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⁴ See Lijphart, , Patterns of DemocracyGoogle Scholar; Lijphart, Arend, ‘Detailed Data used in Patterns of Democracy’ (unpublished manuscript, University of California at San Diego, no date)Google Scholar.

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⁶ See Nagel, Jack H., ‘Expanding the Spectrum of Democracies: Reflections on Proportional Representation in New Zealand’, in Markus M. L. Crepaz, Thomas A. Koelble and David Wilsford, eds, Democracy and Institutions: The Life and Work of Arend Lijphart (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 121Google Scholar.

⁷ Taagepera, Rein, ‘Arend Lijphart’s Dimensions of Democracy: Logical Connections and Institutional Design’, Political Studies, 51 (2003), 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 8.

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⁹ Lijphart, Arend, ‘Back to Democratic Basics: Who Really Practices Majority Rule?’ in Axel Hadenius, ed., Democracy’s Victory and Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 144Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Nagel, , ‘Expanding the Spectrum of Democracies’Google Scholar.

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¹² We use the abbreviations suggested by Taagepera. See Taagepera, Rein, ‘Implications of the Effective Number of Parties for Cabinet Formation’, Party Politics, 8 (2002), 227–236CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁴ Lijphart adjusts for the length of cabinets.

¹⁵ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, p. 181Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, p. 112Google Scholar. Note that all empirical results in this article are based on average values for the period from 1945 to 1996.

¹⁷ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, p. 245Google Scholar. See also Taagepera, , ‘Arend Lijphart’s Dimensions of Democracy’, p. 3Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, p. 91Google Scholar.

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²¹ Taagepera, , ‘Implications of the Effective Number of Parties’Google Scholar.

²² Given the constraint of a one-party majority, the value for N is greatest when the majority is the smallest possible (50 per cent plus one seat) and the number of minority parties is large. As this number approaches infinity, and the seat share of the minority parties approaches 0, N approaches 4.

²³ Of course, a simpler proxy, directly derived from Taagepera’s logical analysis, would be the frequency of one-party majority cabinets.

²⁴ Taagepera, , ‘Implications of the Effective Number of Parties’, pp. 234–5Google Scholar, emphasis added.

²⁵ Tsebelis, George, Veto Players. How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁸ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, p. 34Google Scholar.

²⁹ For this conceptual argument, see Ganghof, Steffen, ‘Normative Modelle, institutionelle Typen und beobachtbare Verhaltensmuster. Ein Vorschlag zum Vergleich parlamentarischer Demokratien’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 46 (2005), 406–431CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³² Interactive effects of party systems and veto points are also visible in other outcomes of democratic politics such as voter turnout and policy outputs. See Franklin, Mark N., ‘The Dynamics of Electoral Participation’, in Lawrence LeDuc, Richard G. Niemi and Pippa Norris, eds, Comparing Democracies 2 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002)Google Scholar; Ganghof, Steffen, ‘The Political Economy of High Income Taxation: Capital Taxation, Path Dependence and Political Institutions in Denmark’, Comparative Political Studies, 40 (2007), 1059–1084CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 1076–80.

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⁴⁴ For an institutional survey of direct democracy in all of Lijphart’s democracies, see Jung, Sabine, Die Logik direkter Demokratie (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ The method of estimation is ordinary least squares (OLS). This is not without problems because the dependent variable is bounded between 0 and 100. OLS is nevertheless chosen for three reasons. First, the goal here is to compare the results with those reported by Lijphart, who also uses OLS. Secondly, the focus here is not on precisely estimating the quantities of a well-understood causal structure, but to make an essentially qualitative inference about this structure itself. Thirdly, a better-suited quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) is also problematic due to the small sample size, but the results of this estimator corroborate the causal structure postulated here and can be obtained from the author. On the QMLE estimator see Papke, Leslie E. and Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., ‘Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(k) Plan Participation Rates’, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 11 (1996), 619–6323.0.CO;2-1>CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴⁷ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, pp. 112–13Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Srebrnik, Henry, ‘ “Full of Sound and Fury”: Three Decades of Parliamentary Politics in Mauritius’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28 (2002), 277–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 279.

⁴⁹ On Finland, see Nousiainen, Jaakko, ‘Finland: The Consolidation of Parliamentary Governance’, in Wolfgang C. Müller and Kaare Strøm, eds, Coalition Governments in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 264–299Google Scholar. On Switzerland, see Linder, Wolf, Swiss Democracy – Possible Solutions to Conflict in Multicultural Societies (London: Macmillan, 2002)Google Scholar.

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⁵¹ See Bach, Stanley, Platypus and Parliament: The Australian Senate in Theory and Practice (Canberra: Department of the Senate, 2003)Google Scholar; Ganghof, and Bräuninger, , ‘Government Status and Legislative Behaviour’, pp. 533–4Google Scholar.

⁵² Colomer, Josep M., ‘It’s Parties That Choose Electoral Systems (or, Duverger’s Laws Upside Down)’, Political Studies, 53 (2005), 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵⁴ I focus on the most important difference between parliamentary and presidential systems, i.e., whether or not governments can be removed by the assembly for political reasons. Switzerland is treated as a presidential system because the cabinet cannot be removed. It is a very special case, however, because the collegial, multi-member cabinet is elected by the assembly.

⁵⁵ Note that a powerful veto point is not a definitional feature of a presidential system. The presidential veto can in some countries be overridden by simple or absolute majorities in the assembly.

⁵⁶ There were brief periods in which the major opposition party or parties in the House had a majority in the Senate. The best-known instance of this situation is the constitutional crisis of 1975: the Senate provoked the dismissal of the Labor prime minister by refusing to pass the government’s appropriations bills. See Bach, , Platypus and Parliament, pp. 83–119Google Scholar; Ganghof, and Bräuninger, , ‘Government Status and Legislative Behaviour’, p. 533Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ These arguments do not contradict the classification of the Australian Senate as a strong legislative veto point in the regression analysis above. The Senate is a strong veto point with respect to portfolio coalitions in the House. Extremely inclusive cabinets would have to be formed to absorb the Senate as a veto player.

⁵⁸ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, pp. 212–13Google Scholar, n. 5.

⁵⁹ Lijphart, , Patterns of Democracy, p. 212Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Arter, David, ‘One Ting Too Many: The Shift to Unicameralism in Denmark’, in Lawrence D. Longley and David M. Olson, eds, Two into One: The Politics and Processes of National Legislative Cameral Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 77–142Google Scholar; von Sydow, Björn, ‘Sweden’s Road to a Unicameral Parliament’, in Longley and Olson, eds, Two into One, pp. 143–201Google Scholar.

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