Constitutional Design For Divided Societies, By A. Lijphart

The article, Constitutional Design for Divided Societies, by A. Lijphart suggests several recommendations of the constitutional design for countries with divided societies and other cleavages. The purpose of the author is to help to constitution writers to shape a good constitutional design in order to successfully establish and maintain democratic governments. In support of this purpose, the main point is focused on two key elements: group autonomy and power sharing as main required attributes of democracy. As mentioned in the article, it is more difficult to establish democracy in divided societies than in homogeneous countries. Therefore, the author highlights nine areas of constitutional choice, and provides some recommendations on those
It depends on different circumstances such as political culture, religion, mentality, historical relations, and readiness to cooperate with each other. The author believes that proportional representation rules in divided societies is undoubtedly the optimal way to go democracy. He provides Denmark as an example of successful experience for African countries. This suggestion is criticized by some scholars. According to Horowitz (1985, 1991), “…that heterogeneous countries in Europe are not easily comparable with deeply divided African and Asian countries. Therefore, it will be difficult to adapt Western consociational democracy in these countries, because the hostility towards members of other groups is much more intense than in the European countries” (as cited in Binningsbo, 2013, p. 100). I support this scholar`s opinion, the reason is that, firstly, it is not acceptable to compare totally different countries. Secondly, in deeply divided ethnic countries power-sharing may lead to fight each other, majority clans can dominate over small clans. As Jarstad (2008: 106) argues: “Although power sharing is prescribed as a viable solution to terminating civil war, it also has a disturbing record of bringing instability, inefficient government and even more violence to war-torn societies” (as cited in Binningsbo, 2013, p. 101). On the other hand, it is clear that divided
The author claims that president with limited political power should appointed by the prime minister and an opposition leader, and confirmed by majority of the parliament member as Australia does. In this case the author does not highlight is it better for one party system or multi-party system countries. In the first case, selecting the head of the state is doubtful without opposition and popular vote. It may involve to the biased action of the party to appoint its representor. In the second case, it depends on collaboration of the parties and political literacy of the party