Minoritarianism or more commonly, the tyranny of the minority, is most often applied disparagingly to processes 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 The US Masons Manual (law book, basically) notes To require a two-thirds vote, for example, to take any action would be to give to any number more than one-third of the members the power to defeat the action and amount to a delegation of the powers of the body to a minority. 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 groups agenda and the nature of the proposals submitted to the group, as the majority will not propose ideas that they know the minority will veto. 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) The liberum veto (Latin for the free veto) was a parliamentary device in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a form of unanimity voting rule that allowed any member of the Sejm (legislature) to force an immediate end to the current session and nullify any legislation that had already been passed at the session by shouting Nie pozwalam! (Polish: I do not allow!). Many historians hold that the principle of liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system—particularly in the 18th century, when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings—and the Commonwealths eventual destruction in the partitions of Poland and foreign occupation, dominance and manipulation of Poland for the next 200 years or so. The expression Polish parliament in many European languages originated from this apparent paralysis.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 02:58:21 +0000
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