majority principle

What justifies majority decision making in democracies? Can we consider that the majority is more likely to be right? Didier Mineur reflects on the philosophical foundations of a rule that has become so self-evident in our societies.

How do you renounce unanimity to embrace the majority principle? How do you ward off the dissastisfaction of a minority defeated by vote? Those problems haunted the Middle Ages, the system of orders and ranks of which made room for the majority principle in many of its central institutions. For historian Olivier Christin, we need to reassess this era’s contribution to the origins of the kind of political decision-making that is associated with the democratic revolution.