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Consociational Democracy and Political Engineering in Postwar Kosovo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2019

Adem Beha
Adem Beha*
Affiliation:
University of Prishtina, Prishtina, Kosovo
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the consociational democracy installed in Kosovo after the war. Starting from the premise that the electoral system is considered one of the key instruments for the engineering of post-conflict societies with deep ethnic divisions, the article analyzes the preferences of local and international actors for the type of electoral system. In particular, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission’s reluctance to organize elections without a prior creation of an institutional base, as well as grand governing coalitions. The mechanisms of consociational democracy aim at addressing elite cooperation between different ethnic communities for building peace and stability in post-conflict societies. But focusing on the intra- and inter-community dynamics of cooperation and confrontation between elites, I conclude that the main obstacle to building a democratic multi-ethnic society in Kosovo and implementing the power-sharing arrangements was the uncertainty over the status of Kosovo.

Keywords

Consociational democracyinstitutionsstabilityelectionsKosovo
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 674 - 689
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019 

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