《民主的模式——36个国家的政府形式和政府绩效》
著者：
者：
本书考察了1945—2010年期间的36个民主国家，将它们置于一幅二维的民主“概念图”之中。凭借有力的证据和深层次的比较分析，作者得出了一个重要结论：共识民主的效果比多数民主更好。作者认为，这一发现讲为正处在民主化进程中的国家以及新兴民主国家提供参考。
本书是美国著名学者阿伦·利普哈特最具代表性的著作，本书第一版于1999年出版后，在政治学界产生了广泛的影响，进入了多所高等院校政治学专业的必读书目。在本书第二版中，阿伦·利普哈特对世界范围内的民主制度进行了比以往任何时候都更全面的分析。本书学术视角新颖、研究领域宽广、实证材料丰富、论证过程严密，是比较政治学领域的一部当之无愧的杰作。
作者简介
阿伦·利普哈特，1936年生于荷兰，后加入美国籍。1963年获得耶鲁大学博士学位，1989年当选为美国国家艺术与科学院院士，1995-1996年任美国政治学会会长，现为加州大学圣地亚哥分校政治学系名誉教授。其主要著作：《和解的政治：荷兰的多元主义与民主》（1968年）、《多元社会中的民主——一项比较研究》（1977年）、《民主政治：21个国家的多数模式政府与共识模式政府》（1984年）、《议会制政府与总统制政府》（1992年）、《选举制度与政党制度：对27个民主国家的研究》（1994年）、《民主的模式：36个国家的政府形式和政府绩效》（1999年）等。
目 录
原文摘录 · · · · · ·
尤其是在多元社会中，社会按照宗数、意识形态、语官、文化、民族或种族的分界线高度分化，形成了拥有各自的政党、利益集团和传播媒介的实际上彼此分离的次级社会，导致了多数民主模式所必需的弹性缺失。在这种情况下，多数决原则不仅是不民主的，而且是危险的，其原因是长期被排除在政权之外的少数派感到排斥、受歧视，因而失去了对体制32的忠诚。
例如，北爱尔兰的多元社会分化为新数多数派和天主教少数派，采用多数决原则的结果是代表新教多数派利益的统一党在1921年到1972年 的所有选举中获胜，垄断了组织政府的权力。
20世纪60年代末，天主教徒 的大规模抗议活动演变成了新教徒一天主教徒的内战，英国进行了军事干预 并把北爱尔兰置于伦教的直接统治之下才控制住了局势。 在北爱尔兰那样的极度分化的社会中，多数决原则的结果不是民主，而是多数专政和国内纷争。这类社会所需要的是这样一种民主制度：它强调 共识而非对抗、主张包容而非排斥、力求使处于统治地位的多数的规模最大化而不满足于微弱多数，这种制度就是共识民主。
尽管英国自身实行多数 民主制度，但历届英国内阁都认识到了在北爱尔兰采用共识民主的必要性： 强调北爱尔兰的所有选举（英国议会下院议员选举除外）都采取比例代表制 原则；把建立广泛的新教徒天主教徒分享权力的联合内阁作为恢复北爱尔兰政治自治的一个前提条件。在1998年达成的关于北爱尔兰的协议中，比 例代表制和分权也是至关重要的原则。刘易斯（ Lewis1965，51-55，65 (查看原文)
[已注销] 2020-07-24 22:42:15
—— 引自章节：第三章共识民主模式/25
《民主的模式：36个国家的政府形式和政府绩效》多面观
本文为2020年秋季“比较政治制度”课程读书笔记。
（一）综述
课上“理论专题二”谈及了民主模式的多样性，包老师举到阿伦·利普哈特的著作《民主的模式》（第二版）为例。我对该比较政治学领域的经典研究作品产生了浓厚的兴趣，下文旨在对本书的观点之“正论”、学者研究之“反论”并进行综合和评论。
1. 正论：共识民主效果更好
利普哈特区分了“多数民主”与“共识民主”的差别，在两个维度——①行政机关-政党维度和②联邦制-单一维度，将其具体划分为10个基本变量进行对照。作者选取1945-2010年期间的36个民主国家，从第5章的“政党体制”到第13章的“中央银行”是对这十个基本变量在应用中的实证研究。作者于第14章形成了按上述两个维度划分的“民主的概念图”。利普哈特认为共识民主模式在绝大多数指标（17个指标中的16个）上的绩效都比多数民主模式更好，且行政机关-政党维度上的共识民主，“对促进民主朝着更宽容、更友善的方向发展都发挥了重要的推动作用”。
