“Consociational arrangements are indispensable for stable politics and governance in deeply divided societies.” Examine this claim in relation to one or two alternatives to partition that scholars have proposed for settling the conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Introduction
The aim of the work was to answer the question of a possible implementation of the consociational model for setting the conflict in Israel/Palestine. This model relates to power sharing in democratic countries, and it was analyzed for several European countries. Is it a proprietary model for Israel regarding a deep division of the Israeli society? To answer the question, this and other models of democracy (ethnic democracy) are compared, and the views of the well-known researchers in this field are presented.
The consociational model describes power sharing in a democracy. The main goals of consociationalism can be defined as democracy survival and violence prevention. As an academic theory, consociationalism was discussed in the article of Lijphart (1982). The researcher wrote that he had "merely discovered what political practitioners had repeatedly – and independently of both academic experts and one another – invented years earlier". As a matter of fact, Lijphart relies largely on the history of the Netherlands when he substantiates his arguments for using the principles of consociationalism to regulate ethnic conflicts.
