Explore the vast range of titles available.

The power-sharing literature lacks a review that synthesizes its findings, despite spanning over 50 years since Arend Lijphart published his seminal 1969 article ‘Consociational Democracy’. This review article contributes to the literature by introducing and analysing an original dataset, the Power Sharing Articles Dataset, which extracts data on 23 variables from 373 academic articles published between 1969 and 2018. The power-sharing literature, our analysis shows, has witnessed a boom in publications in the last two decades, more than the average publication rate in the social sciences. This review offers a synthesis of how power sharing is theorized, operationalized and studied. We demonstrate that power sharing has generally positive effects, regardless of institutional set-up, post-conflict transitional character and world region. Furthermore, we highlight structural factors that are mostly associated with the success of power sharing. Finally, the review develops a research agenda to guide future scholarly work on power sharing.

Movements and groups abound in modern society. Sometimes, a movement or group succeeds in mobilizing a large section of the population and thoroughly knitting it together, by building a pervasive subculture and by setting up a vast interrelated network of organizations, resulting in a seemingly impenetrable and powerful bloc. This happened to different degrees in most Western countries, including the United States and Canada. It is also occurring now in the non-Western world. Belgium and the Netherlands were particularly affected by extensive bloc building. In both countries, Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal pillars – plus a Protestant pillar in the Netherlands – divided society and determined political and social life from the late nineteenth century up to the late twentieth century. As a consequence, the phenomenon has been studied there more thoroughly and under a specific label, ‘verzuiling’ (pillarization). The first section of this article offers a review of pillarization theory in the Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere. In the second part, to advance the study of organized blocs all over the world, I argue for a broad, international perspective on pillarization against the particularistic tendencies of many pillarization researchers, especially in the Netherlands. In a shorter third part, I address the isolation of pillarization theory from general sociological theory. Self-reinforcing processes of segregation and organization in large population groupings were and still are a common feature in the modern world. They have resulted in more than one case in divided societies.

The conventional understanding of the nation within social psychology is as a category of people or \"imagined community.\" However, work within the discursive tradition shows that citizens tend to discuss nationhood in a variety of modes, including the use of nonhuman categories such as references to the physical landscape of the country. This article aims to give a more comprehensive overview of how young people understand the Northern Irish identity, a new and potentially inclusive national category in a divided society, and how politicians articulate it in rhetoric. In Study 1, students (N = 286) discussed this identity in 44 peer-led focus groups. Thematic analysis of their discussions shows four distinct ways in which it is constructed: as a distinctive people, as an identity claim, as a \"hot\" political project, and as a \"cold\" or banal indicator of place. In Study 2, Members of the Legislative Assembly at Stormont (N = 49) responded to open-ended questions about the Northern Irish identity. Each of the parties used different conceptualizations for rhetorical effect. These results give a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of national identity and its ability to promote political agendas.

Civic political parties in divided societies occupy an ambiguous place in the power-sharing literature. Scholarship tends to focus on ethnic parties and assumes civic actors to be marginal. The empirical reality tells a different story: civic parties have contributed to peace, stability and democracy in some of the world’s most deeply divided places by playing a mediating role, acting as a moderating force and representing otherwise marginalised groups. Drawing from interviews with representatives from civic parties, ethnic parties and civil society in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and broader institutional analysis, I argue that civic parties’ survival can be explained by the fact that they meet therein not only with barriers but also critical openings. They adapt to this opportunity structure, with different party types developing under different forms of power-sharing. In illustrating the relationship between governance models and civic parties, this article underlines the importance of post-settlement institutional design.

The stability of divided societies is an important and recurring concern in political science research. It has been suggested that distinctive socialization processes in the different regions of divided societies will lead to diverging trends in public opinion. Therefore, we investigate trends in public opinion on key political issues and attitudes in three divided societies: Canada (Quebec), the United Kingdom (Scotland) and Spain (Catalonia). Using over two decades of survey data, we show that these distinct communities indeed have a particular ideological profile but also that there is no indication these differences become larger over time. In other words, we do not observe any evidence for an increasing lack of public opinion coherence in these divided societies. We conclude with some observations on why divergence could not be observed at the level of public opinion but might still be present at the level of party elites.

