ABSTRACT

Consociational theory is an empirically grounded normative theory that – through promoting power sharing of a specific kind – promises a democratic solution to societies confronted by durable ethnic division and political conflict. Now some forty years of age, consociationalism represents one of the strongest, widely discussed, and influential research programmes in the field of comparative politics.1 It has been formulated and developed by some of the world’s leading political scientists – most notably Arend Lijphart.2 Today, it is generally accepted that consociationalism is “the dominant model of managing ethnically divided societies,”3 and, as René Lemarchand asserts,

“few theories have had a more enduring impact on the thinking of analysts and practitioners of democratic governance than the consociational model.”4