Switzerland is widely known for its successful integration of linguistic and religious minorities. At the same time, a prolonged absence from the collegial, seven-member central government can give rise to feelings of political exclusion. This begs the question whether inclusion really has the desired, let any alone any effect on political behavior. This paper makes use of the frequent use of referendums in Switzerland to assess the extent to which citizens vote differently when somebody from their canton of residence sits in the central government. Studied are all the 670 nationwide referendums held between 1848 and February 2022. Analyzed are cantonal turnout, approval rates, likelihood to vote as the federal government recommends, and chances of being overruled by the state-wide majority. The three main findings are that 1) government inclusion is indeed significantly associated with some of the positive effects theorized, 2) on average, these effects are very small, but also that 3) there are some stark cross-cantonal differences, which are due mostly to national minority languages. In short, including minorities matters more than including majorities.

The power-sharing literature lacks a review that synthesizes its findings, despite spanning over 50 years since Arend Lijphart published his seminal 1969 article ‘Consociational Democracy’. This review article contributes to the literature by introducing and analysing an original dataset, the Power Sharing Articles Dataset, which extracts data on 23 variables from 373 academic articles published between 1969 and 2018. The power-sharing literature, our analysis shows, has witnessed a boom in publications in the last two decades, more than the average publication rate in the social sciences. This review offers a synthesis of how power sharing is theorized, operationalized and studied. We demonstrate that power sharing has generally positive effects, regardless of institutional set-up, post-conflict transitional character and world region. Furthermore, we highlight structural factors that are mostly associated with the success of power sharing. Finally, the review develops a research agenda to guide future scholarly work on power sharing.

Mounting evidence indicates that power-sharing supports transitions to democracy. However, the resulting quality of democracy remains understudied. Given the increasing global spread of power-sharing, this is a crucial oversight, as prominent critiques accuse it of a number of critical deficiencies. The present article advances this literature in two ways. First, it offers a comprehensive discussion of how power-sharing affects the quality of democracy, going beyond specific individual aspects of democracy. It argues that power-sharing advances some of these aspects while having drawbacks for others. Second, it offers the first systematic, large-N analysis of the frequently discussed consequences of power-sharing for the quality of democracy. It relies on a dataset measuring the quality of democracy in 70 countries worldwide, combining it with new fine-grained data for institutional power-sharing. The results indicate that power-sharing is a complex institutional model which privileges a particular set of democratic actors and processes, while deemphasizing others.

How do ethnically divided countries create inclusive and stable democratic institutions? Why do some kinds of federalism fail while others evolve? Scholars looking for answers to these kinds of questions have tended to focus on the West. Yet there are important lessons arising from the substantial democratic and federal reforms that have taken place in Asia over the last few decades. These reforms signal a new model of federal democracy in Asia, comprising multilevel ethnoterritorial federalism, mixed-majoritarianism and a party system that includes both ethnic and multi-ethnic parties. This model has emerged as a response to ethnic conflict and secession risks and reflects the high diversity of clustered communities and cross-cutting cleavages. Despite its overarching majoritarianism, the federal model has led to highly fragmented party systems and coalition governments, with positive implications for democratic stability. Together, these features go some way towards blending otherwise conflicting consociational and centripetal paradigms.

Premised on elite accommodation, consociations provide little consideration for citizens’ input on institutional change. Likewise, valuable analyses of cross-community political participation in divided societies have emerged in recent years, yet whether the relationship between the grassroot and formal political process has broader consequences remains to be fully explored. The article examines the conditions in which nonelectoral participation takes place and the ways in which actors involved therein negotiate constraints for continuous cross-community mobilization. The structure of political systems and the nature of deep divisions in Northern Ireland and Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina invite a comparison of the consequences of nonelectoral political participation in these two illustrative case studies. The article concludes that while the formal political context shapes the likelihood of engagement on a cross-community basis, whether nonelectoral participation changes the structure of political decision-making depends on the willingness and ability of those involved to cooperate with formal institutional politics.

Prospects for democracy in multi-ethnic societies are generally more promising if elections are not mere ethnic censuses, in which people vote predominantly for co-ethnic parties and candidates. But what institutions facilitate or hinder ethnic voting? Unlike past studies, this article explores ethnic voting by conducting a natural experiment (rather than surveys or laboratory experiments). It examines the case of Fribourg, a bilingual (French/German) Swiss canton where elections at different levels of government, within the same electoral district, are held under both majoritarian and proportional systems. Coupled with the high territorial homogeneity of the linguistic groups, this unique setting allows us to conduct a robust empirical analysis of voter behaviour. We find that cross-ethnic voting is significantly more frequent in multi-member majoritarian elections than in list-PR elections or in two-member majoritarian elections. Our results yield qualified support to the centripetalist approach to electoral design in multi-ethnic societies, that favours majoritarian systems, rather than to the consociational school that advocates proportional representation.

This article assesses the articulation of vital ethno-national interests and the use and abuse of veto rights in deeply divided societies. In consociational theory, veto rights represent the primary means by which ethnic groups defend their ‘vital interests’, though they are often criticized for rewarding extremism and producing institutional instability. Situating a case study of Northern Ireland in a comparative perspective, I consider two lines of veto practice: liberal vs corporate (i.e. who has veto rights?) and permissive vs restrictive (i.e. to what issue areas do vetoes apply?), to assess what political incentives, if any, they offer for moderation and stability. Drawing from a review of the legislative debates when a veto was enacted and on semi-structured interviews with members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, I argue that a permissive approach, in which groups can determine their own vital interests, can contribute to moderation, peace and stability in divided societies.

This paper argues that current Western-backed approaches to conflict resolution in Kosovo have failed to alter Serbia's policy toward the region and have contributed to the exacerbation of political tensions between Belgrade and Brussels, while deepening ethnic cleavages between Serb and Albanian communities. While there is no possibility of Kosovo returning to Serbia's control, there is an equal unlikelihood that Serbian-populated regions of Kosovo, especially the north, will submit to Pristina's authority. Most importantly, there is little hope that Kosovo can gain full international recognition and membership in international organizations without a compromise settlement with Serbia. While territorial partition has long been a suggested option, I conclude that the best possible solution for Kosovo, given the positions of all parties involved, is a process of significant decentralization beyond the internationally supported measures in the Ahtisaari Plan. A model of consociational power sharing is one in which Serbian and Albanian municipalities are granted high levels of autonomy similar to arrangements made for Bosnia. While this solution may not be ideal and further weakens central authority, I argue that consociationalism reduces the problems of ethnic conflict, encourages local self-government, and preserves the overall territorial integrity of Kosovo.

Entity-voting in the Bosnian Parliamentary Assembly is a veto mechanism in Bosnia's consociational institutional setting and an important reason for the country's orientation towards the political status quo. An empirical analysis of the number and nature of adopted and rejected draft laws during the legislative period 2006–2010, embedded in George Tsebelis's veto player approach, leads to the conclusion that the veto players in the parliament – either delegates from Republika Srpska or delegates from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – have pushed the consociational system of checks and balances to its extremes. Entity-voting enables the veto players to “hijack” the parliament for their exclusionary ethnic interests and discourages cooperation and compromise between the veto players. Significant legislation, which in the present article is defined as legislation relevant for the European Partnership, faces severe obstacles to getting passed. In the light of these findings, the article discusses three policy implications: institutional redesign, a change of the actors, and an active role of the European Union for providing the actors with a realistically achievable goal which they equally share. This should reset the current calculus of self-interest and encourage cooperation between the veto players.