Power-Sharing and Segmental Regime Entrenchment in Post-Ohrid Macedonia

Nearly 25 years after the Ohrid Framework Agreement, North Macedonia stands as a paradigmatic case of consociational power-sharing: formally stable yet persistently marked by party dominance and accountability deficits. While existing research has shown how power-sharing can entrench clientelism and patronage, this article analyzes the mechanisms through which inclusion can facilitate durable control, bridging consociational theory’s insights on group inclusion and power-sharing with democratic theory’s debates on accountability and regime closure. Introducing the concept of segmental regime entrenchment, the analysis traces how formal inclusion mechanisms, when embedded in environments of weak horizontal accountability, may transform from guarantees of pluralism into instruments of durable segmental party dominance. The article develops a three-stage framework—segmentation, segmental monopolization, and suppression—to explain how power-sharing arrangements produce asymmetric but lasting closure, with especially pronounced effects in segments that hold strategic brokerage positions. By connecting power-sharing arrangements to concerns about elite accountability and regime responsiveness, the study provides a framework for understanding the persistence of segmented governance and the challenges of reform in power-sharing contexts.

Context (archaeology · Work (physics · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Political Conflict and Governance · Turkey's Politics and Society

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