Education Policy and Power-Sharing in Post-Conflict Societies

This book explores the nexus between education and politics in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Macedonia, drawing from an extensive body of original evidence and literature on power-sharing and post-conflict education in these post-conflict societies, as well as the repercussions that emerged from the end of civil war. This book demonstrates that education policy affects the resilience of political settlements by helping reproduce and reinforce the mutually exclusive religious, ethnic, and national communities that participated in conflict and now share political power. Using curricula for subjects—such as history, citizenship education, and languages—and structures like the existence of state-funded separate or common schools, Fontana shows that power-sharing constrains the scope for specific education reforms and offers some suggestions for effective ones to aid political stability and reconciliation after civil wars. 

“This well-composed book demonstrates original fieldwork, is genuinely comparative, and displays a mature grasp of the conceptual, empirical, and normative implications of consociational theory. Anyone interested in the educational arrangements within consociations should start here.” (Brendan O’Leary, Lauder Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

“This book offers an enlightening contribution to the literature on consociationalism. Through a rigorous and skillful comparison of three protracted conflicts–Northern Ireland, Macedonia, and Lebanon–the author is able to show the effect of a peace agreement based on consociational principles upon the education system. This true gem of a book will surely provoke intense debate.” (Germ Janmaat, Reader in Comparative Social Science, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK )

Giuditta Fontana is Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is also Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies at King’s College London, UK, and at the Centre for Conflict Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.