Power‐Sharing in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism and Sectarian Authoritarianism

Consociationalists have traditionally embraced sectarian authoritarianism combined with a very limited form of democracy as the only democratic way of managing plural conflicts. New Generation consociationalists, by contrast, believe their theory is compatible with opposing sectarian authoritarianism in places like Iraq and the Lebanon. Traditional consociationalists have tended to claim that all power‐sharing is consociational, whereas revisionist and liberal consociationalists claim that consociationalism does not require power‐sharing and that the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 is therefore a consociational success. This paper argues that ‘classic’ consociationalism has constantly been revised to deflect criticism and capture apparently successful cases of conflict management. Consociationalists have deployed a ‘Wonderland’ definition which allows them to make such contradictory claims. Paradoxically, this definitional ambiguity and incoherence allows consociationalism to be ‘all things to all people’, resulting in its successful domination of the academic debate.