Comparative european politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Comparative european politics - Essay Example , influential, majoritarian leadership results in superior policy outcomes, Westminster democracies fail to surpass consensus democracies (Lijphart 2007). On a number of pointers, such as inflation, consensus democracies essentially outperform Westminster democracies; in general, they perform slightly better, which somewhat implies that consensus democracies execute no worse (Lijphart 1999). Moreover, consensus democracies have a more moderate, benevolent attributes: better environmental protection, more welfare support, more foreign assistance mission, lower imprisonment rates, and less exercise of capital punishment (Lijphart 1999). Consensus democracy has certain benefits for extremely divided states. Majoritarian democracy may be denounced for ruling out nearly half the population from the decision-making or law-making process, as it can exclude 49.9% of the population from the governmental process (Crepaz et al. 2000). In the existing literature, it is claimed that this disapproval is invalid on two situations (Lijphart 2007). First, if the current minority has an actual opportunity of becoming the future majority, then exclusion perhaps is not a critical dilemma, because each half of the nation alternates being in charge, which will have a tendency to regulate exploitation of the marginalised by the mainstream (Mair 2005). Second, if a country is adequately unvaried, then non-inclusion might not be a critical dilemma since the barred interests of the minority do not diverge much from those of the majority (Ersson & Lane 2003). Lijphart (2007) challenges these two premises by emphasising that in several coun tries, particularly in societies with deep-seated ideological, religious, linguistic, or ethnic divisions, neither situation is valid. These deep-seated cleavages can thwart crossover voting, stopping the current minority from having an actual opportunity of being a future majority (Lijphart 2007). Furthermore, there is unlikely to be a great deal of