At what point can a minority or individual prevent the majority from its right in a democracy from expressing its popular will?
1 Answer
I'd say that the will of the majority can be usurped when the political process isn't actually a pure Democracy but is instead some other form (such as a Republic).
Explanation:
This is a tough question to answer but I'll give it my best shot.
Pure Democracy would put the power of decision making into the hands of the majority of the populace. A small town, for instance, could in theory hold a vote for every decision that needed to be made about the town - Person A sees that Main Street needs to be paved and puts forth a resolution to a vote for the town. The populace of the town vote and the decision of the majority will decide whether or not the road will be paved.
However, there are very few pure Democracies - the sheer inefficiency of such a system means that little would be decided and so little would get done. Imagine if the populace of a large country had to vote on every big decision - for every decision, 30,000,000 votes had to be counted! The expense alone would be tremendous. And so most Democracies are actually Democratic Republics.
A Democratic Republic is a type of government where representatives of the populace (this is the Republic part) are elected in a democratic process. It is the job of the representatives to act in the best interests of the populace that elected them.
However, if a representative does not act in the best interest of the populace, here is one way in which an individual can prevent the majority from having its popular will expressed. This can be both good and bad - a representative who is racist, for example, representing a populace whose majority is not racist, will create a problem. At the same time, a non-racist representative of a racist populace will also be seen as causing problems.
Once all of these representatives are in government, what happens? Government itself is not democratic - there are votes (which is democratic), but there is also seniority among different representatives, political parties, committees, and other ways in which a representative can't simply represent the will of a populace in a democratic setting.
For instance, if the Chairman of the Finance Committee decides that s/he doesn't want the country to spend money on health care for immigrants, that particular issue can be blocked by one person. Never mind that the majority of representatives want that law to pass - it can be blocked by a single person.
And so on.
And so as a final answer, I'd say that the will of the majority can be usurped when the political process isn't actually a pure Democracy but is instead some other form (such as a Republic).
