密尔"多数暴政"思想探析——兼与《多数暴政新解》一文商榷

密尔出于对作为民主核心价值的自由与平等二者冲突的反应,看到了多数暴政的潜在威胁,提出了"多数暴政"思想.其多数暴政包括政治专制和社会专制,是指社会中的某个群体凭借数量上的优势对少数人的权利和自由的压制.密尔论述多数暴政思想的语境是代议制民主,是对托克维尔多数暴政思想的继承和发展,目的在于保护少数的权利和完善西方民主政治,这一思想不能作为分析当代中国政治的工具,但对我国政治文明与和谐社会建设具有一定的启发意义.     

试析资本主义民主政治的多数规则及其困境

多数规则作为资本主义民主政治的制度基础有着特定的假设前提。从某种意义而言,在本质上涉及统治权的分配;从多数规则到多数统治再到多数暴政的理论推定在逻辑上基于多数与少数区分的固定化,以及无限制的多数权威与政治权力的结合;在以多数至上和平等主义为原则的民主中,可能会造成多数对少数的剥夺,但在资本主义民主政治中,代议制使得多数统治间接化与形式化,实际上存在的是少数精英以多数的名义实施的少数暴政。多数规则在资本主义代议民主中的真正困境始终是关于平等与自由的价值冲突。     

马克思主义视域中的"多数暴政"问题分析

"多数暴政"是托克维尔在分析民主政治发展前景时提出的并被后来西方自由主义政治思想家不断提及的理论假设,它有着特定的内涵、意识形态取向和政治价值色彩;资本主义社会的政治制度安排及其运行实践并没有使"多数暴政"在逻辑推理上的可能性获得经验层面的支持;以"防止多数暴政"理论作为分析工具研究当代中国的政治实践缺乏解释力。     

多数决策原则在西方的缘起及内涵的嬗变

少数服从多数原则作为一种古老的决策规则,源于氏族民族制,形成于雅典的寡头政治时期.在直接民主制下它具有实体民主意义上的"多数统治"的内涵,在近代以来的资产阶级代议制民主下,则演变为摆脱了质量特征的纯数量标准.基于此,便形成了统治阶级内部多数与少数的张力,如何防止"多数暴政"或"多数专制"成为现代民主社会普遍关注的重要问题.     

解读"多数的暴政"

民主并不是万能的,它既有好的一面,又有坏的一面.所谓"多数的暴政"就是民主政治中的一个显著缺陷.但是,"多数的暴政"并非是民主政治发展的必然结果.民主政治经过几百年的演变发展,已经形成以权力制约权力和以社会制约权力两种模式来对抗"多数的暴政".     

“多数人暴政”的伦理悖论与现实解决途径研究

伦理悖论是日常生活中时有发生的公共问题,上升到政策层面上,众多政策制定者都希望通过合理的政策设计来弥补、甚至避免伦理两难和漏洞。以一个经典的伦理学悖论案例为切入点,分析了"多数人暴政"这个高频发生的命题产生的逻辑起点和原因,通过现实事件探讨了现实生活中"多数人暴政"对国家政治、经济、文化的实际影响,提出了在公共政策中可以通过法律约束、社会监督和文化感化政策来对多数人的暴政进行一定的预防和控制,以期对现实的政策制定有所借鉴帮助。     

多数原则与民主发展

多数原则是民主政治的基本原则,在民主发展的不同阶段,多数原则有不同的表现形式.简单多数原则是与古典民主相对应多数原则,它追求的是人民的统治,多数人的意志具有至上的权威.资本主义自由民主观以公民自由为核心,为防止出现多数人的暴政,实行的是有限多数原则.社会主义民主在批判性地吸收和继承以往民主制合理性的基础上,实行民主集中制的基本原则,它正确处理民主与集中的关系,实现了最大限度的民主和自由统一.     

