Party Fragmentation Within a Consociational Regime

Arend Lijphart’s initial research into consociational democracy in 1969 has opened the door for ongoing research about institutional design in deeply divided societies. Lijphart’s focus on grand coalitions, proportional representation, veto rights for minorities and autonomy provisions continues to provide important impulses in the redesign of contemporary liberal democracies (such as Belgium or Northern Ireland) and also as a panacea to war-torn divided countries (such as Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq). While Lijphart’s initial framework has been further developed by authors such as Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, his main assumptions from the 1969 article in World Politics still stand. This paper will pick up on Lijphart’s main assumptions and assess an inherent paradox in consociational designs. We argue that the mixture of proportional representation with low thresholds – and the need for elite cooperation through grand coalitions, opens the door for party fragmentation within the different segments within a consociational regime. Evidence from diverse countries (including Belgium, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Switzerland and Iraq) suggests that Lijphart’s promotion of segmental representation is unlikely to lead to one strong party for each segment, but instead, electoral rules and access to power will favour party system fragmentation within each of the different segments. While this might initially not be a bad thing – as it increases options for coalition building and cooperation – it can ultimately result in instability and decrease the willingness of different parties to work together, not least parties representing the same segment within society. We quantitively investigate the relationship between conscociational institutional design and party system fragmentation for elections held in 23 countries since 1950 and we illustrate the causal mechanisms by drawing upon qualitative evidence from two consociational states, i.e. Bosnia and Belgium. We will demonstrate how this paradox of consociationalism might be one of the key reasons explaining why coalition building is difficult and consociational regimes continue to suffer from a certain degree of instability.