Matthijs Bogaards

Central European University | CEU · Department of Political Science

This chapter reviews and analyzes existing literature on factionalism

The governments of national unity in Kenya (2008-2013) and Zimbabwe (2009-2013) have relevance beyond Eastern Africa. This chapter examines how political science has learned lessons from both experiences. It does so by focusing on three bodies of literature: 1) international data sets on power sharing; 2) the comparative literature on consociationa...

The governments of national unity in Kenya (2008–2013) and Zimbabwe (2009–2013) have relevance beyond Eastern Africa. This chapter examines how political science has learned lessons from both experiences. It does so by focusing on three bodies of literature: (1) international data sets on power sharing; (2) the comparative literature on consociatio...

Matthijs Bogaards untersucht zwei Perspektiven auf die Dimensionen von Demokratie, im Sinne von Teilregimen. Die Perspektive der Dänen Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning sieht Teilregime in einem engen logischen und oftmals auch zeitlichen Zusammenhang, die deutsche Perspektive von Hans-Joachim Lauth und Wolfgang Merkel dagegen betont die Unabhä...

Many observers have written with concern about a growing “opposition to gender equality,” “anti‐gender campaigns,” and even a “war on gender.” Often, these trends take place in countries that are witnessing a decline in democratic quality, a process captured by such labels as “democratic erosion,” “democratic backsliding,” or “autocratization.” Thi...

Over the past 10 years, feminist scholarship has made important contributions to the new institutionalism in political science. This literature has developed into two directions. Some scholars have sought to gender existing approaches, resulting in feminist historical institutionalism, feminist sociological institutionalism, feminist discursive ins...

Over the past 10 years, feminist scholarship has made important contributions to the new institutionalism in political science. This literature has developed into two directions. Some scholars have sought to gender existing approaches, resulting in feminist historical institutionalism, feminist sociological institutionalism, feminist discursive ins...

Consociational interpretations of the European Union (EU) are well established and help to explain the political stability of the 27-member state system. In contrast, the increasingly common centripetal elements have not yet received systematic attention. Using a framework originally designed to map the choices for divided societies, this article h...

As the first case of consociationalism, the Netherlands has inspired a global literature on democracy in divided societies. Taking Lijphart’s influential analysis as its starting point, this chapter goes back and forth in time to examine the interplay between social structure and elite behavior. It tells two stories. The first is about politics: th...

As the first case of consociationalism, the Netherlands has inspired a global literature on democracy in divided societies. Taking Lijphart's influential analysis as its starting point, this chapter goes back and forth in time to examine the interplay between social structure and elite behavior. It tells two stories. The first is about politics: th...

Is COVID-­19 the first virus to kill a democracy? Recent events in Hungary, where prime-­‐minister Orbán has been ruling by decree since March 2020, seem to suggest so. This article examines how emergency rule has transformed Hungary's defective democracy, at least for the moment, into an electoral authoritarian regime. This article is part of an i...

Consociational democracies seek to pacify societal divisions through political inclusion and compromise. Militant democracies seek to neutralize threats to democracy and liberal values by excluding anti-system parties from power. As one type of democracy is based on inclusion and the other on exclusion, militant consociational democracy would seem...

Two schools dominate the literature on democracy in divided societies: consociationalism and centripetalism. The first advocates group representation and power sharing while the second recommends institutions that promote multi‐ethnic parties. Although often presented as mutually exclusive choices, in reality many new democracies display a mix. Dra...

Scholars and practitioners tend to favor transitory power-sharing arrangements and liberal forms of consociationalism. Iraq’s constitution of 2005 has both, but the country has been in turmoil ever since. This article argues that Iraq’s political problems can be traced, in part, to the combination of temporary and liberal consociationalism, what is...

Empirical research on democratization is dominated by case studies and small-N comparisons. This article is a first attempt to take stock of qualitative case-based research on democratization. It finds that most articles use methods implicitly rather than explicitly and are disconnected from the burgeoning literature on case-based methodology. This...

In the past decades, New Institutionalism in political science has rekindled an interest in the role of institutions and has theorized the interaction between formal and informal institutions. Unfortunately, little of this has made its way into the consociational literature. This article brings together the two bodies of work, focusing on the case...

This chapter focuses on electoral systems and institutional design in new democracies. It first compares Maurice Duverger’s electoral laws with those of Giovanni Sartori before discussing the main insights from the literature on electoral systems in established democracies as well as evidence from new democracies. It then considers the impact of th...

Can inclusive institutions tame the threat of domestic terrorism? In a series of recent publications, the political scientists Arend Lijphart and Matt Qvortrup claim that consensus democracies are not only kinder and gentler, but also safer: consensus democracies are less likely to experience deadly domestic terrorism and when they do, they suffer...

