Consociational Democracy in Multiethnic Societies E-Book

Patrick Bolte

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: 1,0 (A), Free University of Berlin (Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science), course: Empirisch-analytische Demokratietheorien, language: English, abstract: The central question of this paper is almost as old as the mere concept of consociationalism: to what extent can consociational democracy serve as the appropriate democratic form to divided and multiethnic societies? Soon after Arend Lijphart and Gerhard Lehmbruch had depicted consociational democracy as a viable alternative to majoritarian forms of democracy, a fierce debate about its wider applicability took root. Lijphart and Lehmbruch had presented the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland as cases of consociational democracies – but would the concept work in countries that are divided more deeply? For a good reason, the issue regained relevance and interest of scholars during the 1990s: Intra-state wars now took their tolls on an unprecedented scale - many of which had an ethnic dimension. It requires no statistical analysis to acknowledge ethnic divisions as one of the most serious sources of today’s violent conflicts. In this context, it has been asked whether consociational democracy is a suitable and appropriate model to accommodate the diverse interests and cultures of groups in a multiethnic society. Is it a sustainable model able to prevent conflicts from turning violent? Should it be part of peacebuilding efforts in a post-conflict society? If applied, how should a consociational design look like?

Leseprobe

Table of Content

1 The Concept of Consociational Democracy

1.1 Theoretical Background

1.2 Executive Power-Sharing

1.3 Segmental Autonomy

1.4 Proportional Representation

1.5 Mutual Veto Rights

2 Collected Critiques

2.1 Definition Deficiencies

2.2 Flawed Analysis? The Role of the Case Studies

2.3 Insufficiently Democratic?

2.4 Explanatory Weakness and Non-Applicability

2.5 Conclusion

3 The Favourable Factors for Consociational Democracy

3.1 Structure-oriented Factors

3.2 Actor-oriented Factors

3.3 The Status of the Factors

3.4 Conclusion

4 Making It Work

4.1 Executive: Parliamentary versus Presidential Systems

4.2 Over-representation versus Proportional Representation

4.3 The Modality of Veto Rights

4.4 The Form of Autonomy

4.5 Arbitration

4.6 Working towards Favourable Factors

5 Conclusion

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Freie Universität Berlin

Patrick Bolte

Politikwissenschaft 8.Fachsemester

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Patrick Bolte: Consociational Democracy in Multiethnic Societies

Introduction

The central question of this paper is almost as old as the mere concept of consociationalism: to what extent can consociational democracy serve as the appropriate democratic form to divided and multiethnic societies? Soon after Arend Lijphart and Gerhard Lehmbruch had depicted consociational democracy as a viable alternative to majoritarian forms of democracy (Lijphart 1968; Lehmbruch 1967), a fierce debate about its wider applicability took root (See Nordlinger 1972, Daalder 1974, Barry 1975, Lijphart 1977, and Lustick 1979). Lijphart and Lehmbruch had presented the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland as cases of consociational democracies - but would the concept work in countries that are divided more deeply? For a good reason, the issue regained relevance and interest of scholars during the 1990s. Intra-state wars took their tolls on an unprecedented scale, many of which had an ethnic dimension. Out of 226 armed conflicts recorded for the period between 1946 and 2002, 116 of them have occurred after the end of the cold war in 1989, all but seven of them being intra-state conflicts (Eriksson/Wallensteen/Sollenberg 2003: 593). It requires no statistical analysis to acknowledge ethnic divisions as one of the most serious sources of today’s violent conflicts. In this context, it has been asked whether consociational democracy is a suitable and appropriate model to accommodate the diverse interests and cultures of groups in a multiethnic society. Is it a sustainable model able to prevent conflicts from turning violent? Should it be part of peacebuilding efforts in a post-conflict society? If applied, how should a consociational design look like? The literature on these questions is abundant (See Gurr 1993, McGarry/O’Leary 1993, Lijphart 1995a, Harris/Reilly 1998, Schneckener 2002b).

In order to answer the central question as to what extent consociational democracy can assume a viable democratic model for multiethnic societies; this paper relies exclusively on existing literature - rather than on independent analysis of a few cases studies. Thereby, it seeks to provide a general theoretical review on the issue. The analysis is structured in four parts. Chapter one describes the concept of consociational democracy as outlaid by Lijphart, presents definitions and central components. Chapter two summarises the critique to the model, ranging from the deficient definitions, to the claim that most of the original cases do not fit the model, to the contention that consociationalism would be insufficiently democratic. The focus of chapter three rests on the ‘favourable factors’; it looks at the conditions under which the development of consociational democracy can flourish. Both structure- and actor-oriented factors have been object of dispute, and Lijphart himself has modified them substantially over