那么，共识民主模式的优势如何在书中体现呢？
首先，作者在第3章就引用阿瑟·刘易斯对多数民主的批评（失败的集团/小党缺乏足额代表权），再通过对瑞士和比利时的分析，认为共识民主模式在①维度的“比例代表制”可使各政党分得的议席与他们获得的选票比例相当，可以减小第8章中提及的选举制度中的“非比例性程度”。第二，作者通过回归等定量方式得到许多相关关系图，体现共识民主模式与多数模式的分野，突出力求分享、分散、抑制权力的“共识原则”。如作者在第6章中应用了“联合内阁理论”，阐明有效议会政党数目与最小获胜一党内阁出现概率之间的负相关关系，而较多的有效议会政党数目恰是共识民主的特征体现。之后，作者详细地总结了共识模式诸特点：行政机关与立法机关之间的权力更平衡，有效政党数目较多，利益集团的多元主义水平较低（合作主义水平较高），联邦制和地方分权从而立法权分割、中央银行独立性较强，宪法刚性从而需要司法审查等，（分别对应了第7-13章的内容。）第三，作者反驳了传统观点中对共识民主具有代表性，但“缺乏决策效率”的观点，再从福利国家、环境保护、控制暴力等维度褒扬了共识民主“宽容、友善”的品质。
2. 反论：共识民主有那么好吗？
国内学者中，人大国关学院的杨光斌老师较早对本书的共识民主研究提出批评，他认为利普哈特是一个“基于行为主义的硬邦邦的制度主义者”，由果溯因地运用相关数据，忽略了经济增长的指标；且将多数民主和共识民主进行二分对立的本身存在逻辑结构的问题。
此外，利普哈特在本书第3章中提到，高度分裂的多元社会需要的是强调共识、主张包容、“力求使处于统治地位的多数的规模最大化而不满足于微弱多数”的共识民主制度。也有学者对此提出了自己的质疑和批评，如包老师的述评从变量过多、样本选择的系统性偏差、变量设计从而双变量回归分析几方面问题入手，指出：“共识民主模式不仅不能解决高度分裂社会的族群冲突，反而会加剧族群冲突，会加重政治暴力”。
（二）评论
这次从正反两方面看待一个学术研究的阅读体验很特别，似乎也照应了本课程“比较政治制度”的核心——“比较”意味着需要兼听则明，正反两面的学习可以锻炼我们批判性思考的能力，也让我对理解政治制度图谱的多样性有了更多理解。
事实上，利普哈特本人在写作时也注意到了有些国家是集两类民主模式于一身的，如作者提到，以色列兼有行政机关-政党维度上的共识民主特征（频繁出现的超大型联合内阁、多党制、具有高度比例性的比例代表制选举、利益集团合作主义），也体现了联邦制-单一制维度上的多数民主特征（不成文宪法、一院制议会、中等程度的联邦制和中央银行独立性），美国、加拿大等国家也都是“非典型”。而现实世界其实也难以找到都严格符合两者各自的10条标准的国家，但利普哈特对此没有仔细解释，这成为了后来学者批评其研究的靶子。我们在学习前人的成果时，绝不应“想当然”地照搬照用观点，也要重视其理论逻辑与研究方法。
利普哈特提到，制度传统和政治文化可能成为共识民主在推广和生长方面的阻碍，但他注意到了政治文化与政治结构间的“互动”关系。然而，他没有注意到共识民主与多数民主或许也是相互塑造的——正如杨光斌老师提到的，两者之间其实是“共生共荣的关系”。此外，包老师提到，若将共识民主理论作为政治转型国家宪法设计的模板，将带来误导性；而我们也要考虑到现有的众多研究（有正有反）和他国的经验教训或许都将给现在的政治领导者以新的启示，不断的“学习”和动态现实政治过程的发生，将给未来的政治图景带来什么，也是值得期待的。
参考文献
[1]杨光斌.评利普哈特的“共识民主模式”[J].江苏行政学院学报,2007(05):75-78.
