A Theory of Equitable Governance: Inclusive Majority Rule

Inclusive decision-making has become an increasingly central concern in democracies and organizations, yet formal mechanisms to ensure group representation remain underdeveloped. This paper proposes and characterizes inclusive majority rule, a generalization of majority voting that requires both overall majority support and minimal support within each of several predefined groups. We provide an axiomatic foundation for this rule, showing it is uniquely characterized by neutrality, Pareto optimality, and novel axioms capturing the essence of inclusive decision-making. Our analysis generalizes May's (1952) seminal characterization to heterogeneous societies. We further examine the endogenous design of group inclusion quotas and demonstrate that they can often be chosen to minimize the variance in group political power, promoting more equitable outcomes. The framework offers a tractable and principled approach to addressing the limitations of standard majority rule in diverse settings.