Download - Florian Bieber, Reconceptualizing the Study of Power-Sharing

7/27/2019 Florian Bieber, Reconceptualizing the Study of Power-Sharing

1/11

Reconceptualizing the Study of Power-Sharing


by Florian Bieber

Source:

Southeast Europe.Journal of Politics and Society (Sdosteuropa. Zeitschrift fr Politik undGesellschaft), issue: 04 / 2012, pages: 526-535, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/


2/11

FLORIAN BIEBER


Abstract.This article argues for re-conceptualizing the study of power-sharing in post-conictstate-building. In Southeastern Europe, as elsewhere, power-sharing has become the most

widely employed approach to accommodate the competing demands of ethnonational groups.As a result, the Southeastern European cases of power-sharing have been important for thelarger study of power-sharing and post-conict state-building. This article argues that inorder to draw meaningful conclusions from these cases, the study of power-sharing needs tobecome more multi-dimensional, moving away from the study of formal institutional rules toinclude historical context, local debates, the strength of the state and the performance of theformal procedures to derive a more meaningful picture of power-sharing. Such reconceptu-alization will not just enhance our understanding of power-sharing in Southeastern Europe,but contribute more broadly to a more nuanced debate on this subject.

Florian Bieberis Professor for Southeast European Studies and Director of the Centre for

Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz.

Since the collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars, over a dozen new statesand para-states have been built and wiped out on the territory of the socialistfederation. Today, there are seven post-Yugoslav states, comprising all the for-mer republics plus Kosovo. The states that were proclaimed, and which werebased on ethno-territorial lines but did not follow the republican boundariesof Yugoslavia, remain phantom states, like the Iliridain Western Macedonia, orsuered military defeat, such as the Republika Srpska Krajinain Croatia. At best,they could establish themselves as an autonomous region or entity such as theRepublika Srpskawithin Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The new states were established either as (aspiring) nation states with varyingdegrees of the exclusion of others or as multinational power-sharing systems.The laer was not the result of domestic negotiations, but rather of externalimposition. In eect, the default model of external state-building has beenpower-sharing. Not only states that came into existence, but also numerousunimplemented plans, such as the Carrington Plan for Yugoslavia in 1991or the Z4 Plan for Croatia in 1995 or temporary political selements such asthe short-lived State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (2003-2006), contained

Sdosteuropa 60 (2012), H. 4, S. 526-535

RESEARCH ON STATEBUILDING


3/11

527Reconceptualizing the Study of Power-Sharing

strong power-sharing features, such as veto rights, autonomy and proportionalrepresentation.

Today three political regimes in Southeastern Europe display features of

power-sharing, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Thesehave been shaping academic debates on consociationalism for the past decadewell beyond Southeastern Europe. Among proponents of power-sharing, thesecases, in conjunction with other examples of post-conict power-sharing, haveadvanced the inclusion of third parties, as an integral aspect in the establish-ment and maintenance of power-sharing systems.

Thus, international organizations in particular have taken on a supervisoryfunction and have been institutionally embedded into the system, through, forexample, the inclusion of international judges in the Constitutional Court of

Bosnia and Herzegovina. The power-sharing systems, drafted largely by externalplanners, have been labelled complex power-sharing because the institutionaltools employed extend beyond the narrow understanding of consociationalismas dened by Arend Lijphart in his studies on West European Consociationalsystems. Complex power-sharing also incorporate forms of territorial autonomyand centripetal tools.1

Critics of power-sharing have, on the other hand, taken the performance ofpower-sharing systems in Southeastern Europe as evidence of the inappropriate-ness of power-sharing and its role as part of the problem by facilitating state

capture and the ethnication of society and the political system.2

In response to the obvious aws of rigid power-sharing systems, such as theone in Bosnia and Herzegovina, advocates of consociationalism have begundistinguishing between liberal and corporate consociations to allow dierentia-tion between systems which are rigid and reify ethnicity and those which canco-exist with liberal democracy.3

In the context of the experience of power-sharing in Southeastern Europe,I will argue that some aspects have been neglected in the larger scholarlydebates that merit our aention. Rather than just seeing the cases as evidence

for or against power-sharing, which is not a very fruitful venue of inquiry, thecases need rst to be properly understood. Rather than just noting that context

1 Stefan W, Complex Power-Sharing and the Centrality of Territorial Self-Governancein Contemporary Conict Selements, Ethnopolitics, 8 (2009), n. 1, 27-45, 29.

