Olivier Christin began by recalling that, after a long period of eclipse between the Principate and the 11th century, the majority principle enjoyed a notable resurgence, despite strong resistance against which it had to assert itself. The ideal of unanimity, and the election by inspiration associated with it, was still very prevalent in a society obsessed by its unity and the threat of schisms.
For the historian, legal guarantees had to be created to make acceptable a majority principle that amounted to entrusting to one part of a collective a decision that was to be binding on the whole group. Designed to reconstitute a unanimous vote, the "access" procedure allowed voters to reconsider their choice and join the winning side. The principle of "saniority" was also designed to reconcile the law of numbers with the need to take into account the inequality of candidates and voters. Finally, the conditions for stabilizing and closing electoral colleges had to be established. According to Olivier Christin, it would therefore be a mistake to see the majoritarian principle as synonymous with the democratization of modern societies; it was merely the condition for the institutionalization of power: voting in the modern era meant taking part in the collective formation of a body, allowing that body to speak with one voice.
Olivier Christin then proposed a historical anthropology of voting practices, based on four examples (the election of the Abbot General of the Order of Cîteaux, a virtual affair invented by a canon law author, the confrontation between two candidates to represent the nation of France at the Faculty of Paris, the reform of voting procedures in the East India Company) to show that the majority principle has not imposed itself everywhere as a principle of justice. Two main conclusions could be drawn from these examples: the majority was a sociological or political product, not an arithmetical one; the election had no other purpose than to perpetuate the institution.
