The Paradox of Accommodation: Minority Accommodations and Potential Populists

• In Event: The Roots of Populism in Global Perspective

Abstract

In "The Politics of Accommodation" and "Patterns of Democracy", Lijphart argues that policies of accommodation for minority populations and the adoption of a consensus model of democracy would most effectively stabilize and consolidate a democratic state exhibiting deep cleavages. The recent wave of populism across Europe, however, and its rhetoric for the preservation of the national integrity by supporting policies reflecting the will of the majority, presents a challenge to Lijphart, as the long-term implications of his largely adopted prescriptions seem to have produced a backlash against both consociational democratic governments and policies of multiculturalism, putting, as some scholars have already argued, liberal democracy in crisis. To understand why, this paper asks what effects minority accommodations have on state stability and consolidation, and if those effects can lead us to additional explanations for the rise of populism in Europe, whose message has predominantly centered on identity politics. Focusing on three cases that democratized during the "Third Wave”, Croatia, Macedonia, and Spain, where each exhibit a divided society, and have expressed accommodations for its minority populations in their respective constitutions, this paper finds that policies of accommodation and consociational governments in divided societies expose a paradox: in the effort to stabilize the state via accommodation and inclusion, the state, in the long-term, becomes increasingly unstable, as the state incrementally cedes power to the accommodated group, disrupting the status quo established by the majority. Therefore, politics of accommodation and consociationalism are corrosive to the consolidation and stability of the state if the timing of their adoption comes after the establishment of both the social and political status quo. The study also finds that multiple iterations of accommodation that disrupt the status quo opens a space for the emergence of political opportunists within the disillusioned majority, whose populist promise is to restore the nation to a majority-ruled state. The study concludes with a call to political scientists to not only reexamine the prescriptions of Lijphart, but to ask when in the process of democratization are accommodation policies best made; if older democracies are equally vulnerable to deconsolidation via accommodation; and to what extent can accommodations be pushed before the space for populist politics and political opportunists presents itself.

Author

• Nevena D. Trajkov, Florida International University