Democracy, ethnoicracy and consociational demoicracy
| Author | Nenad Stojanović |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0192512119881730 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512119881730
International Political Science Review
2020, Vol. 41(1) 30 –43
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512119881730
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Democracy, ethnoicracy and
consociational demoicracy
Nenad Stojanović
Université de Genève, Switzerland
Abstract
This article questions the notion of ‘consociational democracy’. It argues that it rests on shaky ground,
empirically and conceptually. As an empirical matter, a consociation is inherently unstable because it
tends either to collapse into ethnoicracy (where the power is shared by the main ethnic groups so that
citizens who do not belong to them are politically marginalized) or to become a non-consociational, liberal
democracy. At the conceptual level ‘consociational democracy’ is an impossibility because a polity cannot be
both consociational and democratic. This article argues that consociations can be at best demoicracies – that
is, polities composed not of a single demos but of multiple demoi. Yet the problem of stability remains. The
article concludes with the suggestion that the stability problem can be addressed by adopting a weak form
of demoicracy – the ‘demoi-within-demos’ constellation – where a thin demos coexists with multiple demoi.
Keywords
Consociationalism, centripetalism, democracy, demoicracy, ethnoicracy, demos
Introduction
The notion of ‘consociational democracy’ has been widely adopted in the literature on institutional
design for multi-ethnic societies. It is based on the idea that deep social cleavages may undermine
the prospects for democracy but that this challenge can be met via elite-driven cooperation between
subcultures. It is characterized by power-sharing in the executive (grand coalition), segmental
autonomy, proportionality and minority veto. While it has been criticized by many, it is still the
dominant approach among international and national political actors in efforts to build democracy
in divided societies.
In recent years, the debate has been enriched by the distinction between ‘corporate’ and ‘liberal’
consociationalism (see McCulloch, 2014; McGarry and O’Leary, 2007, 2009). Briefly, in the for-
mer type the segments entitled to a share of power are pre-determined in advance of election
results, typically on the basis of ascriptive criteria such as ethnicity. In the latter, institutions are
Corresponding author:
Nenad Stojanović, Départment de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, Uni-Mail,
40 boulevard du Pont d’Arve, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland.
Email: nenad.stojanovic@unige.ch
881730IPS0010.1177/0192512119881730International Political Science ReviewStojanović
research-article2019
Special Issue Article
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