This traditional view has come under growing criticism, and liberal democracies have increasingly included constraints on what the parliamentary majority can do, in order to protect citizens' fundamental rights.
Integrative majoritarianism incorporates several institutions to preserve minority groups and foster moderate political parties.
[10] There are relatively few instances of large-scale majority rule in recorded history, most notably the majoritarian system of Athenian democracy and other ancient Greek city-states.
However, some argue that none of those Greek city-states were truly majority rule, particularly due to their exclusion of women, non-landowners, and slaves from decision-making processes.
Most of the famous ancient philosophers staunchly opposed majoritarianism, because decisions based on the will of the uneducated and uninformed 'masses' are not necessarily wise or just.
Plato is a prime example with his Republic, which describes a societal model based on a tripartite class structure.
Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber offers a reason as to why majority democratic government is so scarce in the historical record.
Graeber argues that those two factors almost never meet: "Where egalitarian societies exist, it is also usually considered wrong to impose systematic coercion.
This agenda is most frequently encountered in the realm of religion: In essentially all Western nations, for instance, Christmas Day—and in some countries, other important dates in the Christian year as well—are recognized as legal holidays; plus a particular denomination may be designated as the state religion and receive financial backing from the government (examples include the Church of England in England and the Lutheran Church in the Scandinavian countries).
[clarification needed] This has provoked a backlash from some advocates of majoritarianism, who lament the Balkanization of society they claim has resulted from the gains made by the multiculturalism; these concerns were articulated in a 1972 book, The Dispossessed Majority, written by Wilmot Robertson.