Consensus democracies ‘clearly outperform the majoritarian democracies with
regard to the quality of democracy and democratic representation’ (Lijphart
1999: 301).
These findings support Lijphart’s (1999) conclusions that countries with
proportional representation have more democratic characteristics and extend
them to a larger number of countries. These findings also support Parenti’s
claim that proportional systems are more democratic and may reflect the
values found in each of the electoral systems and the scales of democracy. An
important aspect of democratic government is that it is responsive to the
people. Responsiveness can be described as ‘when the people effectively agree
not to use violence to replace the leadership, and the leadership effectively
leaves them free to criticize, to pressure, to organize, and to try to dislodge it
by any other means’ (Mueller 1999: 139). Elected officials remain accountable
to the electorate who can choose not to re-elect them.