Open Access
Constitutional Design for Divided Societies
Arend Lijphart
- Vol. 1, Iss: 4, pp 33-44
TLDR
Lijphart as mentioned in this paper presents a set of such recommendations, focusing in particular on the constitutional needs of countries with deep ethnic and other cleavages, and his recommendations will indicate as precisely as possible which particular power-sharing rules and institutions are optimal and why.Abstract:
Over the past half-century, democratic constitutional design has undergone a sea change. After the Second World War, newly independent countries tended simply to copy the basic constitutional rules of their former colonial masters, without seriously considering alternatives. Today, constitution writers choose more deliberately among a wide array of constitutional models, with various advantages and disadvantages. While at first glance this appears to be a beneficial development, it has actually been a mixed blessing: Since they now have to deal with more alternatives than they can readily handle, constitution writers risk making ill-advised decisions. In my opinion, scholarly experts can be more helpful to constitution writers by formulating specific recommendations and guidelines than by overwhelming those who must make the decision with a barrage of possibilities and options. This essay presents a set of such recommendations, focusing in particular on the constitutional needs of countries with deep ethnic and other cleavages. In such deeply divided societies the interests and demands of communal groups can be accommodated only by the establishment of power sharing, and my recommendations will indicate as precisely as possible which particular power-sharing rules and institutions are optimal and why. (Such rules and institutions may be useful in less intense forms in many other societies as well.) Most experts on divided societies and constitutional engineering broadly agree that deep societal divisions pose a grave problem for democracy, and that it is therefore generally more difficult to establish and maintain democratic government in divided than in homogeneous Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (1999) and many other studies of democratic institutions, the governance of deeply divided societies, and electoral systems.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Consociationalism and its critics: Evidence from the historic Northern Ireland Assembly election 2007
TL;DR: In the case of the 2007 Assembly election in Northern Ireland, the effective disappearance of the ethno-national conflict cleavage was identified as a determinant of voter choice as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Europeanization and Collective Rationality in Minority Voting: Lessons from Central and Eastern Europe
TL;DR: In this paper, the question of how European integration shaped minority electoral strategies, which constitute the primary form of political mobilization among minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, has been addressed and discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Unravelling semi-presidentialism: democracy and government performance in four distinct regime types
Thomas Sedelius,Jonas Linde +1 more
TL;DR: Do semi-presidential regimes perform worse than other regime types? as discussed by the authors investigates the performance of a single-person regime in terms of its performance compared to other types of regimes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Talking ethnic but hearing multi-ethnic: the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria and durable multi-ethnic parties in the midst of violence
TL;DR: The effect of ethnicity on party politics in Nigeria (1999-present) has been paradoxical as discussed by the authors, as policies designed to end ethnic outbidding and the ethnicisation of party politics have resulted in higher levels of ethnic violence.
Journal ArticleDOI
Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies: Consociationalism, Centripetalism and Communalism Compared
TL;DR: This article surveys the main contending models that have been advanced for ethnically diverse democracies, and examines the key components of each of those models and explores some aspects of their application, arguing that there is much more cross-over between the models than is commonly assumed.
References
More filters
Book
Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the third wave of global democratization has come to an end, leaving a growing gap between the electoral form and the liberal substance of democracy.
Book
Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics
TL;DR: In this article, the constitutional origin and survival of assembly and executive, and the legislative powers of presidents: veto and decree, are discussed, as well as electoral dynamics: efficiency and inefficiency.
Book
Minorities at risk: A global view of ethnopolitical conflicts
TL;DR: A comprehensive survey of 233 politically active communal groups, plus in-depth assessments of ethnic tensions in the western democracies, the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East, and Africa is presented in this article.
Book
Mixed-member electoral systems : the best of both worlds?
TL;DR: Shugart and Wattenberg as discussed by the authors place mixed-member systems in the world of electoral systems and place them as the best of both worlds in a typology of mixed-members.
Journal ArticleDOI
The failure of presidential democracy
Juan J. Linz,Arturo Valenzuela +1 more
TL;DR: The case of Latin America: party politics and the crisis of presidentialism in Chile -a proposal for a parliamentary form of government, Arturo Valenzuela presidentialism and democratic stability in Uruguay, Luis Eduardo Gonzalez and Charles Guy Gillespie Brazil - toward parliamentarism?, Bolivar Lamounier presidentialism, and Colombian politics, Jonathon Hartlyn loose parties, "floating" politicans, and institutional stress -presidentism in Ecuador, 1979-1988, Catherine M. Conaghan presidents, messiahs, and constitutional breakdowns in Peru, Cynthia McCl