We're used to thinking about the tyranny of the majority.
We don't have to imagine what happens when majority voices vote to trample on individual rights.
That fear so animated the founding fathers that they designed a system to restrain it.
A bicameral legislature with one chamber, the Senate,
insulated from electoral pressure by staggered six-year terms and lifetime appointments for judges to shield them from the shifting tides of public opinion.
They spent far less time thinking about the opposite problem, tyranny of the minority.
Yet today,
much of my own work is thinking through the ways that well-organized interest groups and strategically placed individuals have managed to take hold of the systems of power throughout government and enact their minoritarian preferences.
From land use, permitting, and zoning abuses by homeowners associations, to police unions,
gun lobbying groups,
and environmental groups fighting against popular opinion in favor of a niche ideological perspective.
Once you start looking for undue power wielded by a minority, it's all you can see.
This is Good on Paper, a policy show that questions what we really know about popular narratives.
My guest today is Steve Tellis,
a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.
He has a new article out called Minoritarianism is Everywhere
that I think is the single most important piece you can read about this trend in American democracy.
Steve, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
So in the early days of the United States of America,