Lytkina K.A. The Phenomenon of Elections in the Context of Arend Lijphart’s Theory of Democracy (Comparative Analysis of Russia and Foreign Countries)

Abstract: This article studies how the phenomenon of elections is explored in Arend Lijphart’s theory of democracy. The author highlights the main theses that serve as justification for division of democracies to «majoritarian» and «consensus», and briefly describes the variables that allow to attribute a country to a particular type of democracy: the number of effective parliamentary parties, party composition of the government, balance of powers between executive and legislative branches, disproportionality of the elective system, level of centralisation/decentralisation, number of chambers of the parliament, rigidity or flexibility of the Constitution, judicial control, independence of the central bank, and the level of participatory democracy. Methods of comparative analysis were used, the author also used calculations based on the formulas of Laakso and Taagepera's, Juan Molinar's and Golosov's indexes. Disproportionality of the Russian elective system was evaluated according to Michael Gallagher's methods. The analysis of Russian system is based on variables of different dimensions of democracy. The article also provides comparative analysis of the elective processes in countries with different types of democracy. Russia was labelled as a country with majoritarian type of democracy. It is generally confirmed by the patterns of voting behaviour examined in the article, as well as the fact that the strong presidential regime makes the whole political system "more majoritarian", even if the elections to the legislative organs are held according to the system of proportional representation.

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