Consensus and Consensus Democracy: Cultural, Structural, Functional, and Rational-Choice Explanations

Five examples of the origin, operation, and consequences of consensus democracy and closely related democratic forms (the politics of accommodation, consociational democracy, and power-sharing democracy) illustrate the relative strengths of cultural, structural, functional, and rational-choice explanations. The examples show that each of these explanations plays a crucial role in at least one of the five situations. Hence they suggest that it is unwise to assume that one particular approach predominates to such an extent that it should be the ruling paradigm for political research.