6

Majority Rule — A Cause of War?

Peter Emerson

ln a plural society the approach to politics as a zero-sum game is

immoral and impracticable.
Words like “winning” and “losing” have to be banished from the
political vocabulary of a plural society.‘

Introduction
Democracy, as practised in most countries nowadays, is
adversarial. The fact that presidents andlor policies are
changed as the result of a vote rather than as a consequence
of a bloody revolution or war is to be welcomed. Sometimes,
however, the distinction between peaceful and violent change
is muddled. Indeed, the use of divisive voting procedures has
often exacerbated tensions in societies that have then
tumbled into violence. Win-or-lose voting procedures — i.e.
yes-or-no majority votes in decision-making and single
preference systems in elections — along with a practice which
is based on these voting methodologies, namely, that of
majority rule, have often been part of the problem.

An Historical Background
In earlier times and in many cultures, the democratic process
was rather more inclusive. In yesterday’s America, for
example, ‘The tribes gathered and discussed the issue at
hand, listening and speaking until common understanding
had been reached. [a] practice of government by
consensus Similarly, in parts of Africa, ‘Majority rule was
a foreign notion’? and instead, to quote Tanzania-is first
President, Julius Nyerere, ‘The elders talk until they agree.
This “talking until you agree" is the essential of the traditional
African concept of democracy’.“ The sub-Saharan attitude to
conflict resolution was also rather different: to quote an
example from Ethiopia, ‘If someone is quarrelling with
someone else, then the court will set itself the sole task of
ending the conflict while granting to each that he is in the
right’?
A more exclusive form of democracy emerged in Europe
and America where philosophers like Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Jeremy Bentham spoke of ‘le volonté général,
the general will’ and ‘the greatest good of the greatest
number’. Having seen the errors and horrors caused by
various forms of minority rule, especially those of the absolute
monarchs, it seemed obvious to them and many others that
rule by a majority would be a huge improvement. Hence,
today, we have statements such as ‘Democracy rests upon
the principles of majority rule’.6 Few would disagree.
There then came a huge mistake: it was assumed that a
majority opinion could be identified by a majority vote. Despite
huge advances in so many fields of science, including that of
social choice, this assumption still holds. Thus many believe
that ‘Democracy works on the basis of a decision by the
majority’,7 and that ‘Democracy is based on majority
decision’? The world — or at least the Western world —
appears to be committed to the majority vote.9
In many countries, then, current democratic structures are
based on a majority vote form of decision-making. As a direct
consequence of this, most parliaments divide into two —
government and opposition — either under single-party rule or
in majority/grand coalitions. While some international
organizations try to operate in consensus — and by that is
meant a verbal consensus — many forums base their
decisions on a (simple, weighted, qualified or consociational)
majority vote. Such an adversarial democratic structure is
perhaps adequate in some jurisdictions; elsewhere, however,
it has been a recipe for division, violence and, at worst, war.
This chapter will examine some of the dreadful
consequences which have resulted from this Western, if not
now universal, practice of majoritarianism,” first in decision-
making, secondly, in elections. In addition, it will question the
logic of such a polity with particular reference to conflict
resolution work.

Majoritarianism in Decision-Making
There are a number of instances where simplistic voting
procedures and/or inadequate democratic structures have at
the very least exacerbated tensions in society. They include i)
majority vote plebiscites on secession; and ii) majority votes
taken in parliaments and international organizations.

