Minoritarianism

Not to be confused withMajoritarianism.

Inpolitical science,minoritarianism(orminorityism) is aneologismfor apolitical structureor process in which aminority groupof a population has a certain degree of primacy in that population'sdecision making,withlegislative powerorjudicial powerbeing held or controlled by a minority group rather thana majority that is representative of the population.

Concept in depth

Minoritarianism is most often applied disparagingly to processes in which a minority is able to block legislative changes in the presence ofsupermajoritythreshold requirements.For example, if a two-thirds majority vote in favor is required to enact a new law, an opposing minority of greater than one-third is said to have "minoritarian" powers.

Even in the case where minority control is nominally limited to blocking the majority withvetopower (whether as a result of a supermajority requirement orconsensus decision-making), this may result in the situation where the minority retains effective control over the group's agenda and the nature of the proposals submitted to the group, as the majority would be disinclined to propose ideas that they know the minority would veto.

Critics of this use ofminoritarianismargue that the ability to block legislation is substantially different from the ability to enact new legislation against the will of the majority, making the analogy to unpopular "dominant minority rule" examples inappropriate.

Minoritarianism is sometimes used to describe rule by adominant minoritysuch as anethnic groupdelineated byreligion,language,or some other identifying factor. For example, theMongol-ledYuan dynasty(1271–1368) andManchu-ledQing dynasty(1644–1912) both ruled over the majorityHan Chinesepopulation of China.InRhodesia(now calledZimbabwe) andSouth Africa,white minorities controlled the government from 1910 through 1994.

Minoritarianism may also be used to describe some cases where appeasement ofminoritiesbyvotebankpolitics is practiced. Examples include but are not limited to, Indian Muslimsand Francophone Canadians.

In small deliberative groups

Supermajority decision threshold requirements are often found in small deliberative groups where these requirements are sometimes adopted in an attempt to increase protection of varied interests within the group. The requirements may be formally stated or may be unstated (for example, when an organization is described as having a "consensus culture" ).

A common criticism ofconsensus decision-makingis that it can lead to a situation wherein a minority can block the will of the majority. Consensus advocates argue that this is a good feature—thatno actionis preferable to one without the consensus support of the group.

Attempts to resolve the dilemma through formal supermajority standards are generally discouraged by parliamentary authorities:

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" byAlice Sturgis

Dominant minority

See also:Dominant minority

Adominant minority,also calledelite dominance,is a minority group that has overwhelmingpolitical,economic,orculturaldominance in acountry,despite representing a small fraction of the overall population (ademographicminority). Dominant minorities are also known asalien elitesif they are recent immigrants.

The term is most commonly used to refer to anethnic groupwhich is defined alongracial,national,religious,culturalortriballines and that holds a disproportionate amount of power. A notable example isSouth Africaduring theapartheidregime, whereWhite South Africanswielded predominant control of the country although they were never more than 22% of the population.African American-descended nationalsinLiberia,ChristiansinSierra Leone,Sunni ArabsinBa'athist Iraq,theAlawiteminority in Syria (since 1970 under the rule of the AlawiteAssadfamily), and theTutsiinRwandafrom 1884 to 1959 have also been cited as 20th-century and early-21st-century examples.

See also

• Client politics
• Criticism of democracy
• Elitism
• Iron law of oligarchy
• Liberum veto
• Majoritarianism(opposite)
• Minority influence
• Minority (philosophy)
• Minority rights
• Oligarchy
• Pseudo-secularism
• Reverse discrimination
• Reverse racism
• Ruling class
• Social privilege
• Tyranny of the majority
• Majority rule

References

• Derbyshire, John (2002-01-29)."Minoritarianism".National Review.Retrieved2007-01-29.
• Barzilai, Gad.Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities(Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press,2003).ISBN978-0-472-03079-8
• Gibson, Richard.African Liberation Movements: Contemporary Struggles against White Minority Rule(Institute of Race Relations:Oxford University Press,London, 1972).ISBN0-19-218402-4
• Russell, Margo and Martin.Afrikaners of the Kalahari: White Minority in a Black State(Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 1979).ISBN0-521-21897-7
• Johnson, Howard and Watson, Karl (eds.).The white minority in the Caribbean(Wiener Publishing, Princeton, NJ, 1998).ISBN976-8123-10-9,ISBN1-55876-161-6
• Chua, Amy.World on Fire:How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability(Doubleday, New York, 2003).ISBN0-385-50302-4
• Haviland, William.Cultural Anthropology.(Vermont: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993). p. 250-252.ISBN0-15-508550-6.