Scholarly attention has started to shift from democratization and democratic consolidation to trends of democratic deconsolidation, backsliding, regression, and erosion. This article examines Hungary as a deviant and exemplary case for understanding de-democratization. The starting point is the literature on defective democracy, which provides a un...

Ever since Aristotle, the comparative study of political regimes and their performance has relied on classifications and typologies. The study of democracy today has been influenced heavily by Arend Lijphart’s typology of consensus versus majoritarian democracy. Scholars have applied it to more than 100 countries and sought to demonstrate its impac...

According to its advocates, consociationalism helps to secure democracy and social peace in divided societies. According to its critics, power‐sharing arrangements and local autonomy reinforce societal divisions. They see consociationalism as a transitory remedy at best, especially useful in postconflict societies. In today's world, most new consoc...

In the transition to an inclusive democracy, South Africa changed its electoral system for the national parliament to proportional representation. Ever since, there have been suggestions of electoral reform. So far, the debate has rarely involved ordinary citizens. This article presents the results of a Deliberation Day on Electoral Reform in South...

This review article brings together six recent books on democratisation. They cover Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, East Central Europe and the Balkans, Eurasia, and East and South East Asia. The review asks what we can learn from reading about democratisation in different parts of the world. The aim is twofold: to identify regionally speci...

Dieser Beitrag betrachtet Wahlsysteme und fasst die wichtigsten Erkenntnisse aus der Literatur zu Wahlsystemen in etablierten und jungen Demokratien zusammen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den Auswirkungen des Wahlrechts auf den Typus des Parteiensystems und dessen Rolle als Vermittler zwischen Gesellschaft und Staat in pluralen Gesellschaften.

Competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a major concept in the study of political regimes. The introduction of this special issue revisits Levitsky and Way’s seminal study Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Although Africa is the world region with the highest absolute number of competitive authoritarian regimes, po...

The special issue revisits Levitsky and Way’s seminal study on Competitive Authoritarianism (2010). The contributions by North American, European, and African scholars deepen our understanding of the emergence, trajectories, and outcomes of hybrid regimes across the African continent. The Editors Dr. Matthijs Bogaards is Visiting Professor of Poli...

Competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a major concept in the study of political regimes. The introduction of this special issue revisits Levitsky and Way’s seminal study Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Although Africa is the world region with the highest absolute number of competitive authoritarian regimes, po...

Dieser Beitrag betrachtet Wahlsysteme und fasst die wichtigsten Erkenntnisse aus der Literatur zu Wahlsystemen in etablierten und jungen Demokratien zusammen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den Auswirkungen des Wahlrechts auf den Typus des Parteiensystems und dessen Rolle als Vermittler zwischen Gesellschaft und Staat in pluralen Gesellschaften.

This research note about a project-based course on deliberative democracy shows how political theory, research methods, and civic engagement can be fruitfully combined. The novel course format allowed students to practice and study democracy at the same time. Our undergraduate students organized a Deliberation Day on campus and then analyzed the re...

Under what circumstances do opposition parties form electoral alliances, when are they successful, and how do they contribute to democratisation? These are the leading questions in recent studies of opposition coalitions. This article reviews the quantitative literature on pre-electoral coalitions in Africa and beyond. Although differences in opera...

This unique comparative study examines minority representation and power sharing in Canada, Fiji, India, Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa, and Yugoslavia, and notes why this matters for social peace and democracy. Case studies of the (former) ruling parties in these diverse societies show how consociational parties struggle with their dual role of rep...

Most regimes around the world conduct multiparty elections on a regular basis.1 In contrast with the growing literature on electoral authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2002, 2010; Schedler 2006a, 2013), Lindberg (2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d, 2009e, 2012) has argued that in Africa, elections are a new mode of democratic transition...

After a civil war, there is a keen interest in ‘getting the institutions right’. This article summarizes our knowledge of one particular institution, the electoral system, through a review of the literature on power sharing and electoral systems in post-conflict societies. Surprisingly, there is little statistical support for the conviction that pr...

In the new millennium the democratizing force of elections is contested. Different from the growing literature on electoral authoritarianism, Staffan Lindberg has argued that in Africa, elections are a new mode of democratic transition. Attempts to replicate his findings for other regions have failed, raising the question whether perhaps Africa is...

While there is much debate about the merits of dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy, surprisingly little attention is paid to the question as to how to go from degree to dichotomy. This study identifies no less than 38 different ways in which Freedom House and Polity scores have been used to distinguish between democracies and non-de...

During the 1990s the number of African states allowing multiparty elections increased dramatically. Paradoxically, this has been accompanied in the majority of countries by legal bans on ethnic and other particularistic parties. The main official reason has been the aim of preventing the politicization of ethnicity as this is feared to lead to ethn...

Nigeria is the African country that implemented ethnic party bans most systematically. At different points in time, a total of at least 64 parties has been denied registration for failing to demonstrate ‘national presence’. Nigeria is also the African country with the longest record in institutional engineering. Ethnic party bans are one instrument...

