Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T17:47:46.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Consociational Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Arend Lijphart
Get access

Extract

In Gabriel A. Almond's famous typology of political systems, first expounded in 1956, he distinguishes three types of Western democratic systems: Anglo-American political systems (exemplified by Britain and the United States), Continental European political systems (France, Germany, and Italy), and a third category consisting of the Scandinavian and Low Countries. The third type is not given a distinct label and is not described in detail; Almond merely states that the countries belonging to this type “combine some of the features of the Continental European and the Anglo-American” political systems, and “stand somewhere in between the Continental pattern and the Anglo-American.” Almond's threefold typology has been highly influential in the comparative analysis of democratic politics, although, like any provocative and insightful idea, it has also been criticized. This research note will discuss the concept of “consociational democracy” in a constructive attempt to refine and elaborate Almond's typology of democracies.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , January 1969 , pp. 207 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gabriel A. Almond, ”Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, xviii (August 1956), 392–93. 405.

2 Ibid., 398–99, 405–07 (italics omitted).

3 , Kalleberg, “The Logic of Comparison: A Methodological Note on the Comparative Study of Political Systems,” World Politics, xix (October 1966), 73–74Google Scholar. Hans Daalder's critical question “Why should France, Germany, and Italy be more ‘continental,’ tlian Holland, or Switzerland, or more ‘European’ than Britain?” seems to be based on a similar erroneous interpretation; see his “Parties, Elites, and Political Developments in Western Europe,” in LaPalombara, Joseph and Weiner, Myron, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton 1966), 43nCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Almond, 392. There is also no reason, therefore, to call the exclusion of Scandinavia and the Low Countries from the “Continental European” systems an “artificial qualifier,” as Kalleberg does, 74.

5 Almond, 408.

6 Truman, David B., The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York 1951), 508, 511.Google Scholar

7 Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures, 4th ed.,(Evanston 1955), 208Google Scholar.

8 Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City 1960), 88–89Google Scholar.

9 , Almond and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston 1966), 122, 263Google Scholar; , Almond and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton 1963), 134Google Scholar.

10 “Political Systems and Political Change,” American Behavioral Scientist, vi (June 1963), 9–10Google Scholar.

11 Almond and Powell, 259 (italics omitted).

12 Almond, rapporteur, “A Comparative Study of Interest Groups and the Political Process,” American Political Science Review, LII (March 1958), 275–77Google Scholar; , Almond, “A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,” in , Almond and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960), 42–43Google Scholar. See also Lindahl, Goran G., “Gabriel A. Almond's funktionella kategorier: En kritik,” Statsvetenskaplig Tid-shrift, No. 4 (1967), 263–72Google Scholar; and Constance E. van der Maesen and G. H. Scholten, “De functionele benadering van G. A. Almond bij het vergelijken van politieke stelsels,” Ada Politica, 1 (1965–66), 220–26.

13 “A Functional Approach,” 42.

14 Cf. Johannes Althusius’ concept of consociatio in his Politica Methodice Digesta, and the term “consociational” used by Apter, David E., The Political Kingdom in Uganda: A Study in Bureaucratic Nationalism (Princeton 1961), 24–25Google Scholar.

15 Ake, Claude, A Theory of Political Integration (Homewood 1967), 113Google Scholar. This possibility exists not only in the fragmented democracies, but also in fragmented predemo-cratic or nondemocratic systems, of course. See also Lijphart, Arend, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley 1968), 1–15, 197–211Google Scholar.

16 Engelmann, Frederick C., “Haggling for the Equilibrium: The Renegotiation of the Austrian Coalition, 1959,” American Political Science Review, LVI (September 1962), 651–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 , Kirchheimer, “The Waning of Opposition in Parliamentary Regimes,” Social Research, xxiv (Summer 1957), 137Google Scholar.

18 , Lorwin, “Constitutionalism and Controlled Violence in the Modern State: The Case of Belgium” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, San Francisco, 1965), 4 (italics added)Google Scholar. For a description of the establishment of consociational democracy in the Netherlands, see Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation, 103–12.

19 , Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City 1967), 276Google Scholar.

20 , Nyerere, “One-Party Rule,” in Sigmund, Paul E. Jr., ed., The Ideologies of the Developing Nations (New York 1963), 199Google Scholar.

21 Riker, William H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven 1962), 29, 32–33Google Scholar.

22 Almond, “Comparative Political Systems,” 398–99.

23 , Lehmbruch, “A Non-Competitive Pattern of Conflict Management in Liberal Democracies: The Case of Switzerland, Austria and Lebanon” (paper presented at the Seventh World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Brussels, 1967), 6Google Scholar. See also , Lehmbruch, Proporzdetnokratie: Politisches System und politische Kultur in der Schweiz und in Österreich (Tübingen 1967)Google Scholar.

24 , Dahl, Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven 1966), 337Google Scholar.

25 Lehmbruch, 8.

26 , Hudson, “A Case of Political Underdevelopment,” Journal of Politics, xxix (November 1967), 836Google Scholar.

27 , Griffith, “Cultural Prerequisites to a Successfully Functioning Democracy,” American Political Science Review, L (March 1956), 102Google Scholar.

28 Lehmbruch, 9.

29 , Wright, “The Nature of Conflict,” Western Political Quarterly, iv (June 1951), 196Google Scholar.

30 , Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York 1965), 250–51 (italics added)Google Scholar. See also Scholten, G. H., “Het vergelijken van federaties met behulp van systeem-analyse,” Acta Politica, 11 (1966–67), 51–68Google Scholar.

31 , Verba, “Some Dilemmas in Comparative Research,” World Politics, xx (October 1967), 126 (italics added)Google Scholar.

32 , Connory, “Self-Determination: The New Phase,” World Politics, xx (October 1967), 49–50Google Scholar.

33 , Deutsch, Political Community at the International Level (Garden City 1954), 39Google Scholar.

34 Daalder, 69.

35 , Lorwin, “Belgium: Religion, Class, and Language in National Politics,” in , Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, 174Google Scholar.

36 , Nordlinger, “Democratic Stability and Instability: The French Case,” World Politics, xviii (October 1965), 143Google Scholar.

37 , Leites, On the Game of Politics in France (Stanford 1959), 2Google Scholar.

38 Nor does the reverse assumption hold true. Giovanni Sartori relates the instability of Italian democracy to “poor leadership, both in the sense that the political elites lack the ability for problem-solving and that they do not provide a generalized leadership.” This weakness of leadership, he continues, “is easily explained by the fragmentation of the party system and its ideological rigidity.” (“European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism,” in LaPalombara and Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development, 163.) The example of the consociational democracies shows that this is not a sufficient explanation.

39 , Converse and , Dupeux, “Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States,” Public Opinion Quarterly, xxvi (Spring 1962), 1–23Google Scholar.

40 , MacRae, Parliament, Parties, and Society in France: 1946–1958 (New York 1967), 333Google Scholar.

41 , Hoffmann and others, In Search of France (Cambridge 1963), 8 (italics omitted)Google Scholar; , Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago 1964), 220Google Scholar.

42 , Duverger, “The Development of Democracy in France,” in Ehrmann, Henry W., ed., Democracy in a Changing Society (New York 1964), 77Google Scholar.

43 , Verba, “Germany: The Remaking of Political Culture,” in Pye, Lucian W. and , Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton 1965), 133Google Scholar.

44 , Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York 1963), 292Google Scholar.

45 Dahl, 358.

46 , McDaniel, The Danish Unicameral Parliament (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley 1963), ivGoogle Scholar.