Arend Lijpharts Democracies Essay Research Paper An — страница 2

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should have the chance to participate in making that decision, either directly or through representatives. Lijphart lists the following eight elements of the consensus model: 1. Executive power-sharing: grand coalitions This allows all important parties to share executive power in a broad coalition. 2. Separation of powers, formal and informal This prevents the need of a vote of no confidence. 3. Balanced bicameralism and minority representation 4. Multiparty system This usually results in no single party winning a majority vote. 5. Multidimensional party system 6. Proportional representation Parliamentary seats are divided among the parties in proportion to the votes they receive. 7. Territorial and nonterritiorial federalism and decentralization This gives autonomy to different

groups in a society. 8. Written constitution and minority veto Why majoritarianism is not always stabilizing The majoritarian model is usually attributed with avoiding political gridlock, discouraging splinter parties, being less issue-contentious, and having a centralized power structure. Each of these factors has helped provide stability in several advanced industrial countries such as Great Britain and Australia. Still, there are a number of factors to be taken into account in determining which model is most appropriate for a particular country. This section will analyze these factors in detail, but a general guideline is that a majoritarian model is favorable in homogeneous societies and, conversely, a consensus model is better for heterogeneous societies. Some of the

elements Lijphart provides for both models will be examined to illustrate this point. * Concentrated executive power (M) vs. power sharing (C) While concentrated power prevents political gridlock and allows voters to attribute responsibility to a particular party, creating an opposition party can be harmful if the parties are very antagonistic. An example is Austria s First Republic (1918-33), in which the two major communities in the Austrian plural society were the Catholics and the Socialists, and the two large parties that represented them. With the Socialists excluded from the government from 1920 on, the already existent mutual suspicion and hostility was fueled, leading to civil war and the establishment of a fascist regime. Clearly, the stability of the government may

have been improved if power sharing had been utilized. * Cabinet dominance (M) vs. separation of power (C) Cabinet dominance neutralizes executive-legislative gridlock that often limits the efficiency of a government and can threaten its stability. But cabinets are frequently overthrown in countries with mulitparty parliaments without a firm majority coalition. Thus, if a multiparty system is already institutionalized, it will not be useful to utilized majoritarian cabinet dominance. Potentially, the overthrown cabinet can be extremely destabilizing. Weimar Germany in the late 1920s had at least seven significant parties ranging from communists to monarchist conservatives. Naturally, none of these parties came near to securing a majority and coalitions formed cabinets. Little

could be accomplished with majority coalitions containing parties from both the left and the right, for their policy differences were too far apart. This led, of course, to the rise of the Nazis and the abolishment of the democratic regime. Thus, in heterogeneous societies, it is essential that many voices are included in government. * Two-party system (M) vs. multiparty system (C) The two-party system is regarded as stable and effective because it fosters a majority ruling party that will be supported by parliament. The problem with this logic is the assumption that there is only one significant issue dimension in the political system. If there are several dimensions, the two parties would likely be unstable themselves, because a wide variety of people would be represented under

one party. Unstable parties are clearly a threat to a stable democracy. For example, Switzerland is a democracy that had benefited from a multiparty system. Switzerland is a plural society that is divided among several lines of cleavage including religious, socioeconomic, and language. This illustrates how different members of a society will have different concerns that can not be covered by one-dimensional parties. * Plurality system of elections vs. proportional representation The benefit of a PR system is that it is inclusionary by nature. In contrast, a two-party system may foster a significant third party to attempt overthrowing the regime, because it cannot attain influence in government. Therefore, in plural societies it would be hazardous to prevent the representation of