The global spread of democracy has not resulted in scholarly consensus on how to conceptualize and measure democratization. The recent proliferation of hybrid regimes has encouraged attempts to empirically capture these new categories with the help of existing measures of democracy, raising the question of how one can go from degree to type. This i...

The ‘third wave’ of democratization has resulted in the proliferation of regimes that are neither fully democratic nor classic authoritarian. To capture the nature of these hybrid regimes, the democratization literature has come up with a wide variety of adjectives as descriptors of different forms of democracy and authoritarianism. This article re...

This chapter focuses on electoral systems and institutional design in new democracies. It first compares Maurice Duverger’s electoral laws with those of Giovanni Sartori before discussing the main insights from the literature on electoral systems in established democracies as well as evidence from new democracies. It then considers the impact of th...

In a recent publication in this journal, Mozaffar and Scarritt claim to have found a puzzling combination of low fragmentation and high volatility in African party systems. However, if we look at national party systems rather than Africa-wide averages, include regime type as a variable and specify dominance, we find three different constellations:...

This chapter explores how electoral arrangements have been used and can be used in Sub-Saharan Africa to shape the political organization of ethnicity in the emerging party systems of the region. Electoral system is understood here in the broad sense, including not only the way votes are translated into seats, but also the regulations for party reg...

Cross-national measures of democracy are widely used to track the development and spread of democracy around the world and to study the causes and correlates of democratization. Most of the best-known democracy indexes have a component on election outcomes. In many measures, election outcomes make a significant contribution to a country's overall r...

The wave of democratization that has engulfed African countries since the 1980s has been characterized by the establishment of or return to multi-party politics. This has mostly happened in political systems with a long history of de facto and de jure constraints on the ability of political parties to function effectively. While few countries today...

Elections and election outcomes are widely used as a convenient short cut to measuring democracy. If this were correct, information on elections and election outcomes would be a time- and cost-saving means of identifying regime type. However, this article shows that the influential democracy measures of Beck et al., Ferree and Singh, Przeworski et...

Ever since the Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart “discovered” consociational democracy in the late 1960s as a model for maintaining democracy in plural societies, power-sharing and democracy have been viewed as closely linked. The work by Lijphart on consociational democracy and later also consensus democracy constituted a breakthrough in th...

Italy's post-war political system has been analysed as a case of consociational democracy, albeit of a special kind. Not cultural segmentation, but ideological polarisation was the main source of division, giving rise to a distinct pattern of elite cooperation captured with such terms as ‘consociativismo’ and ‘degenerated consociationalism’. This p...

This chapter explores how electoral arrangements can and have been used in the Balkans to shape the political organization of ethnic cleavages in the emerging party systems and how these choices have contributed to or detracted from achieving social peace and democratic consolidation. In the process, the chapter will propose corrections to two prev...

  By most definitions, the third wave of democratisation has given rise to dominant parties and dominant party systems in Africa. The effective number of parties, the most widely used method to count parties, does not adequately capture this fact. An analysis of 59 election results in 18 sub-Saharan African countries shows that classifications of p...

The third wave of democratisation has given new impetus to the debate about the choice of electoral system in divided societies. The growing preference for proportional representation has been dented by Horowitz's advocacy of 'vote pooling' through the alternative vote. However, the conditions in most African polities are unfavourable to the workin...

The favourable factors for the establishment and maintenance of consociational democracy are among the most contested elements of consociationalism. The debate concerns both the favourable factors themselves and their status. The debate over the former is provoked by the inductive character; the debate over the latter can be traced back to an unres...

Although there is much debate about the extent to which South Africa after Apartheid was a consociational democracy, there is little doubt that the interim constitution contained power-sharing arrangements. However, the permanent constitution and the departure of the National Party from the Government of National Unity in 1996 have weakened politic...

The third wave of democratizati on has given new impetus to the debate about the best electoral system for divided societies. The growing preference for proportional representation over plurality elections has been dented by Horowitz's advocacy of "vote pooling" through the alternative vote. However, this proposal lacks a convincing empirical recor...

After the resurgence of democracy in the 1990s, as was the case after independence, dominant party systems are predominant in Africa. This has occurred irrespective of the particular electoral system used. Both scholars and practitioners have so far failed to appreciate the fact that not fragmentation but concentration of the party system is the ma...

Consociationalism has enriched comparative politics with a whole lineage of non-majoritarian types of democracy: from consociational democracy to consensus democracy and power-sharing. This article unravels the development, interaction and succession of empirical and normative typologies in 30 years of consociational literature as embodied in the w...

The favourable factors for the establishment and maintenance of consociational democracy are among the most contested elements of consociationalism. The debate concerns both the favourable factors themselves and their status. The debate over the former is provoked by the inductive character; the debate over the latter can be traced back to an unres...