It is obviously an honor for me that you are still discussing my contribution to political science now fifty years after I came up with the term consociationalism in my 1969 article (Lijphart 1969). After that time there haveâadmittedlyâbeen changes in terminology: accommodation âconsociationâ power-sharingâconsensus are some of the other terms I have used. But the basic characteristics have, I think, only been subject to insignificant change. Basically, my contention wasâand still isâthat an element of consociation and willingness to compromise with other groups can make democracy work even in divided societies if a number of conditions are met. I have divided these conditions in four characteristics, which again can be sub-divided into two categories: (a) cultural autonomy and (b) the other three (grand coalition , proportionality , minority veto ). But before I go any further, it is, perhaps, useful to give you a bit of personal background and to outline the personal journey that led me to the development of my theory, or rather my observation that certain institutional conditions can make democracy work in a peaceful fashion that benefits everyone.
My interest in the topic grew out of my 1963 Yale doctoral dissertation, published as a book by Yale University Press in 1966 under the title The Trauma of Decolonization (Lijphart 1966). In the book I analyzed the Dutch government policy toward West New Guinea . This was the last remnant of the Dutch East Indies colonial empire. While the Dutch recognized Indonesiaâs independence in 1949 they resisted surrendering West New Guinea until 1962. They did this despite the territoryâs evident lack of economic valueâcontrary to the prevalent Marxist and non-Marxist theories of imperialism and colonialism that posited economic advantages as the main explanations. West New Guinea presented an especially clear deviant case because Hollandâs net economic interest in the colony was not just minimal but actually negative: the efforts to maintain possession put Hollandâs extensive trade with and investments in Indonesia at risk. This was not an abstract or imaginary risk. Indeed, in late 1957, Indonesia retaliated by confiscating all Dutch property and expelling nearly all of the 50,000 Dutch nationals. No other objective advantages were at stake either, and subjective and psychological factors were therefore not just contributing factors but the determining forces behind Dutch colonialist policy.
I need not say more about this first book because it was only indirectly linked, in two ways, to my subsequent work on democratic institutions. But a few more words are warranted. While I was working on the PhD, I was struck by the fact that the case of Dutch policy toward West New Guinea was also a deviant case in terms of the normally unemotional and level-headed pattern of policy-making in the Netherlands . I was thus led to a general analysis of the countryâs government and politics. Second, I made use of the deviant case-study method again, by analyzing the Dutch case in the framework of Gabriel Almondâs and Seymour M. Lipsetâs theories of democratic stability (Almond and Verba 1989).
Almond and Lipset had argued that subcultural and mutually reinforcing cleavages made stable democracy very difficult, if not impossible. Dutch democracy, however, was far from unstable and dysfunctional, in spite of the deep religious and ideological divisions in Dutch society. My basic argument was that cooperation at the elite level could overcome the conflict potential inherent in such deep cleavages . I used the term âpolitics of accommodation â for this democratic patternâsynonymous with what I later called âconsociational democracy ,â or âpower-sharing democracy â (Lijphart 1968b). My book entitled The Politics of Accommodation was published in 1968 (Lijphart 1968a).
As I am often called the âfatherâ of consociational theory, I should emphasize that several other scholars were also working on this subject in the late 1960s. In fact, two important books preceded my Politics of Accommodation: Gerhard Lehmbruchâs Proporzdemokratie (Lehmbruch 1967), which compared the Swiss and Austrian cases, was published in 1967, and Sir Arthur Lewisâs Politics in West Africa (Lewis 1965) appeared before. Other significant studies by Hans Daalder, Luc Huyse, Val R. Lorwin, Kenneth D. McRae, Eric A. Nordlinger, G. Bingham Powell, Jr., and JĂźrg Steiner were published both in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their contributions have been a major source of inspiration for me.
When The Politics of Accommodation was published (Lijphart 1968a), I had already started looking at other cases of consociational democracy , which I described and analyzed in a series of articles and book chapters. This research culminated in my 1977 book Democracy in Plural Societies, in which I defined consociational democracy in terms of four basic principles: (a) power-sharing executives in which all important groups are represented; (b) cultural autonomy for these groups; (c) proportionality in political representation , civil service appointments, and government subsidies; and (d) a minority veto power with regard to the most vital issues such as minority rights and autonomy (Lijphart 1977). I also tried to identify the background factors favorable to the establishment and maintenance of consociational democracy. The nine principal cases that I analyzed were the Netherlands , Belgium, Switzerland , Austria , Lebanon , Malaysia , Cyprus , Suriname , and the Netherlands Antilles. My overall conclusionâwhich was also intended to be an explicit policy recommendation for constitution-writers in plural (deeply divided) societiesâwas that a consociational system was a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for stable democracy in such countries.
In the years between my 1968 and 1977 books, my approach changed in four respects, all of which also characterized the further evolution in my research and writing from the 1980s on. I included more and more countries: from the single case in 1968 to the nine cases in 1977 mentioned in the previous paragraph, and then to twenty-one, twenty-seven, and thirty-six countries in my 1984 and 1999 booksâas indicated in the subtitles of these three books (Lijphart 1984, 1999).
This increase in the number of cases made for a change in my basic research approach: from the case-study method, to the comparative method, to the statistical method. Especially in the last chapters of my 1999 Patterns of Democracy the large number of cases allowed me to make effective use of correlation and regression analysis.
Further, I have become more and more explicit about linking my empirical conclusions to policy recommendations. This was mainly implicit in The Politics of Accommodation , but quite explicit in Democracy in Plural Societiesâand in all of my books since then. Political scientists tend to be very cautious about making policy recommendationsâmuch too cautious, in my opinion. Empirical propositions link independent with dependent variables, or causes with effects. Many of these effects can be described as desirable or undesirable. If that is the case, and if the causes, whether behavioral or institutional, can in principle be changed, a clear recommendation about these causes is implied. In much of my own work on governmental institutions, political parties, and electoral systems, I have therefore included discussions of the policy relevance of my findings.
Moreover, I have become increasingly critical of what used to be the conventional wisdom that the power-sharing type of democracy may have advantages in terms of democratic quality and stability , but has the serious drawback of providing less effective government. In the past, I, too, was completely convinced of the validity of this conventional wisdom, and it has taken me many years to liberate myself from it. In my undergraduate and graduate student days in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I regarded the Westminster majoritarian model as the best form of democracy in every respect and multiparty democracy with proportional representation (PR), coalition cabinets , and so on, as clearly inferior. This admiration for the Westminster model represents a long and strong tradition in American political science. In a second phase, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, I became strongly aware of the dangers of majoritarian democracy for religiously and ethnically divided societies, but I still believed that it was the better choice for more homogeneous countries. Only from the mid-1980s on did I become more and more convinced that the consociational and consensus models of democracy were superior to the majoritarian model for all democracies and in almost all respects.
My next step entailed a twofold effort. First, I wanted to use the contrast between consociational and majoritarian democracy as a general framework for the analysis of all democracies, not just democratic government in divided countries. Second, I...