Power-sharing and the quality of democracy

Daniel Bochsler, Andreas Juon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Mounting evidence indicates that power-sharing supports transitions to democracy. However, the resulting quality of democracy remains understudied. Given the increasing global spread of power-sharing, this is a crucial oversight, as prominent critiques accuse it of a number of critical deficiencies. The present article advances this literature in two ways. First, it offers a comprehensive discussion of how power-sharing affects the quality of democracy, going beyond specific individual aspects of democracy. It argues that power-sharing advances some of these aspects while having drawbacks for others. Second, it offers the first systematic, large-N analysis of the frequently discussed consequences of power-sharing for the quality of democracy. It relies on a dataset measuring the quality of democracy in 70 countries worldwide, combining it with new fine-grained data for institutional power-sharing. The results indicate that power-sharing is a complex institutional model which privileges a particular set of democratic actors and processes, while deemphasizing others.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)411-430
Number of pages20
JournalEuropean Political Science Review
Volume13
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Nov 2021

Keywords

  • Consociationalism
  • Democracy
  • Liberal rights
  • Power-sharing
  • Quality of democracy

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