Minoritarianism
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Minoritarianism is a neologism (essentially meaning minority rule) that describes a political philosophy or agenda which asserts that a segment of a country's population (sometimes categorized by religion, language, or some other identifying factor) to which a minority of its citizens belong is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in that country's society, giving it the right to make decisions that affect the society.
It may be applied to countries including:
- Finland-Swedish minority rule in Finland
- Southern Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) under Ian Smith
- South Africa under apartheid rule
The little-used term is most often applied disparagingly to democracies in which a minority is able to block legislative changes through supermajority threshold requirements. For example, if a 2/3 vote in favor is required to enact a new law, a minority of greater than 1/3 is said to have "minoritarian" powers.
Such situations are rarely described using the traditional term "minority rule", however. Critics of this use of minoritarianism argue that the ability to block legislation is substantially different from the ability to enact new legislation against the will of the majority, making the analogy to unpopular "minority rule" examples inappropriate. Also, in such a situation, a supermajority can still override the will of a small enough minority.
Minoritarianism in small deliberative groups
On a smaller scale, supermajority decision threshold requirements are also sometimes found in small deliberative groups where these requirements are sometimes adopted in an attempt to increase protection of varied interests within the group. However this attempt is generally discouraged by parliamentary authorities:
- Some people have mistakenly assumed that the higher the vote required to take an action, the greater the protection of the members. Instead the opposite is true. Whenever a vote of more than a majority is required to take an action, control is taken from the majority and given to the minority. ... The higher the vote required, the smaller the minority to which control passes. (from "The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure" by Alice Sturgis)
A common criticism of consensus decision-making is that it can lead to a situation wherein a minority can block the will of the majority. Consensus advocates argue that this is a feature—that no action is preferable to one without the consensus support of the group.
Even in the case where minority control is nominally limited to blocking the majority with veto power (whether as a result of a supermajority requirement or a consensus process), this may result in the situation where the minority retains effective control over the group's agenda and the nature of the proposals submitted to the group.
See also
- Absolute majority
- Consensus democracy
- Dominant minority
- Majoritarianism (Majority rule)