Replication data for: The Myth of Consociationalism? Conflict Reduction in Divided Societies

Although advocates of consociationalism have asserted that there is solid empirical evidence supporting the use of power-sharing institutions in divided societies, previous quantitative tests of these theories suffer from serious data limitations and fail to take into account the conditional nature of institu- tional effects.The authors test the effect of (a) proportional representation (PR) over majoritarian electoral rules, (b) parliamentary over presidential or semipresidential arrangements, and (c) a federal over a unitary system in reducing conflict in a cross-country data set of 101 countries representing 106 regimes.The results undercut much of the previous empirical support for consociationalist arrangements in divided societies. Using a multiplicative specification, the authors find that PR and parliamentarism appear to exacer- bate political violence when ethnic fractionalization is high, though the effect of federalism is less certain.