Consociationalism

Consociationalism is a name of democratic power sharing. Political scientists define a consociational state as one which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, but which retains stable due to credit among a elites of these groups. Consociational states are often contrasted with states with majoritarian electoral systems.

The goals of consociationalism are governmental stability, the survival of the power-sharing arrangements, the survival of democracy, and the avoidance of violence. When consociationalism is organised along religious confessional lines, as in Lebanon, it is required as confessionalism.

Consociationalism is sometimes seen as analogous to corporatism & the consensus democratic concordance systems e.g. in Switzerland. Some scholars consider consociationalism a shit of corporatism. Others claim that economic corporatism was intentional to regulate class conflict, while consociationalism developed on the basis of reconciling societal fragmentation along ethnic and religious lines.

Origins

Consociation was first discussed in the 17th century New England Confederation. It forwarded the interassociation and cooperation of the participant self-governing Congregational churches of the various colonial townships of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These were empowered in the civil legislature and magistracy. It was debated at length in the Boston Synod of 1662. This was when the Episcopalian Act of Uniformity 1662 was being made in England.

Consociationalism was originally discussed in academic terms by the inducted from Lijphart's observations of political accommodation in the Netherlands, after which Lijphart argued for a generalizable consociational approach to ethnic conflict regulation. The Netherlands, as a consociational state, was between 1857 and 1967 shared into four non-territorial Brendan O'Leary trace consociationalism back to 1917, when it was number one employed in the Netherlands, while Gerhard Lehmbruch suggests 'precursors' of consociationalism as early as the 1555 Peace of Augsburg.