Legacy of Consociational Democracy Model in Western and Post-Сommunist Countries: Experience of Ethnic and Regional Parties (1977 – 2017)

Within the framework of the dissertation a comparative analysis of the strategies of ethnic segments’ representation by ethnic and regional parties is carried out on the example of several Western (Italy, Spain, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium) and post-communist (Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia) democracies from 1977 to 2017 from the point of view of consociational democracy theory. The author proposes criteria for analyzing the strategies of representation of ethnic and regional parties, allowing for structured cross-country analysis without losing a specific country context of the political parties’ functioning. The problem of this study was the contradiction between theory and empirical practice: although according to the theory we should observe the desire of ethnic and regional parties to be presented proportionally, empirically we see that the representation strategies differ significantly. It is proved that such parties in Western democracies often do not follow the consociational logic, preferring to be in opposition at the national level or to combine the logic of distancing and cooperation. Ethnic and regional parties in post-communist democracies, on the contrary, predominantly act within the framework of consociational logic and strive to become part of the ruling coalition. In addition, the segmental parties of Western democracies more often use the radical strategy of secession to realize their goals, while in post-communist democracies, parties’ strategies are more moderate.