Competitive democracy

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The competitive democracy , majoritarian democracy , even competitive democracy or Alternanzdemokratie called, describes quite different political systems within the party democracy , predominantly through competition are characterized by the parties.

In view of the low ability of a competitive democracy to resolve conflicts, critics in particular speak of a conflict democracy . The originally positive view of the post-totalitarian post-war period gradually faded away.

The basic requirements for competitive democracy are pluralism and the majority principle . In party-political systems with proportional representation, pluralism guarantees the broadest possible and differentiated formation of parties , so that different opinions within the people are better reflected than in a system with only majority voting. The parties are in competition with one another, especially for government power .

The term majority democracy, which is often equated with competitive democracy, emphasizes decision-making through majority voting. As a result of this majority decision, the government of a state with competing democracy , provided that the top of the government is not directly elected by the people ( presidential system ), is made up of representatives of a party that has a majority in parliament or of representatives of a coalition of a few parties that come together - mostly just - make up the majority.

The parties that have stood for election but are not part of the government, provided they are represented in parliament, are called parliamentary opposition . Ideally, this opposition will monitor government activities critically and offer alternatives. It can also try to overthrow the government and take power through motions of no confidence .

advantages
  • high efficiency of the government if one party has an absolute majority in parliament or if a coalition formed is stable,
  • Fast decision-making processes, provided that the party base does not attach great importance to being included in the decision-making process,
  • Conflicts “don't have to” be taken into account.
disadvantage
  • Ignoring minorities , especially in systems with only majority voting rights,
  • mostly lower legitimacy and acceptance in the population and among party members if compromises in a coalition are rated as "lazy",
  • growing conflicts, the "solution" of which may be promised in the event of a change of power (elections).

All cooperative, consensus-oriented models are referred to as the counter model to competitive democracy. With regard to the style of interaction of the political forces, the concordance democracy . In consensus democracy , decisions are also made according to the majority principle, but there is significantly more cooperation between the government and the parties that support it on the one hand and the opposition on the other than in a traditional majority democracy . Even minority governments would not be able to function without regular consensus on factual issues.

Term definition and development

Many observers, especially in the early 20th century and the post-war period, saw the United Kingdom as the prototype for a functioning and democratic system of government . This was mainly characterized by stable parliamentary majorities and served as a model early on in political science when it came to establishing effective democratic structures. Especially "[...] in the first post-war decade a model of democracy dominated, which can be characterized with the concise term competitive democracy " ( Lehmbruch 2003: 7). Based on the United Kingdom, Josef Schumpeter coined the idea of ​​this democratic model early on: "The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competetive struggle fort he people's vote". For Schumpeter and other political scientists of the time, the purpose of any political activity in a democratic system was to claim political power through pure competition in order to enforce one's own policy by means of the majorities required for this. The term competitive democracy , but also the term majority democracy , which is mostly used synonymously , are based on the British system and underline the rather competitive character of this model. It is for this reason that the term Westminster democracy developed for this type of system .

For Arend Lijphart , when asked who should rule and whose interests this government should be responsible for, there are two possible answers: The first and the most obvious is the majority (the second is a balance of interests). Lijphart notes, referring to Stephanie Lawson ’s (1993: 192–193) argument that the main purpose of a political opposition is to become a government, that this thesis is based on the assumption of a two-party system . It does not take into account that in consensus-oriented, multi-party systems, governments often consist of coalitions and a change in government usually only means a partial change.

For Lijphart, Great Britain is both the original and the best-known example of the majority or Westminster democracy model. Pure or almost pure majority democracies are relatively rare in Lijphart's view and, alongside Great Britain, its former colonies in the Caribbean, such as Barbados , and New Zealand (at least until 1996) come closest to this model. Many parts of the Westminster model had been exported to these former colonies of Great Britain. Lijphart identified ten criteria as indicators of the majority democratic system type that must necessarily be met if one speaks of majority democracy in its pure form and in which criteria one to five and criteria six to ten each show a certain correlation with one another .

The first criterion is the government format , i. H. How many parties the executive power normally relies on. In the United Kingdom (with a few exceptions) there is a concentration of executive power in just one party . Accordingly, the government cabinet usually only consists of politicians from the party that also holds the majority of the seats in parliament (" Lower House " or " House of Commons "). Coalitions are rather the exception in the British Parliament and only become a relevant option in the rare case of a so-called “hung parliament”, which means that no party alone could achieve a majority of the lower house seats.

The second criterion is the relationship between parliament and government. Government dominance is typical of the Westminster model. To illustrate: Theoretically, in the United Kingdom too, Parliament controls the government, for example, in such a way that it could theoretically remove it from office if it is dissatisfied with its performance. In practice, however, the relationship is usually the other way around, because the government, which is usually supported by only one party and accordingly also provides the ministers alone, has good opportunities to sanction deviants from the government's course, especially through party-internal instruments, since the government personnel are usually almost identical to the high party offices of the ruling party. To give just one example, pressure can be put on potential dissidents by questioning their nominations for the next election by the party. Lijphart quotes the former British Minister Lord Hailsham , who in 1978 pointedly referred to the British system as "elective dictatorship".

