Consociationalism and Racial Cleavages: Redefining the Boundaries of Consociationalism
Consociationalism and Racial Cleavages: Redefining the Boundaries of Consociationalism By Jitske Mijna Grift Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts/Sciences Supervisor: Professor Matthijs Bogaards CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary (2019) Abstract “A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others—which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively.” (Mill, 1873, 308). With this, John Stuart Mill opened chapter sixteen of his book Considerations on Representative Democracy, and established his case for why democracies need to have a uniting factor. But what about countries that do not have this uniting factor? Countries that have divides. Almost 200 years after John Stuart Mill published his book, Arend Lijphart wrote about just that, democracies in divided societies. Lijphart coined the theory consociational democracies, which are democracies that have divides based on factors such as language, religion, ethnicity, race, or culture, but they still function as democracies (Lijphart, 1969). However, Lijphart’s theory has not been without controversy, as some criticize the idea that consociationalism can work for countries that have a racial divide (Barry, 1975). The question about whether democracy can work in racially divided societies is now more relevant than ever, with globalization and international migration, more and more societies are becoming racially diverse.
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