- 期刊
- OpenAccess
Arend Lijphart and Consociationalism
並列摘要
Arend Lijphart has made a great contribution to our understanding of nonmajoritarian democracy (i.e., consociational and consensus democracy). His efforts remind us that nonmajoritarian democracy is at least as legitimate as the majoritarian model, and may perform even better in many ways. For example, it helps achieve political stability in divided societies, and generally provides ”kinder, gentler” outcomes in many policy areas. The purpose of this essay is to examine Lijphart's contribution to the study of consociational and consensus democracy, with an emphasis on the latter, particularly the ”theoretical” part of it. The case of Taiwan is brought to the fore to show that Lijphart's arguments may have some limitations. Interestingly, Taiwan is a divided society, but has been able to achieve democratic stability even without significant power-sharing arrangements. Many other factors may have to be included to account for democratic stability in a divided society such as Taiwan. Of course, a counter-example cannot refute Lijphart's thesis, but it may alert us to other possibilities for the phenomena we are seeking to explain.