Third, a two-party system is characteristic of a majority democracy like Britain. The British Parliament has been shaped by the duel between the Conservative Party and the Labor Party since the interwar period (until then the competition between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party had been fought) and even if there are usually a few lower house seats that go to third parties (these are often parties of regional relevance) the majority question is usually decided between these two parties.

One reason for the establishment of this two-party system lies in the British majority electoral system. This is also Lijphart's fourth criterion for competitive democracy. The majority electoral system implies that there is only one MP per constituency and therefore only one seat in parliament. Majorities in Great Britain usually only arise through the electoral system: The person who has the most votes in a constituency receives the seat in the House of Commons according to the “winner takes is all” principle. In this way, in terms of the number of seats, completely different majorities can prevail in parliament than the number of votes actually cast for the respective parties.

Lijphart's fifth criterion is the association structure, which he describes as pluralistic in connection with the Westminster model. This is characterized by a large number of associations and interest groups that exert pressure on the government in a relatively uncoordinated and competitive manner.

Lijphart cites the structure of the state as the sixth dimension of analysis. According to Lijphart, this is strongly centralized in a pure majority democracy. The United Kingdom fulfills this criterion because the power of local or regional governments is not constitutionally guaranteed in Unitarian states like Great Britain. Furthermore, they are financially dependent on the central government. In Great Britain, however, decentralizing tendencies can be recognized since 1998 with the so-called “ devolution ” when regional parliaments were implemented for Northern Ireland , Scotland and Wales . Nevertheless, it is still true that this decentralization of power - at least in theory - could be ended at any time by the House of Commons.

In the area of ​​parliamentary structure (7.) Great Britain deviates slightly from the ideal type of majority democracy, also in Lijphart's view: the United Kingdom only partially fulfills the point that a majority democracy must be based on a unicameral system . The parliament consists of two chambers ("House of Commons" and " House of Lords " or "Lower House" and "Upper House"). However, these are in an extraordinarily asymmetrical relationship to one another. Almost all political power rests with the House of Commons, while the House of Lords can only delay draft laws for a maximum of one year. For this reason Lijphart speaks of "near unicameralism".

Eighth, from Lijphart's point of view, a flexible type of constitution is characteristic of the majority model. Great Britain, for example, does not have a written constitution in the classical sense, as most other states do. State organization principles and civil rights are instead laid down in the “basic laws” such as the Magna Charta (1215), Bill of Rights (1689) or the Parliament Acts (1911 & 1949). An unwritten constitution implies that it is flexible and can be changed by parliament in the same way as any other law: by a simple majority of parliamentary votes.

For this reason there is (9.) no constitutional jurisdiction in Westminster democracies like Great Britain. After all, there is no “higher law” on the basis of which other laws can be reviewed. For this reason, the parliament or the parliamentary majority can be regarded as the sovereign authority of the country, because the lower house could, since there is no constitutional jurisprudence, change any civil rights or state organization principle at any time with a simple majority. As a result, the lower house could, for example, decide to abolish the second chamber, the House of Lords, and after a maximum of one year postponement the second chamber would be dissolved.

The last point is a government-dependent central bank . So the Bank of England has been heavily dependent on the government. It wasn't until the 1990s that a few steps were taken towards partial independence. A central bank's degree of independence can be measured on an Alex Cukierman scale. The degree of independence is expressed in a value between 0 (highly dependent) and 1 (very independent). From 1997 to 1998 the UK value rose from 0.27 to 0.47.

The ten criteria listed by Arend Lijphart characterize Great Britain almost as a prime example of a competitive, majority or Westminster democracy. Here "[...] political power is concentrated in a representative form with the parliamentary majority and the government, which allows the exercise of power without special consideration for minorities" (Holtmann and Voelzkow 2000: 10). However, it has been shown that the United Kingdom as that System that comes very close to a majority democracy, not for this reason, for example, depicting a democratic target concept. Rather, an understanding has emerged in political science which assumes that Great Britain, as a typical majority democracy, is to be decreed at one extreme of a spectrum that can be particularly characterized by the way in which political decision-making is made.

criteria Majority democracy Consensus democracy
Government format One-party government Multi-party government
Relationship between parliament and government Government dominance Balance of forces
Party system Two-party system Multi-party system
Electoral system Majority vote Proportional representation
Association structure Pluralistic Corporatist
State structure Centralistic Federal
Parliamentary structure Unicameral system Bicameral system
Constitution type Flexible Rigid
Constitutional case law Unavailable Strong
Central bank Government dependent Autonomous

Table: Criteria of majority and consensus democracy according to Arend Lijphart (2012)

distribution

Most democratic states with party-political systems are now referred to as rival democracies . The ideal type of competitive democracy is traditionally the British system (Westminster model). The great importance of plurality in such an understanding of democracy and the resulting parliamentary opposition with its control mechanism over government activity make this model so successful. However, very few states have a pure competitive democracy or a majority democracy.

