ABSTRACT
The contrary to “the behaviorist absurdity”, political institutions matter. The time of founding a new state or a new regime, people can purposefully design their own institutions, that they are not “forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force,” but are “really capable” “of establishing good government from reflection and choice”. Lijphart compares the operation and performance of what he calls majoritarian and consensual democracy. The former concentrate political authority at the national level, where it is exercised by a prime minister whose party’s legislative majority in a single or dominant lower house of parliament is disproportionate to its actual share of the popular vote. In a majoritarian democracy, the judiciary, as well as other institutions such as the central bank, play a subordinate role to the legislature, which can amend and interpret the constitution more or less at will, limited only by tradition, public opinion, and its own self-restraint.
