'Power-sharing' in Post-Konflikt-Situationen: über die institutionellen Voraussetzungen für dauerhaften Frieden
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
The project investigates the impact of power-sharing institutions on civil conflict recurrence. While the majority of civil wars during the Cold War culminated in the military victory of one conflict party, the 1990s witnessed the rise of negotiated solutions to internal strife. Provisions for power-sharing between former adversaries figure prominently in almost all of these settlements. While there are some examples of apparent success, there are also many cases of outright failure, as well as some in-between cases where power-sharing remains fragile but nonetheless offers grounds for (cautious) optimism. The project focused on the promises and the implementation of power-sharing institutions in postconflict periods. The main research questions are: (1) What is the impact of specific power-sharing institutions on lasting peace? (2) What are the institutional prerequisites for successful powersharing? (3) What are important context factors for successful power-sharing? The original project proposal hypothesized that inclusive power-sharing institutions are at the core of successful powersharing in post-conflict situations. Power-sharing can be expected to yield lasting results only if it extends into the ‘inner core' of power, that is, into the positions of real power and influence where key decisions are made. To test this assumption, the project team created the Power-Sharing Event Dataset (PSED) on the promises and practices of power-sharing in post-conflict situations. The dataset revealed that the vast majority of all power-sharing events cluster in the first year after a peace agreement was signed: Up to 60 per cent of power-sharing events in the political, economic, and territorial dimensions occurred in the first year of the post-conflict period under analysis. Military power-sharing occurred less frequently in the first year, but still accounts for about 45 per cent of all such events. Furthermore, military power-sharing arrangements are the most frequent promise of power-sharing made in peace agreements. Political and territorial powersharing arrangements are coming second and third place respectively. PSED, however, shows that political power-sharing is by far the most frequent form of power-sharing implemented by government and rebels. Military power-sharing still occurs frequently, whereas territorial and economic power-sharing is very rare. The empirical results of the project yield surprising answers to the three research questions posited in the original project proposal. We only found that cabinet power-sharing and military powersharing between government and former rebels minimize the risk of renewed civil conflict. When we further differentiated between the types of cabinet power-sharing, we found that senior cabinet positions (inner-core power-sharing) do not exert a statistically significant impact on civil conflict recurrence. Instead, the occurrence and level of non-senior cabinet power-sharing between government and former rebels reduces the risk of civil conflict recurrence. Likewise, we did not find any statistically significant evidence indicating that military power-sharing in the national army command reduces civil conflict risk. Only the military integration of rebel fighters into the national army is a statistically significant predictor of a reduced likelihood of civil conflict recurrence. These findings reveal a lack of empirical support for one of the main hypotheses: the sharing of inner-core power does not have a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of civil conflict recurrence. Rather, we find that the sharing of power positions which are not located in the ‘inner core' have a peace-prolonging effect. The third research question, however, identified past levels of battle violence between government and rebel forces, rebel group characteristics, and the level of official development assistance (ODA) to the post-conflict country as statistically significant context factors. Specifically, we found that civil conflicts characterized by a high level of violence reduce post-conflict peace duration. We also found that the military strength of rebel groups at the end of the civil conflict is important. In contexts where government and rebel forces have roughly equal military capabilities, civil conflict recurrence is more likely to occur than in strongly imbalanced situations. Lastly, we found that the so far largely ignored factor of ODA has a statistically significant moderating impact on the distribution of cabinet positions to the rebels.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
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(2012), Why Security Forces Do Not Deliver Security: Evidence from Liberia and the Central African Republic, in: Armed Forces & Society, 38,1, pp. 46-69
Mehler, Andreas
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(2013), Consociationalism for Weaklings, Autocracy for Muscle Men? Determinants of Constitutional Reform in Divided Societies, in: Civil Wars, Special Issue 1, 15. pp. 21-43
Mehler, Andreas
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(2013), Power-Sharing, in: Nicolas Cheeseman / David Anderson / Andrea Scheibler (eds.), Routledge Handbook of African Politics, Abingdon: Routledge
Mehler, Andreas
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(2013), Why Federalism Did Not Lead to Secession in Cameroon, in: Ethnopolitics, 13, 1, pp. 48-66
Mehler, Andreas
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(2014), The Power-Sharing Event Dataset (PSED): A New Dataset on the Promises and Practices of Power-Sharing in Post-Conflict Situations, in: Conflict Management and Peace Science, Advance online publication
Ottmann, Martin and Johannes Vuellers
