CONSOCIATIONALISM AS A PATHWAY TO RESOLVING THE YEMEN CRISIS: EXPLORING POSSIBILITIES AND CONFRONTING CHALLENGES

The international stage remains characterized by a persistent struggle for hegemony, so wars are inevitable. The conflict emerges through interaction that is characterized by friction and discord resulting from different and irreconcilable interests, and crisis refers to the highest point of a conflict. Crisis, where peace and war meet, most movingly and decisively dramatizes the first characteristic of world politics and furnishes the logical groundwork for the theorizing of that politics. The country possesses long history of religious diversity, regionalism, ethnicity and is currently experiencing a complex set of economic, social, and political challenges. Further, the crisis in Yemen is aggravated by its strategic importance in the Gulf region. Consociationalism is a system of government designed to address conflict and to be shared among diverse ethnic, religious, and linguistic communities in society. This article investigates the potential of consociationalism as a mechanism for marginalization and exclusion on the Yemeni case, and illustrates how trust, absence of functional institutions, and meddling by party’s hostile to the process impede the achievement of consociational democracy in Yemen. This paper examines the issues of applying consociational democracy in a fragmented society with particular reference to Yemen.