[2]包刚升.共识民主理论有“共识”吗?——对利普哈特研究方法的学术批评[J].经济社会体制比较,2014(05):195-205.
Preface to the Second Edition
https://e-edu.nbu.bg/pluginfile.php/830138/mod_resource/content/1/Lijphart%2C%20A.%20Patterns%20of%20Democracy%20-%20Government%20Forms%20and%20Performance%20in%20Thirty-Six%20Countries%20%282012%29.pdf
Second, I extended I welcome the opportunity to publish an updated edition of Patterns of Democracy, originally published in 1999, because it gives me an opportunity to test whether my main fi ndings and conclusions continue to be valid—especially my fi nding that the great variety of formal and informal rules and institutions that we fi nd in democracies can be reduced to a clear two-dimensional pattern on the basis of the contrast between majoritarian and consensus forms of government, and my conclusion that consensus democracies (measured on the fi rst of these dimensions) have a superior record with regard to effective policy-making and the quality of democracy compared with majoritarian democracies. The basic organization of the book has not changed, but the data on which its empirical analysis is based has changed in important ways. First, my analysis continues to compare the same number of democracies—thirty-six—but three of the countries had to be removed because they are no longer free and democratic according to the criteria of Freedom House: Colombia, Venezuela, and Papua New Guinea. I replaced them with Argentina, Uruguay, and Korea, which returned to democracy in the 1980s.
Second, I extended the analysis from 1996 to 2010, which enix x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION tails a considerable increase in the time span during which the other thirty-three democracies are analyzed: a 74 percent increase for the newest democracies included in the fi rst edition— India and Spain—smaller but still substantial increases for the countries that became democratic between the 1950s and the early 1970s, and even a signifi cant 28 percent increase for the older democracies analyzed from the late 1940s on.
Third, I made no major changes in the defi nition and measurement of the ten basic variables that make up the majoritarianconsensus contrast, with two important exceptions. In hindsight, I concluded that the way I operationalized executive dominance in Chapter 7 of the original edition was too complicated and cumbersome; I therefore use a much simpler and more straightforward operationalization in the updated edition. In Chapter 13, I was forced to change the treatment of central bank independence because from the mid-1990s on the internationalization of central banking—in particular, the creation of the European Central Bank and changes in several national central bank charters demanded by the International Monetary Fund—changed the status of central banks from domestic institutions to organizations in the international system. A less important change is that I reduced my discussion of the issue dimensions of partisan confl ict—which is not an institutional variable and is not one of the basic ten variables distinguishing majoritarian from consensus democracy— from about a third of Chapter 5 to a more appropriately short addendum to that chapter.
Fourth, the biggest changes are in Chapters 15 and 16 with regard to the variables by which I measure the performance of consensus versus majoritarian democracies. Some of these variables—like economic growth, the control of infl ation and unemployment, women’s representation, and political equality—are the same as in the original edition, but the data on them are for later periods and therefore almost completely new. A few others, like social expenditure and environmental performance, are also the same but measured by new and different indexes. And then there are PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi entirely new variables not used in the original edition at all. I also streamlined the presentation of the results of the regression analyses. Instead of showing the bivariate relationships between consensus democracy and the performance variables in the tables and discussing the infl uence of control varia bles, especially the impact of the level of economic development and population size, in the accompanying text, I now have tables showing multivariate regression analyses of the effects of consensus democracy with these two standard controls in place in all instances.
