Talk:Tyranny of the majority
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[edit] Origins
Why does the article claim that the phrase originates froma few different places, which are decades apart? I'm currently reading de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," and it's not a subtly used phrase - whole chapters of the book are titled and dedicated to the concept of the "tyranny of the majority." Is there a reason to include Mill's work 25 years later? Jordanp (talk) 00:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Is there an article to be written here?
Currently, a couple of references for use of the phrase aside, this article is devoid of content. Right now, all it actually says is:
- The tyranny of the majority is the dilemma facing a democracy when a minority's own interests are consistently blocked by an electoral majority.
Ignoring the huge number of ill-defined terms (a "minority" could mean, say, an ethnic minority, or a parliamentary minority; "electoral" could refer to the electorate (usually electing representatives), or a majority of representatives, usually sufficient to establish law. "blocking someone's interest" could mean anything from "not doing as someone says" to "making life miserable for someone"), what appears to be said here is that the tyranny of the majority is the "dilemma" (not the right term in this context) that someone does not get their way. Hardly unique to democracy, and certainly not a valid definition.
As far as I understand it, the phrase evokes a very clear mental image - that of a small number of people (states, what have you) being acted against in a discriminatory fashion by a majority vote. It's certainly a problem, particularly if it is assumed everyone votes in their own interest - what is it that would stop anyone but Bill Gates from voting "yes" on a referendum to take away his money and split it up evenly?
I'm not sure whether there's any good source actually discussing the phrase in detail - usually, people who use it are deliberately avoiding making a rational argument, instead going for the emotional image of, say, a majority in Nazi Germany voting in favour of the Holocaust.
If there is serious use of the term, maybe that includes a usable definition. Until then, the best we can do is something like "the phrase tyranny of the majority is used by people opposing majority rule in certain matters because they think the decisions so made would be mean". Or an AFD as dicdef.
RandomP 03:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Lani Guinier
Whether the Lani Guinier book "Tyranny of the Majority" is relevent to the article is a content decision, but the bare sentence that User:Raggz is deleting is not original research (see my comment on his talk page (here). The book is discussed in the Lani Guinier article; the inline link should be sufficient sourcing, but feel free to add the book to the references if desired. - David Oberst 09:37, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
