New “Others” in Post-Conflict Consociations: A Continuum of Exclusion?

Abstract

Debates on consociationalism seek to explain how and why prescriptive power-sharing can support successful ethnic conflict management in post-conflict societies and if the differences between liberal and corporate consociationalism affect system stability. At the same time, a new and growing body of work has begun to examine the previously under-considered effects of power-sharing on “Others,” that is, those communities not in alignment with the included ethnic groups. This paper adds to understandings of liberal and corporate consociational models and their impact on a specific type of Other – “newcomers” – through interviews with civil society organizations representing their interests. Current approaches to the liberal-corporate distinction do not reflect the impact of institutional design on newcomers navigation of power-sharing systems. Through a comparative analysis of newcomer engagement in (liberal) Northern Ireland and (corporate) Lebanon, this paper will reveal how institutional design cultivates path-dependent elite behaviors that negatively impact newcomers through different policy responses.