Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Major/Program
Political Science
First Advisor's Name
Tatiana Kostadinova
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee chair
Second Advisor's Name
Eduardo Gamarra
Second Advisor's Committee Title
committee member
Third Advisor's Name
Barry Levitt
Third Advisor's Committee Title
committee member
Fourth Advisor's Name
Rebecca Friedman
Fourth Advisor's Committee Title
committee member
Keywords
Democracy, Democratic Consolidation, Minority Groups, Spain, Macedonia, Basque, Catalonia, Westphalia, Sovereignty
Date of Defense
1-18-2023
Abstract
The origin of this work lies in a paradox that is over forty years in the making: to consolidate their new regimes, democratizing countries of the Third Wave exhibiting deeply divided societies were prescribed constitutions based on consociational practices, which emphasize the inclusion of minority groups, accommodations, and power-sharing. However, with declarations of secession and events of terrorism and armed conflicts, Third Wave countries such as Spain and Macedonia continue to face difficulties in achieving full consolidation.
This study asks if these accommodation practices for minority groups have lagged, negative consequences for the consolidation of democratic regimes, subsequently opening a space for illiberal populist or national protection movements to emerge.
Examining three dyadic relationships in Spain and one in Macedonia, an original three-phase model was developed to answer this question. Process-tracing was employed using a multimethod approach that consisted of semi-structured interviews and secondary sources. The findings show that in cases where the minority group is dissatisfied and its political actors are considered to have both legitimacy and leverage vis a vis the state, challenges to regime consolidation are likely to occur, particularly if iterations of the sequence “demand-accommodation-demand” shifts leverage from the state to the group. The study also finds that if the sequence is continuously repeated, polarization within the state deepens, opening space for populist politics to grab hold. The work’s broader contribution is to the larger debate in political science on the future of Westphalian philosophies and practices of state-making, nation-states, and majoritarian politics.
TRANSLATE with x English Arabic Hebrew Polish Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak Czech Italian Slovenian Danish Japanese Spanish Dutch Klingon Swedish English Korean Thai Estonian Latvian Turkish Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian French Malay Urdu German Maltese Vietnamese Greek Norwegian Welsh Haitian Creole Persian TRANSLATE with COPY THE URL BELOW Back EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal Back
Identifier
FIDC011059
ORCID
0000-0003-1346-1992
Recommended Citation
Trajkov, Nevena, "The Paradox of Accommodation: Minority Groups and Risks to Democratic Consolidation" (2023). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5275.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5275
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).