CPI Week 2
Basic Patterns of Political
Organisation
20 October 2006
Westminster Model
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The essence of the Westminster Model is
majority rule
Great merit is that any other answer - such
as unanimity requirement, qualified majority implies some form of minority rule or at least
a minority veto
Inspired by Britain but Britain no longer a
pure example
Westminster model
characteristics
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Concentration of executive power: one-party and bare-ma jority
cabinets.
Fusion of power and cabinet dominance.
Asymmetric bicameralism
Two-party system.
One-dimensional party system.
Plurality system of elections. (first past the post)
Unitary and centralized government.
Unwritten constitution and parliamentary sovereignty.
Exclusively representative democracy (nearly excludes
referendums)
Consensus model
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Lijphart’s view
Some societies are heterogeneous: divided along
religious, ideological, linguistic, cultural, ethnic, or
racial lines into virtually separate sub-societies with
their own political parties, interest groups, and
media communication
In such societies, majoritarian democracy cannot be
adapted flexibly to provide feasible political solutions
Majority rule is not only undemocratic but also
dangerous, since alienated minorities will lose sense
of allegiance to the system
Consensus characteristics
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Executive power-sharing in “grand coalitions”
Separation/balance of exec and legislative powers
Balanced bicameralism and minority representation
Multiparty system
Proportional representation
Interest group corporatism, cohesive interest groups
Federalism and decentralization
Strong bicameralism
Rigid constitutions
Judicial review
Institutional variables
Executive-parties
Federal Unitary Dimension
1 Cabinets
1 Unitary-Federal gov
2. Executive-legislative
Relations
2: Uni/bi cameral
3 Party systems
3 Constitutional flexibility?
4 Electoral Systems
4 Judicial Review?
5 Interest groups
5 Central Banks
Lijphart: Patterns of Democracy
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How does performance of democracy depend on its
institutional characteristics?
Question addressed by Powell and Lijphart.
Empirical and theoretical analysis.
Lijphart examines 36 countries from 1945-1996.
Lijphart describes the institutions in terms of 10
variables. What are they?
A given country is thus described in terms of a value for each variable.
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Some of the values use standard, well established measures such
as the Laasko-Taagepera index of the effective number of parties.
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Other measures developed by Lijphart e.g. degree of judicial review
index (1-4), pg 226. Strong judicial review- no j.r.
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Consider the other measures used to capture the 10 characteristics
Lijphart is interested in. Are they appropriate? Are they objective or
impressionistic?
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Proxy variables?
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Often a variable is unobservable, but a proxy for it can be
constructed. But by definition there will be measurement error
involved.
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How to measure level of democracy? If this is the outcome we want
to explain?
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Is Democracy dichotomous? Or is it continuous?
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Freedom House Scores (www.freedomhouse.org)
Rating from 1-7, where 1 is free and 7 is not free.
Assesses countries on Political Rights and Civil Liberties
Results 1
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1. The variables in the first group are empirically correlated with each
other. Chapter 14.
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2: Likewise with second group of variables
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3: The variables in the 2 groups are not correlated with each other. Is
this problematic?
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See Chapter 14.
Results 2
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Chapter 15. The “so what” issue.
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Impact of institutional choice on economic growth measured in
terms of inflation and GDP.
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Evidence mixed but consensus democracies do slightly better and
considerably better on inflation
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Maj may do better in terms of economic freedom
Differences in outcomes?
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Impact of institutional form on violence?
Dependent variables, number of riots and numbers of deaths
from political violence.
No statistically significant results.
Expectation that consensus democracies are better at controlling
violence (Powell 1982).
Majoritarian systems not better at governing
In fact Lijphart finds few statistically significant variations
between two systems in terms of management of economy and
in maintaining civil peace.
Results 3
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Chapter 16
8 indicators of quality of democracy, how appropriate are these?
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Is this how you would measure democracy?
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Uses index by Dahl and Vanhanen rather than FH scores.
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Vanhanen index: composite of degree of party competition and
participation in elections. High Belgium and low Botswana (any
problems?)
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Consensus democracies do better on these 2 indexes.
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Results 3 continued
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Women’s representation. IS this a good indicator?
Consensus democracy 6.7% more women in parliament.
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Political equality as an indicator of quality of democracy?
How to measure this concept?
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Rich-poor ratio used. And consensus democracies more egalitarian.
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Electoral Turnout. Consensus does better.
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Corruption, uses Transparency International scores
Finds no relationship.
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Conclusion:
Majoritarian democracies do not out perform consensus
democracies
Powell (1989 and 2000)
Majoritarian Vision and Proportional vision.
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Majoritarian
Vision
1. Clarity of Responsibility
2. Identifiability
Majorities
Government
Domination
Pol. Making
Proportional Vision of democracy.
Multiple
Party
Choices
PR
Vote
Representation
Participation in Policy
making by all reps.
Similar though not equivalent to Lijphart
Powell asks which vision best serves as an instrument of
democracy?
What are the reasons and conditions under which each
vision succeeds or fails?
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Analyses of more than 150
democratic elections show
that each vision succeeds
fairly well on its own terms.
Powell concludes: the
proportional influence vision
enjoys a clear advantage in
creating policy congruence
between citizens and their
policymakers
Predominately
Proportional
Mixed
Predominately
Majoritarian
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Sweden
Switzerland
Ireland
Japan
Spain
USA
Australia
Canada
France
Greece
New Zealand
United
Kingdom
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Powell's finding (p 222, figure 9.3) is that the distance
between the median voter and the governmental position
is somewhat greater in majoritarian systems than in
proportional ones.
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This is not what one should be expect.
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The majoritarian vision works only fitfully. The
simplifications and distortions necessary to create
decisive elections frequently exact a heavy cost in
distance between the citizen median and the position of
the government."
www.transparency.org
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Country ranks
Finland (1) N. Zealand (2) Denmark (3) Iceland (4)
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UK(11) Ireland (17) Chile (20) Barbados (21) France (22)
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Tunisia (39), Italy (42)
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Czech Republic and El Salvador (51)
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Latvia, Slovakia and Brazil (57)
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Sierra Leone, Moldova (114)
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Bangladesh and Haiti (145)
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Methodology.
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FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2004
1
1.5
2
3
4
5
USA
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Ireland
Italy
Spain
Uruguay
Czech
Estonia
Greece
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Slovakia
S.Africa
Israel
Ghana
Guyana
S. Korea
Croatia
Albania
Kenya
Bangladesh
Colombia
Bahrain Belarus
Jordan Iran
Russia Iraq
Yemen Liberia
Djibouti U.A.E
Zimbab
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Afghan.
Tonga
E. Timor Niger
Zambia
Nicaragua
6
7
Burma
Cuba
Sudan
Syria
Saudi A
N. Korea
Libya