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1 Comp. Pol. Stud. 3 (1968-1969)

handle is hein.journals/compls1 and id is 1 raw text is: TYPOLOGIES OF DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS AREND LIJPHART AREND LIJPHART is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California (Berkeley). The author of several articles and books in the areas of com- parative political theory and of politics in the Netherlands (particularly its colonial relationships), Professor Lijphart is currently working on studies of social pluralism and democracy, and of voting behavior in Western Europe. P OLITICAL THEORISTS AND SCIENTISTS, from Plato and Aristotle on, have attempted to construct classificatory schemes of political systems to aid them in their explorations of politics, and such schemes have become particularly prevalent in comparative politics in recent years.' However, recent typologists have not followed the prece- dent set by their illustrious forebears in paying special attention to democracies. Aristotle distinguished five different kinds of democracies; but in the modem typologies, democracies usually either constitute one category, without any further elaboration within the single category, or are subsumed under a more comprehensive category. In the two well-known typologies based on Talcott Parsons' pattern variables, a dichotomous distinction is made, in Francis X. Sutton's terms, between intensive agricultural and modern industrial societies, or, to use Fred W. Riggs' terms, between agrarian and industrian societies.2 Mod- ern democracies fit the latter of the two categories, in both cases. Riggs makes this explicit when he subdivides each category according to the AuTHoR's NoTE: An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Brussels., September 18-23, 1967. 1 gratefully acknowledge the con- structive criticisms of Jack Citrin, Ernst B. Haas, Val R. Lorwin, Rodney Stiefbold, and Patricia Taylor, and the generous financial support of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. 3