Sharing Power, Securing Peace?
Ethnic Inclusion and Civil War

Shows how power-sharing practices reduce violence both preventively and after conflicts by giving potential violent challengers access to central and/or regional power.

Lars-Erik Cederman (Author), Simon Hug (Author), Julian Wucherpfennig (Author)

9781108406550, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 July 2022

300 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'As Fred Iklé's classic book states in its title, 'Every War Must End,' and most civil wars end with some form of power-sharing, formal or informal, between the state and its challengers. This landmark book by Cederman, Hug, and Wucherpfennig offers valuable new insights and a wealth of new empirical results on whether sharing power helps secure the peace in the aftermath of ethnic war. With attention to the usual methodological pitfalls in the analysis of observational data and conceptual innovations throughout their book, Cederman, Hug, and Wucherpfennig provide a strong argument for the peace-inducing effects of the practice - rather than merely the promise - of sharing political power, while also noting that power-sharing institutions are no panacea. This extraordinary book charts the way forward in the quantitative study of civil war.' Nicholas Sambanis, Professor of Political Science, The University of Pennsylvania

Does power sharing bring peace? Policymakers around the world seem to think so. Yet, while there are many successful examples of power sharing in multi-ethnic states, such as Switzerland, South Africa and Indonesia, other instances show that such arrangements offer no guarantee against violent conflict, including Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe and South Sudan. Given this mixed record, it is not surprising that scholars disagree as to whether power sharing actually reduces conflict. Based on systematic data and innovative methods, this book comes to a mostly positive conclusion by focusing on practices rather than merely formal institutions, studying power sharing's preventive effect, analyzing how power sharing is invoked in anticipation of conflict, and by showing that territorial power sharing can be effective if combined with inclusion at the center. The authors' findings demonstrate that power sharing is usually the best option to reduce and prevent civil conflict in divided states.

1. Introduction
Part I. Theories and concepts
2. Power sharing and conflict in the literature
3. Key concepts and arguments of our approach
Part II. Analyzing the effect of power sharing on civil war
4. Power sharing and civil war: Data and baseline models
5. Contrasting formal power-sharing institutions and practices
6. Endogenizing governmental power sharing and its effect on civil war
7. The strategic logic of governmental power sharing and civil war
8. The effect of territorial and governmental power sharing on civil war
9. The strategic logic of territorial power sharing, secession and civil war
Part III. Power sharing and civil war in time and space
10. The diffusion of power sharing
11. Trends in power sharing and conflict
12. Conclusions for theory and policy.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB]