Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries

by Arend Lijphart

Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries.

Genres: Political Science, Politics

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Arend d'Angremond Lijphart is a Dutch American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, elections and voting systems, democratic institutions, and ethnicity and politics. He is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is influential for his work on consociational democracy and his contribution to the new Institutionalism in political science.

Reviews

[User F.]

Man versteht, warum es ein Klassiker ist, aber ob man es wirklich heute noch lesen muss, weiß ich nicht; vieles ist doch inzwischen entweder Gemeingut oder überholt.

[Yu]

This book is very much focused on Majoritarian and Consensus Government/democracy models. It has a clear chronological category as well. Most of the discussion is classified in detailed time terms. There are 22 democratic countries as instances throughout the whole book. As a book written in 80s, I think it's good.

[Liquidlasagna]

Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics
October 1984

People who preferred the pre-statistical Lijphart will not be too impressed by the cluster of countries since they are close to common sense evidence anyway.

[Rosa Bergerac]

And what have we reached in 2023?

[Irine]

pp. 106-126 150-168

[Public Scott]

Even as someone who is very interested in this topic (albeit a layman) - this reader found Lijphart's book very challenging. I was unable to read straight through and had to do some skimming. Comparing twenty-odd democracies back and forth got kind of overwhelming.

[Marti]

I singoli argomenti sono interessanti ma è la materia in se che è terribilmente pesante.