2 Donald R / Philip R, Dilemma of State-Building in Divided Societies, in: (eds.), Sustainable Peace. Power and Democracy after Civil War. Ithaca/NY, London2005, 1-26, 5; Anna K. J, Power-Sharing: Former Enemies in Joint Government, in: AnnaK. J / Timothy D. S (eds.), From War to Democracy. Dilemmas of Peacebuilding.Cambridge 2008, 105-134.

3 Brendan OL, Debating Consociational Politics: Normative and Explanatory Argu-

ments, in: Sid N (ed.), From Power-Sharing to Democracy: Post-Conict Institutions inEthnically Divided Societies. Montreal, Kingston 2005, 3-43.

Accessvia CEEOL NL Germany


4/11

528 Florian Bieber

maers or that one needs to know more, this article argues that there are vestrands of knowledge when it comes to power-sharing that have been neglectedand need to be brought back into the study of power-sharing and institutional

design in order to assess these institutional solutions and derive informed casestudies for larger scale comparisons.

Historical Context

Recent literature on institutional design has been largely devoid of historicalcontext. This is the result of the evolution of the debate on consociationalism,which originally focused extensively on historical context. They sought to ex-plain the origins of power-sharing institutions through an elite bargain and were

interested in the broader social traditions of compromise and accommodation.This focus has been abandoned due to a shift in the debate from consociation-alism as an empirical description of the political system of a set of countries(commonly Benelux, Austria and Swierland) towards a prescriptive approach.4I believe that historical experience with dierent forms of compromise andaccommodation in former Yugoslavia is necessary for our understanding ofcontemporary institutions, highlighting the need to bring the past into theanalysis of power-sharing.

Yugoslavia itself had strong power-sharing features, as did some of its re-

publics, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina and to some degree Croatia. Dur-ing the rst decades of socialist rule, the institutions of power-sharing werenot necessarily matched by power-sharing practices, as the ruling elites of therepublics were not motivated by ethnicity or even primary republican loyalty,but sought the devolution of the system as a tool to secure legitimacy. How-ever, by the 1970s and especially after Titos death, the system had gravitatedtowards power-sharing with strong eective veto rights of the republics anda weak centre, with republican interests becoming a more prominent featureof the system.

Thus, the post-war institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Mace-donia may have been drawn up by international mediators, but the institutionsthey set up often resemble the Yugoslav ones, and institutional practices, suchas the state presidency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have to be seen not just interms of ruptures, but also in terms of continuities. As Donald Horowi notedin 1993:

4 The importance of historical context has been part of the debate of consociationalism,

see Arend L, The Evolution of Consociational Theory and Consociational Practices,1965-2000,Acta Politica(2002), special issue, n. 1/2, 11-22, 14.


5/11


One of the ironies of democratic development is that, as the future is being planned,the past intrudes with increasing severity. In this eld, there is no such thing asa fresh start.5

The impact of past experience is hard to quantify, which is one of the reasonsthat the past has often been ignored in the literature on power-sharing. Thelack of experience of cooperation and of power-sharing institutions is oftensaid to be an obstacle for seing up power-sharing systems. In this sense, thepost-Yugoslav cases of power-sharing would be expected to do beer thanelsewhere. However, this experience is not always an obvious asset. The failureof Yugoslavia and its break-up have also been a source of scepticism towardspower-sharing and federalism. Rather than reducing the past to a benecial ornegative factor with regards to power-sharing, it needs to be considered in its

complexity.

