The risks of majority rule as decision mechanism: on the tyranny of numbers

• Autor(a) principal: Fontana Filho, Mauricio
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Mises
• Texto Completo: https://revistamises.org.br/misesjournal/article/view/1412
• topic: Democracia representativa; Esfera do indecidível; Sufrágio restrito; Sufrágio universal; Tirania da maioria; Representative democracy; Sphere of the undecidable; Restricted suffrage; Universal suffrage; Tyranny of the majority; Esfera de lo indecidible; Democracia representativa; Sufragio restringido; Sufrágio universal; Tirania da maioria

We investigate the decision-making mechanism of political majorities in indirect democracy and its excesses. The main goal is to inquire about the intrinsic legitimacy of the people given its primarily quantitative character. Is it enough to have a majority of the people to guarantee decision-making legitimacy? What are the risks of having the majority as a decision-making mechanism? This paper uses the hypothetical-deductive method through bibliographic analysis and data collection. The initial hypothesis to be confirmed points that people do not receive legitimacy from their numbers, but from the quality of their initiatives, and that it is not a naturally just, but prone to tyrannize minorities, and should be limited by norms. It suggests the delimitation of the spheres of how to govern and who governs through fixed norms, under the penalty of insufficient, incompetent, and negligent decisions.