This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
The Dilemma of Democracy, Quintin Hogg, Collins, 1978. The author makes frequent reference to this term throughout.
The Shaman’s Coat, A Native History of Siberia, Anna Reid, Phoenix, 2002, p 136.
The International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, which started work in September 1992, held ‘negotiations among the ethnonationalist leaders of the three “warring factions”’. Balkan Tragedy, Susan Woodward, The Brookings Institute, 1995, p 303.
Only three persons came. Furthermore, they were not allowed into any polling stations, but only into the count. See osce/odihr Assessment Report of 19.12.2003.
The UN, for instance, was set up by three old men meeting in Yalta, and all three had an empire to protect. Accordingly, democracy notwithstanding, they made sure that their powers in the UN were greater than those of most other leaders: hence the concept of the permanent members of the UN Security Council and their veto powers. Many other international bodies are also far from democratic. In the IMF, for example, decisions are taken by an 85% weighted majority... but the US has 17% of the vote, and the other members of G8 hold a further 30%. The effect, therefore, is that Washington can veto anything at all! The Age of Consent, George Monbiot, Flamingo, 2003, p 16.
The osce/odihr also observed the US elections of 2.11.2004. In its report dated 31.3.2005, it stated that “it is difficult for third party presidential candidates to appear on the ballot in all 50 states” (Section D), so maybe the days of FPP are indeed numbered.
See for example his foreword in Defining Democracy, Emerson (2002).
“... the power of the majority over the minority... fails to secure a just rule”. The Meaning of the Russian Revolution, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1906, Section IV.
The Proposed Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland Act 2004, Section 2 (1), published by the NIHRC, 2004.
“All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development...” Article 1.1, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The UN General Assembly adopted this Covenant in 1996, and it came into force ten years later. At no point does the Covenant discuss the methodology by which a people-(whatever that is!)-may “freely determine” their status-cf. Christine Bell, pp 120–1-and its only reference to decision-making concerns the workings of its Human Rights Committee, which it says shall take decisions by majority vote (Article 39).
Balkan Tragedy, Susan Woodward, Brookings Institute, 1995, p 280.
The Fall of Yugoslavia, Misha Glenny, Penguin, 1992, p 163.
The Death of Yugoslavia, Laura Silber and Allan Little, Penguin, 1995, p 231.
The report, Participation in Gacaca and National Reconciliation, was published by the NURC in January 2003. It was discussed in some detail at a press conference on March 6th 2003 in the Hôtel Mille Collines, at which the first-named author of this chapter was present.
Modernising Government and the e-government Revolution: Technologies of Government and Technologies of Democracy, John Morrison, in Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution, P. Leyland and N. Bamforth (eds.), Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2003, pp 157–188.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
(2007). The Realpolitik of Consensus Voting Peter Emerson with Assistance from Elizabeth Meehan. In: Emerson, P. (eds) Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-33164-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-33164-3_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-33163-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-33164-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)