State Strength

Power-Sharing as part of a post-conict state-building strategy also needs to beunderstood in the context of state capacity, state contestation and state strength.Without these dimensions, there is a risk that power-sharing is decontextualizedfrom other features of the state. In his work on state-building, Francis Fukuyamaargued that states should be considered in terms of both their strength, i.e. the

ability to enforce policies and the scope of their functions, i.e. the ambitionof the state in terms of the elds in which it engages (i.e. social services, healthcare).6It maers profoundly whether the state that is governed through power-sharing is a state with large enough scope and sucient strength, i.e. whoseimpact is widely felt and with the capacity to take decisions in a large numberof policy areas. or whether the state is a state with few competences and pos-sibly a limited reach and where, in eect, lile power is shared.

Here the cases from Southeastern Europe raise interesting questions. At rstglance, a state with limited scope would seem to have greater chances of faring

well as a power-sharing system, as there are fewer points of contestation andthus fewer opportunities for blockage in the decision making process. An ex-ample for such a weak state in terms of scope (and strength) would be Lebanon,which has privatized many state functions. In Southeastern Europe, Bosniaand Herzegovina and the short-lived State Union of Serbia and Montenegroare examples of weak states governed by power-sharing. The dissolution ofthe laer and the perpetual crisis of the former suggest that the combination of

5 Donald L. H, The Challenge of Ethnic Conict. Democracy in Divided Societies,Journal of Democracy4 (1993), n. 4, 18-37, 23.

6 Francis F, The Imperative of State-Building,Journal of Democracy15 (2004), n. 2,17-31, 21f.


6/11

530 Florian Bieber

a minimal state and power-sharing does not necessarily lead to stable politicalarrangement. In fact, both cases lack both scope that is suciently broad withthe capacity to enforce an already severely limited leverage.

This is for two reasons. First, most citizens in Southeastern Europe expecta state to have a broad scope, based on the socialist experience. A limited scopereduces the ability of citizens to identify with the state and empowers alterna-tive sub-state structures that provide health care, social services, housing, etc.For example, a 2007 UNDP-commissioned study in Bosnia and Herzegovinafound strong support for wider involvement by the institutions of the state.Among citizens who cite a decent standard of living as the greatest priority,96.5 % consider the state responsible for providing it.7

Second, EU enlargement in Southeastern Europe interjects a particular dy-

namic where states are required to have a high level of strength (even if notnecessarily scope) to implement policies and laws and enforce rules. Thus,despite a variety of political systems that can be found among EU memberstates (from centralized unitary states to federal systems), they share at leastthe requirement of state strength.8

Rather than conclusively answering the question about the interrelationshipbetween state capacity and ambition and power-sharing, these points shouldhighlight that there is a great variety of states in terms of their ability to enforcerules and their ambition as to which spheres they govern. The states that emerge

from such a dynamic have varying eects on power-sharing systems; therefore,when considering power-sharing systems without looking at the powers thatare shared and how these powers can be enforced (or not), care must be takennot to stop short of determining the crux of the maer for all maers relatedto power-sharing.

Performance

We still have an empirically incomplete picture of power-sharing in South-

eastern Europe (and also in many other cases). Institutional design is oftenviewed as something opaque where we explore the institutional set up on oneside and the state of interethnic relations on the other. However, we need tounderstand in greater detail how these institutions work in practice and whatthis tells us about their impact on interethnic relations.

7 UNDP/Oxford Research International, The Silent Majority Speaks. Snapshots of Todayand Visions of the Future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Main Report, Quantitative Survey.Sarajevo 2007, 29, available at . All cited internetsources were last accessed on 06.12.2012.

8 See more on this in Florian B, Building Impossible States? State-Building Strategiesand EU Membership in the Western Balkans, Europe-Asia Studies63 (2011), n. 10, 1783-1802.


