motion. Majority vote has a hallowed, if theoretically insecure, position in
democratic belief, resting on the argument that a decision accorded to by more
people than oppose it is politically legitimate. In practice there are very few
fully-fledged majority systems, and the logic of majority voting is seldom fully
applied or thought out in decision-making arenas.
There are a host of theoretical problems—does a majority involve, for
example, all those entitled to vote, or only those who appear and cast a vote?
Further problems occur when one considers whether or not a majority vote
really represents a positive preference, or simply a relative preference for one
rather than another of a set of unpopular alternatives. This has always been a
major objection to the use of thereferendumas a decision-making device,
and is particularly troublesome with elections to office, when either a com-
plicated set of rules, several ballots, or both, become necessary to ensure that
the winner is actually preferred to all alternatives by a majority of voters (see
proportional representation). Nevertheless, the idea of majority rule is
firmly entrenched in political attitudes. Among varieties of the system one of
the most important is the qualified majority, that is, a requirement that a fixed
proportion other than 50% + 1 of an electorate support an issue or candidate
for a valid result. Thus constitutional amendments both in political systems and
other organizations often require a two-thirds vote for passage. When a
referendum was held in Scotland in 1979 ondevolution, the legislation
authorizing it required not only a majority of votes cast to be in favour, but
also that those votes had to represent at least 40% of all those entitled to vote. In
fact a majority of those voting did favour devolution, but due to a large number
of abstentions the 40% threshold was not reached. The logic for majoritarian
systems other than a simple majority is, therefore, slightly hazy; if 50% + 1 is
not sacrosanct, then why fix on any other figure, specifically, short of absolute
unanimity? (See alsovoting systems.) In practice, politicians with a majority,
however slender, have no hesitation on relying on majority rule, as was seen at
the end of the 20th century in several cases where tiny majorities in refer-
endums upheld support forEuropean Uniontreaties.
Maladministration
Maladministration refers to actions of thecivil service, government ministers,
local governmentofficers or anyone with legal authority to make decisions
affecting the public where those actions are corrupt or otherwise illegal. Where
a decision is massively incompetent and individuals can show that they have
suffered serious personal hurt the issue of maladministration may arise, but
mere incompetence generally would not be treated as maladministration. The
typical issue in a case of maladministration is likely to be whatcommon law
calls anultra viresaction, that is, an official has made a decision they did not have
Maladministration