Power-Sharing in Divided Societies

Abstract

Peacebuilding—in one form or another—is likely to persist for the duration of a liberal world order. Power-sharing models of government as a contribution to peacemaking have dominated constitutional design since the mid-1990s, but they remain highly contested. Consociational power-sharing offers a means to move beyond armed conflict acceptable to political actors, for whom a return to hegemonic majoritarianism is unacceptable and a hope of conflict transformation too distant. Critics claim that it locks in divided identities and prevents other options emerging. This chapter argues that the causal impact of power-sharing in cases such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, compared to other features of these conflicts, such as excessive canonization, is not clear-cut and that in other situations, such as Northern Ireland, the outcomes are more positive. Basing each cycle of power-sharing executive formation on the results of the previous election rather than historic balances of power or population can facilitate internal electoral competition within political communities and the emergence of new parties outside of the traditional political divisions. It could also facilitate other forms of representation, such as gender quotas. The external influences on power-sharing and international intervention are not well explored, and engaging with the “local turn” in peacemaking could allow a better understanding of the positive and negative factors in the interaction between external support and local agency.