Does Smallness Enhance Power-Sharing? Explaining Suriname’s Multiethnic Democracy

Abstract

ABSTRACTPointing to a number of informal dynamics in small societies that are supposed to enhance cooperation and consensus, traditional studies on power-sharing posit that small states are ‘most likely’ candidates for stable, multiethnic democracy. These assumptions are, however, challenged by the case study literature on small states which highlights a variety of informal patterns that undermine democratic governance. Addressing this contradiction, the present paper provides an in-depth analysis of power-sharing politics in Suriname, a small, culturally heterogeneous country in South America that initially figured as a prominent case in consociational theory. The analysis reveals that the smallness of Suriname strongly affects and shapes the nature of democracy in the country. On the one hand, clientelism ensures that members of each ethnic group included in power-sharing arrangements have access to state resources and services, thus providing a large measure of political stability. On the other hand, clientelism undermines the functioning of multiethnic democracy by a host of negative side effects, among which economic and social dependency of citizens, executive dominance and authoritarian politics, endemic corruption that goes largely unpunished, and state predation by elites. The upshot is that whereas power-sharing arrangements in small societies might indeed be facilitated by a small population size, there is a heavy price to pay in terms of the quality of democracy.