Lijphart was born inApeldoorn,Netherlands in 1936.[3] During his youth, he experienced World War II and he attributed his aversion "to violence" and interest "in questions of both peace and democracy" to this experience.[4]
Dutch by birth, he has spent most of his working life in the United States and became anAmerican citizen. He has since regained his Dutch citizenship and is now adual citizen of both the Netherlands and the United States.[citation needed]
Lijphart is the leading authority onconsociationalism,[3] or the ways in which segmented societies manage to sustaindemocracy through power-sharing. Lijphart developed this concept in his first major work,The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (1968), a study of theDutch political system, and further developed his arguments inDemocracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (1977).
InThe Politics of Accommodation (1968), Lijphart challenges the influentialpluralist theory and argues that the main factor in having a viable democracy in a strongly divided society is the spirit of accommodation among the elites of different groups.[9]
InDemocracy in Plural Societies (1977), Lijphart demonstrates that democracy can be achieved and maintained in countries with deep religious, ideological, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic cleavages if elites opt for a set of institutions that are distinctive ofconsociational democracy. In this book, Lijphart defines a consociational democracy in terms of four characteristics: (1) "government by grand coalition of the political leaders of all significant segments of the plural society," (2) "the mutual veto", (3) proportionality, and (4) "a high degree of autonomy of each segment to run its own internal affairs."[10] Lijphart's work challenged the then influential view that democracy could only be stable in countries with a homogenous political culture.
Beginning with his bookDemocracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (1984), Lijphart focused on the broader contrast betweenmajoritarian democracy andconsensus democracy. 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.[11] 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 byjudicial review, and independentcentral 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.
InPatterns 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 theenvironment, more foreign aid work, and more welfare spending – qualities he feels "should appeal to all democrats".[12] He also finds that consensus democracies have a less abrasivepolitical 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.
Peter Gourevitch and Gary Jacobson argue that Lijphart's work on democracy make him "the world's leading theorist of democracy in sharply divided societies."[13] Nils-Christian Bormann claims that "Arend Lijphart's typology of democratic systems has been one of the major contributions to comparative political science in the last decades."[14] Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder hold that "Arend Lijphart is a leading empirical democratic theorist who reintroduced the study of political institutions into comparative politics in the wake of the behavioral revolution."[15]
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 theAmerican Political Science Review.[16]
In this article Lijphart argues that the comparative method can be understood in contrast to the experimental and statistical methods and claims that the main difficulty facing the comparative method is that "it must generalize on the basis of relatively few empirical cases."[16] To solve this problem, Lijphart suggests four solutions:[16]
(1) "increasing the number of cases as much as possible by means of longitudinal extension and a global range of analysis"
(2) "Reducing the property space of the analysis"
(3) "Focusing the comparative analysis on 'comparable' cases"
(4) "Focusing on the key variables"
Lijphart also discusses thecase study method and identifies six types of case studies:[16]
(1) Atheoretical
(2) Interpretative
(3) Hypothesis-generating
(4) Theory-confirming
(5) Theory-infirming
(6) Deviant case analyses
Lijphart work on methodology drew on ideas developed byNeil Smelser.[17] It was also the point of departure for the work byDavid Collier on the comparative method.[18]
Lijphart, Arend. 1985.Power-Sharing in South Africa. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California.ISBN978-0-87725-524-6.
Grofman, Bernard, and Lijphart, Arend (eds.). 1986.Electoral Laws & Their Political Consequences. New York: Agathon Press.ISBN978-0-87586-074-9.
Lijphart, Arend. 1994.Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945–1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-828054-5.
Lijphart, Arend, and Waisman, Carlos H. (eds.). 1996.Institutional Design in New Democracies. Boulder, Colorado: Westview.ISBN978-0-8133-2109-7.
Lijphart, Arend. 1999.Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-07893-0
Grofman, Bernard and Lijphart, Arend (eds.). 2002.The Evolution of Electoral & Party Systems in the Nordic Countries. New York: Agathon Press.ISBN978-0-87586-138-8.
Lijphart, Arend. 2008.Thinking About Democracy. Power sharing and majority rule in theory and practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lijphart, Arend. 2012.Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms & Performance in Thirty-six Countries, Second Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-17202-7
Taylor, Steven L., Matthew S. Shugart, Arend Lijphart, and Bernard Grofman. 2014.A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lijphart, Arend. 1971. "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method."American Political Science Review 65(3):682–93.
Lijphart, Arend. 1972. "Toward Empirical Democratic Theory: Research Strategies and Tactics."Comparative Politics 4(3): 417–32.
Lijphart, Arend. 1975. "The Comparable-Case Strategy in Comparative Research."Comparative Political Studies 8(2): 158–77.
Lijphart, Arend. 1997. "Dimensions of democracies". European Journal of Political Research 31: 193–204/
Lijphart, Arend. 1998. "Consensus and Consensus: Democracy Cultural, Structural, Functional, and Rational-Choice Explanations."Scandinavian Political Studies 21(2): 99–108. (Lecture given by the Winner of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Uppsala, 4 October 1997.)
Lijphart, Arend. 2000. "The Pros and Cons – but mainly Pros – of Consensus Democracy".Acta Politica 36(2): 129–39.
Lijphart, Arend. 2000. "The Future of Democracy: Reasons for Pessimism, but Also Some Optimism."Scandinavian Political Studies 23(3): 245–283.
Lijphart, Arend. 2001. "Democracy in the 21st century: Can we be optimistic?"European Review 9(2), 169–184.
Lijphart, Arend. 2002. "Negotiation Democracy versus Consensus Democracy: Parallel Conclusions and Recommendations."European Journal of Political Research 41(1):107–113.
Lijphart, Arend. 2004. "Constitutional Design for Divided Societies."Journal of Democracy 15,2: 96–109.
Lijphart, Arend. 2013. "Steps in My Research and Thinking About Power Sharing and Democratic Institutions."Taiwan Journal of Democracy Special issue, 1–7.[2]
Lijphart, Arend. 2018. "Consociationalism After Half a Century," pp. 1–9, in Michaelina Jakala, Durukan Kuzu, and Matt Qvortrup (eds.).Consociationalism and Power-Sharing in Europe. Arend Lijphart's Theory of Political Accommodation. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Andeweg, Rudy. 2001. "Lijphart versus Lijphart: The Cons of Consensus Democracy in Homogenous Societies."Acta Politica 36(2): 117–28.
Bormann, Nils-Christian. 2010. "Patterns of Democracy and Its Critics."Living Reviews in Democracy.[3]
Crepaz, Markus M. L., Thomas A. Koelble, and David Wilsford (eds.). 2000.Democracy and Institutions: The Life Work of Arend Lijphart. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Jakala, Michaelina, Durukan Kuzu, and Matt Qvortrup (eds.). 2018.Consociationalism and Power-Sharing in Europe. Arend Lijphart's Theory of Political Accommodation. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lustick, Ian S. 1997. "Lijphart, Lakatos, and Consociationalism."World Politics Vol. 50, No. 1: 88–117.
Gourevitch, Peter, and Gary Jacobson. 1995. "Arend Lijphart, A Profile."PS: Political Science & Politics 28(4): 751–754.
Grofman, Bernard. 1997. "Arend Lijphart and the 'New Institutionalism'". UC Irvine, CSD Working Papers.[4]
Hadenius, Axel. 2002. "Power-Sharing and Democracy: Pros and Cons of the Rustow-Lijphart Approach", pp. 65–86, in Ole Elgström and Goran Hyden (eds.),Development and Democracy: What Have We Learned and How? New York: Routledge and ECPR.
Munck, Gerardo L. and Richard Snyder. 2007. "Arend Lijphart: political institutions, divided societies, and consociational democracy," pp. 234–272, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder,Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [Interview with Arend Lijphart]
Schouten, Peer. 2008. "Theory Talk #8: Arend Lijphart on Sharing Power in Africa and the Future of Democracy," Theory Talks (26-05-2008).[5]
Taagepera, Rein. 2003. "Arend Lijphart's Dimensions of Democracy: Logical Connections and Institutional Design."Political Studies 51(1): 1–19.
Taiwan Foundation of Democracy. 2013. Special Issue ofTaiwan Journal of Democracy (May 2013) in honor of Arend Lijphart.臺灣民主基金會
^Munck, Gerardo L. and Richard Snyder (2007). "Arend Lijphart: political institutions, divided societies, and consociational democracy," pp. 234–272, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder,Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Bernard Grofman, "Arend Lijphart and the New Institutionalism", pp. 43–73, in Markus Crepaz, Thomas Koelble, and David Wilsford (eds.),Democracy and Institutions: The Life Work of Arend Lijphart. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
^Munck, Gerardo L. and Richard Snyder (2007). "Arend Lijphart: political institutions, divided societies, and consociational democracy," pp. 234–272, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder,Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 237.
^"Arend Lijphart". Department of Political Science, University of California at San Diego. Archived fromthe original on 16 May 2008. Retrieved22 August 2008.
^"Arend Lijphart". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved15 August 2015.
^Peter Gourevitch and Gary Jacobson, "Arend Lijphart, A Profile."PS: Political Science & Politics 28(4)(1995): 751–754, p. 751
^Bormann, Nils-Christian. 2010. "Patterns of Democracy and Its Critics."Living Reviews in Democracy, p. 1.[1]
^Munck, Gerardo L. and Richard Snyder (2007). "Arend Lijphart: political institutions, divided societies, and consociational democracy," pp. 234–272, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder,Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 234.
^Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder, "Arend Lijphart: Political Institutions, Divided Societies, and Consociational Democracy," pp. 234–72, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder,Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, p. 263; Neil J. Smelser, "Notes on the Methodology of Comparative Analysis of Economic Activity."Social Science Information 6(2–3) 1967: 7–21; Neil J. Smelser,Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976.
^David Collier, "The Comparative Method," pp. 105–19, in Ada W. Finifter (ed.),Political Science: The State of the Discipline II. Washington, D.C.: The American Political Science Association, 1993.
