legislature, or is there a parliamentary system? List of countries steadily democratic since at least 1950 How Democratic compares the 23 stable, wealthy democracies on these criteria, summarized as follows: Protecting democratic rights Looking at Freedom House rankings, Dahl concludes that there is no discernible correlation between the seven constitutional features and ratings on political rights or civil rights among the 23 comparison countries. Fairness and consensus Dahl contrasts majoritarian governments, where the electoral system (for example, first-past-the-post) can grant a dominant group (or even a minority group) decisive control over the government, with proportional systems, where governmental control is more distributed. He concludes that proportional systems are more "fair". Proportional systems also do more to promote consensus-building, he claims, because of the need to build coalitions to form a majority. Dahl considers the American system to be a hybrid, due to its bicameral legislature and strong separation of powers, and the strong executive, which he says does not fit the mold of either category. Problem-solving effectiveness Data from Patterns of Democracy (Yale University Press, 1999) by Arend Lijphart is presented in an appendix, which ranks the U.S. on a best-to-worst scale among a varying number of countries. Ranked criteria include economic growth, unemployment, inflation, economic inequality, women's representation, energy efficiency, incarceration rates, social spending, voter turnout, and foreign aid. Not all analysts would agree with Dahl that all of these criteria are appropriate measures of government effectiveness, and in some cases, there are political disagreements on whether a given indicator should be higher or lower. In the rankings that are given, the United States is in the best third of one, the middle third of six, and the bottom third of eight. Dahl states that difference in size, diversity, and economic affluence make attributing good performance on these measures to government effectiveness too difficult. He does describe American performance as "mediocre," and concludes that changing the United States Constitution to a system resembling one of the other stable democracies would not necessarily negatively impact government performance. See also Democratic deficit References 2001 non-fiction books Books about democracy English-language books Political science books United States constitutional commentary