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Debating Consociational Politics: Normative and Explanatory Arguments
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a democratic regime is parliamentary or presidential, but whether it has cross-community power sharing over executive functions and legislative agenda-setting (and to what degree: complete, concurrent, or weak). To the degree that it is complete, opposition will indeed be weak; to the degree that it is either concurrent or weak, opposition will be more vigorously evident. This analysis has qualified certain of Lijphart’s statements. First, rather than requiring a grand coalition government, a democratic consociation necessarily has an executive in which there is significant cross-segmental representation, though the forms of representation may range from complete, to concurrent, to weak. Consociations vary, in short, in the extent to which segments are included and in the degree of opposition to the governing coalition in the executive. Second, the degree to which they are liberal or corporate in their popular and assembly voting systems should distinguish democratic consociations. Third, consociational arrangements may co-exist with non-ethnic and inter-ethnic parties. Fourth, consociational executives are as likely to be presidential as parliamentary, and consociational advocates need have no necessary bias against collective as opposed to single-person presidencies. Consociational arrangements, it bears saying again, need not be comprehensive: they may be confined to distinct constitutional and policy sectors (in the domain of the politics of identity, recognition, and constitutional change); or they may be applied piecemeal where they are deemed necessary. They need not be mechanically applied throughout the entirety of politics. Nor are consociationalists peddlers of a panacea: the practices they commend are not everywhere likely to be either feasible or desirable. Consociational arrangements allow for and facilitate greater justice, both procedural and social, say its advocates. Groups govern themselves in agreed domains of autonomy. Distributions that follow proportional allocations may be seen as very fair: to each according to their numbers. Within a democratizing world, this idea of fairness has an underlying moral appeal. There is also a correlation between numbers and potential power that makes such a mode of justice likely to be stable and legitimate.
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| | Authors: O'Leary, Brendan. |
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19
a democratic regime is parliamentary or presidential, but whether it has cross-community
power sharing over executive functions and legislative agenda-setting (and to what degree:
complete, concurrent, or weak). To the degree that it is complete, opposition will indeed be
weak; to the degree that it is either concurrent or weak, opposition will be more vigorously
evident.
This analysis has qualified certain of Lijphart’s statements. First, rather than requiring a
grand coalition government, a democratic consociation necessarily has an executive in which
there is significant cross-segmental representation, though the forms of representation may
range from complete, to concurrent, to weak. Consociations vary, in short, in the extent to
which segments are included and in the degree of opposition to the governing coalition in the
executive. Second, the degree to which they are liberal or corporate in their popular and
assembly voting systems should distinguish democratic consociations. Third, consociational
arrangements may co-exist with non-ethnic and inter-ethnic parties. Fourth, consociational
executives are as likely to be presidential as parliamentary, and consociational advocates
need have no necessary bias against collective as opposed to single-person presidencies.
Consociational arrangements, it bears saying again, need not be comprehensive: they may be
confined to distinct constitutional and policy sectors (in the domain of the politics of identity,
recognition, and constitutional change); or they may be applied piecemeal where they are
deemed necessary. They need not be mechanically applied throughout the entirety of politics.
Nor are consociationalists peddlers of a panacea: the practices they commend are not
everywhere likely to be either feasible or desirable.
Consociational arrangements allow for and facilitate greater justice, both procedural and
social, say its advocates. Groups govern themselves in agreed domains of autonomy.
Distributions that follow proportional allocations may be seen as very fair: to each according
to their numbers. Within a democratizing world, this idea of fairness has an underlying
moral appeal. There is also a correlation between numbers and potential power that makes
such a mode of justice likely to be stable and legitimate.
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