Consociational Power-Sharing in the Arab World as Counter-Revolution

Abstract

This paper argues that consociational power-sharing in the Arab world is intrinsically counter-revolutionary. The academic debate on consociational power-sharing has largely overlooked this because 1) it pre-supposes class inequalities and over-emphasizes state stability; and 2) it is limited by a broader misunderstanding of counter-revolution, in which the concept is reduced to momentary reactions to revolution. By critiquing class and state assumptions in the consociational power-sharing literature and presenting a nuanced conceptualization of counter-revolution, this paper seeks to bring the debate closer to the concurrent revolutionary episodes against the consociational arrangements of Lebanon and Iraq, and to inspire more inclusionary state-(re)building arrangements in the Arab world.