Conflict Management in Divided Societies

Theories and Practice

Stefan Wolff, Christalla Yakinthou, Stefan Wolff, Christalla Yakinthou

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415563734
• eBook ISBN: 9781136630736
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This exciting and innovative new textbook takes a multi-perspective approach to the study of conflict management in divided societies.

Offering a wide range of perspectives from the leading experts in the field, the work explains conflict management from the viewpoint of the political scientist, the constitutional architect, the activist, and the NGO. It examines the philosophies underpinning constitutional design, the actors and processes involved, and the practicalities of the settlement process, combining conceptual and theoretical contributions with empirical case studies. In so doing, it provides a comprehensive global introduction to the study of conflict management in divided societies.

Features & benefits of the textbook:

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• Clearly explains the theories underpinning constitutional design including power sharing/liberal consociationalism, centripetalism, power dividing, and territorial solutions

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• Surveys the key actors and processes involved in designing and implementing peace including the evolution of diplomacy in peace-making, and separate chapters about crafting solutions for divided societies from the perspectives of NGOs, the UN, EU and AU

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• Explores the realities on the ground with chapters written by activists and practitioners which draw on their experience of working in conflict zones

Written in a clear and engaging style, this work is essential reading for all students of conflict resolution.

Part I

Theories of conflict management

1 Consociationalism

Power sharing and self-governance

Stefan Wolff

Introduction

Consociationalism as a theory of managing conflict in divided societies has two predominant dimensions of institutional design that have emerged most clearly in its liberal consociational version: power sharing and self-governance.¹ Territorial approaches to conflict management in divided societies are occasionally treated as a separate approach in the literature, even though empirically power sharing and (territorial) forms of self-governance frequently coincide, by design or otherwise (Wolff 2009a). Proponents of (liberal) consociational power sharing have especially pointed out both the important connections between, and evolving complementarity of, consociational power sharing and territorial forms of self-governance,² thus seeking to fill a significant gap in conflict management theory.³ While these empirical connections have been obvious for some time, conceptual links have only recently been established more systematically.⁴

This chapter aims to examine those links in more detail, including by empirical illustration. Engaging with critics of both power sharing and territorial self-governance, I offer a conditional theoretical and empirical defence of liberal consociationalism, thus also contributing further to the development of liberal consociational theory and practice and deepening the relationship between power sharing and territorial self-governance.

Power Sharing and Self-Governance in Consociational Theory

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill in his Considerations on Representative Government expressed scepticism with regard to the possibility of democracy ‘in a country made up of different nationalities’ (Mill 1861, 230). While there clearly is empirical evidence that any system of government that permanently excludes specific segments of its citizens, on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, language or ideology, etc., eventually does so at its peril, democracy is the one system in which population diversity can be effectively accommodated without recourse to repression or assimilation. This is neither always easily accomplished, nor is there a blueprint for doing so. In fact, while Mill’s dictum has been taken up as a challenge by scholars and practitioners of institutional design in divided societies to find ways in which democracy and diversity can be combined in a legitimate system of government, there is little consensus on how to do so. Alongside centripetalism and power dividing,⁵ consociationalism is one of the approaches to make democracy possible in an ethnically diverse country. As a theory and a political practice, it is prominently associated with the work of Arend Lijphart, as well as more recently with that of John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary.

The Main Characteristics of the Power-Sharing Strategy

Arend Lijphart began to examine democratic consociational systems in the late 1960s, coining the very term when making reference to the political systems of Scandinavian countries and of the Netherlands and Belgium (Lijphart 1968, 1969). He followed up with further studies of political stability in cases of socially severely fragmented societies, eventually leading to his ground-breaking work Democracy in Plural Societies (Lijphart 1977).

The phenomenon Lijphart was describing, however, was not new. As a pattern of social structure, characterizing a society fragmented by religious, linguistic, ideological or other cultural segmentation, it had existed and been studied (albeit not as extensively) long before the 1960s. These structural aspects, studied by Lorwin (1971), among others, were not the primary concern of Lijphart, who was more interested in why, despite their fragmentation, such societies maintained a stable political process, and identified the behaviour of political elites as the main, but not the only, reason for stability. Furthermore, Lijphart (1977, 25–52) identified four features shared by consociational systems – a grand coalition government (between parties from different segments of society), segmental autonomy (in the cultural sector), proportionality (in the voting system and in public sector employment) and minority veto. These characteristics were, more or less prominently, present in all the classic examples of consociationalism: Lebanon, Cyprus, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Fiji and Malaysia. Some of these consociations have succeeded, such as in Switzerland,⁶ Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium, while others have failed, such as Lebanon, Cyprus, Fiji and Malaysia.