7/11


This can be best illustrated by the use of veto powers. Veto powers constituteone of the essential and yet most controversial features of power-sharing. Smallergroups are able to block all or just certain decisions if they appear to negatively

aect the interests of these groups. Lijphart called them the ultimate weaponthat minorities need to protect their vital interests.9Schneckener distinguishesbetween direct, indirect and delaying veto powers in consociational systems.10

Bosnia has direct veto powers by allowing the representatives of the constitu-ent peoples in parliament to evoke a violation of the vital interests of thecommunity. Macedonia has an indirect veto right as certain key laws requirenot just a simple parliamentary majority, but also a majority of votes from thenon-majority communities, which de facto gives the Albanian community thepossibility to block legislation. In Kosovo, similarly, certain laws require both

consent from the majority in parliament and the majority of non-dominantcommunities, giving the Serb community the possibility to veto certain laws.Amidst the perception that ethnicity and blockage in the political system go

together, one would expect wide usage of these veto mechanisms by smallercommunities to block decisions. However, the reality is quite dierent. InBosnia, the vital interest veto has been used only in four cases between 1996when the Dayton constitution came into eect and 2011. Similarly, veto rightsin Macedonia and Kosovo have not led to the blockage of legislation in parlia-ment since these mechanisms came into eect (in 2001 and 2008 respectively).

The reasons for the limited use of veto powers dier. In Bosnia and Herze-govina, the main veto player, the Republika Srpska, possesses a more eectiveveto mechanism, namely the ability to block any legislation at any reading inboth chambers of parliament if two thirds or more of the MPs from either theRepublika Srpska or the Federation do not support the law. Unlike the vitalinterest veto, this mechanism is not subject to a mediation procedure and reviewby the constitutional court. Thus, 52.3 % of all legislative acts in the Bosnianparliament between 1996 and 2007 failed due to the entity veto.11In Macedoniaand Kosovo, on the other hand, the inclusion of a minority party in government

meant that legal acts in parliament had support of the parliamentary majorityand thus the veto mechanism had lile relevance in comparison to informalpractices of cooperation in the executive branch.

9 Arend L, The Power-Sharing Approach, in: Joseph M (ed.), Conict andPeacemaking in Multiethnic Societies. New York 1991, 491-510, 495.

10 Ulrich S, Making Power-Sharing Work: Lessons from Successes and Failuresin Ethnic Conict Regulation,Journal of Peace-Research39 (2002), n. 2, 203-228, 221f.

11 Kasim T / Merima T / Ivana M, Evaluacija procesa odluivanja u Par-lamentarnoj Skuptini BiH, 1996-2007. godine, in: Kasim T et al., Proces odluivanja uParlamentarnoj Skuptini Bosne i Hercegovine. Stanje komparativna rjeenja prijedlozi.

Sarajevo 2009 (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, BiH), 77-100, 89, available at .


8/11

532 Florian Bieber

As a result, we can observe a signicant discrepancy between the formalinstitutional set-up and expected dynamics of a consociational system and theempirically observed reality. This highlights the need to understand not just

the formal institutional structures but also the practice, often based on informalpaerns that are not easily mapped out in formal decisions and documents.

Institutional Innovation

Institutional design rarely follows academic debates, and scholarly advice isoften ignored. The global prevalence of power-sharing systems in internation-ally brokered peace plans has less to do with academic interest or advocacy andmore with improvisation of international mediators and, at best, learning from

previous peace plans. Very often, the peace agreements seem to follow manyof the prescriptions of power-sharing, such as the idea of representation of allmajor groups, veto rights, a grand coalition, and group autonomy.

