Abstract

The main topic is how Lijphart's majoritarian and consensus models of democracy have coped with the 1975-1995 economic crisis. Building upon the body of the available literature, the Author discusses several methodological and technical problems involved, proposes a new classification of the countries concerned, and tests it against an extensive battery (six indicators) of macroeconomic data. Contrary to previous findings, the results show that majoritarian regimes score better than the competing model on all relevant variables, including those typically associated with the (socialdemocratic) consensus democracies (i.e., unemployment).