Generally the quality of all the new data is a great deal better than the quality of the data that I had at my disposal in the mid1990s, and they are available for many more countries. In particular, I made grateful use of two entirely new and highly relevant datasets for the measurement of the quality of government and the quality of democracy, respectively: the Worldwide Governance Indicators and the data of the Democracy Index project of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Not only have excellent data become much more available in the past decade, but they have also become more easily accessible. In the preface to the fi rst edition, I wrote that I might not have been able to write it without the invention of email. I can now add that this new edition might not have been possible, or would have been much more diffi cult to write, without all of the information that is available on the internet.
To briefl y preview my conclusions in the updated edition, I fi nd that my original conclusions are amply confi rmed. In fact, the evidence with regard to the interrelationships of my ten majoritarian versus consensus characteristics and with regard to the superior performance of consensus democracy has become even clearer and stronger.
The preparation of a study of as many as thirty-six countries is impossible without the input of many comparative and country experts. I am deeply grateful to my friends and colleagues for the valuable advice and assistance I received from them. First of all, xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION I want to express my thanks again to everyone who helped me with the fi rst edition of this book. Their input is still refl ected in the contents of this second edition, too.
I was especially in need of assistance with regard to the three new countries in the updated edition, and I am grateful for the excellent advice on Korean politics from Taekyoon Kim, KyoungRyung Seong, Jong-Sung You, and my Korean research assistant, Don S. Lee. For Argentina and Uruguay I had a huge team of aides and advisers, and I am deeply indebted to them all: David Altman, Octavio Amorim Neto, Marcelo Camerlo, Rossana Castiglioni, Sebastián Etchemendy, Mark P. Jones, Jorge Lanzaro, Andrés Malamud, M. Victoria Murillo, Sebastián M. Saiegh, and Andrew Schrank. For recent developments in several other countries I relied on the advice of Edward M. Dew, Fragano S. J. Ledgister, Ralph R. Premdas, and Rajendra Ramlogan (Barbados and the other Caribbean countries); Carl Devos and Luc Huyse (Belgium); Pradeep K. Chhibber and Ashutosh Varshney (India); Yuko Kasuya and Mikitaka Masuyama (Japan); Deborah Bräutigam, Jørgen Elklit, Shaheen Mozaffar, Linganaden Murday, and Nadarajen Sivaramen (Mauritius); Peter Aimer and Jack Vowles (New Zealand); Richard Gunther and Óscar Martínez-Tapia (Spain); Matthew Flinders, Michael Gallagher, and Thomas C. Lundberg (United Kingdom); and Gary C. Jacobson (United States).
I am equally grateful to all of the scholars who helped me in important subject areas: Krista Hoekstra, Hans Keman, Jelle Koedam, and Jaap Woldendorp (cabinet coalitions); Daniel M. Brinks, Isaac Herzog, Donald W. Jackson, and Mary L. Volcansek (judicial review); Christopher Crowe and Mauro F. Guillén (central banks); and Scott Desposato, Stephen J. K. Lee, Philip G. Roeder, and Sebastián M. Saiegh (statistical and computer issues). Other scholars whom I would like to thank without placing them in country or subject categories are Ernesto Alvarez, Jr., Julian Bernauer, Joseph H. Brooks, Royce Carroll, Josep M. Colomer, Zachary Elkins, John Gerring, Ronald F. Inglehart, Mona Lena Krook, Sanford A. Lakoff, Dieter Nohlen, Matt H. Qvortrup, Manfred G. Schmidt, Alan PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xiii Siaroff, Fabia Soehngen, Rein Taagepera, Steven L. Taylor, and Adrian Vatter.
