Stabilizing Without Integrating: Ethnopolitical Cartelization and Power-Sharing in Post-Ohrid Macedonia

This article examines the long-term effects of Macedonia’s post-conflict power-sharing arrangement, introduced by the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001), on interethnic integration and democratic accountability. While the consociational model is widely credited with stabilizing the state and ensuring minority inclusion, it has also contributed to the institutional entrenchment of ethnic segmentation, shaping the incentives of political competition and governance. The article introduces the concept of ethnopolitical cartelization to describe how consociational power-sharing facilitates the consolidation of dominant ethnic parties as gatekeepers to state institutions, limiting intra-ethnic pluralism while preserving interethnic parity. Drawing on institutional analysis and empirical evidence, the article argues that key features of the Macedonian model, such as ethnic veto mechanisms, proportionality rules, and decentralized governance, have incentivized the monopolization of political representation within ethnic blocs, most clearly exemplified in the long-standing dominance of DUI within the Albanian political segment. This dynamic has enabled the development of vertically integrated party structures that channel access to state resources through identity-based patronage and informal governance. The result is a form of segmented stability in which public administration, education, and language policy operate through parallel structures. The Macedonian case illustrates the broader limitations of consociational design in deeply divided societies: while formal inclusion is achieved, it may come at the expense of shared civic space, horizontal accountability, and democratic responsiveness. By segmenting political authority and embedding elite brokerage into the structure of governance, the system inadvertently entrenches the very boundaries it was designed to overcome.