The Study Of The Rule Of The Majority

The rule of the majority is the important characteristic of democratic politics. It is also the cogent argument of the claim and implementation of democratic politics. Based on the reasonable anticipation of the rule of the majority, the realization of it is the perfect condition that people would like to reach. So people construct various patterns to put into practice in the world. Either the direct democracy—the majority commanding and performing the rights, or the indirect democracy—the majority consigning the rights to the deputy, involves inevitably relationship between majority and minority. The development of democracy shows that the majority, as a whole, are unable to rule bacause of the mediocre intelligence, emotionality and non-rationality. The direct democracy is not feasible. Modern democracy can only assign the rights to some political elites and carry out the representative democracy which unifies the rule of majority and elite politics. Democracy is recognized as the important and effective way of the realization and ensuring of freedom, but it also has the hidden danger of infringing freedom. Direct democracy denies the intermediary organization between individuals and rights, emphasizes the community's homogeneity, lacks the tolerance to the dissidence and takes individuals as the tool to realizes the profit of the whole country. These flaws easily lead to the tyrannical rule to the minority and it is very difficult for direct democracy to remove them. The indirect democracy has its own complexity and introduces different systems and mechanisms of constitution and rule of law so that it has prevented the tyrannical rule. But it still has the hidden danger of it. The majority may break the regulations, make the rights very arbitrary and then infringe the rights and freedom of the minority. In brief, majority and minoristy make the people, and without either of them, democracy will degenerate into non-democracy. It is reasonable for democracy to request the rule of majority but at the same time, democracy should also respect the rights of the minority. Minority plays an important role in democracy and human society. Democracy without minority is the tyrannical even the totalitarianism democracy. A society without minority is a society that is doomed to stagnate or decline. Therefore, we must fully affirm the polistical status and value of minority in democratic politics and adopts all kinds of methods to restrict the rights of majority, to defend and safeguard the rights and freedom of minority.