Power Sharing And Political Stability In Deeply Divided Societies

Nearly all the peace accords signed in the last two decades have included power-sharing in one form or another. The notion of both majority and minority segments co-operating for the purposes of political stability has informed both international policy prescriptions for post-conflict zones and home-grown power-sharing pacts across the globe. This book examines the effect of power-sharing forms of governance in bringing about political stability amid deep divisions. It is the first major comparison of two power-sharing designs – consociationalism and centripetalism - and it assesses a number of cases central to the debate, including Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi and Northern Ireland. Drawing on information from a variety of sources, such as political party manifestoes and websites, media coverage, think tank reports, and election results, the author reaches significant conclusions about power-sharing as an invaluable conflict-management device. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of ethnic conflict management, power-sharing, ethnic politics, democracy and democratization, comparative constitutional design, comparative politics, intervention and peace-building.

This volume considers an array of power-sharing systems in divided cities and states, with critical evaluations of their merits and defects as well as explanations of their emergence, maintenance, and failings.

The establishment of durable, democratic institutions constitutes one of the major challenges of our age. As countless contemporary examples have shown, it requires far more than simply the holding of free elections. The consolidation of a legitimate constitutional order is difficult to achieve in any society, but it is especially problematic in societies with deep social cleavages. This book provides an authoritative and systematic analysis of the politics of so-called 'deeply divided societies' in the post Cold War era. From Bosnia to South Africa, Northern Ireland to Iraq, it explains why such places are so prone to political violence, and demonstrates why - even in times of peace - the fear of violence continues to shape attitudes, entrenching divisions in societies that already lack consensus on their political institutions. Combining intellectual rigour and accessibility, it examines the challenge of establishing order and justice in such unstable environments, and critically assesses a range of political options available, from partition to power-sharing and various initiatives to promote integration. The Politics of Deeply Divided Societies is an ideal resource for students of comparative politics and related disciplines, as well as anyone with an interest in the dynamics of ethnic conflict and nationalism.

This edited collection aims to enhance our understanding of the utility of power-sharing in deeply divided societies by subjecting power-sharing theory and practice to empirical and normative analysis and critique. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners of power-sharing, ethnic politics, democracy and democratization, peacebuilding, comparative constitutional design, and more broadly Comparative Politics, International Relations and Constitutional and Comparative Law.

This book focuses on the design and operation of power-sharing in deeply divided societies. Beyond this starting point, it seeks to examine the different ways in which consociational institutions emerge from negotiations and peace settlements across three counter-intuitive cases - post-Brexit referendum Northern Ireland, the Brussels Capital Region and Cyprus. Across each of the chapters, the analysis assesses how the design or mediation of these various forms of power-sharing demonstrate similarity, difference and complexity in how consociationalism has been conceived of and operated within each of these contexts. Finally, a key objective of the book is to explore and evaluate how ideas surrounding power-sharing have evolved and changed incrementally within each of the empirical contexts. The unifying argument within the book is that power-sharing has to have the capacity to adapt to changing political circumstances, and that this can be achieved through the interplay of formal and informal micro-level refinements to these institutions and the procedures that govern them, that allow such institutions to evolve over time in ways that increase their utility as conflict transformation governance structures for deeply divided societies. This book fills the gap in the published literature between theoretical and empirical studies of power-sharing, and will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, consociationalism, European politics and IR in general.

Power-sharing is an important political strategy for managing protracted conflicts and it can also facilitate the democratic accommodation of difference. Despite these benefits, it has been much criticised, with claims that it is unable to produce peace and stability, is ineffective and inefficient, and obstructs other peacebuilding values, including gender equality. This edited collection aims to enhance our understanding of the utility of power-sharing in deeply divided places by subjecting power-sharing theory and practice to empirical and normative analysis and critique. Its overarching questions are: Do power-sharing arrangements enhance stability, peace and cooperation in divided societies? Do they do so in ways that promote effective governance? Do they do so in ways that promote justice, fairness and democracy? Utilising a broad range of global empirical case studies, it provides a space for dialogue between leading and emerging scholars on the normative questions surrounding power-sharing. Distinctively, it asks proponents of power-sharing to think critically about its weaknesses. This text will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of power-sharing, ethnic politics, democracy and democratization, peacebuilding, comparative constitutional design, and more broadly Comparative Politics, International Relations and Constitutional and Comparative Law.

Power-sharing serves as a popular conflict resolution device at war’s end. Yet, the performance record of such arrangements is highly variable, sometimes leading to peace and stability and at other times to immobilism and institutional collapse. This book explores the adoption, function, and dissolution of power-sharing arrangements across the Global South, including case studies of Colombia, Ethiopia, Malaysia, and Iraq, and others to make sense of this mixed record. Authors identify a range of contextual factors as well as significant variations in the institutional rules and their meaning across the cases that help to explain divergent power-sharing outcomes. Emphasis throughout the chapters is placed on system adaptability for power-sharing success.

With its emphasis on emerging and cutting-edge debates in the study of comparative constitutional law and politics, its suitability for both research and teaching use, and its distinguished and diverse cast of contributors, this handbook is a must-have for scholars and instructors alike. This versatile volume combines the depth and rigor of a scholarly reference work with features for teaching in law and social science courses. Its interdisciplinary case-study approach provides political and historical as well as legal context: each modular chapter offers an overview of a topic and a jurisdiction, followed by a case study that simultaneously contextualizes both. Its forward-looking and highly diverse selection of topics and jurisdictions fills gaps in the literature on the Global South as well as the West. A timely section on challenges to liberal constitutional democracy addresses pressing concerns about democratic backsliding and illiberal and/or authoritarian regimes.