In April 2011, I gave seminars on the fi ndings of this updated edition at the Juan March Institute in Madrid and at the Madrid campus of Suffolk University, and in November 2011 a similar seminar in the Department of Politics of the University of Antwerp. The comments and questions I received from the participants in these seminars were very helpful. I would also like to thank William Frucht, executive editor at Yale University Press, for the strong encouragement he gave me to write an updated edition, and Laura Jones Dooley, who expertly copyedited both the fi rst and second editions. Above all, I owe special thanks to my two research assistants, Christopher J. Fariss and Don S. Lee. Chris was my main statistical adviser, and he prepared almost all of the fi gures in Chapters 6 to 14 as well as the factor analysis reported in Chapter 14. Don collected and organized most of the macroeconomic and violence data for Chapter 15. I am deeply grateful for their help, hard work, and friendship.
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Introduction There are many ways in which, in principle, a democracy can be organized and run; in practice, too, modern democracies exhibit a variety of formal governmental institutions, like legislatures and courts, as well as political party and interest group systems. However, clear patterns and regularities appear when these institutions are examined from the perspective of how majoritarian or how consensual their rules and practices are. The majoritarianism-consensus contrast arises from the most basic and literal defi nition of democracy—government by the people or, in representative democracy, government by the representatives of the people—and from President Abraham Lincoln’s famous further stipulation that democracy means government not only by but also for the people—that is, government in accordance with the people’s prefererences.1 Defi ning democracy as “government by and for the people” 1 1. As Clifford D. May (1987) points out, credit for this defi nition should probably go to Daniel Webster instead of Lincoln. Webster gave an address in 1830—thirty-three years before Lincoln’s Gettysburg address—in which he spoke of a “people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.” 2 INTRODUCTION raises a fundamental question: Who will do the governing and to whose interests should the government be responsive when the people are in disagreement and have divergent preferences? One answer to this dilemma is: the majority of the people. This is the essence of the majoritarian model of democracy. The majoritarian answer is simple and straightforward and has great appeal because government by the majority and in accordance with the majority’s wishes obviously comes closer to the democratic ideal of “government by and for the people” than government by and responsive to a minority. The alternative answer to the dilemma is: as many people as possible. This is the crux of the consensus model. It does not differ from the majoritarian model in accepting that majority rule is better than minority rule, but it accepts majority rule only as a minimum requirement: instead of being satisfi ed with narrow decision-making majorities, it seeks to maximize the size of these majorities. Its rules and institutions aim at broad participation in government and broad agreement on the policies that the government should pursue. The majoritarian model concentrates political power in the hands of a bare majority—and often even merely a plurality instead of a majority, as Chapter 2 will show—whereas the consensus model tries to share, disperse, and limit power in a variety of ways. A closely related difference is that the majoritarian model of democracy is exclusive, competitive, and adversarial, whereas the consensus model is characterized by inclusiveness, bargaining, and compromise; for this reason, consensus democracy could also be termed “negotiation democracy” (Kaiser 1997, 434). Ten differences with regard to the most important democratic institutions and rules can be deduced from the majoritarian and consensus principles. Because the majoritarian characteristics are derived from the same principle and hence are logically connected, one could also expect them to occur together in the real world; the same applies to the consensus characteristics. All ten variables could therefore be expected to be closely related. Previ- INTRODUCTION 3 ous research has largely confi rmed these expectations—with one major exception: the variables cluster in two clearly separate dimensions (Lijphart 1984, 211–22). The fi rst dimension groups fi ve characteristics of the arrangement of executive power, the party and electoral systems, and interest groups. For brevity’s sake, I shall refer to this fi rst dimension as the executives-parties dimension. Since most of the fi ve differences on the second dimension are commonly associated with the contrast between federalism and unitary government—a matter to which I shall return shortly— I shall call this second dimension the federal-unitary dimension. The ten differences are formulated below in terms of dichotomous contrasts between the majoritarian and consensus models, but they are all variables on which particular countries may be at either end of the continuum or anywhere in between. The majoritarian characteristic is listed fi rst in each case. The fi ve differences on the executives-parties dimension are as follows: 1. Concentration of executive power in single-party majority cabinets versus executive power-sharing in broad multiparty coalitions. 