Reform of consociationalism arrangements in deeply divided societies

This report was prepared for the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and its partners in support of pro-poor programmes. Research Officer Brigitte Rohwerder outlines the reforms and democratic transition of consociational-arrangement peace agreements in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lebanon, and Burundi. The second part of the report is extensively based on the legal pathways away from consociationalism and institutional transitions identified by Allison McCulloch (2017). Excluding the collapse of power-sharing arrangements, the addressed legal pathways are threefold: (a) power-sharing dissolution via politically initiated constitutional reforms, i.e., Northern Ireland; (b) Power-sharing dissolution via judicial interventions, i.e., Bosnia and Herzegovina, and (c) Power-sharing adoption on an interim basis, i.e., Lebanon. The author highlights some key arguments from McCulloch that advocate for liberal consociationalism over corporate. A particular emphasis is the role of the international community (external actors) for the consociational transition in these countries.