Consociational Federalism: Political Elites, Referendums and Constitutional Amendments in Divided Societies

This work focuses on constitutional amendments in divided societies. It analyzes and compares the ways in which constitutional amendment procedures are organized in states with significant linguistic, national or cultural cleavages.To explore this issue, we mobilize the theoretical framework of consociational federalism. The latter is a particular form of federalism that takes shape in accordance with the teachings and values of consociationalism (or consociational democracy). Consociational federalism is particularly relevant to study constitutional amendment procedures in divided societies, since it recommends a set of institutional arrangements and normative proposals designed to facilitate the achievement and maintenance of political stability in states marked by significant cleavages. Using a comparative approach, we study the constitutional amendment procedures in place in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, while drawing on a number of other systems Read more