1980/04/01 by Robert H. Dix · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Political theory and Gramsci #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East #Political Conflict and Governance
paper · doi:10.2307/421928
In a series of books and articles beginning in 1968, Arend Lijphart has distinguished a variety of democracy in which centrifugal tendencies inherent in a plural society are counteracted by the cooperative attitudes and behavior of the leaders of the different segments of the population.' Through a variety of artificial, antimajoritarian devices, such as grand coalitions, the rule of proportionality, and mutual vetoes, it is argued, political leaders of the several subcultures can by their deliberate decisions bring stability to an otherwise badly divided society. The principal cases of successful consociationalism, which in turn have formed the main evidential basis for Lijphart's arguments concerning how elite accommodation works and what factors influence its success, are the small European democracies of the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria. Lijphart has also at times included Lebanon as a non-European example of consociationalism, and in his most recent and definitive elaboration of the theory (Democracy in Plural Societies) he has included examples from other parts of the Third World as well (Cyprus, Malaysia, Nigeria, Surinam, and the Netherlands Antilles in particular) although they, along with Lebanon, are cases of, at best, very mixed success. It may therefore prove instructive for comparative purposes to examine Lijphart's theory, and especially those conditions that he sees as favorable to the success of consociational democracy, in the light of a highly successful case of consociationalism from the Third World, such as that of Colombia.