Majoritarian representation

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A majoritarian voting system is an electoral method which gives the right to appoint all the representatives to the majority of the electors, denying representation to all minorities. First electoral method ever appeared, it was later progressively corrected or eliminated, due to its huge non-democratic effects.

Theory

The majoritarian right was substained by a large and important group of scholars. Aristotle launched a theory which was later assumed by many Roman thinkers who said that quod maior pars curiae efficit, pro eo habetur ac si omnes egerint (the decision taken by the majority of the senators is valid as it would be approved by all). Jean-Jacques Rousseau, consequently to his concept of general will, said that la voix du plus grand nombre oblige toujours tous les autres (the voice of the greater number ever forces all people). Adhémar Esmein said that if the entire country was a single constituency, the electoral majority would have the right to appoint all the deputies, as it appoints the head of the executive power; even in its extreme consequencies, this system does not cause an injustice to the minority, because the majority obtains no more than its right.

Decline

Quite undisputed until the first half of the 19th century, the classic majoritarian system, sometimes referred as block voting, began to be more and more criticized when great ideological differences arose. Corrections were worldwide progressively introduced in two senses:

• a first possibility was to reduce the dimension of the constituencies, so to divide the election in many local races and, consequently, increase the possibility for the minority to win some local disputes. At-large elections were substituted by many multi-member constituencies and, finally, by single-winner electoral districts;
• a second possibility was to introduce corrections even still voting at-large or, at least, in multi-member constituencies:
  • the limited voting system allowed the electors to vote a number of candidates which was lower than the contesting seats;
  • the cumulative voting system allowed the electors to concentrate their full share of votes on fewer candidates;
  • the single non-transferable vote was the extremism of the limited vote, the elector having a single choise in a multi-member race;
  • the preferential block voting system allowed the electors to rank the candidates, imposing a quota to be elected;
  • the party-list voting system, which established the proportional representation, fully abandoning the majoritarian criterion.

Actual usage

Nowadays, at-large majoritarian representation is no more used for national elections cause its anti-democratic effects denying equality, while it is sometimes still used for local elections organised on non-partisan bases.

A modern variation provides a party-link between candidate. Indeed, this variation extremises the problems of the system, so its use is limited to exceptional cases. Residual usage in several multi-member constituencies is reduced to the choise of the Electoral college of the President of the United States. The block voting is also used to elect a part of the assemblies in the regional elections in Italy and France: in this cases, the majoritarian quota is one of two parts of an additional member system.

Declined for multi-member polls, majoritarian representation is instead largely in use in its single-winner version, being considered in many countries as a good balance between democratic representation and efficacious governance.

See also

• Semi-proportional representation
• Proportional representation

External links

• Block voting