ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the consociational experience in three deeply divided societies: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, and Northern Ireland. All three are examples of complex consociations; Bosnia and Burundi are organized along corporate consociational lines and Northern Ireland is inspired by liberal consociational logic. While Northern Ireland has moved the furthest along the stability continuum, Burundi remains in the process of tentatively stabilizing its arrangement, and Bosnia is characterized by a kind of imposed stability, brought about, in part, by the work of international actors as the military and political holders of the peace. The post-conflict institutional design in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as outlined in the Dayton Peace Accords, highlights the importance of context in how consociationalism is designed. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Lebanon, another deeply divided society seeking stability via consociational methods, but where an outcome of stability is less assured.
