In this article you will learn about the Minority Representation in Political Science.
Minority Representation
Democracy is a system of government in which people’s power is supreme. The government is representative of the people. It is accountable to the people. It is often described as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. In order to ensure it's such a character, it is essential that the system of representation should be such that it can enable both the majority and minority communities to elect their representatives. For achieving this objective a special need was felt for giving representation to the minorities because it is felt that a general system of representation involving a simple majority vote victory system can result both in the victory of candidates backed by unreal majorities as well as the non-election of candidates belonging to minorities.
For overcoming these two defects, and more particularly for ensuring representation to minorities, several scholars strongly advocate some special steps for minority representation.
The concept of majority representation stands for ensuring representation of minorities along with the representation of the majority community. While some advocates of majority representation hold that minorities should be given representation in proportion to their strength in society, some others support the case for giving some representation to them. The former is known as Proportional Representation of all the people, while the latter is a concept of minority representation.
Rationale/Importance of Minority Representation
In the population of almost every state there is a majority community along with several ethnic, linguistic, cultural, educational minority groups i.e. minorities. In contemporary times some countries even identify the lesbians, transgenders, gay, bisexuals or hetro-sexual groups, as sexual minorities. Moreover, in countries where the number of women are quite less than men, they are also treated as a minority.
Although a liberal democratic state always grants equal, social, civil, political, educational, cultural and political rights to it's all citizens without any discrimination of caste, creed, religion, ethnicity, lingual, place of residence, birth or sex, there is always accepted the need to provide some additional measures and protections to their smaller members. Quite often, because of this factor (Smaller Number) people belonging to minorities fail to get due or sizable representation in the representative institutions. They find themselves at a disadvantage in respect of distribution of power, resources and opportunities in the political process.
Moreover the people belonging to minorities want to live with their respective religious, cultural and civil traditions and values. At times, they find themselves living with several disadvantages resulting from their lesser numbers as well as with some deficit in their need for a better or special protection and promotion of their educational and cultural needs and interests.
This article on Minority Representation in Political Science is contributed by Dipshikha Anand. If you like LawStudyPoint.com do follow us on our Twitter handle.