Concurrent majority
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A concurrent majority is a majority composed of majorities within various subgroups. As a system of government, it means that "major government policy decisions must be approved by the dominant interest groups directly affected ... each group involved must give its consent".[1] There must be majority support within each affected group concurrently.[1]
As a political principle, it enables minorities to block the actions of majorities. In the United States, its most vocal proponents have tended to be minority groups.[2] The concurrent majority was intended to prevent the tyranny of the majority that proponents feared might arise in an unlimited democracy by granting some form of veto power to each of the conflicting interests in society.
Background
Prior to the
United States Constitution
Even so, the widening of the franchise caused concern. The framers of the
Having two houses was intended to serve as a brake on popular movements that might threaten particular groups, with the United States House of Representatives representing the common people and the United States Senate defending the interests of the state governments. The House was to be elected by popular vote, and the Senate was to be chosen by state legislatures. The executive veto and the implied power of judicial review, which was later made explicit by the Supreme Court of the United States, created further obstacles to absolute majority rule; with the rise of the Warren Court in the 1960s and its establishment of a precedent of one man, one vote, judicial review was used to strike down most of the obstacles to absolute majority rule by declaring such measures unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the
Calhoun and nullification
During the first half of the 19th century, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina revived and expounded upon the concurrent majority doctrine. He noted that the North, with its industrial economy, had become far more populous than the South. As the South's dependence on slavery sharply differentiated its agricultural economy from the North's, the difference in power afforded by population threatened interests that Calhoun considered essential to the South.
His theory of the "concurrent majority," elaborated in his posthumous work of political theory
Nullification, an outgrowth of Jeffersonian
References
- ^ a b Peter Woll, American Government: Readings and Cases (Pearson/Longman, 2006), p. 259.
- ^ Kersh, Rogan (2004). Dreams of a More Perfect Union. Ithaca and New York: Cornell university Press. pp. 141–42.
- ^ a b Wills, Garry (2005). The Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. xv-14.
- ^ "John C. Calhoun: Disquisition on Government". Retrieved 2015-09-27.
Sources
- Brown, Guy Story. "Calhoun's Philosophy of Politics: A Study of A Disquisition on Government" (2000)
- Cheek, Jr., H. Lee. Calhoun And Popular Rule: The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Discourse. (2004) online edition
- Ford Jr., Lacy K. "Inventing the Concurrent Majority: Madison, Calhoun, and the Problem of Majoritarianism in American Political Thought," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 19–58 in JSTOR
- Potter, David M., Don E. Fehrenbacher and Carl N. Degler, eds. The South and the Concurrent Majority. (1973). 89 pp., essays by scholars
- Safford, John L. "John C. Calhoun, Lani Guinier, and Minority Rights," PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jun., 1995), pp. 211–216 in JSTOR
- Loo, Andy. "John C. Calhoun’s Concurrent Majority" (2016) The Princeton Tory online version