Author: Madalen Beth Reid
Published 1 July 2021
Abstract: Consociational democracy has become a dominant model for post-conflict democratisation, making an understanding of its dynamics and outcomes important for practitioners and scholars of peacebuilding. This paper explores the quality of consociational governance in the long term in societies transitioning from conflict, and asks whether this imperfect system is viable in the long term despite the absence of adequate transition mechanisms to a more efficient and normatively adequate system. A comparative analysis of Northern Ireland after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a crucial case of supposed consociational success, and Lebanon after the 1989 Taif Accords, which has failed by all measures except having avoided a return to civil war, provides insights into the functioning of power-sharing in both cases and into consociationalism more generally. The causes, nature, and consequences of the ongoing financial crisis in Lebanon and the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal in Northern Ireland are explored in historical context. It is argued that despite their crucial role in bringing an end to violent conflict, the inefficiency and dysfunctionality of consociational governments damages their fragile and conditional legitimacy and consequently fails to adequately manage the problem of disputed legitimacy that leaves deeply divided societies vulnerable to recurrent violence. The dysfunctional politics often dismissed as insignificant in the face of recent violent conflict is therefore a serious problem that maintains many of the conditions that led to past violence. This paper concludes that while neither case study provides a good model for export, there is much to be learned from their successes and shortcomings that can be applied to current or future consociational settlements when these problematic solutions to conflict are unavoidable.