Power-Sharing: Institutional and Social Reform in Divided Societies
240
Power-Sharing: Institutional and Social Reform in Divided Societies
240Paperback
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Overview
Power-Sharing seeks to explore the unintended consequences of power-sharing for the communities themselves, their individual members, and for others in society. More specifically, it is distinctive in questioning explicitly whether power sharing: perpetuates inter-communal conflict by institutionalising difference at the political level; inhibits conflict resolution by encouraging extremism; stifles internal diversity; and fails to leave sufficient space for individual autonomy.
This book not only provides a theoretical exploration and critique of these questions, but comprehensively examines specific test cases where power-sharing institutions have been established, including in Northern Ireland, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Lebanon. It also explores such issues as the role of political leaders, human rights instruments, the position of women, and the prospects for reconciliation within such societies.
Furthermore it provides a detailed set of policy recommendations to meet the challenges of transition in deeply-divided societies.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745322926 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 11/29/2005 |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Ian O'Flynn is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at Newcastle University. He is a specialist on the nature and requirements of democracy in multicultural and multinational societies. He is the co-editor of Power Sharing (Pluto, 2005) and the editor of The Value and Limits of Rights (Routledge, 2013).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Democratic Values and Power Sharing
Ian O'Flynn
THE CHOICE OF DEMOCRATIC VALUES
At one point or another, many of us may have wondered why democratic power-sharing proves so difficult in some divided societies. It is true that there is no such thing as a perfect democracy, at least not in the real world. But since there are numerous countries around the globe where power sharing, in one form or another, has been relatively successful, we must wonder what it is that makes the difference. Why is it that groups and communities in countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands have managed to prosper – not in spite of power sharing, but precisely because of it – while those in countries like Sri Lanka and Macedonia have struggled to move beyond a mere tentative commitment to sharing power? Why is it that Great Britain can move with some success towards greater devolution, while Belgium seemingly moves ever closer to partition?
No one chapter can possibly hope to offer anything more than a partial perspective on these enormously complex and contested issues. However, even partial perspectives can add to our understanding of the challenges that democratic power sharing brings, and help build new solutions to old problems. In this spirit, I want to offer a philosophical perspective on what might best be described as a matter of measurement. We know that when people are engaged in violent conflict, they can measure progress in terms of territory gained or lost. But in countries that have already made the transition to democracy, and are striving to build sustainable power-sharing institutions, progress can be much more difficult to measure. It can be more difficult to measure because the values and standards by which we might assess that progress – values like equality, freedom, inclusion and so forth – are often vaguely defined and badly understood.
There are doubtless many reasons why democratic values sometimes prove so problematic. Perhaps the most basic reason, however, is how to choose from the many different values to which we might conceivably appeal and, correspondingly, how to decide what that choice implies for the course that power sharing ought to follow. The ongoing debate between advocates of consociational versus integrative power sharing provides a clear illustration of what is at issue here: while both recognise the importance of the values of inclusion and moderation to conflict management and resolution, the different weight that each accords to those values results in what are seemingly conflicting institutional prescriptions. Thus, if democratic values really are to provide clear and unambiguous standards by which we might assess the progress of a power-sharing democracy, we need to be explicit about the priority that we give to some values and not to others, as well as about the institutional implications of that choice (see Weale 1999, pp. 40-2). In order to explore what is at issue here, this chapter will consider the account of democratic values advanced by Robert Dahl in his Democracy and Its Critics (1989). While I maintain that this prominent account is plausible in its own right, I will suggest a number of ways in which it needs to be developed with respect to the challenges of sharing power in divided societies.
DAHL ON DEMOCRATIC VALUES
Dahl's account of democratic values – or what he variously refers to as democratic ideas, principles or assumptions – is situated within a much broader project that aims to show that democracy is a better form of government than any of its rivals (Dahl 1989, p. 84 and passim). Here, I will simply assume that, although far from easy to establish and maintain, democracy represents the best hope for divided societies as their members struggle to build a just and stable political society (Sisk 1996, p. 29). Following Dahl, I will also assume that in a democracy citizens should be regarded as equally well qualified, taken all around, to participate in the political process (Dahl 1989, pp. 97-8), an assumption which he elaborates in terms of two key democratic values: intrinsic equality and personal autonomy. To these two values, I will add a third: the value of inclusion. Like Dahl, I take it that the value of inclusion is implicit in the values of intrinsic equality and personal autonomy. However, the value of inclusion is worth considering in its own right since it draws our attention to a number of further questions that are of crucial importance with respect to how democracy should proceed in divided societies.