2. Executive-legislative relationships in which the executive is dominant versus executive-legislative balance of power. 3. Two-party versus multiparty systems. 4. Majoritarian and disproportional electoral systems versus proportional representation. 5. Pluralist interest group systems with free-for-all competition among groups versus coordinated and “corporatist” interest group systems aimed at compromise and concertation. The fi ve differences on the federal-unitary dimension are the following: 1. Unitary and centralized government versus federal and decentralized government. 2. Concentration of legislative power in a unicameral legislature versus division of legislative power between two equally strong but differently constituted houses. 4 INTRODUCTION 3. Flexible constitutions that can be amended by simple majorities versus rigid constitutions that can be changed only by extraordinary majorities. 4. Systems in which legislatures have the fi nal word on the constitutionality of their own legislation versus systems in which laws are subject to a judicial review of their constitutionality by supreme or constitutional courts. 5. Central banks that are dependent on the executive versus independent central banks. One plausible explanation of this two-dimensional pattern is suggested by the classical theorists of federalism—Ivo D. Duchacek (1970), Daniel J. Elazar (1968), Carl J. Friedrich (1950, 189– 221), and K. C. Wheare (1946)—as well as by many contemporary theorists (Colomer 2011, 85–100; Hueglin and Fenna 2006; Stepan 2001, 315–61; Watts 2008). These scholars maintain that federalism has primary and secondary meanings. Its primary defi nition is: a guaranteed division of power between the central government and regional governments. The secondary characteristics are strong bicameralism, a rigid constitution, and strong judicial review. Their argument is that the guarantee of a federal division of power can work well only if (1) both the guarantee and the exact lines of the division of power are clearly stated in the constitution and this guarantee cannot be changed unilaterally at either the central or regional level—hence the need for a rigid constitution, (2) there is a neutral arbiter who can resolve confl icts concerning the division of power between the two levels of government— hence the need for judicial review, and (3) there is a federal chamber in the national legislature in which the regions have strong representation—hence the need for strong bicameralism; moreover, (4) the main purpose of federalism is to promote and protect a decentralized system of government. These federalist characteristics can be found in the fi rst four variables of the second dimension. As stated earlier, this dimension is therefore called the federal-unitary dimension. INTRODUCTION 5 The federalist explanation is not entirely satisfactory, however, for two reasons. One problem is that, although it can explain the clustering of the four variables in one dimension, it does not explain why this dimension should be so clearly distinct from the other dimension. Second, it cannot explain why the variable of central bank independence is part of the federal-unitary dimension. A more persuasive explanation of the two-dimensional pattern is the distinction between “collective agency” and “shared responsibility” on one hand and divided agencies and responsibilities on the other suggested by Robert E. Goodin (1996, 331).2 These are both forms of diffusion of power, but the fi rst dimension of consensus democracy with its multiparty face-to-face interactions within cabinets, legislatures, legislative committees, and concertation meetings between governments and interest groups has a close fi t with the collective-responsibility form. In contrast, both the four federalist characteristics and the role of central banks fi t the format of diffusion by means of institutional separation: division of power between separate federal and state institutions, two separate chambers in the legislature, and separate and independent high courts and central banks. Viewed from this perspective, the fi rst dimension could also be labeled the joint-responsibility or joint-power dimension and the second the divided-responsibility or divided-power dimension. However, although these labels would be more accurate and theoretically more meaningful, my original labels—“executives-parties” and “federal-unitary”—have the great advantage that they are easier to remember, and I shall therefore keep using them throughout this book. The distinction between two basic types of democracy, majoritarian and consensus, is by no means a novel invention in political science. In fact, I borrowed these two terms from Robert G. Dixon, Jr. (1968, 10). Hans Hattenhauer and Werner Kaltefl eiter 2. A similar distinction, made by George Tsebelis (2002), is that between “institutional veto players,” located in different institutions, and “partisan veto players” such as the parties within a government coalition. 