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■ IMAD SALAMEY TheCrisisofConsociational DemocracyinBeirut C O N F L I C T T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A N D S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y T H R O U G H E L E C T O R A L R E F O R M The pursuit of inter- and intragenerational equity across communities is essential for the achievement of social stability over time and, consequently, sustainability.1 In cities whose communities are deeply divided, equity becomes crucially a political question where power-sharing arrangements among the various residing groups determine to a large extent the prospect of social stability and prospective sustainability. Pursuing appropriate urban resource and environmental management strategies becomes secondary to achieving political equity. As the case of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in Iraq demonstrates, the agreement over appropriate political arrangement that provides an accommodating and equitable ethno-sectarian and sustainable coexistence remains a priori. Most multiethnic, multiconfessional cities, particularly those in developing countries undergoing massive urbanization and demographic shifts, are confronting significant sociopolitical stress.2 With urbanization claiming the majority of many developing countries’ populations, the fate of nations becomes essentially tied to urban prosperity.3 Governments’ failing urban policies and inadequate state power-sharing arrangements may drive communities to develop primordial forms of informal urban networks, resorting to ethnic and sectarian mobilizations.4 The result can deepen the division between urban communities while fueling ethno-sectarian competition over resources and political control, often radicalizing ethno-sectarian and separatist sentiments.5 This has been manifested throughout many world multiethnic cities, whether in Sarajevo, Kirkuk, Belfast, Baghdad, Beirut, Jerusalem, Kabul, or Islam Abad. Deteriorating social and national cohesion is transcended at inter- and intragenerational levels, hindering the achievement of urban inter- and intragenerational equity or the establishment of accommodating ethno-sectarian arrangements that are essential for urban, and in turn, national sustainability. Can urban democracy provide the appropriate power-sharing arrangement capable of satisfying the aspirations of the different groups and achieving social stability? The answer to this 178 ■ IMAD SALAMEY question varies widely along ideological perspectives. Proponents of democracy themselves vary along two prominent but opposed political structural propositions that have been advanced as appropriate arrangements for deeply divided communities in a plural society. The first is associated with the “integrationist” or “citizenship” nationalist, realist, and classic liberal theory models that advocate the submergence of divided communities into one within the nation-state while removing preferences to any particular religious, sectarian, ethnic, regional, or racial affiliation, thus achieving equal rights and sustainable relations. The second is associated with the multicultural and neoliberal theory that highlights diversity and stresses the importance of preserving ethnic, sectarian, religious, regional, gender, and racial particularities and necessitates differential political arrangements to citizen groups as a means of achieving sustainable community relations.6 In essence, the division between both perspectives entails differences regarding the politicization or depoliticization of communities. Modern experiences utilizing both paradigms have met with relative success. In deeply divided and pluralistic cities, historic grievances, geopolitical contexts, differential group sizes, countries’ economic development, resources and services allocation, social mobility, demographic changes, linguistic and religious makeup, communities’ spatial distribution, and state electoral systems have been among the many factors associated with the success of one political model over another. The debate goes on between proponents of the “citizenship” and “pluralism” perspectives as to the choice model for sustainable polity. Arendt Lijphart, the founding father of “consociational democracy,” summoned both paradigms as a situational choice. He suggested that whether a society is ethnically homogeneous or heterogeneous necessitates differential power-sharing arrangement strategies. For a homogeneous society, a majoritarian system is natural, while for an ethnically heterogeneous society more delegated power-sharing arrangements are required. For a diverse or heterogeneous society that is deeply divided, Lijphart suggested consociational democracy as a suitable model.7 He defined consociationalism as “government by elite cartel designed to turn a democracy with a fragmented political culture into a stable democracy.”8 Thus, Lijphart initiated the foundation of ethnodemocracy and strongly supported and devised a plural power-sharing model for a deeply divided society as a sustainable strategy. Ideally, power distribution envisioned by Lijphart, as has been the case in Lebanon, necessitates agreements between the various ethnic groups and a continuous process of negotiation until consensus is reached. Yet, Lijphart’s consociational democratic model for divided societies has undergone increasing challenges...

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