Le condizioni socio-economiche e politiche del power-sharing. I casi della Bosnia- Erzegovina e della Macedonia

In this paper we have analyzed various pre-conditions for the proper functioning of consociative democracy, trying to understand to what extent the failure of inter-ethnic power sharing to bring to the consolidation of the peace and democracy in Macedonia and Bosnia, as well as its different performance in the two countries, were the effects of the more or less favorable domestic pre-conditions. Most of the pre-conditions favoring the consolidation of peace and democracy through the power-shring arrangements are either tautological or based on the implicit assumptions. In some cases, they are linked to other pre-conditions. The only pre-conditions that appeared to bear some relevance in the two countries are: 1. The stability of the size – for while it did not appear to be neither the sufficient nor the necessary condition for the functioning of the power-sharing, we saw how the issue is particularly relevant in both countries analyzed. 2. The financial prosperity: which can make the re-distributive effects of the power sharing more acceptable and less evident, and at the same time is showed in the literature to be positively related to the democratization process as well. The presence of the certain, even if feeble, level of identification with the common state and the certain degree of the shared national identity. The existence of political community, the will to live in the common state is, indeed, the necessary condition for both the survival of the state and for its democratization. This factor appears to be the most important pre-condition of the proper functioning of the power sharing mechanisms. Yet, it is possible to argue that this condition proves to be a truism, for the inter-ethnic power sharing is actually conceived as a solution for strongly divided societies where such conditions are not present. Moreover, the power sharing tends to undermine, rather than to strengthen, the identification of the citizens with the common state and strengthens the identification with the sub-group. It thus, ironically, appears that the power sharing is only well- suiting for those societies where it actually is not needed and that it probably undermines the only necessary condition for its stability, sharpening inter-ethnic tensions.