i) Majority vote plebiscites on secession

‘All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of

that right they freely determine their political status ..."‘ But
people cannot ‘freely’ determine anything if someone has
already reduced that which should have been a free (i.e.
multi-option) choice to a binary dilemma ofjust two options.
Unfortunately, none of the international declarations on self-
determination stipulate the particular methodology by which ‘a
people’ should actually determine their status. In the absence
of such, most politicians have resorted to the binary majority
vote, not least because this voting procedure allows them to
control the agenda.”
A simple instance comes from Canada, where M.
Parizeau decided that the people of Quebec should be
presented with the choice of either the status quo or
independence. In effect, it was a contest between the
Anglophones and the Francophones, and the question all but
disenfranchised the indigenous Cree Indians. In the 1980
referendum, Parizeau lost by 59.6 percent to 40.4 percent. So
he waited for a few years before having another go: in 1992,
there was a second defeat, this time by 56.7 percent to 43.3
percent. Accordingly, he chose to hang on for a little longer,
and then he held yet another ballot in 1995 — the referendum
process was rapidly becoming a ‘never-end-’em"3 — and he
now lost by a mere whisker, 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent. He
blamed the hapless Cree Indians - who voted for the devil
they knew — so he had to resign.
As this and other examples show, the right of self-
determination, at least as currently defined, is a provocation.
It might have been an adequate principle for those who
wished to resolve the external problem of colonialism. As a
means of settling internal disputes, however, it was and still is
a recipe for mayhem. Consider the following: if a minority
does not want the status quo, and if a majority of that minority
chooses to opt out, then of course it may. If, however, a
minority of that minority disagrees, and if a majority of that
minority of the minority so chooses, then it may choose
another path. The logic of this is as nonsensical as the
consequences have often been bloody: there will be peace
and tranquillity on this planet when every pair of individuals is
an independent nation-state ofjust two persons.

The British Isles

This form of balkanization started in the UK in 1920 when
Ireland opted out. So Northern Ireland opted out of opting out
and opted back in again. The eventual consequence was
violence, the thirty years of ‘the Troubles’.

The Caucasus
Lessons were unlearnt. When Mikhail Gorbachev introduced
his policy of perestroika, the USSR started to break up. In
1991, Georgia opted out.“ Whereupon Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, and very nearly Ajaria as well, opted out of Georgia:
on October 3, 1999 in Abkhazia, in an 88 percent turnout, 97
percent supported independence; and on February 18, 2007,
South Ossetia followed with a 99 percent margin. Hence
more violence: in 1992, it was between the region and the
nation; in 2008, it was outright war between Georgia and
Russia.“ Meanwhile, in Nagorno-Karabakh on December 10,
1991, i.e. after its war, a majority of 99.89 percent voted for
independence, and only 24 individuals bravely said ‘no’.’6
In today’s Russian Federation, the prospect of a similar
chain of events has come to be called ‘matrioshka
nationa|ism’,” named after the famous Russian dolls: lurking
within every majority is another minority; within that, a smaller
one; in every smaller one, a tiny one; and inside that again, a
miniscule one. There is the fear, certainly among some
Russian politicians, that if one part of the Federation were to
opt out — like Chechnya — others would surely follow; which
partly explains why the two recent wars in that Republic were
so bitter.

The Balkans
In Yugoslavia in the 1990s, a major political question was the
dichotomy, ‘Are you Serb or Croat?’ For many people in what
is now Croatia, this closed question was of course
unanswerable: the partners in or children of a mixed
marriage; those who were neither Orthodox nor Catholic;
those like the \/lahs or the Roma who were of another ethnic
minority; and most tragically of all perhaps, those Slavs and
others who were trying to move beyond any sort of
antagonistic nationalism. Alas, the binary format was chosen
for the Croatian referendum question in May 1991:
independence, ‘yes or no?’ The Serb minority in the Krajina —
three areas in Croatia which had a predominantly Serb
population — organized their own ballot one week earlier. In
the latter poll, a turn-out of 95 percent voted by a 90 percent
margin to stay in Yugoslavia. The international community did
not recognize it. In the other poll, 93 percent of an 84 percent
turnout voted for Croatian independence. This result was
recognized. The other consequence of both votes was war.
In November 1991, the EU set up the Badinter
Commission, a team of international lawyers to consider the
problems of Yugoslavia.’8 It endorsed the referendum and, as
a result, there was a spate of such ballots: votes in Slovenia,
Croatia, Macedonia (polls which preceded the work of the
commission) and Bosnia were recognised; votes which did
not produce the required result, as in Montenegro, were
repeated; and votes which were not wanted were just not
recognized — Republika Srpska, Herzeg-Bosna, Sandzak,
and Kosovo — unless or until, of course, the West changed its
mind.” The Commission did not, however, question the
methodology of the majority vote. The final comment comes
from Sarajevo’s now legendary newspaper, Oslobodjenje: ‘all
the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a
referendum’.2°

