Analysis Of Arend 's Patterns Of Democracy

We know that democracies are common among the economically urbanized countries and rare between the very deprived ones. The reason we scrutinize this pattern is not that democracies are more probable to emerge, as a result, of economic development but that they are to a large extent more possible to survive if they occur to emerge in most urbanized countries. The paths to democracy are diverse. Indeed, they appear to follow no unsurprising pattern. But once democracy is conventional, for whatever reasons, its endurance depends on a few, easily particular, factors.

In layman’s terms, “the government ought to do what the majority of people want” (Ch. 1 Pg.7). This theory has a pejorative connotation due to the idea that the minority would be ruled out, allowing the majority to further advance their bias agenda. Many political scientists see this theory prevalent in modern society. In this circumstance I am unable to see the majority rule, therefore I do not agree with the idea the Majoritarianism sufficiently depicts American

All of these features of a regime, if disrupted or altered, could be the difference between a stable democracy and it demonstrating a radical archetype of ascendancy. After explaining both alternatives, Mainwaring comes to the conclusion that “Presidentialism and a fractionalized multi party system seems especially inimical to stable democracy” in that they are conducive to gridlock between the executive and legislative branches of government. (Mainwaring, p. 168)

In the reading “ Patterns of democracy” Lijphart states there are five different dimensions of the majoritarian-consensus typology which are based not only on characteristics of the party system, electoral system and government coalitions, but on federal vs. unitary traits as well. The first characteristic of Lijphart’s five dimensions is closely related with the majoritarian system in that it consists of a one party cabinet concentration of power versus a multiparty sharing

According to Chapter 9 of Patterns of Democracy by Arend Lijphart titled Interest Groups: Pluralism versus corporatism, the author sought to explain the fifth and last difference between majoritarian and consensus democracy in terms of interest groups. Majoritarian democracies tend to have pluralism tendencies insofar as interest groups while consensus democracies tend to have corporatism tendency. Below, the chapter’s detailed analysis of the subject matter will be extensively be judged. The strength, the weaknesses and suggestions on how those weaknesses could have been prevented will be discussed.

Democracy as a form of government is usually exposed to different understanding, interpretations and even definitions. For some it is the solution and for others it is a problem. It is a term that is a fundamentally disputed concept—a concept that is at the heart of endless debates that although are not settled by any kind of argument, are nevertheless continued by all sorts of scholarly evidence. Democracy is a disputed concept because nearly everyone values the “ideal”, yet there are different legitimate but also incompatible criteria for judging whether the ideal is actually one to strive towards. In a perfect world, we as comparative thinkers would use concepts that reflect the uniqueness of each country and yet are simple enough to be relevant and measurable in every country. In reality and practice, the difficulty of gathering political information usually prevents scholars from achieving these goals so we tend to settle on concepts that focus on characteristics of democracy like Robert Dahl in his book, On Democracy, and Sheldon Wolin in his articles “Fugitive Democracy” and “Norm and Form”. These scholars lead us to question why

When hearing the world democracy, many people think of the American government, but there are many different types of democracies throughout the world. In this chapter, they talk about many different types of democracies and what makes each one unique. The United States has a representative democracy where we have representatives who we elect speak for us on many topics. A good example of this is having a State senator who people vote for. Once the senator is elected he then represents the State of Illinois. This makes it easier to get things done. Switzerland is an example of a direct democracy. In a direct democracy people get to vote on specific issues in a country. This is not as common as a representative democracy because people would have to vote on issues

Democracy has become the most widespread political form of government during the past decade, after the fall of all its alternatives. During the second part of the 20th century, the 3 main enemies of democracy, namely communism, fascism and Nazism, lost most of their power and influence. However, democracy is still only to be found in less than half of this world's countries. China with a fifth of the total population "had never experienced a democratic government" and Russia still doesn't have a well established democracy. By adopting a democratic perspective, 3 types of governments emerge, non-democratic, new democracies, and old democracies, and all have a different challenge to overcome: either to become democratic, to "consolidate"

Winston Churchill once remarked that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”. In agreement with his statement, this paper will examine the problems of democratic governments using specific examples, and compare it to the failure of fascist governments in Nazi Germany and Italy and communist governments in the Soviet Union and China.

Democracy is eloquently described by Abraham Lincoln as 'government of the people, by the people, for the people '. The quote by Lincoln though, is perhaps the most straightforward, compelling explanation ensuring that even the laymen understand the fundamentals of the term. The subject matter that is required in this essay is to determine differences in the quality of democracy. This is regarded as the dependant variable, which is the outcome that needs explanation. This can be explained using the independent variables, the economic factors and cultural factors which will be used to explain the phenomena of the dependant variable. 3 countries will be looked at in this essay to explain the given theories. The countries are Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. All 3 countries have been picked having many similarities but when it comes to the quality of democracy, they vary. All 3 countries are vastly Muslim, they border each other and they are all situated in the north Africa. However the Polity score of each country differs with Tunisia Algeria and Libya scoring 7, 2 and 0 respectively. Libya 's polity score was taken that of 2014. In measuring the difference in quality of democracy it needs to be ensured that the countries are as similar as possible therefore enabling the difference in the quality of democracy distinguishable.

As society continues to revolutionize and evolve, government constantly reforms and continues to manifest. In U.S. government, between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, the government seeks to act in the best interests of citizens through a system of checks and balances (page 15). Intended to keep government from becoming too powerful in one branch, the shared power of checks and balances creates an atmosphere in which each branch has certain limited powers that can be checked by another branch. With constant checks and balances, how can government run sufficiently to approve any legislation? Is there true democracy when majority interests are imposed on the minority? Is it possible for the U.S to be an innovator in government structures and processes with a check and balance system? In the case study of The Revolution in the British Monarchy of Government, there is a unified but divided structure and process of government between the U.S and Britain. Through interconnected structured processes and accountability, the wheels behind machinery government are introduced showing a unique divided parallel between U.S. and Britain government. Through this divided-parallel, a closer look at the growth of Britain government reveals historic reforms that were considered to have taken a vigorous surge into the overall market of government reinvention and the machinery of government.

Secondly, the title of the next chapter of the book is the Westminster model of democracy. As the author noted, this is another name of the majoritarian model. It is unclear why the author felt a need to dedicate a chapter to this. That said, he effectively gives three countries that fit this group. Furthermore, the author listed ten characteristics of the model and how England, New Zealand, and Barbados comply and deviate from the model as well as any qualification that needs to occur in the group.

Churchill’s claim that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” is deliberately provocative and intended to challenge the reader’s simplistic ideal that democracy is without faults. There are an estimated 114 democracies in the world today (Wong, Oct 3rd lecture). A figure that has increased rapidly in the last century not necessarily because democracy is the best form of government, but primarily for reason that in practice, under stable social, economic and political conditions, it has the least limitations in comparison to other forms of government. Be it the transparency of a democratic government or the prevalence of majority rule, all subdivisions of democracy benefit and hinder its

* Second….democracy cannot be thought of as consolidated until a democratic transition has been brought to completion

He proposes ten criteria to distinguish the majoritarian from the consensus in the two dimensions: “executives-parties dimension” and “ federal-unitary dimension”. Finally, Lijphart (2012) argues that consensus is “more democratic than majoritarian” in most aspects (p. 7), because consensus model is described by “negotiation democracy”.