Abstract

By compiling data on 12 politico-institutional variables for 25 member states of the European Union over the years 1997—2006, we were able to investigate the emerging patterns of democracy in the European Union. The study addresses the questions of how direct democracy can be incorporated into Lijphart’s (1999) typology of consensus and majoritarian democracy and how empirical democratic patterns are affected by this extension. For the western democracies, three dimensions of democracy were extracted using principal component analysis, with two resembling those found by Lijphart (1999) and a third one being shaped by the interplay between direct democracy and cabinet type. East European democracies tend to have a lower degree of interest group corporatism, weaker central banks, stronger judicial review and stronger direct democracy.