Consociationalism is Dead! Long Live Zombie Power-Sharing!

Abstract

Scholars argue that consociationalism has become the preferred institutional tool of choice for the international community when seeking an end to civil war. This paper argues that consociationalism is increasingly becoming redundant as an institutional apparatus to end violent conflict linked to intra-state conflict. Over the last few decades divided societies have been subjected to consociational influence. In many places consociational institutions have long since ceased functioning in a way that is healthy for the body politic, yet somehow consociationalism remains dominant both for policy prescription and in academic thinking. While consociationalism was once understood by institutional designers to be transformative, facilitating a transition to a less sectarian system, the reverse is true. Rather than transformation and change, consociations tend to develop ossified properties rendering them resistant to practically any reform. Summoning the image of the zombie, I note that consociationalism is ‘dead but dominant’ and has to defend itself through increasingly authoritarian statecraft. Consociationalism is thus neither dead nor alive, but walking dead, listlessly stumbling from one crisis to the next. Each crisis is experienced contingently with the feeling that something could happen – that something could change – very soon, even as routine prevails in the face of an increasingly defensive state.