Description
| Product ID: | 9780521124492 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | US |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy |
| Title: | Counting the Many |
| Subtitle: | The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule |
| Authors: | Author: Melissa Schwartzberg |
| Page Count: | 248 |
| Subjects: | History of ideas, History of ideas, Political science and theory, Political science & theory |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating Examines the history underlying the use of supermajority voting rules and offers a critique of their ability to remedy the defects of majority decision making. Supermajority rules govern many features of our lives in common: from the selection of textbooks for our children''s schools to residential covenants, from the policy choices of state and federal legislatures to constitutional amendments. It is usually assumed that these rules are not only normatively unproblematic but necessary to achieve the goals of institutional stability, consensus, and minority protections. In this book, Melissa Schwartzberg challenges the logic underlying the use of supermajority rule as an alternative to majority decision making. She traces the hidden history of supermajority decision making, which originally emerged as an alternative to unanimous rule, and highlights the tensions in the contemporary use of supermajority rules as an alternative to majority rule. Although supermajority rules ostensibly aim to reduce the purported risks associated with majority decision making, they do so at the cost of introducing new liabilities associated with the biased judgments they generate and secure. |
| Imprint Name: | Cambridge University Press |
| Publisher Name: | Cambridge University Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2013-11-18 |
