IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v1y1989i1p33-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Democratic Political Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Arend Lijphart

Abstract

The two dimensions of the majoritarian-consensus typology are based on (1) characteristics of the party system, electroal system and government coalitions, and (2) federal vs. unitary traits. Consensus democracy and the earlier concept of consociational democracy overlap considerably, but they differ in the degree to which they focus on formal institutions vs. informal practices. Moreover, consociationalism is the more suitable prescription for very deeply divided societies. With only a few minor doubts, the 22 cases of long-term democracy fit the majoritarian-consensus typology well. There are three causal explanations for the placement of the cases in the typology: the degree to which the countries are plural societies, population size and the influence of the Westminster model. Contrary to the conventional view, the evidence further shows that majoritarian democracy cannot be regarded as superior to consensus democracy in terms of their respective consequences for democratic stability and quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Arend Lijphart, 1989. "Democratic Political Systems," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 1(1), pages 33-48, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:1:y:1989:i:1:p:33-48
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692889001001003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692889001001003
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951692889001001003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cusack, Thomas R., 1997. "Social capital, institutional structures, and democratic performance: A comparative study of German local governments," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Institutions and Social Change FS III 97-201, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    2. Fuchs, Dieter, 1993. "A metatheory of the democratic process," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Institutions and Social Change FS III 93-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:1:y:1989:i:1:p:33-48. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.