Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521124492)

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.

Author: Melissa Schwartzberg
ISBN-10: 0521124492
ISBN-13: 9780521124492
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/18/2013
Pages: 248
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2014 pg. 701