关于正确处理党内多数与少数关系的思考

党内多数与党内少数是指围绕某项事务所产生的不同观点的党员群体在量上的差别。在党内必须服从多数,同时又必须要保护少数。党内多数与党内少数之间是辩证统一的关系。     

萨托利“有限多数原则”论析

多数原则是人们在民主历程中找到的具有操作性的决定原则。亚里士多德、洛克、卢梭等人都曾论证过多数原则的合理性。萨托利从程序共识的角度讨论了多数原则的合理性，但同时也看到这一原则所具有的多数专制弊端。他延续以往思想家关注少数权利的传统，并从多数与少数的可变性、少数的权利、反对者的权利等方面对有限多数原则进行了详细的阐述。从而完善和发展了人们对多数原则的认识。     

论萨托利“有限多数原则”思想

多数原则是人类民主政治生活中的重要原则。在人类非政治生活中,多数原则也是解决矛盾达成共识的重要方式,但随着人类社会的发展,多数原则特别是简单多数原则中存在的问题也日益凸显。本文通过对萨托利《民主新论》中关于多数原则的相关内容的介绍与论述,说明有限多数原则相对于简单多数原则更具有科学性。     

Measuring majority power and veto power of voting rules

We study voting rules with respect to how they allow or limit a majority from dominating minorities: whether a voting rule makes a majority powerful and whether minorities can veto the candidates they do not prefer. For a given voting rule, the minimal share of voters that guarantees a victory to one of the majority’s most preferred candidates is the measure of majority power; and the minimal share of voters that allows the minority to veto each of their least preferred candidates is the measure of veto power. We find tight bounds on such minimal shares for voting rules that are popular in the literature and used in real elections. We order the rules according to majority power and veto power. Instant-runoff voting has both the highest majority power and the highest veto power; plurality rule has the lowest. In general, the greater is the majority power of a voting rule, the greater its veto power. The three exceptions are: voting with proportional veto power, Black’s rule and Borda’s rule, which have relatively weak majority power and strong veto power, thus providing minority protection. Our results can shed light on how voting rules provide different incentives for voter participation and candidate nomination.

     

Brexit and the British Constitution: Reflections on the Last Three years and the Next Fifty

The decision to leave the EU provoked the biggest constitutional crisis of recent British history. The referendum—a device for circumventing the parliamentary process—was followed by conflict between a minority government and a majority of MPs unwilling to leave the EU without satisfactory alternative arrangements. The courts, drawn into this conflict, upheld conventions that sustain the authority of Parliament and restrain the despotic power of ministers. The reaction of members of the current government was to take disreputable and anti-democratic positions against both the Speaker of the House of Commons and the courts. They now have a sufficient majority in Parliament to resume adherence to constitutional conventions and restore a political culture of debate and tolerance, but they show little sign of doing so, and there is a risk that they will do irreparable damage to the political culture that underpins democracy.     

Do supermajority rules limit or enhance majority tyranny? evidence from the US States, 1960–1997

Buchanan and Tullock (1962) demonstrates that supermajority rules can reduce tyranny of majority problems in a democracy. However, recent theoretical work by Dixit, Grossman, and Gul (2000) postulates that this static analysis of supermajority rules may be inadequate to explain political decisions in a dynamic setting. In fact, supermajority rules may increase the incidence of majority tyranny because of rotating political representation. Using data from US state legislatures we examine the effect of supermajority rules on different categories of government expenditures and tax revenues during the latter half of the 20th century. We find supermajority rules have little effect on general government expenditures and tax revenues. However, supermajority rules are associated with lower public welfare transfers, which supports the traditional analysis of the fiscal effects of supermajority rules.     

Bureaucracy,organization culture and development

The first part of the paper discusses the concept of organizational culture and highlights its value as an aid to understanding the way organizations work. Using four basic models of organization culture (power, role, task and person) the paper then goes on to describe a questionnaire survey of cultures in development organizations. The questionnaire required two sets of responses: firstly an indication of preferred organization culture and secondly the respondents' perception of the way their organization actually works. Whilst the vast majority of respondents prefer task-orientated cultures, most actually perceive themselves to be operating in a role culture (bureaucracy), whilst a large minority perceives a power (political) culture. These results demonstrate an inherent tension in many people's working lives. They also indicate the necessity of taking into account the political environment of work when designing training courses; few organizations appear to operate in the rational way upon which many development techniques and practices are posited. In the final part of the paper there is discussion of the need to make a modification to the basic cultural models in order to make them particularly relevant to developing countries.     

权利冲突中的少数主义原则

权利冲突问题一直以来都是法学研究的一个热点,同时也是一个难点,而多数人权利与少数人权利的冲突问题,则可以说是难点中的难点:因为处理不好它有可能导致民主制度的颠覆或多数人的暴政等问题.考虑到法学首先是一种实践性学科,因而对这个在实践中经常遇见的问题进行理论上的分析并提出解决之道就是法学的当有之责--而"少数主义原则"正是对这一问题的可能答案.     

