Consociationalism, a form of government involving guaranteed group representation
S Issacharoff, ‘Constitutionalizing Democracy in Fractured Societies’ (2003–2004) 82 Texas Law Review 1861
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Ian Lustick has argued that academics lack an alternative 'control' approach for explaining stability in deeply divided societies and that this has resulted in the empirical overextension of consociational models.
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John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary argue that three conditions are key to the establishment of democratic consociational power-sharing: elites have to be motivated to engage in conflict regulation; elites must lead deferential segments; and there must be a multiple balance of power, but more importantly the subcultures must be stable.
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Donald L. Horowitz argues that consociationalism can lead to the reification of ethnic divisions, since "grand coalitions are unlikely, because of the dynamics of intraethnic competition. The very act of forming a multiethnic coalition generates intraethnic competition – flanking – if it does not already exist".