“If any generalization about institutional design is sustainable, given the bloody outcomes of countless political systems that appeared to exclude major cleavage groups from power, it is that majoritarian systems are ill-advised for countries with deep ethnic, regional, religious and other emotional and polarizing divisions.” (Andrew Ellis, “Dilemmas in Representation and Political Identity,” International IDEA, 2006). While this quotation represents the general position taken in this series on shared governance, the analysis has opened up an array of possibilities for those wanting to set a country such as ours on a developmental path.
I will conclude this series by considering some of the general issues that have arisen. However, firstly, we should note that like most political theories, these consensual governmental arrangements have been criticized but they are not usually the products of political theorists but of politicians seeking to optimally manage their societies. Indeed, even those commentators who are critical usually eschew majoritarianism for our kind of societies and speak of power division,