Managing Conflict Through Democracy

Managing Conflict Through Democracy

Description

Though frequently heralded as a panacea for societal ills, the advent of democratic rule in historically fractured societies often risks amplifying—rather than ameliorating—pre-existing social, ethnic and religious tensions. Emerging democracies must manage these tensions lest electoral processes and the demands of governance be the trigger and the means for renewed conflict. In the period immediately after World War II, the preferred mechanism for attempting to dampen historic animosities was through a mechanism of formalised power-sharing that has come to be known in political science by the name consociationalism. In attempting to lessen the explosive potential of historical societal divisions, these new democracies apportioned governmental authority, with political roles delineated along historical fault lines. This chapter is concerned with the contrasting approach taken by what has been termed the ‘third wave’ of democratisation. This period followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and has spread democracy more broadly around the globe than ever before. In common with the earlier period of post war democratisation, the new round confronts the need to stabilise governance in historically divided societies. By contrast to the earlier period, however, the post-Soviet efforts take as their defining characteristic not the formalised power-sharing seen in prior eras, but a system of democratic competition for political office under a strong system of constitutional constraints on the exercise of political power. While the means of resolving social divisions have evolved, this move away from a system of prescriptive allocation of political power does not suggest that the fundamental problem this system sought to redress has gone away. Both in and out of Europe, recent developments shed light on a broader range of nation-reinforcing tools beyond some kind of pro rata formal power-sharing. Alongside increased attention to constitutional restraints on the exercise of political power has come the dramatic expansion, and apparent acceptance, of judicial review of the structures of governance. The role of judicially enforced constitutionalism offers a different avenue of nation-building than that assumed in the consociational models. Rather than securing national unity through formal power-sharing along the major axes of social division, constitutionalism tends to impose limits on the range of decisions that democratically elected governments may take. This chapter examines the institutional contours of fragile ‘third wave’ democracies and their structural limitations on the exercise of majoritarian power; it also explores the potential for robust constitutional protections to channel historic tensions into fruitful democratic engagement. The aim is not to devise a one-size-fits-all model of proper constitutionalism. I find this a dispiriting and more than mildly chauvinistic enterprise. Instead, I look at structured forms of power in divided societies in the terms by which the constitutional courts of those societies analyse the difficulties they present. In part, this is recognition of how much more sophisticated the world has become since the simple consociational models that were supposed to yield stability through formal power-sharing. In part as well, this is recognition of the stakes in truly fractured societies. The unfortunate lesson of history is that stable civilian governance is most likely to emerge from post-conflict societies when one ethnic group has accomplished clear dominance or destruction of the other. Even with the introduction of more aggressive international peace-keeping, the key issue in nation-building remains the creation of an integrated political authority claiming legitimacy beyond an ethnic or racial base.

Source Publication

Rights in Divided Societies

Source Editors/Authors

Colin Harvey, Alex Schwartz

Publication Date

2012

Managing Conflict Through Democracy

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