Rwanda
In the 1930s, the Belgian authorities issued everyone in
Rwanda with an ID card. The question was closed: ‘Are you
Hutu or Tutsi?’ Now Rwandan society was quite unlike
Kenya’s, for example, where different tribal groups speak
different languages. In Rwanda, in contrast, they all live
cheek by jowl and everyone speaks the one language,
Kinyarwanda. The Belgians nevertheless decided to split
everyone into two, and thus they converted a social
distinction into a tribal one. Those who were tall were called
Tutsi, the small were the Hutu (the Twa were ignored), and
anyone of average build was asked if they had ten or more
cows; in effect, another closed question. Those who said ‘yes
were classified as Tutsi; the ‘no’s were Hutu?’
Having supported a form of minority rule — in which the
tiniest minority, the colonialists, were on top — the authorities
post-WWII changed their minds and argued for its opposite,
majority rule. So the losers of yesterday could become the
winners of tomorrow. Little wonder, then, that when the
lnterahamwe launched their gruesome genocide in 1994, the
slogan they used was ‘Rubanda Nyamwinshi’, ‘the majority
people’.22
Sudan
In all the words that have been written on the Rwandan
genocide, few have questioned the practice of interpreting the
principle of majority rule to mean the practice of majority
voting. Instead, as in the Balkans, so too in Africa, the
international community blunders on. In July 2002, British
diplomats were present in Kenya when the two sides to the
civil war in Sudan, the Khartoum government and the
Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, SPLMP3 signed the
Machakos Protocol to end that war. Inter alia, this agreement
promised a binary referendum in South Sudan on whether or
not the latter could have independence. Here was the answer
the South wanted. But if one part of the country could gain its
objectives by waging a war, and then negotiating a settlement
to hold a referendum, then why not another? In a word,
balkanization. ‘[I]f the South were to secede, this would open
a Pandora’s box in the whole of Sudan.’2“‘
The first consequence took place in what was already a
very turbulent region: Darfur. Literally within months, in early
2003, another ‘movement’, the Sudanese Liberation
Movement, SLMF5 again with an army to match, resorted to
violence. The government responded with its now notorious
Janjaweed.26
The South Sudan referendum was held in January 2011
and, on the whole, it passed off peacefully; the actual
handover of power is scheduled for July 2011. A second
consequence of Machakos, however, is that further
referendums are already in the pipeline. Within Sudan, the oil-
rich region of Abyei on the border between North and South is
due to hold its own referendum shortly; there has already
been some violence there. Meanwhile, South Kurdufan and
Blue Nile are due to hold consultations on the initial basis of
an eitherlor question.
Consequences further afield may be even more traumatic.
Somaliland now wants a referendum to secede from the rest
of Somalia. They are the first. And elsewhere? Will the
Moslem North try to secede from the Christian South in
Nigeria, a land that has often seen violence in Kaduna, which
straddles the two, including post-election violence in April
2011? Will something similar happen in Ivory Coast, a land
which saw two rivals from a previous civil war participate in a
win-or-lose election and which, partly as a result, descended
into more violence? (see below). Consequences in the DRC
could be even worse.
In effect, the international community has now exported
the right of self-determination and the practice of binary
plebiscites to a continent of almost unlimited ethnic or tribal
diversity. Little could be more unwise. South Sudan may be
just the calm before the storm. I hope not; suffice here to say,
however, that when Slovenia held its referendum in 1990,
many people did not realize that there would very soon be
ghastly consequences elsewhere in Yugoslavia.

Multi-option referendums
The referendum has been suggested and/or used in a
number of other conflict zones, often with serious
consequences. One was proposed for Kashmir in 1947, but
never implemented; Northern Ireland held its border poll in
1972, to which the mainly Catholic Social Democratic and
Labour Party, SDLP, organized a boycott;27 and in 1999, East
Timor’s referendum led to massive post-ballot violence.
In contrast, some jurisdictions have used multi-option
ballots: Newfoundland held a three-option poll in 1948,
Singapore did the same in 1962 and so did Puerto Rico five
years later; while in Guam in 1982, there were six options on
the ballot paper, and just in case that was not enough, a
further seventh option was left blank, for any other
suggestion.” All of these polls were held under a form of two-
round voting, TRS, and all passed off peacefully. Preferential
polls could be even more inclusive.