Intrinsic equality
According to Dahl, virtually all arguments for democracy ultimately fall back, even if only by implication, on the value of intrinsic equality. This value, associated with Kant but defended by philosophers of different schools, holds that each individual has independent moral standing and hence is valuable in his or her own right. It holds, furthermore, that because our moral standing cannot be reduced to that of any other, all individuals are intrinsically equal (Dahl 1989, pp. 84-5; see also Dworkin 1970, p. 11; Weale 1999, p. 58). Although the value of intrinsic equality has proved immensely powerful as an abstract ideal, it has, however, proved notoriously vague in practice. Philosophers disagree about the precise respects in which intrinsic equality should be ascribed to individuals, and about the requirements, if any, that this value places upon democratic practices and institutions. Like Dahl, I agree that the interpretation that seems 'most relevant to the democratic process is expressed in the principle of equal consideration of interests' (Dahl 1989, p. 86). But even here there is scope for disagreement. It is not clear, for instance, whether equal consideration of interests can be secured by affording individuals no more than a standard range of civil and political rights, or whether in some circumstances further institutional measures are also required.
While Dahl's discussion turns on the intrinsic equality of individuals, a key claim in many divided societies is that this value can also be ascribed to groups or communities. As Peter Jones explains, the suggestion here is that because groups can be attributed with a moral standing that is separate from the moral standing attributed to their individual members, they can be treated as if they were valuable in and of themselves (Jones 1999, passim). In Northern Ireland, for example, the term 'parity of esteem' is often used to express the idea that the two conflicting communities, British unionists and Irish nationalists, should be afforded just such a status (see Pollak 1993). Parity of esteem features in the 1998 Agreement as a guiding political principle and, as such, has played an important role in ensuring that 'the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities' have equal standing (Agreement 1998, Constitutional Issues, article 1 (v)). In a similar vein, Quebec governments take it as axiomatic that French culture in Quebec is valuable in its own right and hence should be preserved for the future. To this end, they have introduced a series of stringent language and employment laws that 'actively seek to create future members of the community' (Taylor 1994, p. 58).
From one perspective, institutional guarantees of status can help reduce insecurities and tensions between groups, and hence help lessen the difficulties that they can face in sharing power. But from another perspective, it is difficult to see how the thought that intrinsic equality can be ascribed to groups can be rendered compatible with ascribing intrinsic equality to their individual members (Habermas 1994, pp. 110-11; Barry 2001a, p. 50). Institutionalising groups as if they were valuable in their own right seemingly assumes that groups are static, or that groups mean the same thing to each and every member. This, however, can hardly be the case. The term 'Serb', for example, does not refer to a single entity but to a range of associations and institutions – including the Orthodox Church, political parties and so forth – that offer a range of definitions of what being 'Serbian' means and that act in a range of ways to pursue those definitions, often in competition with one another. How this competition plays itself out will depend on institutional and other contexts: Kosovo Serbs, for example, are not the same as Serbs in the remainder of Serbia. But whatever the context, the point is that group identity is not a property, a set of essential attributes that all members must inevitably possess, but a relationship that members establish and re-establish among themselves (Parekh 1999, p. 68). To think otherwise is to run the risk of trapping people within rigidly defined categories that may be untrue to the ways in which they view themselves and the world about them. In other words, by prioritising one interpretation of a group's identity over others, we may well end up failing to treat some of its individual members as valuable in and of themselves.
Although these considerations might lead us to conclude that groups cannot be valuable in their own right (see, for example, Jones 1998, p. 36), the trouble is that they are often perceived to be intrinsically valuable by their individual members. Like it or not, perceptions matter greatly in divided societies, as does the corresponding ability to act as a collective entity (Rothchild 1986, pp. 87-93; Sisk 1996, pp. 13-14). This is not to suggest that we should never try to change those perceptions – or to 'diminish their pretensions', to use Neil MacCormick's phrase (1996, p. 566) - especially when they work against the maintenance of a just and stable power-sharing democracy. But what we cannot do is discount those perceptions, simply because we think they are misguided. The simple fact of the matter is that Christians and Muslims in Lebanon, Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Walloons and Flemings in Belgium do not simply participate in political life as individual citizens, but also as distinct groups with vital communal interests to protect.
On the face of it, then, the trouble would appear to be this. As Dahl contends, any convincing account of democracy must appeal to the value of intrinsic equality as ascribed to individuals. But since we must also take seriously the fact that groups, too, are often viewed as intrinsically valuable, the danger is that these two imperatives may conflict. The question, therefore, is what to do. Do we simply have to live with this potential tension and muddle through as best we can when conflicts arise? Or perhaps the sensible thing to do is to avoid getting caught up in philosophical debates about the nature and scope of democratic values, favouring instead an incremental, piecemeal approach that allows values to emerge under their own steam (but see Goodin 1982, pp. 3-4 and chapter 2)? In what follows, I want to show that such conclusions are too hasty. Taken on its own, intrinsic equality does appear to come up short as a standard by which to measure the progress of a power-sharing democracy. However, following Dahl, I will argue that when intrinsic equality is combined with a second fundamental democratic value – the value of personal autonomy – the case for appealing to democratic standards becomes much more powerful.
