The Limits of Consociationalism: Belgium and Canada As Crucial Tests

The thesis offers a critique on consociationalism as a method of ethnic integration. It tests two crucial-cases, Belgium and Canada, which are widely considered as successful consociational cases in the literature. This thesis attempts to demonstrate that internal factors of consociational systems can often become cause of further ethnic fragmentation instead of limiting it. Further, it argues that once consociational institutions are in place, separatist tendencies of ethnic groups are likely to persist. It concludes that states should not put such institutions in place to begin with, because there is little or even nothing to do later to fix the problems they created.