ii) Majority votes taken in parliaments and international

organizations
Majoritarianism was, without doubt, a major part of the
problem in (Northern) Ireland: the Unionists claimed the right
of majority rule in a six-county jurisdiction, while the
Republicans wanted a 32-county structure. It was also ‘a
major cause of ethnic conflict’ in Sri Lanka,29 in Cyprus, in the
Middle East, and elsewhere. It is, indeed, a catalyst of
division if not a cause of war, not only within the nation state,
but also in international organizations.
Take, for example, the UN Security Council vote on Iraq.
In October 2002, the 15-member Council voted on Resolution
1441; it was another closed question, for-or-against.” France,
for one, did not like the draft on offer; in particular, she
objected to the inclusion of the phrase ‘serious
consequences’.3‘ And yet she voted in favour. Now why
would anyone vote for something they did not like? Well, in
majority voting, this happens quite frequently. People and
countries vote for ‘this’, either i) because they definitely
support ‘this’; or ii) because they think, on balance, ‘this’ is
better than the alternative ‘that’; or maybe iii), as in the case
in point, because they are giving priority to some other
consideration like the need for international solidarity. Sadly,
as is now widely acknowledged, the passing of that
Resolution was one more step on the road to war in Iraq.
There are, in fact, many reasons why, both in
parliamentary votes and in regional! national referendums,
the two-option majority vote is an inaccurate measure of the
collective will.32 Furthermore, there are other voting
procedures by which decisions can be taken: apart from
simple, weighted, twin and consociational majority votes,
there are some multi-option forms: these include a) plurality
voting (which is like first-past-the-post, FPP); b) the
alternative vote, AV, otherwise known as the single
transferable vote, ST\/, or instant run-off vote, IRV; c) the two-
round system, TRS; d) a Borda count, BC; e) approval voting;
and f) a Condorcet count. If one of these methodologies is
more accurate,” and if therefore there is little justification for
using majority voting, then the justification for the current
practice of majority rule based on majority voting falls.
Unfortunately, the ‘public is deeply imbued with the mystique
of the majority’,3“ and there is a surprisingly strong and
persistent tendency in political science to equate democracy
solely with majoritarian democracy and to fail to recognize
consensual democracy as an alternative and equally
legitimate type’.35
Thus, for the moment, the international community tends
to promote a majority vote interpretation of majority rule, and
only when such a policy goes wrong does the argument
swing in favour of that which in some ways is a complete
opposite — power-sharing. The latter is usually considered to
be an extraordinary measure and a temporary expedient
whereas, if it were more widely practised, it could help to
prevent that which it is only used to cure. The list of countries
where such a polity is practised, or has at least been
considered, grows longer by the day: Afghanistan, Belgium,
Bosnia, Honduras, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Northern Ireland
and Zimbabwe all come to mind. Of stable countries,
however, only Switzerland uses such an inclusive all-party
polity.

Majoritarianism in Electoral Systems

Electoral systems, too, can be a cause of war, especially if
they are inaccurate. Such outcomes, and the divisive
campaigns which precede the votes under the more
adversarial systems, often promote competing antagonisms
within a stable society, that or they exacerbate divisions in an
unstable one. Indeed, many single-preference voting
procedures often act as instruments of ethnic cleansing.

Ukraine

Ukraine consists of a predominantly Russian-speaking and

Orthodox East, and a mainly Ukrainian-speaking Catholic or
Uniate West. But there is no hard and fast line between the
two. Both are Slav and both are Christian. To use a divisive
electoral system to electjust one individual, with the
possibility of a small margin of victory, would obviously be
unwise. Yet such was the scenario in the final of a TRS
election in 2010: \/iktor Yanukovich won with 48.7 percent to
Julia Timoshenko’s 45.7 percent. Thankfully, Ukraine has not
spilt over into violence, and nor did it do so at the time of the
Orange Revolution in 2004.36