Arend Lijphart describes the federal German system as "tending to be a case of consensus, especially due to its pronounced federal character" .

Ways out

The Switzerland - u. a. It is also described with overlapping models of so-called deliberative , direct , consensus , concordance , participatory , proportional or referendum democracies - one of the few exceptions. This can be traced back to the “way”, which has gradually grown since the middle of the 19th century, of creating things together, of being jointly responsible for them.

literature

  • Hans-Peter Schneider, Wolfgang Zeh: Parliamentary Law and Parliamentary Practice in the Federal Republic of Germany (6th part: Bundestag) . Berlin 1989, ISBN 978-3-11-011077-7
  • Hans-Peter Schneider: The parliamentary opposition in constitutional law of the Federal Republic of Germany . Frankfurt 1974, ISBN 978-3-465-01056-2
  • Lijphart, Arendt (2012): Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, Yale: Yale University Press
  • Lawson, Stephanie (1993): Conceptual Issues in the Comparative Study of Regime Change and Democratization. In: Comparative Politics 1993 (2), pp. 183-205
  • Lehmbruch, Gerhard (2003): Negotiating Democracy. Contributions to comparative government doctrine, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
  • Lehmbruch, Gerhard (1976): Party competition in the federal state. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer
  • Holtmann, Everhard / Voelzkow, Helmut (Hrsg.) (2000): Between competition and negotiation democracy. Analyzes of the government system in the Federal Republic of Germany, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag
  • Schumpeter, Josef (1943): Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: George Allen & Unwin

Individual evidence

  1. Thomas Hofer : The Political Analysis: Conflict Democracy - about Austria's new path towards a conflict democracy , NÖN , 10 July 2018
  2. ^ Conrad Seidl : Social partnership: On to conflict democracy? - The price for a conflict democracy can be social peace , Der Standard , October 5, 2017
  3. Nina Horaczek : The strike of 2003. From the social partners consensus to conflict democracy? The political effects of the strikes in 2003 with special consideration of the ÖGB , ÖGB-Verlag, Vienna 2007
  4. Peter Gerlich, Barbara Steininger: Consensus and Conflict Democracy (Diploma and PhD seminars) , University of Vienna , 2005
  5. Emmerich Tálos , Christian Stromberger : Negotiating democratic decision-making and corporatist decision-making in the end? - Far-reaching changes using the example of the design of Austrian labor law , OZP Vol. 33, No. 2 (2004)
  6. Johannes Schnizer : Austria Convention - what for? , Zukunft No. 7/8, 2004, pp. 12–15
  7. ^ Rules of the game for conflict democracy: SPÖ rejects preamble to constitution - draft of a catalog of fundamental rights presented , Der Standard , December 14, 2003
  8. Katharina Krawagna-Pfeifer : ÖGB Debate: The Beginning of Conflict Democracy - The mobilization against the ÖGB is not a coincidence, but a government program , Der Standard , September 9, 2001
  9. like “active conflict democracy” in: The eternal vertical pulls him up , Gunter Hofmann , Die Zeit 10/95, March 3, 1995
  10. ^ Gerhard Lehmbruch: Negotiating Democracy. Contributions to comparative governance . West German Publishing House, Wiesbaden 2003.
  11. ^ Josef Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy . George Allen & Unwin, London 1943.
  12. a b c Arend Lijphart : Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries . Yale University Press, New Haven 2012, pp. 245 .
  13. Everhard Holtmann / Helmut Voelzkow: Between competitive and negotiating democracy . Analysis of the government system of the Federal Republic of Germany . West German Publishing House, Wiesbaden 2000.
  14. ^ Heidrun Abromeit & Michael Stoiber: Democracies in comparison . Springer, S. 48 .
  15. Direct democracy, the co-creator , or - How Germany also misunderstands democracy , Vladimir Rott, August 15, 2015, on his blog
  16. “… What is called Swiss political culture… is deeply connected to citizen participation. Direct democracy relies ... on the participation and competence of the citizens. [It] can only work if the citizens have the appropriate skills to ... politicize. … The common sense is a resource found in most people - sociologists agree on that. The political culture of Switzerland, whose institutions are anchored in citizenship [the "militia system"], is a special case. Many of Switzerland's advantages are related to this system. ... Take a movement like Pegida in Dresden or the citizens' protests in connection with the renovation of the train station in Stuttgart: Our system based on the participation and politicization of citizens would have caused such unease much earlier, the interests of the citizens would have been included earlier. It is no coincidence that we do not have a broad Pegida movement. ... But: Our system has come under pressure. The ultra-modern civilization we live in today calls into question all of the things that make Switzerland what it is. The “militia principle” is one of them. Reform may or may not work. I hope so, but I am skeptical. ... The discussion about it is important: What holds us together as a society? What does direct democracy mean to us? ” - Georg Kohler : Direct democracy has to be more than an outlet . Der Bund / Newsnet , January 14, 2015
  17. ^ Georg Kreis , Andreas Suter : Democracy. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .