Arend d'Angremond Lijphart (born 17 August 1936) is a Dutch-American

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

specializing in

comparative politics Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the '' comparative method'' or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relat ...

election An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative d ...

s and

voting system An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, nonprofit organizations and inf ...

s, democratic institutions, and

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

and politics. He is Research

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. He is influential for his work on consociational democracy and his contribution to the new Institutionalism in political science.

Biography

Lijphart was born in

Apeldoorn Apeldoorn (; Dutch Low Saxon: ) is a municipality and city in the province of Gelderland in the centre of the Netherlands. The municipality of Apeldoorn, including the villages of Beekbergen, Loenen (Apeldoorn), Loenen, Ugchelen and Hoenderloo ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

in 1936. 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. He has a B.A. from Principia College in 1958 and a PhD in political science from Yale University in 1963. Lijphart taught at Elmira College (1961–63), the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

(1963–68), at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

(1968–78), and the

(UCSD) (1978–2000). He became a professor emeritus at UCSD in 2000. Dutch by birth, he has spent most of his working life in the United States and became an American citizen. He has since regained his Dutch citizenship and is now a dual citizen of both the Netherlands and the United States.

Awards and honors

Over his career, Lijphart has received many awards and honors: * 1984–85 Guggenheim fellow * 1989 Elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

* 1995 to 1996 Served as President of the

American Political Science Association The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political scientists in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library (now Tilton Hall) of Tulane University in New Orleans, it publishes four ...

. * In 1993 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. * 1997 Awarded the prestigious Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 1997. * 1998 Elected to the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

* 2010 Received the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeritus Award Lijphart has also received honorary doctorate from

(2001),

Queen's University Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of ...

(2004), and

Ghent University Ghent University (, abbreviated as UGent) is a Public university, public research university located in Ghent, in the East Flanders province of Belgium. Located in Flanders, Ghent University is the second largest Belgian university, consisting o ...

(2009).

Major works

Consociationalism and consensus democracy

Lijphart is the leading authority on consociationalism, or the ways in which segmented societies manage to sustain

democracy Democracy (from , ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitiv ...

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 the Dutch political system, and further developed his arguments in ''Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration'' (1977). In ''The Politics of Accommodation'' (1968), Lijphart challenges the influential pluralist 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. In ''Democracy 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 of consociational 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." Lijphart's work challenged the then influential view that democracy could only be stable in countries with a homogenous political culture. Beginning with his book ''Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries'' (1984), Lijphart focused on the broader contrast between majoritarian democracy and

consensus democracy Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision-making and supermajority to the process of legislation in a democracy. It is characterized by a decision-making structure that involves and takes into account as broad a range of opini ...

. 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. 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 Bicameralism is a type of legislature that is divided into two separate Deliberative assembly, assemblies, chambers, or houses, known as a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism is distinguished from unicameralism, in which all members deliberate ...

, rigid constitutions protected by

judicial review Judicial review is a process under which a government's executive, legislative, or administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. In a judicial review, a court may invalidate laws, acts, or governmental actions that are in ...

, and independent

central bank A central bank, reserve bank, national bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the monetary policy of a country or monetary union. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the mo ...

s. 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". 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. 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." 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." 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."

Methodology

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 The ''American Political Science Review'' (''APSR'') is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all areas of political science. It is an official journal of the American Political Science Association and is published on their behalf ...

''. 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." To solve this problem, Lijphart suggests four solutions: * (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 the

case study A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular f ...

method and identifies six types of case studies: * (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 by Neil Smelser. It was also the point of departure for the work by David Collier on the comparative method.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.

Publications

Books

* Lijphart, Arend. 1966. ''The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch & West New Guinea''. New Haven: Yale University Press. * Lijphart, Arend. 1968. ''The Politics of Accommodation. Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands'', Berkeley, California: University of California Press. * Lijphart, Arend. 1977. ''Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration''. New Haven: Yale University Press. . * Lijphart, Arend. 1984. '' Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries''. New Haven: Yale University Press. . * 'Lijphart, Arend. 1985. 'Power-Sharing in South Africa''. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California. . * Grofman, Bernard, and Lijphart, Arend (eds.). 1986. ''Electoral Laws & Their Political Consequences''. New York: Agathon Press. . * Lijphart, Arend. 1994. ''Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945–1990''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . * Lijphart, Arend, and Waisman, Carlos H. (eds.). 1996. ''Institutional Design in New Democracies''. Boulder, Colorado: Westview. . * Lijphart, Arend. 1999. ''Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries''. New Haven: Yale University Press. * Grofman, Bernard and Lijphart, Arend (eds.). 2002. ''The Evolution of Electoral & Party Systems in the Nordic Countries''. New York: Agathon Press. . * 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. * 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.

Articles and chapters

* Lijphart, Arend. 1968. ”Typologies of Democratic Systems.“ ''Comparative Political Studies'' 1(1): 3–44. * Lijphart, Arend. 1969. "Consociational Democracy." ''World Politics'' 21(2): 207–25. * 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–

* 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.

References

External links

Lijphart Elections Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lijphart, Arend 1936 births Living people Dutch political scientists People from Apeldoorn Dutch emigrants to the United States American political scientists Scholars of nationalism Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Corresponding fellows of the British Academy Principia College alumni Yale University alumni University of California, San Diego faculty Elmira College faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty Academic staff of Leiden University