Personal autonomy
According to Dahl, the value of intrinsic equality may be a necessary condition of democracy, but it is not a sufficient condition. It is not sufficient because, although intrinsic equality means that a just democratic system must aspire to treat each citizen's interests with equal consideration (and, empirically speaking, may well be unstable unless it does so), it is simply too weak to justify the basic democratic idea that citizens should, all things considered, have an equal say in the democratic process. As Dahl explains, it would not offend this value if I were to claim that since I know what is best for you, and since I can be trusted to advance your interests as if they were my own, then I ought to speak for both of us (1989, pp. 87-8). In other words, it would not be offensive because although the value of intrinsic equality implies that each person's interest must be treated with equal consideration, it leaves two further questions unanswered: (a) who best judges that interest? and (b) who best safeguards and promotes it?
In response, Dahl argues that a more robust justification for democracy can be constructed by joining the value of intrinsic equality to a second fundamental democratic value. He terms this value the 'assumption of personal autonomy' which straightforwardly says that 'no person is, in general, more likely than yourself to be a better judge of your own good or interest or to act to bring it about' (1989, p. 99). Admittedly, the value of personal autonomy has been the source of some dispute among political philosophers (see, for example, Barry 2001b, pp. 118-23). Yet for present purposes, what is significant is not so much the particular stance that Dahl takes on this value, but that he appears to draw no great distinction between a number of important dimensions of it.
For example, Dahl sometimes seems to suggest that people should be treated as if they are the best judges of their own interest, whereas at other times he seems to suggest that people actually are the best judges of that interest. The former is a normative claim that might rightly play its part in the justification of democracy, whereas the latter is simply an empirical claim that may or may not be true in particular cases. In the present context, what is perhaps more important is that Dahl does not always distinguish clearly between who best judges an interest and who best safeguards and promotes it. Although both feature in his analysis, I contend that the second of these two dimensions is often the more decisive consideration, especially since the realities of modern political life are such that representative democracy is by and large unavoidable (Mill 1991 [1861]).
Interestingly, Dahl's own examples (slavery and the subjugation of women) seem to support this contention (1989, p. 104). While countless other examples could easily have been cited, the important point to note here is that the failure by some to safeguard and promote the interests of others, particularly when those others have (or are perceived to have) a different group identity, has been a principal justification for establishing political systems based on power sharing. Moreover, this failure also helps to explain why the dominant tendency, both in the literature and in practice, has been to call for the institutionalisation of group identities as a key means of protecting members' interests – through, for example, the provision of reserved seats and mutual vetoes within a legislature (see, for example, Lijphart 1977).
Now, it is perhaps easy to forget that this dimension of the value of personal autonomy is not just a matter that affects relations between groups, but also has crucial consequences for relations within groups. Institutionalising group identities may help protect groups from one another and hence afford them a more effective voice within the democratic process. But it may also turn a group's identity into a commodity over which its leaders must compete in order to gain or retain political power. For example, the tendency of so-called 'ethnic entrepreneurs' to mobilise politically for personal gain has been well documented. So, too, has their proclivity for playing upon existing fears and prejudices when more moderate members of their group attempt to make conciliatory gestures towards members of competing groups (see, for example, Horowitz 2001, 2002; Sisk 1996, p. 83). Since this means that moderates must always be aware of losing support to extremists who typically portray themselves as holding true to the group's 'authentic' identity and aspirations, moderates can also be led to treat the group as if it were a monolithic whole.
The danger, therefore, with institutionalising group identities is that it may make it difficult for political leaders to remain responsive to, and hence effectively promote, the full diversity of members' interests. Otherwise put, it may make it difficult for those who do not necessarily conceive of their identity along group lines to have their interests effectively represented. In saying this I do not mean to deny that, in some instances, the only option is to institutionalise competing group identities, especially in contexts where the memories of violent conflict are still fresh and where insecurity is wholly rife. Nor do I mean to deny the rather obvious fact that, for instance, Israeli Arabs, Russian Estonians, Kashmiri Muslims or Chinese Malaysians do not simply seek to engage in political life as individual citizens but also as distinctive groups that have vital collective interests to protect (see Parekh 1999, p. 72). However, I contend that insofar as a commitment to the value of personal autonomy entails a commitment to democracy, those charged with designing power-sharing institutions should ultimately aim towards a very different vision of what power sharing should involve, even if that vision is not obtainable in the shorter term.
(Continues…)
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