This study attempts to measure the deliberation quality of the Democratic Opening Debates in the Turkish Parliament through the Discourse Quality Index (DQI). The majority of studies have been conducted on the deliberation quality of relatively homogenised and developed Western societies and on less conflictual or contentious topics. In these countries, democratic culture has been institutionalised. On the contrary, Turkey is a developing country and has been going through an ethnic conflict involving violence for many decades. Thus, this case study aims to make an original contribution to empirical deliberation studies. Researchers have examined the 88-page stenographic records of the Democratic Opening Debates and put forward a DQI score. According to the findings, the controversial debates fulfill only 40% of high-level deliberative discourse ethics. This result demonstrates that the ideal deliberation process does not exist in Turkey even though a convenient atmosphere is created for deliberations by means of official procedures. Ethnic division in the society has a profoundly negative impact on the quality of deliberations.

This article explores collective identity frames and discursive strategies employed by social movement actors mobilizing in ethnically divided societies, a context where ethnicity constitutes the primary collective category of identification. By using Bosnia and Herzegovina as a case study, it analyzes movement framing in three waves of social protests that occurred in the country in the last decade. Specifically, it investigates the diverse ways in which movement leaders tackled ethnicity in their discourses. The article shows that movement leaders’ narratives rested, respectively, on the primacy of human and citizenship rights, a common feeling of deprivation, and victimhood. Their approach toward ethnicity, however, differed in each wave. Ethnicity was openly rejected in 2013, avoided and not openly contested in 2014, and accepted and approached as an opportunity to bring further support to the movement in 2018. The article highlights that ethnicity can be tackled differently by social movement actors mobilizing on nonethnic grounds in divided societies, and that it might constitute a vantage point for social mobilization rather than a drawback, contributing to raising transversal solidarity.

Civil society (CS) strengthening is central to peacebuilding policies for divided, post-war societies. However, it has been criticized for creating internationalized organizations without local backing, unable to represent citizens’interests. Based on in-depth empirical research in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article focuses on the legitimacy of CS organizations (CSOs). It explores why legitimacy for donors rarely accompanies legitimacy for local actors. We hypothesized that whilst donors avoid supporting mono-ethnic organizations, seen as problematic for peacebuilding, ‘ethnicness’may provide local legitimacy. However, our analysis of CSOs’ethnicness nuances research characterizing organizations as either inclusive or divisive. Moreover, local legitimacy is not based on ethnicness per se, but CSOs’ability to skilfully interact with ethnically divided constituencies and political structures. In addition, we offer novel explanations why few organizations enjoy both donor and local legitimacy, including local mistrust of donors’normative frameworks and perceived lack of results. However, we also show that a combination of local and donor legitimacy is possible, and explore this rare but interesting category of organizations.

Intergroup contact plays a critical role in the reduction of prejudice; however, there is limited research examining the multiple ways through which contact can impact trajectories of development for adolescents in divided societies. Thus, the goal of the current study was to examine individual- and context-level effects of intergroup contact on change in intergroup bias through adolescence. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze five waves of data from 933 youth (Mage = 15.5, SD = 4.03; range: 10–20 years old; 52% female) living in 38 neighborhoods in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The results suggest that youth increase in bias with age. Adolescents with more frequent intergroup contact increase more quickly, and those who report higher quality of contact increase more slowly. Both frequency and quality of contact at the neighborhood level predicted slower increases in bias across adolescence. The results add to a growing literature that combines social and developmental approaches to understanding how intergroup processes and intergroup divide impact youth development of intergroup attitudes and behaviors. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of both individual experiences and the context of intergroup contact for youth development in divided contexts.

PurposeThis paper aims to demonstrate the transformative potential of school networks in divided societies, where separate schools often mirror wider ethnic divisions. It describes Shared Education in Northern Ireland, where networks are being utilised to change how Catholic and Protestant schools engage with one another. The concept of boundary crossing is used to frame how staff members build relationships and bridge distinct knowledge communities shaped by socio-cultural practices and identities.Design/Methodology/ApproachA mixed-methods design was employed. Evidence is presented based on a social network analysis of teacher interactions within a Shared Education partnership of five primary schools in Northern Ireland.FindingsThe findings suggest that school networking can overcome systemic separation in divided societies and provide the infrastructure necessary to establish an alternative model for collegial engagement. The structural characteristics of the observed school network are discussed, including comments on its sustainability, the role of boundary-crossing relationships, the professional value for those involved and its transformative potential for society.Originality/valueThis paper provides a unique perspective on the application and utility of school networks for supporting the development of professional communities in challenging circumstances. It also presents valuable social network data on the structure and management of school networks.