Glossary on the Republic

Tyranny of the majority

Founding

Democracy has a built-in danger: that fifty-one percent can crush the other forty-nine. The framers were as afraid of the mob as they were of the king.

Tyranny of the majority is the risk that a ruling majority will use its power to trample the rights of a minority. It is the dark side of pure majority rule: if the only rule is that the most votes win, then the many can do anything they like to the few.

The framers feared it intensely. They had revolted against a king, but they did not trust unchecked crowds either. James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 that the great danger to a popular government was a majority faction united by passion or interest against the rights of others.

Their answer was to build a republic, not a pure democracy, and to lace it with protections a simple majority cannot easily override: a written Bill of Rights, an independent judiciary, divided powers, and a large diverse nation where no single faction could easily dominate.

The phrase itself was sharpened by Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer who toured America in the 1830s. In Democracy in America he warned that the tyranny of the majority could be subtler than any king, ruling not just actions but opinions, pressuring everyone to think alike.

Origin

The danger that a majority will oppress a minority; central to Federalist No. 10 and Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

Why it matters

Tyranny of the majority is the reason a democracy needs rights that cannot be voted away, courts that answer to the law rather than the crowd, and limits even on the will of the people. The vote decides who governs. It was never meant to decide everything. Some things, the framers insisted, must be beyond the reach of any majority, however large.