Bio: (1936-) Dutch-American sociologist. Arend Lijphart holds a doctorate in political science from Yale University and he has lectured at the University of California, San Diego. Lijphart studies democratic systems, elections, and voting, as well as ethnic conflicts in multiethnic societies. He is one of the most famous scholars of institutional models of democracy. His method of study was primarily based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of empirical data and comparative schematic models. In his works from the beginning of the 1960s, he studied what he called "the politics of accommodation". He later studied a form of democracy he called "consocial democracy". Consocial democracy is based on the cultural and political autonomy of different groups, and the cooperation of their elites, to create a stable system. Lijphart uses both of these approaches to study multiethnic societies with ethnic conflicts.

In his book Models of Democracy (1999), he studied 36 countries with a democratic tradition of more than nineteen years and compares their institutional characteristics in ten different areas. His research aims to rank these countries on the dichotomous scale of majority democracy - consensus democracy (consensus democracy and consocial democracy are similar but not the same concepts). Majority democracy is an ideal type category in which decisions are made by a simple majority (citizens or MPs). The most important thing for consensus democracy is the idea of ​​consensus - the desire to create and implement in reality an institutional framework that will allow decisions to be the result of a consensus of the largest population or a wide range of different parties, religious or ethnic communities, professional associations, and other groups, within one country. In the consensus model of democracy, rules and institutions aim at broad participation in government and broad agreement on government policy; associated with this is the tendency to limit and distribute power in different ways. This model is also characterized by commitment, negotiation, and compromise. Consensus democracy insists on a broad consensus and engagement of all, to achieve an essential compromise with which everyone would agree, and insists on a sense of unity to achieve a common goal.

Lijphart analyzes 36 states with democratic order, by researching the system-institutional order in ten different, but related areas in each of them. Each of the ten areas of study consists of one variable, and they are grouped into two different dimensions, with each dimension consisting of five variables. The first dimension is the executive-party dimension, while the second is the federal-unitary dimension. At the end of his book, Lijphart presents data and analysis that indicate that in addition to procedural, consensual democracy also has substantial advantages. Consensus democracies are more effective in reducing unemployment and maintaining lower inflation rates; their level of violence is lower; they are better rated by the level of democratization; they have a greater representation of women in parliaments and government; have greater political and economic equality; have a higher voter turnout rate; have citizens who are more satisfied with the performance of democracy; have a lower rate of the distance between voters and governments; have slightly lower levels of corruption; have better social protection; they are more efficient in energy consumption and environmental protection; their penal policy is more lenient, and have a higher rate of aid to other countries.

Main works

The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch & West New Guinea (1966);

The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands  (1968);

Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (1977);

Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (1984);

Power-Sharing in South Africa (1985);  

Electoral Laws & Their Political Consequences (1986);

Parliamentary versus Presidential Government (1992); 

Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies 1945–1990 (1994);

Institutional Design in New Democracies (1996);  

Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms & Performance in Thirty-six Countries (1999);

The Evolution of Electoral & Party Systems in the Nordic Countries (2002);

Thinking about Democracy: Power Sharing and Majority Rule in Theory and Practice (2008);

A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective (2014).