Afterword: Consociationalism and the State: Situating Lebanon and Iraq in a Global Perspective

Abstract

In this afterword to the special issue on Consociationalism and the State: Lebanon and Iraq in Comparative Perspective, we reflect on the insights from the articles in the special issue and their contributions to the wider field of consociationalism studies, including the relationship between the state, state formation, and consociationalism; the interplay between consociationalism and identity construction and change; and the functionality, longevity, and agility of the consociational state. We suggest that the emergent research agenda on consociationalism and the state should engage further with ideas of agency and with wider cross-regional comparisons from the global south in order to show how historically contingent developments precondition conflict processes, group grievances, and post-conflict preferences in power-sharing systems.

Notes

1 Matthijs Bogaards, Ludger Helms, and Arend Lijphart, “The Importance of Consociationalism for Twenty-first Century Politics and Political Science,” Swiss Political Science Review 25, no. 4 (2019): 341–56, 341.

2 Donald L. Horowitz, “Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems,” Journal of Democracy 25, no. 2 (2014): 5–20.

3 Craig Parsons, How to Map Arguments in Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 12.

4 John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland’s Conflict and Its Agreement 2: What Critics of Consociation Can Learn from Northern Ireland,” Government and Opposition 41, no. 2 (2006): 249–77, 271.

5 Parsons, How to Map Arguments, 12.

6 Karen Bird, “Ethnic Quotas and Ethnic Representation Worldwide,” International Political Science Review 35, no. 1 (2014): 12–26.

7 Jo Saglie, Ulf Mörkenstam, and Johannes Bergh, “Political Cleavages in Indigenous Representation: The Case of the Norwegian and Swedish Sámediggis,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 26, no. 2 (2020): 105–25.

8 Megha Ram and K. Wallace Strøm, “Mutual Veto and Power-Sharing,” International Area Review Studies 17, no. 4 (2014): 343–58.

9 Bassel F. Salloukh, “Consociational Power-Sharing in the Arab World: A Critical Stocktaking,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 20, no. 2 (2020): 100–8, 103.

10 Bassel F. Salloukh, “Taif and the Lebanese State: The Political Economy of a Very Sectarian Public Sector,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 25, no. 1 (2019): 43–60.

11 Matthijs Bogaards, “Iraq’s Constitution of 2005: The Case Against Consociationalism ‘Light,’” Ethnopolitics 20, no. 2 (2021): 186–202.

12 Toby Dodge, “Iraq’s Informal Consociationalism and its Problems,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 20, no. 2 (2020): 145–52, 147.

13 Dodge, “Iraq’s Informal Consociationalism,” 150.

14 John McGarry, “Classical Consociational Theory and Recent Consociational Performance,” Swiss Political Science Review 25, no. 4 (2019): 538–55, 540.

15 Joanne McEvoy and Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif, “Power-Sharing Challenges: From Weak Adoptability to Dysfunction in Iraq,” Ethnopolitics 21, no. 3 (2022), 238–57.

16 Arend Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” World Politics 21, no. 2 (1969): 207–25, 219.

17 Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” 216.

18 Shamiran Mako, “Divided Opposition, Fragmented Statebuilding: Elite Bargaining in Pre-and Post-2003 Iraq,” International Peacekeeping (OnlineFirst, 2023).

19 Brendan O’Leary, “Power Sharing in a Deeply Divided Place: An Advocate’s Introduction,” in Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places, edited by Joanne McEvoy and Brendan O’Leary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 1–64, 3.

20 Vivien A. Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse,” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (2008): 303–26.

21 Toby Dodge and Renad Mansour, “Politically Sanctioned Corruption and Barriers to Reform in Iraq,” Chatham House Research Paper (June 2021). Available at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/2021-06-17-politically-sanctioned-corruption-iraq-dodge-mansour.pdf

22 Shamiran Mako, Structuring Exclusion: Institutions, Grievances, and Ethnic State Capture in Iraq (Manuscript in preparation).

23 Mahmoud Farag, Hae Ran Jung, Isabella C. Montini, Juliette Bourdeau de Fontenay, and Staveer Ladhar, “What Do We Know About Power Sharing after 50 Years?” Government and Opposition 58 (2023): 899–920, 906.

24 Shamiran Mako and Alistair D. Edgar, “Evaluating the Pitfalls of External Statebuilding in Post-2003 Iraq (2003-2021),” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15, no. 4 (2021): 425–40.

25 Thea Riofrancos, “From Cases to Sites: Studying Global Processes in Comparative Politics,” in Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry, edited by Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 107–25, 107.

26 Mako, Structuring Exclusion.

27 Farag et al., “What Do We Know about Power Sharing,” 909.

28 Nic Cheeseman and Blessing-Miles Tendi, “Power-Sharing in Comparative Perspective: The Dynamics of ‘Unity Government’ in Kenya and Zimbabwe,” Journal of Modern African Studies 48, no. 2 (2010): 203–29, 204.

29 Diana Fu and Erica S. Simmons, “Ethnographic Approaches to Contentious Politics: The What, How, and Why,” Comparative Political Studies 54, no. 1 (2021): 1695–721, 1698.

30 Janine A. Clark, “Field Research Methods in the Middle East,” PS: Political Science & Politics 39, no. 3 (2006): 417–24.

31 Sarah E. Parkinson, “(Dis)courtesy Bias: ‘Methodological Cognates,’ Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research,” Comparative Political Studies 55, no. 3 (2022): 420–50.

32 Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif, Soeren Keil, and Allison McCulloch, eds., Power-Sharing in the Global South: Patterns, Practices and Potentials (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024); Allison McCulloch and Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif, “Territorial and Institutional Settlements in the Global South,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 2023.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shamiran Mako

Shamiran Mako is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Her research focuses on the international relations and comparative politics of the Middle East with a substantive emphasis on ethnic politics, post-conflict statebuilding, and governance in divided societies.

Allison McCulloch

Allison McCulloch is a Professor of Political Science at Brandon University. Her research considers the interplay between adoptability, functionality, and adaptability in the life cycle of power-sharing agreements. This includes examining the complex role of external actors in the adoption and function of power-sharing arrangements; investigating the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion intrinsic to power-sharing practice; and demonstrating how these institutional choices can affect marginalized communities, especially women, in perverse ways.