Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars

Conclusion

conclusion We began this book by describing the role power-sharing and power-dividing institutions played in facilitating the construction of an enduring peace in South Africa. Emerging from a war that had lasted nearly a decade, provisions for sharing multiple dimensions of state power fostered an environment in which people on both sides of the racial divide felt secure enough to allow the peace process to move forward. The success of this effort to negotiate the end of civil war is perhaps best symbolized by the 2004 dissolution of the white political party that had presided over the country’s racist apartheid system. In an act that would have appeared treasonous during the years of interracial conflict, many members of the now defunct National Party have chosen to join their former rivals in the African National Congress .1 That South Africa’s contending groups succeeded in constructing a political system in which competing interests are expressed without violence does not mean that power-sharing and power-dividing institutions were a panacea for all the problems that the country faced in the post–civil war era. In fact, a short three years after signing the peace settlement, the country adopted a new constitution that abandoned many of the power-sharing and power-dividing provisions that had formed the original basis for peace.2 1. Wines 2004. 2. Claiming that the new constitution included no provisions for sharing and dividing power would be an exaggeration. For example, guarantees of regional autonomy remained in place for the province of Kwazulu Natal. On a discussion of power sharing in the current governance of South Africa, see Sisk and Stefes 2005. conclusion 141 Having nurtured a sense of trust and security among former rivals, politicians felt sufficiently comfortable with one another to modify the political system so that it might address a new set of concerns. Chief among these new priorities was creating a political system efficient enough to quickly and effectively tackle the many challenges of governance still facing the state. The persistence of poverty, a daunting crime rate, and the rapid spread of hiv infection among the population all required the construction of a political system in which the government could operate with heightened efficiency , even if at times this meant failing to build consensus among the state’s competing interests. As the example of South Africa demonstrates, employing power-sharing and power-dividing institutions as the foundation of a political system brings with it both advantages and liabilities. This conclusion is intended to explore these different sides of power-sharing and power-dividing institutions . In the first section, we emphasize the value of these institutions as a tool for facilitating an enduring peace in states emerging from civil war via a process of negotiation. Toward this end, we summarize the central findings of our statistical analyses and advance the claim that negotiated settlements based on power-sharing and power-dividing principles are preferable to alternative means of ending civil wars. In the second section, we describe the problems and challenges inherent in any power-sharing or power-dividing arrangement. Specifically, we consider the inability of power-sharing institutions to foster a fully democratic state with the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. We suggest that these limitations make the value of power sharing most apparent in the immediate aftermath of civil war. In a final section, we build on these and other insights to discuss the policy implications for those involved in efforts to resolve intrastate conflicts. Power Sharing as a Means of Managing Conflict in Post–Civil War States key findings of the book The statistical analyses that form the heart of this study each seek to illustrate the role that power-sharing and power-dividing institutions play during the process of peacefully ending civil war. Collectively, these findings indicate that the chances for an enduring peace are greatly enhanced when competing parties include power-sharing or power-dividing provisions for 142 crafting peace multiple dimensions of state power as part of their negotiated agreement to end civil war. Factors Associated with Creating Power-Sharing and Power-Dividing Institutions We initiated our consideration of the value of power sharing in Chapter 2 by identifying the conditions under which institutions requiring the sharing or dividing of the political, military, territorial, and economic aspects of state power might first develop. Taking into account...