User:C mon/Politician
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Template:Form of government Within political science authors distinguish between consensus democracy and majoritarian democracy. This distinction originated from Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy. In a consensus democracy political power is both shared between social groups on the national level and divided between social groups on the regional level. Political systems of Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
According to Lijphart consensus democracies are characterized by the following ten elements:
- Executive power-sharing in broad multi-party coalitions or minority cabinets;
- A balance of power between executive and legislative;
- Multiparty systems;
- Proportional representation;
- Corporatism;
- Federal and decentralized government;
- Division of legislative power between two houses, which are equally strong but differently constituted;
- A rigid constitution which can only be amended by an extraordinary majority;
- Judicial review
- Independence of central banks.
In this view, Switzerland, a country with considerable minorities, is a prime example of such a consensus democracy. Examples of this include: its confederal structure, and the tradition that all large parties are included in the cabinet, creating oversized coalition governments.