Kenya

Other countries have not fared so well. As a result of the

democratic process in many emerging democracies, ‘Ethnic
parties developed, majorities took power, and minorities took
shelter?” A recent example of this sort of chaos was seen in
the violence that followed the December 2007 FPP elections
in Kenya. In such a land, where the people are divided not
only into various tribes but also into two ethnic groups — the
Bantu and the Nilotic — a win-or-lose electoral system that pits
one person against another would obviously be unwise.
Needless to say, of the two main candidates contesting the
presidency, one was a Kikuyu, a member of the dominant
Bantu tribe, and the other was a Luo, the major Nilotic tribe.
Eventually, a power-sharing settlement was negotiated. It
could all have been so easily obviated if the electoral system
itself had been of a win-win variety. This could still be done
before the next contest, either by a system of PR or even by
the very simple expedient that was used initially in the USA:
the winner becomes the president and the runner-up
becomes the vice-president.

C6te d’|voire

Not every divisive election leads to war. Indeed, Sierra Leone

had a civil war in 2002 but a reasonably peaceful election
under FPP in 2007. Cote d’Ivoire also had a civil war in 2002,
but its story is now one of renewed violence. The 2010 TRS
elections brought together two of the previous combatants:
Laurent Gbagbo from the South and his old rival, Alassane
Ouattara, from the North. As in Kenya, the results were
disputed, and violence erupted. Eventually, after hundreds of
deaths, Ouattara’s forces marched into Abidjan, albeit with
outside assistance. For the long-term stability of the country,
some form of power-sharing would again be advisable.

Other electoral systems

Some systems are more suitable for plural societies: the more
sophisticated forms of PR-list, for example. But any system
that allows the voter to cast only one preference — i.e. which
thus restricts the voter’s ability to express his/her full opinion
— is not much better than the majority vote used in decision-
making. Elections under such a system in places like Bosnia
and Kosova are often little more than sectarian headcounts.38
The same was true in elections for the Council of
Representatives in Iraq and for the House of People (Wolesi
Jirga) in Afghanistan, the former under PR-list, the latter
under the single non-transferable vote, SNTV; again, both are
single preference forms of voting. Therefore they are often
inaccurate. Furthermore they are divisive if not indeed
dangerous.
Some countries have tried to devise a more inclusive, or
at least a non-sectarian, electoral system. Lebanon uses a
multiple form of FPP such that, in any constituency where
there are say, 25 percent Maronite, 50 percent Shia and 25
percent Sunni, any party wishing to stand must nominate four
candidates: 1 Maronite, 2 Shia and 1 Sunni. Furthermore, the
voter must vote for 1 + 2 + 1 candidates, and the easiest way
for them to do so is to just vote for the party ticket.39 Dagestan
has devised another non-sectarian system: in one
constituency, all the candidates of every party must be of one
religion; in a second constituency, they are all of another faith;
and so on.4° Of those other electoral systems which allow the
voter to cast his/her preferences across the sectarian divide,
the most inclusive are probably PR-STV and the quota Borda
system, OBS, not least because they are not based on party
labels or ‘designations’.“’

Conflict Resolution
If the political process is to be a means by which disputes can
be resolved peacefully, it should be one of mediation, just as
it was originally in Africa. Now in seeking to arbitrate any
dispute, domestic, industrial or political, professional
mediators seldom ask questions which are closed. Rather,
they talk to both or all parties, firstly to find outjust what
options exist. Next, in a process that is sometimes called
shuttle diplomacy, they try to improve on some of these
options, to make them more acceptable to the other parties.
And finally, they aim to identify that option which enjoys the
widest level of support from all concerned. In any instances of
violence, internal or external, the eventual resolution will often
consist of a compromise. In other words, as in Africa, the
mediators will treat both or all sides (at least initially) as if they
were both or all (at least to some extent) right.
In the Middle East, the best option on offer is probably the
two-state solution, not least because neither Palestine nor
Israel would contemplate the ideal — the one-state solution —
for as long as either believes in majority rule.
In other scenarios, too, the outcome must often involve a
form of power-sharing. This should consist of the following:

- decision-making which caters for open questions, i.e.

multi-option voting, so that, as an absolute minimum,
compromise options can be on both the agenda and the
ballot paper;
- elections that are both preferential and proportional;
- power-sharing in governance which allows not only for
post-sharing but also for compromise in decision-
making.

An inclusive polity
In short, voting procedures should be ‘peace-ful’, that is, the
democratic process should be a vital part of the peace
process, and the relevant voting procedures should enable
the voters to use the democratic process as an act of
reconciliation, if of course such is their wish.
In decision-making, the very structure of the ballot should
allow the voter to cast a preference for those options that
have been proposed by the erstwhile foe. If a negotiation
relies on a majoritarian process, the various participants
might well keep their cards fairly close to their chests. After
all, ‘Once your fall-back positions are published, you have
already fallen back to them’.“2 If the final vote were to be
preferential, however — and this author would suggest the
MBC — then those concerned could reveal and even adjust
their own preferences at any stage of the debate.“
In elections, the voter in NI should be able to vote for both
a Catholic and a Protestant.“ Likewise those in Bosnia
should be able to cast their preferences across the gender,
the party and the ethno-religious divides. As noted above, the
Lebanese have an electoral system that could, in theory, take
religion out of politics. Unfortunately, their system of
governance actually entrenches sectarianism, just like the
consociational decision-making in the Belfast Agreement.“
Finally, in governance, just as the people elect the
parliament (and, if the electoral system is a good one, that
parliament will represent all the people), so too parliament
should elect the government, again by a system of PR, such
that the government represents the entire parliament. The
only methodology for a parliament to elect a cabinet in which
each member undertakes a different responsibility and yet
which, overall, represents the given parliament proportionally,
is the matrix vote.“ In many conflict zones — Kenya and
Zimbabwe, for example — negotiations on power-sharing have
been both problematic and protracted. In Belgium, too,
forming a government can involve seemingly endless
negotiations, and on February 17, 2011, Brussels inherited
the mantle previously held by Baghdad and before that
Amsterdam, for the longest running talks on forming a
government: 250 days.”

Conclusions
A voting procedure is inadequate if the choice of
options/candidates and/or the ability of the voter to express a
full opinion has been excessively restricted. In some conflict
zones, the outcome of a vote has been different to that of the
opinion poll. In Northern Ireland, for example, throughout the
troubles, the public consistently expressed support for
integrated education, mixed housing and power-sharing; alas,
in elections, in large part, those same individuals chose
politicians who at the time opposed such measures.
Furthermore, while the British government realized that the
choice of electoral system was very important — and hence,
they reintroduced PR-STV in 1972 — they continued to use
FPP elections for Westminster. In February 1974, the
Unionists got 53 percent of the vote and 92 percent of the
seats. So the FPP voting system was part of the
discrimination that caused and then fed ‘the Troubles’.
Likewise in Bosnia, ‘public opinion polls in May and June
1990, and again in November 1991, also showed
overwhelming majorities (in the range of 70 to 90 percent)
against separation from Yugoslavia and against an ethnically
divided republic’."‘8 Yet the single-preference electoral system
used in 1990, TRS, gave the voters little choice, and the
result was an overwhelming victory for the three ethnic
parties.
Sometimes, then, the use of majority voting in parliaments
and referendums, the use of simplistic single-preference
electoral systems, and the absence of any voting mechanism
by which a parliament can elect a government, have given
results which, as a minimum, do not reflect the general will;
and at worst, they have been a cause of war. There are,
however, better more inclusive voting procedures.
Appendix: Abbreviations

