The Insignificant Other? Comparing perceptions of exclusion and inclusion among Others in deeply divided societies
(2023) The Nation as a Sacred Communion? Religion, Legacies and Conflict — Location: Queen’s University Belfast (31.May.2023)
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- Consociational regimes have often been proposed as a solution to ethnic conflict in deeply divided societies. Through purposeful design, inter-group competition and minority protection are institutionalised. As the conflict between “salient” ethnic groups is pushed into the institutional realm, consociationalism is often thought to have the potential for democratic stability. However, a growing number of scholars have pointed out that consociations may come with a high price that may, in fact, threaten the stability of the system in the long run. It is argued that the closure of the political space to ethnic Others – that it those who are not members of the recognised, salient social segments - may lead to (1) a lack of inclusion in public decision-making and (2) a lack of responsiveness to the needs of non-dominant groups, and thus more generally speaking to an underrepresentation of interests and needs. Consequently, the democratic legitimacy of public decision-making may be undermined. Yet, despite the growing scholarly and theoretical attention allocated to the exclusion of ethnic Others and its impact on democracy in consociational regimes, little do we know about whether and how ethnic Others make sense of exclusion and inclusion within the realm of the consociational representative democratic system. How do they problematise ethnicity-based representative democracy through their own status as ‘Others’? Which democratic solutions do they imagine? Investigating the cases of Belfast, Brussels and Mostar as typical ‘places’ where consociationalism is experienced in everyday life, this paper takes on an exploratory bottom-up approach to understanding issues of democratic exclusion and inclusion in consociational regimes. Using biographic interviews, group talks and observations, the paper analyses the framing of citizens’ (Others) experience with consociational democracy through their understanding of politics, the state and political representation. It then seeks to understand how these perceptions of exclusion shape political behaviour and attitudes in the consociational democracy.
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Sautter, A.-M. (2023). The Insignificant Other? Comparing perceptions of exclusion and inclusion among Others in deeply divided societies. The Nation as a Sacred Communion? Religion, Legacies and Conflict, Queen’s University Belfast. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/248583