Is Consociational Democracy Undemocratic?

... Is Consociational Democracy Undemocratic? Europe is the continent of old democracies, and at the end of the twentieth century, democracy is still the form of government which prevails1. When one examines contemporary theories of democracy, one may note that although there is a shared belief in the basic idea of 'government by people', there is still a controversy on ' who' the people are and 'how' they rule2. The answers to these questions have been different for different countries according to their size, societal cleavages, historical political cultures and key political actors; thus, a wide variety of democratic theories that have brought about unique political institutions has emerged. One basic idea, as famously put forward by Almond, in the first democratic viability theory was that separate subcultures and segmentation are conducive to unstable, ineffective and hence undemocratic government3. A counter-argument by Lijphart suggested that a democracy could work even under

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