analysis: Majority principle

Rasul Bakhsh Rais

All major parties must work towards building national consensus on issues of national interest. It is not only in the spirit of building democracy, but is equally a requirement of pragmatic politics

There are many popular miscon- ceptions about democracy that have been perpetuated without any serious thought or challenge.

One of these mistaken beliefs that must be broken is the idea of majority and its supreme power to rule. Yes, majority is an essential requirement in parliament to form a government. But how such a government must function in a democracy is another question and one needs to explore democratic theory and practice for answers.

The principle of majority is politically a convenient tool to aggregate interests in modern societies, which are made up of countless competing groups that struggle endlessly for political and policy space. Therefore, we cannot fully appreciate what democracy stands for unless we contextualise it in social and political pluralism that characterises modern society.

The troubling question then is why should a minority inside or outside parliament restrain a party or a coalition of parties that has been voted into power?

First, the parliamentary majority may not exactly represent the majority of electorates, much less the larger numbers who do not find their names on the voter lists. This is a major problem in first-past-the-pole or simple majority electoral system that we have inherited from the British tradition. In the past few elections, popular vote percentages of the ruling majorities were less than forty percent of registered voters. Who then really represents the majority of citizens — the remaining sixty percent?

Technically, they are left out because the electoral system fragments representation in single-member constituencies with many parties and independent candidates competing against one another. Of course one answer to this dilemma would be proportional representation in which the seats in parliament would be allocated according to the percentage of the popular vote polled by each party with a minimum requirement. Some western democracies have adopted this method of representation for all major groups and parties.

The proportional representation alternative has its own downside: it tends to prevent formation of electoral majorities in parliament, promoting factional tendencies and small party influence in coalition building. It may not produce the desired political effects in a transitional democracy like ours because it may undermine the evolution of a two-party system, which is necessary for a stable parliamentary form of government.

The real answer lies in capturing the true spirit of democracy, which is not really about majority rule but about working together toward a common social good.

The fundamental assumption in democracy is that all parties, groups and individuals seeking popular mandate wish to serve the same purpose — the public good. They may however differ on what exactly that public good is. They may not agree on how that public good can best be achieved, or on the prioritisation of public goods.

Majority parties or groups of parties in immature democracies attempt to impose their will on the rest of society without being sensitive to legitimate concerns and interests of other social and political entities. In democracies, popular leaders and parties use two powerful constructs to push their unilateral definition of public good in all spheres of public policy: popular mandate and sovereignty of the parliament. Neither provides a free license to the majority to do as it pleases beyond providing a legitimate ground for forming a government and translating its manifesto into viable public policy.

The trouble starts the moment a majority begins to exercise its constitutional right to bring about any substantial change in society or radically transform vital elements of public policy according to its ideological vision. The ‘trouble’ — constraining factors or systemic checks — is constitutionally and by norm built into every democratic order with varying degrees of effectiveness. The more effective the checks on the majority, the better the quality of democratic life.

It is argued that restraints, constitutional or political, on the majority throw a spanner in the works for a ruling party. Not really: checks from within the party, if it has internal democratic structures; an opposition representing the political minority; and civil society balance the majority view and moderate its plans.

We have seen in our case that when majorities passed controversial legislation and policies claiming their constitutional right to do so, they proved to be short-lived, divisive and polarised the society.

With elections getting closer, we need to rethink democratic politics and how we can build a true participatory and inclusive democracy. We need to think about the much-ignored democratic principle: working together.

All major parties must work towards building consensus on issues of national interest. It is not only in the spirit of building democracy, but is equally a requirement of pragmatic politics. There is much muck left by the Musharraf regime to be raked in, and it will not be possible to clean up without a government of national consensus.

The next governments in the provinces and at the centre will face the gigantic tasks of rebuilding institutions, arresting the decay of governance, fighting terrorism and resetting national priorities. These challenges require us to work together towards a stable political future.

The presence of President Pervez Musharraf in the post-election political order cannot be wished away. That, along with the corruption of institutions and the dismantling of the superior judiciary, may be the single most troubling legacy of the old order. The question of who will work with him and who will not is already drawing lines of confrontation in the future politics of Pakistan.

If these elections are about democratic transition, and not about legitimising the Musharraf-centred disorder, then structural anomalies in the Constitution and the judiciary will have to be removed. Another important challenge is the redefinition of federalism, because the one-man rule that we have so passively endured has provoked ethnic nationalism.

No party alone can handle these numerous structural issues. A national government inclusive of all parties and groups may help evolve a national social pact. Failing that, we may enter another phase of power struggles, confrontation and misuse of the majority principle.

The author is a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk