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Power‐sharing versus Majority Rule: Patterns of Cabinet Formation in Twenty Democracies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
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THE TERM ‘MAJORITY RULE’ IS OFTEN USED EITHER AS A synonym of democracy or as one of its defining characteristics. An important contribution that the scholars belonging to the consociational school have made to democratic theory is to point out that this close identification of majorit rule and democracy is fallacious. Majoritarian democracy, of which the Westminster model is the ideal type, is not the only form of democracy; the major alternative is consociational democracy. Furthermore, majority rule is not necessarily the best form of democracy; especially in plural societies - that is, societies deeply divided by religious, ideological, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or racial cleavages into separate sub-societies with their own political parties, interest groups, and media of communication - consociational democracy is the more suitable democratic model.
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References
1 See the work of Hans Daalder, Edward M. Dew, Theodor Hanf, Luc Huyse, Enver M. Koury, Gerhard Lehmbruch, W. A. Lewis, Arend Lijphart, Val R. Lorwin, Kenneth D. McRae, R. S. Milne, Eric A. Nordlinger, K. Z. Paltiel, G. Bingham Powell, Jr, John Seiler, Jürg Steiner and Karl von Vorys. An excellent anthology of basic writings on consociational democracy is Kenneth D. McRae (ed.), Consociational Democracy: Political Accommodation in Segmented Societies, Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 1974.
2 Steiner, Jürg, ‘The Principles of Majority and Proportionality’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 1, No. 1, 01 1971, pp. 63–70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerhard Lehmbruch, Proporzdemokratie: Politisches System und politische Kultur in der Schweiz und in Österreich, Tübingen, Mohr, 1967.
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