Consociationalism is a theoretical and normative model for managing pluralism that seeks to foster patterns of democratic governance and peaceful coexistence in plural or divided societies. In theoretical terms, the general logic of consociationalism can be summarized by four fundamental principles: coalition government, proportional representation, veto power and segmental autonomy. However, these normative principles are relatively abstract and are open to many interpretations by political actors. As such, how do divided societies manage to incorporate consociationalism and its principles into their legal systems? This article aims to provide some answers to this question by comparing three Western liberal consociational democracies: Belgium, Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) and South Tyrol (Italy). Our objective is thus, on the one hand, to better understand the context in which political actors in these three divided societies undertook to introduce power-sharing mechanisms, and, on the other hand, to observe how consociationalism was incorporated within their respective legal order.