ABSTRACT
Consensus democracy should not be considered as an ideal but as a realistic requirement to make politics work and drives policy-making under conditions where majorities are difficult to construe. Other than the concept of Polyarchy Arend Lijphart aims at developing a theory of democracy by means of ‘institutional engineering’: choosing an institutional design that promotes political stability and leads to policy performances that are beneficial. In essence this empirically driven theory argues that the established ‘rules’ of the political game affect political behaviour. This is the topic of Section 2 which is preceded by the story how Lijphart developed his ideas. Section 3 focusses on the essential relationship of this approach: policy formation in relation to their policy outcomes which would be better in a consensus type of democracy. We conclude the chapter by critically assessing the empirical results in view of this approach and note that there is room for improvement by paying attention to the role of parties and stateness.
