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1 Comp. Pol. Stud. 3 (1968-1969)

handle is hein.journals/compls1 and id is 1 raw text is: 







                                  TYPOLOGIES OF

                    DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS


                                               AREND LIJPHART

  AREND LIJPHART is Assistant Professor of Political
  Science at the University of California (Berkeley). The
  author of several articles and books in the areas of com-
  parative political theory and of politics in the Netherlands
  (particularly its colonial relationships), Professor Lijphart
  is currently working on studies of social pluralism and
  democracy,  and of voting behavior in Western Europe.



P   OLITICAL THEORISTS AND SCIENTISTS, from Plato and
    Aristotle on, have attempted to construct classificatory schemes of
political systems to aid them in their explorations of politics, and such
schemes  have become  particularly prevalent in comparative politics in
recent years.' However, recent typologists have not followed the prece-
dent  set by their illustrious forebears in paying special attention to
democracies. Aristotle distinguished five different kinds of democracies;
but in the modem  typologies, democracies usually either constitute one
category, without any further elaboration within the single category, or
are subsumed  under a more comprehensive category.
   In the two well-known  typologies based on Talcott Parsons' pattern
variables, a dichotomous distinction is made, in Francis X. Sutton's terms,
between  intensive agricultural and modern industrial societies, or, to use
Fred W.  Riggs' terms, between agrarian and industrian societies.2 Mod-
ern democracies fit the latter of the two categories, in both cases. Riggs
makes  this explicit when he subdivides each category according to the

AuTHoR's  NoTE:  An  earlier version of this paper was delivered at the
Seventh World  Congress of the International Political Science Association
in Brussels., September 18-23, 1967. 1 gratefully acknowledge the con-
structive criticisms of Jack Citrin, Ernst B. Haas, Val R. Lorwin, Rodney
Stiefbold, and Patricia Taylor, and the generous financial support of the
Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley.


3

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