AV alternative vote (= IRV =

STV)
BC Borda count
DRC Democratic Republic of
Congo
FPP first past the post
IRV instant run-off voting (= AV
= STV)
MBC modified Borda count
NI Northern Ireland
OSCE Organisation for Security
and Co-operation in
Europe
PR proportional representation
QBS quota Borda system
SDLP Social Democratic and
Labour Party
SLM Sudanese Liberation
Movement
SNTV single non-transferable
vote
SPLM Sudanese People’s
Liberation Movement
STV single transferable vote
TRS two-round system
UNESCOUN Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organisation
WWII World War II
1 Sir W. Arthur Lewis, Politics in West/llfrica (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1965), 66-7.
2 Keny Nerburn (ed.), The Wisdom of the Native Americans (Novato, CA:
New World Library, 1999), 138.
3 Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom (Boston, MA: Little Brown and
Company, 1994), 25.
4 Paul E. Sigmund, The Ideologies of Developing Nations (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 197.
5 Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun (London: Penguin, 2001),
315.
6 US Dept of State: httpzl/usinfo.state.gov/productslpubs/principleslwhat.htm.
7 Report of the Constitution Review Group, Government of Ireland, 1996,
398.
8 International UNESCO Education Server for Civic, Peace and Human
Rights Education:
http:/lwww.dadalos.orglintlDemokratielDemokratielGrundkurs5l
mehrheitsprinzip.htm.
9 By ‘the world’ I mean not only the political sphere of media, academia and
practitioner, but also the business community. ‘The statutory contract
succinctly lays down the basics of the legal relationship between the
company, its members, and the members inter se. In consequence, a
member agrees to be bound by the decisions of the majority taken at a
general meeting of the company. just like in a parliamentary democracy
when the cabinet has taken a decision a dissenting member will
nevertheless be bound by it.’ Clement Chigbo, An Examination Of Majority
Rule Principle And The Remedies Available To Shareholders, May 12,
2006: http://www.jonesbahamas.com/?c=135&a=8793.
10 The original Russian word for ‘majoritarianism’, by the way, is
‘bolshevism’. The word was coined in London in 1903 when the Social
Democrats split into two: the bolsheviks (bolsheviki), the members of the
majority (bolshinstvo) of that party, all 19 of them, and the 17 mensheviki
of the minority (menshinstvo). There were three abstentions, while others,
the Jewish Bund, had already walked out.
11 Article 1.1, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
adopted by the UN in 1996. This ‘right’ was first devised by President
Woodrow Wilson who, in his later years, reflected, ‘I never knew there
were a million Germans in Bohemia’, quoted in Abba Eban, Diplomacy for
the Next Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 38.
12 In like manner, many dictators, including Napoleon, Lenin, Mussolini,
Hitler, Duvalier, Khomeini, Mugabe and Saddam Hussein, have all used
majority votes - Peter Emerson, Defining Democracy (Belfast: The de
Borda Institute, 2002), 104-10.
13 The phrase was first coined by some wit on BBC Radio 4.
14 In 1990, the author gave a press conference in Tbilisi on the need for a
 non-majoritarian, more inclusive form of governance. The speech was well
received.
15 The author was a member of the EU monitoring mission for South Ossetia
from September 2008 to January 2009.
16 When the first post-Soviet ethnic dispute broke out in 1988, in Nagorno-
Karabakh, the headline in Pravda was Hatu OTIBCTBD, ‘This is our
Northern Ireland’.
17 Anna Reid, The Shamans Coat (London: Phoenix, 2002), 136.
18 On his first visit to Yugoslavia in 1990—1, the author had written on the
possible benefits of a consensual polity and of the inherent weaknesses of
any form of majoritarianism. At home, in October 1991, and one month
before the commission under Robert Badinter was inaugurated, he invited
a native of Sarajevo to a cross-community conference in Belfast, not least
to warn of the dangers of using a majority vote referendum in Bosnia
(Peter Emerson, From Belfast to the Balkans (Belfast: The de Borda
Institute, 1999), 47). The Commission recommended use of the
referendum for any people seeking self-determination, although it did
suggest the outcome of the Bosnian referendum ‘would be valid only if
respectable numbers from all three communities of the republic approved’
(Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (Washington: Brookings Institute,
1995), 280). There again, it did not define the word ‘respectable’. On the
day of the vote, March 1, 1992, the Bosnian Serbs boycotted and the
barricades went up in Sarajevo; it was soon full scale war (Misha Glenny,
The Fall of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin, 1992), 163). Nine months later,
the author returned as a freelance war correspondent.
19 The 1991 poll in Kosovo — 99 percent in favour — did not qualify. Eight
years later, at Rambouillet, the international community decided that it
