The two faces of power-sharing
| Author | Andreas Juon,Daniel Bochsler |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211037244 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
The two faces of power-sharing
Andreas Juon
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zu
¨rich
Daniel Bochsler
Central European University (CEU), Vienna, & University of Belgrade
Abstract
Lijphart’s claim that power-sharing spurs democratization in divided societies has strongly influenced ‘institutional
engineering’ and is widely accepted among scholars despite the fact that empirical tests of its merits remain rare. This
article revisits the democratic effect of power-sharing, arguing that it has two antagonist faces. On the positive side, it
provides guarantees of inclusion to political elites, allowing them to commit to democratic rules. On the negative
side, it also has an illiberal face, entailing limits on competition and individual rights. In this article, these contrary
characteristics are traced back to two institutional types of power-sharing: a more flexible and open, liberal, type and a
more rigid, corporate one. Using a novel dataset on power-sharing rules for 138 multi-ethnic countries and the
period from 1945 to 2016, their respective democratic merits are tested. Conforming to theoretical expectations, the
findings indicate that only liberal forms of power-sharing exhibit strong positive effects on democracy while corporate
forms exert mixed or even negative ones. These findings are robust to a series of alternate model specifications and
operationalizations as well as to instrumental variable approaches. In conclusion, the article indicates only a partial
democratic effect of power-sharing, limited to its liberal subtype.
Keywords
consociationalism, democracy, democratization, ethnic conflict, power-sharing
Introduction
Power-sharing is a popular institutional prescription for
divided societies, with the prospect of establishing both
political stability and democracy (Lijphart, 1977).
Guided by this hypothesis, an important body of litera-
ture indicates that power-sharing indeed helps prevent
violent conflict in divided societies (Cederman, Wimmer
& Min, 2010; Pospieszna & Schneider, 2013; Roeder,
2005; Schneider & Wiesehomeier, 2008; Walter, 2002).
However, most empirical research focuses on its effect on
the (absence of) conflict, rather than on the establish-
ment of positive peace, which also entails a democratic
society. This gap is striking as numerous studies reveal
that there are important trade-offs between political sta-
bility and democracy (Cederman, Hug & Krebs, 2010;
Mousseau, 2001). Power-sharing regimes are a corner-
stone in this debate, as they are praised for providing for
democracy (Linder & Ba
¨chtiger, 2005), but also
criticized for their antiliberal and undemocratic features
(Dixon, 2012; Van Schendelen, 1984).
This article scrutinizes this critique of power-sharing
and assesses its empirical validity. In particular, we argue
that power-sharing has two faces (Bochsler & Juon,
2021): On the one hand, it fosters political plurality and
guarantees political inclusiveness along communal lines
(Bormann, 2014; Lijphart, 1977). This increased open-
ness of the political system represents an important
advance for democracy. On the other hand, power-
sharing is often based on rigid ethnically based institu-
tions, which not only limit free competition, but also
confine political power to a narrow set of often undemo-
cratic elites and risk perpetuating ethnic polarization
(Dixon, 2012; Reilly, 2001; Van Schendelen, 1984).
Corresponding author:
andreas.juon@icr.gess.ethz.ch
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(4) 526–542
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211037244
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These restrictions clearly limit democratic ideals of free
competition and openness.
We argue that the relative importance of these antago-
nist faces diverges between two institutional types of
power-sharing (McCulloch, 2014; McGarry & O’Leary,
2007): In ‘corporate’ power-sharing systems, which are
based on rigid, ethnically based institutions, the illiberal
face of power-sharing will often be dominant and eclipse
the democratic gains of increased inclusiveness. In con-
trast, in ‘liberal’ power-sharing systems, which rely on
more flexible, electorally based institutions and on indi-
rect incentives, the trade-off is less severe and gains
accruing from higher inclusiveness will prevail.
1
An example for the former, corporate, type is Leba-
non’s corporate power-sharing system, based on quotas
for its various religious groups. While achieving long
periods of stability, it has failed to turn the absence of
violence into positive peace, instead establishing a nom-
inally democratic system characterized by neopatrimoni-
alism and severe democratic shortcomings and
polarization (Ghosn & Khoury, 2011; Zahar, 2007).
An example for the latter, more liberal type, are Nigeria’s
power-sharing rules, gradually enhanced across several
consecutive constitutions. Rather than relying on
group-specific rules, they tie political representation to
territorial units and constrain presidential elections
through vote spread requirements. While also plagued
by shortcomings, this more flexible institutional setup
has enabled gradual progress towards the regularized,
peaceful alternation of power (Sklar, Onwudiwe & Kew,
2006; Suberu, 2007).
Are these two types of power-sharing systematically
associated with different effects on democracy? Are lib-
eral power-sharing institutions better suited than corpo-
rate ones to overcome the trade-off between increased
inclusiveness and limitations to democratic practice? Do
they, then, represent a better safeguard for democracy?
This study is the first to trace these questions empiri-
cally in a systematic (large-N) fashion. Innovating over
previous research, we measure power-sharing as a
political-institutional model, as defined by Lijphart
(1977), and test for diverging effects between its types.
For this purpose, we use a newly updated global dataset
that codes power-sharing in 138 ethnically diverse
countries for the period of 1945–2016. Inclusive
constitutional rules form the basis of our independent
variables. In order to avoid overlaps with power-sharing,
we rely on a minimalistic concept of democracy, using
both our own novel measure thereof, based on electoral
freedom (Hyde & Marinov, 2012), and conventional
measures (Marshall & Gurr, 2014). Both are continuous
in order to capture the rise of hybrid and competitive-
authoritarian regimes since the end of the Cold War.
These new measures allow us to go beyond existing
studies and investigate the diverging impacts of the two
types of power-sharing in detail. To our knowledge,
there is no empirical work that captures both types
simultaneously or that investigates their consequences
for democracy. Most systematic earlier studies have not
distinguished different types of power-sharing (Vogt
et al., 2015), whereas others investigate some dimensions
thereof, or focus on only one of our two types (Graham,
Miller & Strøm, 2017).
The results conform to our theoretical expectations,
showing that the liberal-pluralist type of power-sharing
increases democracy levels, whereas the effects of the
rigid, corporate type are mixed. Our findings are robust
across multiple model specifications and operationaliza-
tions. They also hold if we use instrumental variables and
matching procedures, to account for the origins of
power-sharing. We complement these quantitative find-
ings with a qualitative analysis of two power-sharing
countries, Lebanon and Nigeria, which in our sample
are typical of our attained relationship. While we identify
antidemocratic practices in both, we find a less severe
trade-off between consociational restrictions and democ-
racy in the more liberal setup of the latter.
The remainder of this article proceeds as follows: The
next section discusses previous research and formulates
our theoretical expectations. Building on this, we present
our conceptualization and operationalization of power-
sharing and democracy, before conducting our empirical
analysis. Finally, we situate our findings and identify
avenues for future research.
Literature review and theory
While consociational theory is popular with scholars and
practitioners alike, it nevertheless remains controversially
debated. On the one hand, the literature on ethnic con-
flict mainly follows Lijphart’s reasoning that power-
sharing allows for the inclusion of a plurality of interests.
Thereby, it is often considered as the only suitable model
of democracy to stabilize heterogeneous or post-conflict
societies (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2015; Lijphart, 1977). On
the other, the proposition that power-sharing also
1
As we elaborate in our theoretical section, the two types of power-
sharing are not mutually exclusive. While most countries
overwhelmingly rely on one type or the other, a small number
combine them (see footnote 6).
Juon & Bochsler 527
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