The latter, which gives states equal power regardless of size, was intended to serve as a check on the former. They established two houses of Congress: the House of Representatives, where each state is represented according to its population, and the Senate, where each state is afforded two representatives. You can learn more about this in our narrative about constitutional democracy, but in the meantime, let’s turn to the specific tactics the founders used to avoid what they would have considered “mob rule.” So if we’re to avoid a “tyranny of the majority,” we would essentially have to, in some way, temper pure democracy. Democracy, however, is based on the majority’s voice. “I regard as impious and detestable,” Tocqueville wrote, “the maxim that in matters of government the majority of a people has the right to do everything.” Tocqueville, like Plato before him, believed that justice can-and often must-reside outside of the immediate desires of the People. Tocqueville questioned if public opinion was always motivated by the right reasons. He asserted that, given every American’s roughly equal intellectual stature to his fellow citizens, “public opinion” (as he called it) would become an overwhelming force in American politics. Perhaps the most influential individual to write about the tyranny of the majority-and to articulate how this concept relates specifically to the United States-is French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who traveled to the United States in 1831. And in the French Revolution, after overthrowing the ruling elites, Robespierre and other revolutionaries clamoring for equality made the streets run red with blood during the Reign of Terror, before emperor Napoleon Bonaparte overtook power. The early democracies of Athens and Rome experienced several moments where a popular tyrant would rise to power, appear to represent the sentiments of the poor, “left out” majority, and launch an aggressive campaign in the name of restoring power to the people.
The concept of a “superior force of an interested and overbearing majority,” as Madison calls it in Federalist Paper #10, has been an inherent flaw of democratic governments long before the founding of the United States.
Typically, a tyrannical majority is led by a demagogue who ridicules the previous established power, appeals to popular sentiment, and launches attacks against minority groups-all to the delight of the demagogue’s supporters. You’re probably thinking: I thought democracy was good! Why did Socrates, arguably the most famous philosopher of all time, think it was so dangerous? Well, Socrates and Plato, in addition to many other prominent political philosophers that followed them, were concerned that democracies might lead to a tyranny of the majority, whereby the majority of citizens oppresses the minority in a democratic state. From best to worst, this is the order in which regimes degrade, as described by Socrates in Plato’s Republic. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch.”Īristocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, Tyranny.