Lustick, I. (1979) ‘Stability in Divided Societies: Consociationalism versus Control’

Lustick, I. (1979) ‘Stability in Divided Societies: Consociationalism versus Control’, World Politics 31 (3), 325-44.

• Focus on compromise, bargaining and accommodation as methods for achieving stability in deeply divided societies.
• Deeply divided: a situation where “ascriptive ties generate an antagonistic segmentation of society, based on terminal identities with high political salience, sustained over a substantial period of time and a wide variety of issues. As a minimum condition, boundaries between rival groups must be sharp enough so that membership is clear and, with few exceptions, unchangeable” (325).
• Aim: to distinguish between ‘consociational’ approach and ‘control’: consociational models can be deployed effectively only if an alternative typological category of ‘control’ is available.
• Puzzle: “how to explain the political stability over time in societies that continue to be characterized by deep vertical cleavages”.
• Consociation and control both assume continuation of deep divisions or vertical segmentation in societies, as well as intense rivalries between segments for key resources: they are alternative explanations for stability.
• Consociationalism: mutual cooperation of subnational elites: Stability is the result of the cooperative efforts of subculture elites “to counteract the centrifugal tendencies of cultural fragmentation” (Lijphart): elite cartel whose members have a shared interest in survival of the arena where their groups compete, and negotiate and enforce, within their groups, terms of mutually acceptable compromises: interethnic bargaining (Rothchild).
• Control: “superior power of one segment is mobilized to enforce stability by constraining the political actions and opportunities of another segment or segments” (328).
• Barry: critique of consociationalism: remedies may aggravate rather than rehabilitate; antidemocratic, manipulative nature of consociational ‘techniques’ often ignored.
• Control model: stability in a vertically segmented society is the result of sustained manipulation of subordinate segments by a superordinate segment.
• Contrasting consociation and control along seven dimensions:

Issue	Consociation	Control
Criterion that effectively governs the authoritative allocation of resources	Common denominator of groups’ interests as defined by elites	Interest of superordinate segment as defined by its elite.
Linkages between the two subunits	Political or material exchanges: negotiations, bargains, compromises.	Penetrative linkages: extracts what it needs and delivers what it thinks fit.
The significance of bargaining	Hard bargaining between units is a necessary fact of life	Hard bargaining signifies breakdown of control & stability
The role of the official regime	Umpires: focus is preservation of the arena (Bailey): translate compromises into legislation & administrative procedures and enforce rules without discrimination.	Legal & administrative instrument of the superordinate group; staffed by dominant group; uses discretion to benefit sub-unit it represents at expense of other unit.
Normative justification for continuation espoused publicly & privately by regime’s officials	General references to welfare of both subunits.	Elaborate group-specific ideology – derived from history and perceived interests of dominant group.
Character of central strategic problem facing subunit elites	Symmetrical for each sub-unit: elites must strike bargains that do not jeopardise the integrity of the system as a whole: internal group discipline is key	Asymmetric with regard to both subunits: superordinate elites devise cost-effective techniques for manipulating subordinate group; subordinate elites exploit bargaining & resistance opportunities. External focus is key.
Appropriate visual metaphor: separateness, specificity, stability	Delicately but securely balanced scale	Puppeteer manipulating his stringed puppet.

• Reasons for developing ‘control’ as analytic approach:
  1. Explain absence of effective politicization of subnational groups other than by questioning genuineness of groups’ cultural differentiation; superordinate group directly responsible for failure of subordinate units to produce effective political organization.
  2. Different kinds of coercion involving mix of coercive and non-coercive techniques that emerge in particular conditions, have different implications, are more or less attractive as prescriptive models.
  3. “In light of the unavoidably elitist character of consociational regimes, certain consociational societies may in fact be more closed for more citizens than societies in which a certain measure of control is exercised by, for example, a dominant majority overt the free political behavior of a subordinate minority” (334).
  4. Category of ‘control’ helps establish conceptual boundaries of the ‘consociational’ approach; study of mechanisms of control assists in elaboration of consociational models.
  5. One society can contain both kinds of relationships between its different groups.
  6. “In deeply divided societies where consociational techniques have not been, or cannot be, successfully employed, control may represent a model for the organisation of intergroup relations that is substantially preferable to other conceivable solutions: civil war, extermination, or deportation” (336).
• Four paths for management of communal conflict:
  1. Institutionalised dominance: three methods of conflict management
     1. Proscribe/control political expression of dominated groups’ interests;
     2. Prohibit entry/access of dominated group members into dominant group;
     3. Provide monopoly/preferential access to dominant group members to political participation, advanced education, economic opportunities etc.
  2. Induced assimilation;
  3. Syncretic integration;
  4. Balanced pluralism.
• Overt coercion is often evidence of breakdown of control system, not just proof of its existence (Kuper).
• Parallels with theory of ‘internal colonialism’.
• “In particular situations and for limited periods of time, certain forms of control may be preferable to the chaos and bloodshed that might be the only alternatives” (344).
• Study of ‘control’ systems helps identify strategies for resistance and is part of struggle to dismantle such systems.