Consociational Democracy

• Lijphart was first to describe the consociational democracy through his work, though, it was probably first used in 1603 by the German political philosopher Althusius.
• Consociationalism is a stable democratic system in the deeply divided societies.
• It based on power sharing between elites from different social groups.
• Consociational democracy is found in countries that are deeply divided into distinct religious, ethnic, racial, or regional segments.
• The Swiss state was considered a prime example of consociational democracy during the second half of the 20th century. The country shows a broad participation of different minority groups in political decision-making processes, proportionality in government and inclusion of opposition parties in the executive as well as the crucial regulation of conflict through compromise and amicable negotiation.
• Consociational democracy is known for the expressly cooperative behaviour of the political elite, as evidenced by the strong emphasis on informal decision-making procedures and ‘amicable agreements’ as a specific form of conflict management.

Characteristics of Consociational democracy

The conceptualization of consociational democracy, is distinguished by the following characteristics:

• the inclusion of the most important political parties in a broad coalition government
• a considerable degree of political autonomy for cultural minorities, guaranteed through minority rights and/or regional autonomy
• the principle of proportionality, both in terms of the translation of votes into parliamentary seats and regarding proportional representation of the most relevant political groups in public offices
• a minority veto allowing proposals made by the government majority to be blocked
• a strong socio-cultural segmentation of various political groups with their own parties and media as well as educational, occupational and leisure activities
• expressly cooperative elite behaviour, wherein political differences are set aside in order to address conflicts among members and form broad compromises based on amicable agreements

Lijphart’s typology of democratic regimes

• Its conceptual foundation draws on Lijphart’s two-dimensional typology of democratic regimes. These dimensions are
  • the societal structure (homogenous or pluralistic/heterogeneous)
  • elite behaviour (cooperative or competitive).
• By combining these two characteristics, four types of democracy can be identified

Varieties of consociational governments

Centripetal democracy

• In this type of democracy, social cleavages do not reinforce each other and in which, therefore, political elites can be allowed to compete, is called centripetal democracy.
•  Examples: The United Kingdom and United States are examples.

Centrifugal democracy

• It is the situation in which deep social divisions are not compensated for by elite cooperation, causing deadlock in the short term and breakdown of democratic government in the long term.
• Examples: Weimar Germany and the French Fourth Republic.

Depoliticized democracy

• In this situation, the elites cooperate and the social cleavages are cross-cutting.

Consociational democracy

• In this type of democracy, elite cooperation prevents deep social divisions from destabilizing democracy.
• Example: Switzerland