Integration and Identity in an International Context: Problems and Ambiguities in the New Politics of Multiculturalism

Debates about multiculturalism, minority rights, and identity dominated Anglo-American political theory during the majority of the 1990s, and continue to raise important questions concerning the nature of citizenship, community, and the responsibilities of liberal states. They were popular, too, among policy makers, politicians, and journalists: many academics and practitioners were, for a time, united in their support for multiculturalism. Just as the philosophical literature at that time became more 'multiculturalist', so many European states increasingly adopted multiculturalist policies as a way of including historically marginalised groups into mainstream liberal culture or, in some cases, as a way of protecting minority groups from unfair pressures from the majority culture. However, as time has gone on, the multiculturalist turn in liberal political theory, and among many European governments, has waned. In the wake of terrorist atrocities around the world, growing concerns about the erosion of civic and national identity, and fears that cultural recognition can permit illiberal practices, many academics and practitioners have sought to distance themselves from the idea that it is a role of the state to afford special treatment to cultural minorities, and have sought once again to emphasise those common bonds which unite citizens of liberal democratic states, rather than those cultural identities which may serve to divide them. This article evaluates some of the recent philosophical literature on multiculturalism against the changing political landscape in Britain and Europe and suggests that the multiculturalist position remains weakened by a number of crucial ambiguities.     

Re-centring British Government: Beliefs, Traditions and Dilemmas in Political Science

Bevir and Rhodes have offered a useful addition to the tools of political scientists by developing an interpretivist approach to political science. Interpretation is a crucial mechanism for understanding the social world but one that has been underused in political analysis. This article welcomes Bevir and Rhodes' emphasis on interpretivism but suggests that there are a number of problems in the way they use the approach. In particular: they use a narrow definition of interpretivism; they caricature the nature of existing work in political science; the concept of tradition does too much work; and they pay insufficient attention to power and power relations.     

Power and Democracy in Denmark: Still a Viable Democracy

In its final report, the Danish Democracy and Power Study (1998–2004) pointed to a number of serious democratic problems such as declining political party membership, a growing gap between a competent and resourceful majority and a marginalised minority, the growing influence of the media, the transfer of power from the political to the judicial system, and the democratic deficit associated with European Union membership. However, the report also concluded that overall democratic development in the last 30–40 years has been surprisingly positive. This article assesses the development of democracy in Denmark in relation to the parliamentary chain of governance: the standard used in the final report of the majority of the Norwegian power study group. The conclusion is that, in the case of Denmark, democratic development has not – as the parliamentary committee initially expected – resulted in a systematic weakening of the parliamentary chain of governance.     

A contribution to the conceptualization of political resources utilized in corporate political action

• This paper is an attempt at improving existing conceptualizations of corporate political resources. I contend that existing typologies are too vague, simplistic and incomplete on several points. This is why I firstly suggest a new typology and then offer some thoughts on the main characteristics of these resources. Lastly, I apply the idea of resource combination (or bundle) to political resources, showing that they can play three different roles in implementing two generic political strategies.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Claiming rights in exile: women’s insurgent citizenship practices in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines insurgent citizenship practices employed by activists in the exiled Burmese women’s movement from the 1990s and onwards. Consisting of political exiles, refugees and ethnic insurgents, this movement has successfully used the transnational, transitory space of the borderlands to constitute its participants as political subjects with legitimate claims to rights, citizenship and leadership. Drawing on interviews, this analysis interrogates women’s activism through the lens of insurgent citizenship practices. Thus, how have Burmese women’s activists claimed rights and lived citizenship in exile? Three main strategies are examined: firstly, women activists have positioned themselves as political actors and authorities through involvement in governance and humanitarian aid delivery in refugee camps. Secondly, they have claimed rights and political subjectivity through engagement with international norms, networks and arenas. Thirdly, they have claimed citizenship and political influence in oppositional nation-making projects through engaging with and negotiating ethno-nationalist armed struggles. The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s insurgent citizenship practices, showing how they navigate multiple marginalized subject positions, direct their rights claims towards multiple governing authorities, and enact multiple political communities.