Minority Rights, Majority Rule
Minority Rights, Majority Rule

Author: Sarah A. Binder

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-06-13

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780521587921

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Minority Rights, Majority Rule seeks to explain a phenomenon evident to most observers of the US Congress. In the House of Representatives, majority parties rule and minorities are seldom able to influence national policy making. In the Senate, minorities quite often call the shots, empowered by the filibuster to frustrate the majority. Why did the two chambers develop such distinctive legislative styles? Conventional wisdom suggests that differences in the size and workload of the House and Senate led the two chambers to develop very different rules of procedure. Sarah Binder offers an alternative, partisan theory to explain the creation and suppression of minority rights, showing that contests between partisan coalitions have throughout congressional history altered the distribution of procedural rights. Most importantly, new majorities inherit procedural choices made in the past. This institutional dynamic has fuelled the power of partisan majorities in the House but stopped them in their tracks in the Senate.

Presidential Elections and Majority Rule
Presidential Elections and Majority Rule

Author: Edward B. Foley

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0190060158

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In his latest book, Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, Edward Foley asks how the American electoral system can better represent the people. What kind of winner truly reflects the nation's votes: the plurality winners of winner-takes-all elections, as currently used, or the majority-preferred winners of a reformed system? How do third-party candidates affect American presidential elections? What, if anything, would change in a two-candidate run-off?And how can electoral reform be implemented without sowing chaos? Ultimately, Foley outlines a solution in which the Electoral College can be restored to its original majoritarian ideals through state law rather than Constitutional amendment.

Majority Rule Or Minority Will
Majority Rule Or Minority Will

Author: Harold J. Spaeth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-02-19

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780521805711

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Examines the influence of precedent on the behavior of the US Supreme Court justices.

Majority Rules
Majority Rules

Author: Roger Fleming

Publisher: Elderberry Press (OR)

Published: 2014-06-09

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781934956649

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Little does Nick Taft know when he arrives to serve his Congressman in Washington, he would stumble upon a human smuggling cartel insulated by powerful Capitol Hill interests. He soon falls for the beguiling Lisa Castile, an ambitious staffer of the opposing party who works for a committee chairman with suspect ties to the trafficking venture. The relationship of these two opposites and the enterprise they unveil trails immigration reform legislation, controlled by the nefarious chairman. The young staffers find themselves swept into a Justice Department investigation of the illegal operation, uncertain as to whether it is to deter them or protect them. Majority Rules moves the reader through the halls of Congress with an insider's view of currently relevant political history. In between colorful power schemes, the story highlights the majority/minority mindset that has entrapped Washington for decades.

Dividing the Rulers
Dividing the Rulers

Author: Yuhui Li

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2019-09-16

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0472125923

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The election of populist politicians in recent years seems to challenge the commitment to democracy, if not its ideal. This book argues that majority rule is not the problem; rather, the institutions that stabilize majorities are responsible for the suppression of minority interests. Despite the popular notion that social choice instability (or “cycling”) makes it impossible for majorities to make sound legislation, Yuhui Li argues that the best part of democracy is not the large number of people on the winning side; it is that the winners can be easily divided and realigned with the losers in the cycling process. He shows that minorities’ bargaining power depends on their ability to exploit division within the winning coalition and induce its members to defect, an institutionalized uncertainty that is missing in one-party authoritarian systems. Dividing the Rulers theorizes why such division within the majority is important and what kind of institutional features can help a democratic system maintain such division, which is crucial in preventing the “tyranny of the majority.” These institutional solutions point to a direction of institutional reform that academics, politicians, and voters should collectively pursue.

First Democracy
First Democracy

Author: Paul Woodruff

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-03-16

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0195304543

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This brilliant analysis of the nature of democracy draws on the hard-earned lessons of the ancient Greeks.