6 INTRODUCTION (1986) also contrast the “majority principle” with consensus, and Jürg Steiner (1971) juxtaposes “the principles of majority and proportionality.” G. Bingham Powell, Jr. (1982), distinguishes between majoritarian and broadly “representational” forms of democracy and, in later work, between two “democratic visions”: majoritarian and proportional (Powell 2000). Similar contrasts have been drawn by Robert A. Dahl (1956)—“populistic” versus “Madisonian” democracy; William H. Riker (1982)—“populism” versus “liberalism”; Jane Mansbridge (1980)—“adversary” versus “unitary” democracy; and S. E. Finer (1975)—“adversary politics” versus centrist and coalitional politics. Nevertheless, there is a surprisingly strong and persistent tendency in political science to equate democracy solely with majoritarian democracy and to fail to recognize consensus democracy as an alternative and equally legitimate type. A particularly clear example can be found in Stephanie Lawson’s (1993, 192– 93) argument that a strong political opposition is “the sine qua non of contemporary democracy” and that its prime purpose is “to become the government.” This view is based on the majoritarian assumption that democracy entails a two-party system (or possibly two opposing blocs of parties) that alternate in government; it fails to take into account that governments in more consensual multiparty systems tend to be coalitions and that a change in government in these systems usually means only a partial change in the party composition of the government—instead of the opposition “becoming” the government (Lundell 2011). The frequent use of the “turnover” test in order to determine whether a democracy has become stable and consolidated betrays the same majoritarian assumption. Samuel P. Huntington (1991, 266–67) even proposes a “two-turnover test,” according to which “a democracy may be viewed as consolidated if the party or group that takes power in the initial election at the time of transition [to democracy] loses a subsequent election and turns over power to those election winners, and if those election winners then peacefully turn over power to the winners of a later INTRODUCTION 7 election.” Of the twenty countries with the longest democratic history analyzed in this book, all of which are undoubtedly stable and consolidated democratic systems, no fewer than three— Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland—fail even the one-turnover test during the more than sixty years from the late 1940s to 2010, that is, they experienced many cabinet changes but never a complete turnover, and six—the same three countries plus Belgium, Finland, and Germany—fail the two-turnover test. This book will show that pure or almost pure majoritarian democracies are actually quite rare—limited to the United Kingdom, New Zealand (until 1996), and the former British colonies in the Caribbean (but only with regard to the executives-parties dimension). Most democracies have signifi cant or even predominantly consensual traits. Moreover, as this book shows, consensus democracy may be considered more democratic than majoritarian democracy in most respects. The ten contrasting characteristics of the two models of democracy, briefl y listed above, are described in a preliminary fashion and exemplifi ed by means of sketches of relatively pure cases of majoritarian democracy—the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Barbados—and of relatively pure cases of consensus democracy— Switzerland, Belgium, and the European Union—in Chapters 2 and 3. The thirty-six empirical cases of democracy, including the fi ve just mentioned (but not the European Union), that were selected for the comparative analysis are systematically introduced in Chapter 4. The ten institutional variables are then analyzed in greater depth in the nine chapters that comprise the bulk of this book (Chapters 5 to 13). Chapter 14 summarizes the results and places the thirty-six democracies on a two-dimensional “conceptual map” of democracy; it also analyzes shifts on the map over time and shows that most countries occupy stable positions on the map. Chapters 15 and 16 ask the “so what?” question: Does the type of democracy make a difference, especially with regard to effective policy-making and the quality of democracy? These chapters show that consensus democracies score signifi cantly higher 8 INTRODUCTION on a wide array of indicators of democratic quality and that they also have better records with regard to governing effectiveness, although the differences in this respect are not as large. Chapter 17 concludes with a look at the policy implications of the book’s fi ndings for democratizing and newly democratic countries.