However, there have been some additional aspects that have evolved inpractice that have not yet been appropriately captured by most scholars ofpower-sharing, especially in light of the emerging concept of complex power-sharing. When considering that this argues for multidimensional institutionalarrangements, including international involvement and more features thanthe original West European models of consociationalism, these institutional

innovations are signicant.Here, two related features in Macedonia and Kosovo are noteworthy. In theabsence of formal territorial autonomy or full cultural autonomy for minoritygroups, both countries devolved powers to municipalities which were re-drawnto empower minority groups at the local level. Whereas in Kosovo new mu-nicipal boundaries formalized existing territorial segregation, in Macedonianew municipalities were established to ensure that in contested regions localminorities constitute at least 20 % of the population of the municipality in orderto enjoy certain rights. Thus, in addition to decentralization, there are municipal

mechanisms of minority inclusion that could be considered to be local power-sharing. Overall, their performance has been weak because local authoritieshave limited capacities and they are beset by a lack of oversight by the stateas well as the activities of international players. Similarly, decentralization inMacedonia has been undermined by a strong central government using its dis-cretion in funding municipalities. Thus, the Ohrid Framework Agreement hasbeen formally implemented, but the inability of municipalities to secure theirown funding reduced their ability in practice to act autonomously.12

12 See Aisling L, Between the Integration and Accommodation of Ethnic Dierence:

Municipal Decentralization in the Republic of Macedonia,Journal on Ethnopolitics and MinorityIssues in Europe12 (2012).


9/11


These diculties aside, the inclusion of municipalities both as a dimensionof decentralization and a locus of power-sharing marks a signicant additionto the scope of power-sharing and the conventional state-centred approach of

scholarship on power-sharing.

The Strange Gap between Local and InternationalDebates on Power Sharing

Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia have been discussed by scholars eithercritical or supportive of international eorts to strengthen post-war states asexamples of power-sharing and state-building ever since their establishment.However, these studies have often been devoid of voices from the countries

in question. The insider experience on how these institutions are perceived,experienced, and function in practice, as well as domestic controversies, do notshape international academic debates. By contrast, key international texts onpower-sharing are usually included in domestic debates but more recent studiesof the countries are generally not widely read, translated or debated. In eect,there are two parallel debates about power-sharing and state-building going onin Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and to a lesser degree Kosovo.

The cause for this gap is in part of a technical nature: few scholars of power-sharing would know the languages in question, especially if looking at casesin a broader comparative perspective. Similarly, few scholars from the region,unless they have studied or worked abroad, publish in English-language jour-nals or books. Furthermore, international scholarship on state-building andpower-sharing is not widely available in the region and few texts have beentranslated. To illustrate this dynamic, we shall briey look at the Bosnian debateon power-sharing.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the debates only began after a ten-year delay.The late debate on power-sharing in Bosnia might at rst seem surprising,considering the profound impact that the new political system had. Only inthe mid-2000s, ten years after Dayton, did Bosnia come to be analysed and de-

bated from the perspective of political systems in general, and power-sharingin particular.13The debate was triggered by the rst (internationally negotiated)eorts to amend the constitution in late 2005 and in early 2006, which narrowlyfailed in the Bosnian parliament in April 2006. Although this process was notconducted publicly and Bosnian scholars had a marginal role, it drew aentionfor the rst time to the technical details of the political system and the optionsfor change.14

13Esad Z, Vladavina Konsensusom. Sarajevo 2006. Zgodi discusses consensusdemocracy and its relevance for Bosnia. However, the book makes only scant reference to

international academic debates on power-sharing or consociationalism.14 Ivan L, Silajdi i HDZ 1990, Dani, 05.05.2006.


10/11

534 Florian Bieber

A second trigger was the rst major book in Croatian (Serbian/Bosnian) onBosnian consociationalism wrien by the well-known Croatian political scientistand commentator Mirjana Kasapovi.15While a number of Western scholars

and Bosnian scholars had previously wrien in Western languages about theconsociational system in Bosnia, Kasapovis book was the rst such studywidely accessible to a Bosnian readership. The debate that ensued focused bothon the descriptive and the prescriptive aspects of power-sharing.16

