Acceso usuarios
Michelangelo Bovero
The institution of ballot cast with universal suffrage can prove that a regime is democratic only if the overall political game is played according to certain rules. The rules of the game represent the meaning and the value of democracy's (logical) conditions: if these rules are violated or incorrectly applied, then the game cannot be labelled democratic. The principle of majority is regarded by many as the "key rule" of democracy. the identification of a democratic regime with the "power of the majority" is misleading. In this article, the author argues against the claim that the majority rule is or should be key rule of democratic elections. If the electoral system is designed so that it necessarily and immediately results in a political majority of members of parliament that is pre-established, immovable and unchangeable for the whole term, then the political game is distorted. The function of elections in democracy is not to attribute the power of taking collective decisions directly to a group of citizens, but to determine the composition of the body authorized to take collective decisions so that the political views of all citizens are represented, proportionally and without exclusions. This function can be fulfilled by adopting the criterion of proportionality, not majority rule. The principle of majority plays an essential role not in the elections for representative bodies, but in the decision-making by the elected representatives: it is the procedural principle that parliaments, as a collegial body, adopts in order to make collective decisions. This rule simply corresponds to a formal condition of efficiency of the political process, and applies equally to any collegial decision-making body, hence for all non-democratic regimes where collective decisions are taken. It follows that the majority rule is not, as such, more democratic than autocratic.