Lijphart’s own thinking on consociational theory has developed considerably over the decades since he first introduced the concept into comparative politics, partly in response to the challenges that other scholars made against his assumptions and prescriptions. Lijphart engaged his critics most comprehensively in his book Power Sharing in South Africa (Lijphart 1985, 83–117) and in his contribution to Andrew Reynolds’s The Architecture of Democracy (Lijphart 2002, 39–45). In the latter, he also offers a substantive revision of his original approach, now describing power sharing and autonomy (i.e., grand coalition government and segmental autonomy) as primary characteristics, while proportionality and minority veto are relegated to ‘secondary characteristics’ (Lijphart 2002, 39). Yet, in relation to his grand coalition requirement, Lijphart maintains his earlier position that this form of executive power sharing means ‘participation of representatives of all significant groups in political decision making’ (Lijphart 2002, 41).

Apart from Lijphart, the other main, and today predominant, thinkers on consociational theory and practice are John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary. In order to appreciate fully the current state of consociational theory, it is, therefore, useful to examine a collection of their joint and individual writings from 1987 to 2002, entitled The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements (McGarry and O’Leary 2004a), in particular its co-authored introduction on the lessons that Northern Ireland holds for consociational theory more broadly.⁷

Northern Ireland and its 1998 Agreement, McGarry and O’Leary maintain, ‘highlights six important weaknesses in traditional consociational theory’ (McGarry and O’Leary 2004b, 5). These are the failure to address the role of external actors; the trans-state nature of some self-determination disputes and the necessary institutional arrangements to address them; the increasing complexity of conflict settlements in which consociational arrangements form an important element but require complementary mechanisms to deal with ‘the design of the police, demilitarization, the return of exiles to their homes, the management of prisoners, education reform, economic policy, and the promotion of language and other group rights’ (McGarry and O’Leary 2004b, 13); terminological and conceptual inaccuracies, primarily associated with Lijphart’s grand coalition requirement; the merits of preferential proportional electoral systems, i.e. STV; and the allocation of cabinet positions by means of sequential proportionality rules, i.e. the d’Hondt mechanism. In dealing with these weaknesses, McGarry and O’Leary offer both refinements of, and advancements to, traditional consociational theory. The refinements relate, first, to the technical side of consociational institutions, where the authors recommend STV instead of list-PR as an electoral system as it militates against the proliferation of micro-parties. Second, McGarry and O’Leary elaborate the usefulness of sequential proportionality rules, such as the d’Hondt mechanism or the Sainte-Laguë method, in the allocation of cabinet positions in order to avoid protracted bargaining between parties and increase parties’ incentives to remain part of cross-communal coalitions.

McGarry and O’Leary’s observations on external actors bring consociational theory into line with an established debate in international relations on the role of third parties in conflict resolution.⁸ Equally importantly, their discussion of the provisions in the 1998 Agreement that go beyond domestic institutions and address the specific ‘Irish dimension’ of the Northern Ireland conflict reflects a growing awareness among scholars and practitioners of conflict resolution that many ethnic conflicts have causes and consequences beyond the boundaries of the states in which they occur and that for settlements to be durable and stable, these dimensions need addressing as well. In the case of the 1998 Agreement for Northern Ireland, McGarry and O’Leary highlight three dimensions: cross-border institutions which formalize cooperation between the Northern Ireland executive and the Irish government (the so-called North–South Ministerial Council) and renew British–Irish intergovernmental cooperation (the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference); the explicit recognition by the two governments of the right to self-determination of the people in Northern Ireland and the Republic, i.e. the possibility for them to bring about, in separate referenda, a united Ireland if that is the wish of respective majorities; and new institutions of regional cooperation, incorporating the UK and Irish governments, and the executive organs of the other devolved regions in the UK and its dependent island territories in the Channel and the Irish Sea.

A final, and perhaps the most significant, advancement of the power-sharing dimension of consociational theory is McGarry and O’Leary’s contention that Lijphart’s grand coalition requirement is overstated, as ‘what makes consociations feasible and work is joint consent across the significant communities, with the emphasis on jointness’ (McGarry and O’Leary 2004b, 15). In other words, what matters for a democratic consociation ‘is meaningful cross-community executive power sharing in which each significant segment is represented in the government with at least plurality levels of support within its segment’ (O’Leary 2005a, 13). On that basis, McGarry and O’Leary distinguish ‘unanimous consociations (grand coalitions), concurrent consociations (in which the executive has majority support in each significant segment) and weak consociations (where the executive may have only a plurality level of support amongst one or more segments)’ (O’Leary 2005a, 13).

