This article examines the consociational democracy installed in Kosovo after the war. Starting from the premise that the electoral system is considered one of the key instruments for the engineering of post-conflict societies with deep ethnic divisions, the article analyzes the preferences of local and international actors for the type of electoral system. In particular, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission’s reluctance to organize elections without a prior creation of an institutional base, as well as grand governing coalitions. The mechanisms of consociational democracy aim at addressing elite cooperation between different ethnic communities for building peace and stability in post-conflict societies. But focusing on the intra- and inter-community dynamics of cooperation and confrontation between elites, I conclude that the main obstacle to building a democratic multi-ethnic society in Kosovo and implementing the power-sharing arrangements was the uncertainty over the status of Kosovo.

The processes of peace-building and democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were instituted on 14 December 1995 by the Dayton Accords, which brought an end to the Bosnian War. While claiming their objectives to be reconciliation, democracy, and ethnic pluralism, the accords inscribed in law the ethnic partition between Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims by granting rights to “people” based on their identification as “ethnic collectivities.” This powerful tension at the heart of “democratization” efforts has been central to what has transpired over the past 16 years. My account uses ethnographic methods and anthropological analysis to document how the ethnic emphasis of the local nationalist projects and international integration policies is working in practice to flatten the multilayered discourses of nationhood in BiH. As a result of these processes, long-standing notions of trans-ethnic nationhood in BiH lost their political visibility and potency. In this article I explore how trans-ethnic narod or nation(hood) — as a space of popular politics, cultural interconnectedness, morality, political critique, and economic victimhood — still lingers in the memories and practices of ordinary Bosnians and Herzegovinians, thus powerfully informing their political subjectivities.

This article examines the break-ups of post-communist Czechoslovakia and the Union of Serbia and Montenegro under consociationalism. According to Arend Lijphart, social divisions may be neutralized at the elite level with power-sharing mechanisms. Lijphart's theory has been abundantly criticized, particularly because, while its intention is to induce cooperation, consociationalism does not give leaders actual incentives to cooperate. Czechoslovakia and the Union qualified as consociations; however most favorable factors were absent. The states failed to overcome their divisions and broke apart. Both states were going through a democratization period, experienced differently in each republic. The article argues that the application of consociationalism at this time magnified the divisions. Stirring up the ethnic sensitivity of the population was the most reliable strategy for politicians to secure popular support. In this context, and with the EU enlargement prospect, the consociational structure, instead of bringing elites together, weakened the federal power and provided elites the opportunity to defend republican interests at the expense of the federations. Hence, while a consociation requires certain conditions and favorable factors, the context in which consociationalism is implemented, and particularly democratization periods, may have a decisive influence on the leaders’ ability to cooperate, on their decisions, and thereby on the state.