Instructor: Dr. Hans Oversloot

For countries that have sharp segmental cleavages, it is always difficult to maintain political stability, since the demands of different segments are often dissimilar and conflicting. Arend Lijphart, in his series of books, attempts to develop the theory of consociational democracy to solve this problem. In his 1975 book The Politics of Accommodation, what he provides is not the normative theory of consociational democracy (the normative work is better developed in his book Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration), but a case study on the society of the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the idea of consociational democracy is clear in this book.

At the beginning of his book, Lijphart comes up with a paradox: the Netherlands has salient social cleavages, while these cleavages have not hindered the country from becoming a significantly stable and harmonious democracy. To explain this paradox, Lijphart first does some empirical work to show the divisions of Dutch society. He refers to the Netherlands as ‘a nation divided’ and uses a lot of data to illustrate the structure of the cleavages, for example, he uses the nationwide survey conducted by him in 1964. After the analysis, Lijphart argues that the key to this pluralist country’s success is the politics of accommodation, which means the elites of segmental groups are responsible for cooperating and preserving the political system. Lijphart gives out some specific characteristics of politics of accommodation, including the pre-eminent role of the elites, the participation of the elites of all segmental groups, and the principle of proportionality. It is notable that as a mechanism of democracy, in fact, the politics of accommodation excluded the mass that makes up the groups from national politics. Lijphart says that people at the mass level lack flexibility and only the elites have the commitment and ability to achieve political stability. Furthermore, Lijphart points out that the Dutch people have a deferential attitude towards their leaders, for example, the Dutch workers have a deferential attitude to trade union leaders, which enables the elites to play politics of accommodation at the top.

This is a valuable book for both consociationalism theory and empirical analysis of Dutch society. In the book reviews, Andries Hoogerwerf writes that ‘the way in which it integrates modern theory, survey data and historical data in a mosaic is in many respects admirable’ (Hoogerwerf, 1968). Nevertheless, it has been criticized in some aspects. Andries Hoogerwerf finds that there is a fundamental ambiguity in this book, as Dutch political system is characterized by reinforcing cleavages in some pages and by cross-cutting cleavages in some other pages (Hoogerwerf, 1968). De Kadt addresses two weak points of Lijphart’s book: failure to take into account both the truly staggering changes in Dutch Catholicism and failure to consider the problems fudged by Dutch politics lower down (De Kadt, 1970).

These critiques seem to be valid, and personally, I also have two questions about this book. The first one is about the leader-follower relationship. In this book, Lijphart emphasizes the deferential attitude and regards it as an important reason for the politics of accommodation at the elite level. However, in his later work Democracy in Plural Societies, Lijphart does not include it in the favorable conditions for consociational democracy. This is confusing because according to his case study of the Netherlands, deferential attitude actually has an important role in enabling elites to efficiently accommodate. A possible explanation might be that the deferential attitude is not as institutional as the other factors mentioned as favorable conditions by Lijphart (e.g. balance of power, multiparty system, size, etc.). If normative usefulness is the reason for its being excluded, in my opinion, it would be problematic and might lead to empirical invalidity.

The second question is about the link between size and stability, in terms of the burden of foreign policy. In the book, Lijphart mentions that a small democracy has an inherent advantage in that it is less likely to lead an active foreign policy and to have grave burdens placed upon it in the form of difficult foreign policy choices.’ (Lijphart, 1975, p. 101) I personally think it is doubtful because the burden of a state is related to not only the total amount of policies to make but also the size of its government. For example, a small state could indeed be less involved in international relations, but it is possible that even a relatively small amount of foreign policies could be a big burden, simply because small states do not have many institutions and officers to deal with it. On the other hand, a great power surely has a lot of foreign policies to make, but due to its giant foreign-policy government department, such burdens could be acceptable.

References

• De Kadt, E. (1970, 11). Book Reviews: The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. By AREND LIJPHART (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968). xiv + 222 pp. 54s. 6d. Race & Class, pp. 389-390.
• Hoogerwerf, A. (1968). The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. By Lijphart Arend. (Berkeley: University of Califonia Press, 1968. Pp. 222. $5.75.). American Political Science Review, pp. 1350-1351.
• Lijphart, A. (1975). The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands.