Territorial Distribution Requirements Without Centripetal Pitfalls: Electoral Design for Power-Sharing Collective Presidencies

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Drawing from four electoral models for the election of Bosniak and Croat representatives to the collective Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article proposes a set of favorable conditions for the application of territorial distribution requirements in deeply divided societies. It shows that it is possible to deliver stable consociational outcomes using territorial distributive requirements for bi-national polities. Territorial distributive requirements result in stable democracy only under appropriate consociational conditions for the election of multi-person presidencies in dyadic societies with a demographic imbalance of power, whereas centripetal techniques prevent minority groups from choosing their most-preferred representatives.