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Concurrent majority refers in general to the concept of balancing majority and minority interests through limited government. The most vocal proponents of the theory have tended to be aristocrats, finding themselves in the minority and fearing the tyranny of the majority assumed to be made possible by unlimited democracy.

Prior to the American Revolution, nearly all governments were controlled by small minorities. The conception of government that materialized during the separation of the United States from the England marked movement away from such control towards wider enfranchisement. The transition was drastic at the time, though the resulting political system was still accessible to a minority.

Even so, the widening of the franchise caused concern. The framers of the United States Constitution, even while reiterating that the people held national sovereignty, worked to ensure that a simple majority of voters could not infringe upon the liberty of the rest of the people. Alexander Hamilton, influenced by Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, pushed for bicameralism in the United States Congress. He intended having two houses to serve as a brake on popular movements that might threaten particular groups (especially considering Shays' Rebellion), with the House of Representatives representing the common people and the Senate defending the interests of the aristocratic minority. The House was to be elected by popular vote, while Senators were appointed by state legislators. Executive veto and the implied power of judicial review by the Supreme Court created further obstacles to simple majority rule.

During the first part of the 19th century, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina revived and expounded upon the concurrent majority doctrine. An ardent advocate of states' rights, Calhoun served as Vice President and Senator. He noted that the North, with its industrial economy, had become far more populous than the South. As the South's agricultural economy differed vastly from that of the North, the difference in power afforded by population threatened interests Calhoun considered essential to the South.

As national policy, driven by the North, became ever more hostile to the South, Calhoun argued more stridently for a requirement of concurrent majority by geographic region. Following the Tariff of 1828, referred to by Southerners as the "Tariff of Abominations", Calhoun wrote (anonymously at the time) the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. The document threatened secession of South Carolina if the tariff was not repealed. After another protective Tariff of 1832 was passed instead of a repeal of the 1828 tariff, Calhoun attempted to fight both with the doctrine of nullification.

The doctrine, which essentially said that any state might declare specific federal laws void within the borders of the state, required a concurrent majority of the legislatures of each state in addition to the federal legislature to assent to a law for it to have nation-wide effect. South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification of the two tariffs and began preparations to defend the nullification against federal enforcement. A Compromise Tariff of 1833 was passed, avoiding armed conflict and ending the Nullification Crisis. Calhoun's philosophy of concurrent majority had found little support in the Southern states outside of South Carolina.