A Plea for a European Semi-Parliamentary and Semi-Consociational Democracy

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Peters
Keyword(s):  
Consociational Democracy

scholarly journals What Does It Mean to Be a(n Italian) Borderland? Recent Literature on Italy's ‘New Provinces’ of South Tyrol and the Julian March

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Eden McLean
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Minority Populations ◽  
World War ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
South Tyrol ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Role ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
Friuli Venezia Giulia

In the era of the Schengen Area (at least in the days before Covid-19), travel from Munich to Bozen/Bolzano or Ljubljana to Trst/Trieste is a decidedly unremarkable, albeit beautiful, adventure. Just as meaningful as the lack of border controls, travellers find all public signage in both Italian and German (and sometimes Ladin, too) upon arrival in Bozen/Bolzano. Signs in the streets of Trst/Trieste less reliably have Slovene alongside the Italian, but assistance with translation can be found with little difficulty. The Italian autonomous regions ‘with special statutes’ in which these cities reside – Trentino-Alto Adige (South Tyrol) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (the Julian March) – are multilingual territories that, at least on an official level, embrace a multiethnic heritage and reality. In fact, Trentino-Alto Adige's consociational democracy is widely regarded among political scientists as an international role model for how states can successfully protect and give voice to minority populations. Those unfamiliar with the more recent history of these regions might be surprised to learn of these avowedly multiethnic political and cultural structures. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, the regions’ two states – Austria-Hungary until 1919 and thereafter Italy – employed the ‘nationality principle’ to define policies and populations in these territories. As in most of Europe at the time, sovereignty was increasingly predicated on the contemporary ideal of the nation state, in which borders, ethnicity, language and citizenship were all bound together. Of course, as a multiethnic empire, Austria-Hungary was much more concerned about centralising state authority (and then fighting a world war) than national homogeneity, while Italy's nationalisation campaign in the interwar period became fundamental to its presence in the new provinces. Still, both states sought to classify and ultimately to control their border populations by privileging ethnolinguistic categories of citizenship.

Issues and Party Competition in the Netherlands

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEES AARTS ◽  
STUART ELAINE MACDONALD ◽  
GEORGE RABINOWITZ
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Dutch Politics ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
Party Choice ◽  
Low Threshold ◽  
Party Strength ◽  
Substantial Change ◽  
Voting Models ◽  
Homogeneous Culture

The Netherlands represents the prototypic case of a consociational democracy; in addition, the Dutch system has an extremely low threshold for obtaining representation in the legislature, making it open to challengers of any political persuasion. This article has two explicit goals: to compare two models of issue-based party choice, the directional and proximity models; and to understand the changing nature of electoral competition in the Netherlands. The article's analytic focus is the elections of 1971, 1986, and 1994. These elections, the only ones for which appropriate data are available for testing the issue theories, represent important points in the historical sequence. Tests of the alternate issue voting models generally favor directional over proximity theory. The broader analysis suggests substantial change in Dutch politics, away from the tight structuring of subcultural allegiances to a more politically homogeneous culture in which party strength appears rather fluid.

scholarly journals Consociational Democracy

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 509-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudy B. Andeweg
Keyword(s):  
Consociational Democracy

Secularism and Ethno-religious Nationalist Hegemony in Malaysia

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-249
Author(s):  
Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid ◽  
Zairil Khir Johari
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Set Up

Chapter 8 investigates the efforts of parties to navigate their way within the dominant discourse of hegemonic ethnoreligious nationalism in Malaysia. It discusses the way politics has addressed the question of identity—a corollary of the nation’s colonial experience and segmented socio-economic set-up. The post-Independence practice of consociational democracy served to cement ethnic-oriented politics, which blended with religious boundaries of Malaysia’s plural society. Since the late 1990s, however, emerging ‘new politics’ characterised by middle class–based civil activism has gradually shifted the political narrative away from issues of identity to universal values such as social justice, good governance and human rights. In this light, the chapter discusses the role of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), Malaysia’s largest opposition party in Parliament.

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