Kasapovi argues in her book not only that power-sharing is an appropriatepolitical system for Bosnia, but also that the Dayton system was an incompletepower-sharing system. She argues that historically, social and political life inBosnia has been organised along religious and later ethnonational lines. Themain change of the 1992-1995 war has been, in her mind, the territorialisation

of ethnonationalist aliation, reducing the choices for a political system. Thus,Bosnia and Herzegovina is not sustainable as a non-ethnic or administrativefederation, nor can its ethnic groups be satised with some type of unemotionalregionalism implemented in some Western nation state.17

The Dayton arrangement in the eyes of Kasapovi is an imperfect consociation asit does not aribute equal group rights. Serbs and Bosniaks enjoy de facto territo-rial autonomy, whereas Croats are only a minority in one entity, the Federationof Bosnia and Herzegovina.18In particular, the laer suggestion, implying theestablishment of a third (Croat) entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been the

source of controversy in the debates and also tainted the term consociation asbeing a concept associated with the position of Croat national parties.

Kasapovis position found supporters and critics in Bosnia and Herzegovina.Critics focused on three aspects. First, some scholars and commentators chal-lenged the characterization of Bosnia as a society shaped by deep religious andethnonational divisions pre-dating the Dayton accords. Second, others, includingthe Swiss political scientist of Bosnian origin Nenad Stojanovi, challenged theview that Bosnia was not a fully-edged consociational system, arguing insteadthat Bosnia is an example of consociationalism par excellence.19

Third, critics focused on whether consociationalism is an appropriate modelfor Bosnia at all. The most articulate critique came from Azim Mujki, from the

15Mirjana K, Bosna i Hercegovina: podijeljeno drutvo i nestabilna drava.Zagreb 2005.

16 The debate took place primarily in the weekly Dani, the daily Oslobodjenje and theacademic magazine Status.

17 Mirjana K, Bosna i Hercegovina: Deset godina nakon Daytona, Status(2006),n. 9, 44-73, 70.

18 Ibid., 68f.19 Interview with Nenad S, Uredjenje BiH i vicarske je neuporedivo, Slobodna

Bosna, 18.10.2007, 34. A similar view is experessed by Zlatko H, Kako izvan granicamiletske paradigme, Nezavisne novine, 27.09.2007, 10.


11/11


Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo. He argued that theethnocratic system governing Bosnia and Herzegovina is incompatible withliberal democracy. Besides arguing that the state should practice benign indif-

ference towards ethnonational identity, he also suggests that consociationalismencompasses an ethnofederal arrangement of the country that is a prelude tostate disintegration. He explicitly rejects the possibility that consociationalismcan tame nationalism and rather draws on Roger Brubaker to argue that theconsociational system is reifying exclusionary ethnic practices.20

In addition to this largely normative debate on power-sharing, empiricalstudies have shed a dierent light on the functioning of institutions, such asthe aforementioned analysis of the use of vetoes.21Through this brief discus-sion of inner-Bosnian debates and studies of power-sharing, I argue that the

state-building and power-sharing literature needs to move away from studyingcountries without also including local scholarship on power-sharing and assess-ing the perception of power-sharing in the domestic academic arena.

The domestic understandings of power-sharing are fundamental not onlyin providing empirical richness to any study of power-sharing, but also forexploring normative perceptions of power-sharing in its particular context.As a result, the domestic debates about power-sharing do not just enrich thelarger discussions about this system of governments, but they also shed lighton its legitimacy and the practices of power-sharing that are often substantially

dierent from the mere legal framework.These ve dimensions of studying power-sharing in Southeastern Europehelp to broaden the understanding of state-building and particular institutionalapproaches by including the context, from the historical to the academic. Thisarticle thus suggests that there is a need for greater academic cooperationbetween researchers with local knowledge, including languages, debates, andbackground and scholars with a comparative focus.

20 Asim M, We, the Citizen of Ethnopolis. Sarajevo 2008, 149-183.21 T / T / M, Evaluacija procesa odluivanja (above fn. 11).

Download - Florian Bieber, Reconceptualizing the Study of Power-Sharing

Top Related