However, the subsequent assertion, also repeated in other writings, that ‘[c]onsociations become undemocratic when elites govern with factional or lower levels of support within their segments’ (McGarry and O’Leary 2004b, 15) is not fully convincing. Assuming that ‘support’ means electoral support, a consociation is democratic or not if its executive emerges in free and fair elections, not if it fulfils certain numerical tests. Implicitly, what seems to be at stake is less the democratic credentials of the arrangement, than its consociational nature; especially the criterion of jointness which emphasizes equality and cooperation across blocs and some genuine consent among the relevant mass publics for a democratic consociation and thus excludes just any coalition, as well as cooptation of unrepresentative minority ‘leaders’. By extension, an arrangement in which elites govern with low levels of support from within their segments might also prove less stable compared to one in which an executive can rely on broader levels of support. This was certainly true of Lebanon by the early 1970s, where the unreformed consociational mechanisms that had been in place since independence from France could no longer satisfy significant sections of Lebanese society.

The more recent writings by Lijphart, McGarry and O’Leary also indicate a clear move away from corporate and towards liberal consociational power sharing. The main difference between the two is that a ‘corporate consociation accommodates groups according to ascriptive criteria, and rests on the assumption that group identities are fixed, and that groups are both internally homogeneous and externally bounded’, while ‘liberal … consociation … rewards whatever salient political identities emerge in democratic elections, whether these are based on ethnic groups, or on sub-group or transgroup identities’ (McGarry 2007b, 172).⁹ This is another important modification of consociational theory that addresses one of its more profound, and empirically more valid, criticisms, namely that (corporate) consociations further entrench and institutionalize pre-existing, and often conflict-hardened, ethnic identities, thus decreasing the incentives for elites to moderate (e.g., Horowitz 1985, 1991, 2003). However, this move away from corporate consociationalism in the literature is not entirely reflected in political practice: for example, Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the original Dayton Accords, Northern Ireland under the 1998 Agreement, Lebanon under the 1989 Ta’if Accord, Cyprus under the proposed (but rejected) Annan Plan all display features of predetermined arrangements based on ascriptive identities.

The Main Characteristics of Self-Governance

In consociational theory the term ‘autonomy’ is frequently used to describe the second main dimension of institutional design alongside power sharing. In this abstract sense, it refers to the whole breadth of self-governance arrangements, be they territorial or non-territorial in nature.

Non-territorial or (national) cultural autonomy is usually advocated in cases where claimant groups are territorially not sufficiently concentrated. Such ‘[p]ersonal autonomy applies to all members of a certain group within the state, irrespective of their place of residence. It is the right to preserve and promote the religious, linguistic, and cultural character of the group through institutions established by itself’ (Lapidoth 1996, 175).¹⁰ It has its modern origins in Austro-Marxism, and is particularly associated with the work of Otto Bauer (1907) and Karl Renner (1918). It was widely applied in the period between the First and Second World Wars, and has seen a degree of resurgence in Central and Eastern Europe after 1991, while also being incorporated into the Belgian federal model (see Smith 2010). Neither conceptually nor empirically is it much invoked in the contemporary literature on consociationalism as a strategy for managing conflict in divided societies, and I shall therefore not treat it at any further length here.

Territorial self-governance (TSG), on the other hand, is a strategy of conflict management in divided societies widely and predominantly employed in cases of territorially compact groups (Benedikter 2007; Hannum 1996; Lapidoth 1996; Suksi 1998; Wolff 2009a). Though it has generated a significant literature both within and without the consociational school of conflict management, as well as among its critics, there are considerable conceptual and empirical problems with the definition of TSG as a strategy of conflict management.¹¹ Moreover, much discussion has focused on just two forms of TSG – autonomy and federation.

Conceptually broader and more contested is the term autonomy. Beyond its general use in consociational theory describing both territorial and non-TSG arrangements, in the literature on TSG, autonomy often refers simultaneously to the specific territorial status of an entity within an otherwise unitary state (e.g., the Åland Islands in Finland) and the functional status of a particular level of government within a multilayered system (e.g., the autonomy of a federal state to make certain decisions independent of a federal government). Put differently, autonomy, which is one of the most frequently employed terms to describe territorial approaches to conflict management in divided societies, is used both in an abstract functional sense in the context of governance arrangements and as a concrete manifestation of TSG in a specific (often singular) sub-state entity in a given state.¹² It is therefore useful to trace the academic...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Theories of Conflict Management
• Consociationalism Power Sharing and Self-Governance
• Centripetalism Cooperation, Accommodation and Integration
• Power Dividing The Multiple-Majorities Approach
• Processes and Actors
• The Diplomacy of Conflict Management
• Quiet Diplomacy Preventing Conflict through Discreet Engagement
• Imperfect but Indispensable The United Nations and Global Conflict Management
• Regional Origins, Global Aspirations The European Union as a Global Conflict Manager
• Limited Capabilities, Great Expectations The African Union and Regional Conflict Management
• Political Engagement, Mediation and the Non-Governmental Sector
• Case Studies
• Between Theory and Practice Rwanda
• The Challenges of Implementation Guatemala
• The Failure of Prevention Kosovo
• A Never-Ending Story Cyprus
• The Potency of External Conflict Management Northern Ireland
• Index