Arend Lijphart

Arend d'Angremond Lijphart (born 17 August 1936, Apeldoorn, Netherlands) is a political scientist specializing in comparative politics, elections and voting systems, democratic institutions, and ethnicity and politics. He received his PhD in Political Science at Yale University in 1963, after studying at Principia College from 1955 to 1958. He is currently Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Dutch by birth, he has spent most of his working life in the United States and is an American citizen. He has since regained his Dutch citizenship and is now a dual citizen of both the Netherlands and the United States.

Major works

Lijphart is the leading authority on consociationalism, or the ways in which segmented societies manage to sustain democracy through power-sharing. Lijphart developed this concept in his first major work, The Politics of Accommodation, a study of the Dutch political system, and further developed his arguments in Democracy in Plural Societies.

His later work has focused on the broader contrasts between majoritarian and "consensus" democracies. While Lijphart advocated consociationalism primarily for societies deeply divided along ethnic, religious, ideological, or other cleavages, he sees consensus democracy as appropriate for any society with a consensual political culture.^[1] In contrast to majoritarian democracies, consensus democracies have multiparty systems, parliamentarism with oversized (and therefore inclusive) cabinet coalitions, proportional electoral systems, corporatist (hierarchical) interest group structures, federal structures, bicameralism, rigid constitutions protected by judicial review, and independent central banks. These institutions ensure, firstly, that only a broad supermajority can control policy and, secondly, that once a coalition takes power, its ability to infringe on minority rights is limited.

In Patterns of Democracy (1999, 2nd ed., 2012), Lijphart classifies thirty-six democracies using these attributes. He finds consensus democracies to be "kinder, gentler" states, having lower incarceration rates, less use of the death penalty, better care for the environment, more foreign aid work, and more welfare spending – qualities he feels "should appeal to all democrats".^[2] He also finds that consensus democracies have a less abrasive political culture, more functional business-like proceedings, and a results-oriented ethic. The 2012 edition included data up to 2010 and found proportional representation (PR) was vastly superior for the "quality of democracy", being statistically significantly better for 19 of 19 indicators. On the issue of “effective government” 16 out of 17 indicators pointed to PR as superior, with 9 out of 17 statistically significant. These results held up when controlling for the level of development and population size.

Lijphart has also made influential contributions to methodological debates within comparative politics, most notably through his 1971 article 'Comparative politics and the comparative method', published in the American Political Science Review.^[3]

Honours

In 1989, Lijphart was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and from 1995 to 1996 served as President of the American Political Science Association.^[4] In 1993 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[5] He was awarded the prestigious Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 1997.^[6]

Publications

Books

• The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch & West New Guinea. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.
• The Politics of Accommodation. Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
• Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-300-02494-0.
• Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-300-03182-3.
• Power-Sharing in South Africa. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1985. ISBN 0-87725-524-5.
• Grofman, Bernard, and Lijphart, Arend (eds.). Electoral Laws & Their Political Consequences. New York: Agathon Press, 1986. ISBN 0-87586-074-5.
• Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945–1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-828054-8.
• Lijphart, Arend, and Waisman, Carlos H. (eds.). Institutional Design in New Democracies. Boulder: Westview, 1996. ISBN 0-8133-2109-3.
• Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms & Performance in Thirty-six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-300-07893-5
• Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms & Performance in Thirty-six Countries, Second Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780300172027
• Grofman, Bernard and Lijphart, Arend (eds.). The Evolution of Electoral & Party Systems in the Nordic Countries. New York: Agathon Press. ISBN 0-87586-138-5.

Journal articles

• Lijphart, Arend; Schmidt, Manfred G. (February 1997). "Dimensions of democracies". European Journal of Political Research. Wiley. 31 (1–2): 193–204. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.1997.tb00774.x. 
• Lijphart, Arend (June 1998). "Consensus and consensus democracy: cultural, structural, functional, and rational-choice explanations". Scandinavian Political Studies. Wiley. 21 (2): 99–108. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9477.1998.tb00007.x.  Lecture given by the Winner of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Uppsala, October 4, 1997 Full text.
• Lijphart, Arend (December 1999). "Power–sharing and group autonomy in the 1990s and the 21st century" (PDF). Constitutional Design 2000. Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame. 
• Lijphart, Arend (September 2000). "The future of democracy: reasons for pessimism, but also some optimism". Scandinavian Political Studies, special section: The Future of Democracy (pp. 245–283). Wiley. 23 (3): 265–273. doi:10.1111/1467-9477.00038.  Full text.
• Lijphart, Arend (January 2002). "Negotiation democracy versus consensus democracy: parallel conclusions and recommendations". European Journal of Political Research. Wiley. 41 (1): 107–113. doi:10.1111/1475-6765.00005. 
• Lijphart, Arend (April 2004). "Constitutional design for divided societies". Journal of Democracy. Project MUSE. 15 (2): 96–109. doi:10.1353/jod.2004.0029.  Pdf.
• Vatter, Adrian (March 2009). "Lijphart expanded: three dimensions of democracy in advanced OECD countries?". European Political Science Review. Cambridge Journals. 1 (1): 125–154. doi:10.1017/S1755773909000071. 

Further reading

• Summaries of Lijphart's major works
• Lijphart, Arend (2000). Democracy in the twenty-first century: can we be optimistic? (Uhlenbeck Lecture 18) (PDF). Wassenaar, Netherlands: Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. ISBN 9789071093340. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 December 2008. 
• Staff writer (May 26, 2008). "Arend Lijphart on sharing power in Africa and the future of democracy (interview)". Theory Talk. Peer Schouten. 8. 
• Rylee, Ryan (8 March 2012). "Arend Lijphart: patterns of democracy: government forms and performance in thirty-six countries (interview)". New Books Network. Yale University Press.  Podcast.

References

External links

• Arend Lijphart at UCSD