Quotas in a Liberal World: Paradoxes of Hybrid Liberal-Corporate Power-Sharing

The recent literature on Consociational Democracies - also addressed as power-sharing regimes – shows that there are two ways of establishing institutions, which lead to elite accommodation in divided societies: the corporate model is based on the logic of fixed identities, ethnic quotas, group representation, group veto rights and ethno-federalism. The liberal model allows for identity change, and representation along multiple lines of cleavages, it is based on proportional representation, super-majorities, and non-ethnic federalism (McGarry & O’Leary 2007; McCulloch 2014). Many Consociational Democracies mix the two models: Croatia allows its minorities to chose whether they vote for reserved seats in parliamentary elections, or by PR rules for any political party. Bosnia and Herzegovina allocates the three seats in its presidency to three “constituent groups”, but votes are counted jointly for two seats are counted jointly, allowing for inter-ethnic voting. And, again, Bosnia and Herzegovina, creates an ethno-federal territory, which even carries the name of one of its three constituent groups, but the same constitutional court declares all federal units to be multiethnic, and the peace agreement gives refugees the right to return, undermining the ethnic character of the federal subjects. Can the two models co-exist? And can liberal elements be introduced in otherwise corporate consociational regimes, in order to open them up for political competition and weaken the divides between the different groups? Theoretically, the paper scrutinises the strategic implications of the liberal and the corporate model, and highlights the potential paradoxes emerging from hybrid liberal-corporate consociational rules. These are further analysed through empirical case studies.