would now recognize a referendum in Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic refused
to sign (just as Vojislav Kostunica would have done). As a result, NATO
launched its 2000 offensive. Still he refused. So the Russian Foreign
Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, went to Belgrade to negotiate a settlement,
and he removed the referendum clause. Whereupon Milosevic did sign.
So the war came to an end. In this regard, then, the war achieved nothing.
20 su svi ratovi u bivsoj Jugoslaviji poceli nekim referendumom’ (author’s
translation), Oslobodjenje, February 7, 1999, 11.
21 John Reader, Africa (London: Penguin, 1998), 616.
22 In a brave attempt to overcome the legacy of that genocide, the Rwandan
government has initiated a series of ‘mini Truth and Reconciliation
Commissions’ called gacacas. A European company undertook a social
survey on this policy and asked a series of binary questions. At a
subsequent press conference in Kigali which the author attended, it
presented its findings. In the questions which followed, one participant
observed, ‘Asking yes-or-no questions is very unAfrican‘. Gerard Prunier,
The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst, 1995), 183.
23 Its military wing is the SPLA, the SPL Army.
24 Timothy Othieno, ‘Democracy and Security in East Africa’, in Challenges
of Conflict, Democracy and Development in Africa (Johannesburg: EISA,
2007), 280-1.
25 This also has its military wing, the SLA, and has often had direct links with
the SPLM.
26 The janjaweed first appeared in 1988, but only now did these ‘evil
horsemen’ come to prominence.
27 In 1988, the same SDLP supported the use of a two-option referendum to
endorse the Belfast Agreement, a document which allows for NI to hold a
referendum every seven years or so on whether or not to join a united
Ireland. If the poll is lost, NI stays in the UK for another seven years; if it is
won, itjoins a united Ireland for ever! It is another instance of a ‘never-
end-’em’.
28 Emerson, Defining Democracy, 119-20.
29 Rudhika Coomaraswamy, ‘The Politics of Institutional Design’ in Sunil
Bastian and Robin Luckham, Can Democracy be Designed? (London: Zed
Books, 2003), 146.
30 And this in the wake of another closed question, George W. Bush’s now
infamous, ‘Are you with me or against me?’
31 In Article 13, the Security Council ‘Recalls that the Council has
repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of
its continued violations of its obligations‘.
32 Peter Emerson, Proportionality without transference: the merits of the
Quota Borda System (QBS), Representation 46: 2, 197-209.
33 The most accurate measure of a majority opinion is a Condorcet count,
while a similarly precise measure of the collective will is a modified Borda
count, MBC. In many circumstances, a Condorcet winner is also the MBC
winner.
34 Michael Dummett, The Principles of Electoral Reform (Oxford: OUP,
1997), 81.
35 Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven: Yale 1999), 6.
Lijphart is talking here more of consociationalism, which though a huge
improvement on straight majoritarianism, is still adversarial. Both in
decision-making and in elections, voting procedures in a ‘consensual
polity’ would be preferential.
36 The author was an OSCE election obseryer on both occasions.
37 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2000), 629.
38 On its own initiative, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe, OSCE, used a single-preference form of PR-list in both Bosnia in
1996 and Kosovo in 2001; admittedly, the latter system involved set-aside
seats for the major ethnic minorities. The author was an observer for both
of these contests. Véra Stojarova and Peter Emerson, Party Politics in the
 Western Balkans (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 11-3.
39 Farid el Khazen, Prospects for Lebanon (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese
Studies, 1998), 15 et seq.
40 Anna Matveeva, The North Caucasus (London: Royal Institute of
International Affairs, 1999), 18.
41 The form of consociationalism prescribed in the Belfast Agreement
requires all the elected representatives to ‘designate’ themselves as
‘unionist’, ‘nationalist’ or ‘other’; thus the very agreement entrenches
sectarianism.
42 Abba Eban, Diplomacy for the Next Century, 81.
43 Peter Emerson, Designing an All-inclusive Democracy (New York:
Springer, 2007), 15 et seq.
44 The present system, PR-STV, does allow the voter to vote for both the
Catholic and the Protestant; unfortunately, in the count, the vote may be
transferred, and thus it may go to either the Catholic or the Protestant. A
more inclusive voting procedure is called the Quota Borda System, QBS
(Peter Emerson, Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy, 39-60), and the
two electoral systems are compared in Peter Emerson, ‘Proportionality
without transference’.
45 Footnote 41
46 Peter Emerson, Designing an All-inclusive Democracy, 61 et seq.
47 Peter Emerson, Defining Democracy, chronology.
48 Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 228.