INTD 200 Study Guide - Final Guide: Consensus Democracy, Thomas Carothers, Soviet Central Asia
10 Sep 2016
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Perils of presidentialism (pros/cons of strong president during transition to democracy) Lijphart is interested in variations among liberal democracies. He studied 22 cases (between 1945-1980) that are all liberal democracies but with significant differences among them. He believes that regimes reflect qualities of societies and different societies may create different political regimes. He makes distinctions between majoritarian and consensus democracies. The principle of a consensus democracy is to share and disperse power as much as possible. The principle of a majoritarian democracy is to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the majority, still subject to democratic rules of the game. Lijphart rejects the conventional assumption that majoritarian democracy is the best form of democracy. He highlights 2 independent dimensions which can be used to define democratic regimes and then to classify individual cases: an institutional dimension and a territorial dimension.
