CIAO DATE: 07/2009
June 2009
Centre on Human Rights in Conflict
Executive summary
• Power-sharing may involve not only political power-sharing, but shared governance over economic resources or the security sector, and in some cases territorial autonomy arrangements
• There are at least five critical challenges to negotiating a peace agreement involving power-sharing: - Mistrust may outweigh the influence of the power- sharing incentives offered - The third-party guarantee needed to overcome mistrust is not available - The incentives that are offered may not be the right ones - If there are no measures to address the original causes of conflict, incentives may not be enough - Incentives cannot induce so-called spoilers to participate in a peace process
• There are far more potential challenges to implementing power-sharing agreements in practice: - Agreements may be violated because incentives were insufficient or can be obtained more easily outside the agreement - Agreement fails because a group was less interested in, or unable to reap the benefits of, specific incentives - Old patterns of mistrust and cheating are imported into governance processes and state institutions - Instead of creating a grand coalition, power-sharing may create incentives for extremism and ethnic or hardliner outbidding - Incentives such as territorial autonomy may encourage secessionist tendencies - Parties may have committed to agreement out of short-term pragmatism rather than long term interest or policy - Exclusion of groups from benefits may encourage new grievances and even conflicts - Competition may turn violent amongst former allies - Violent regions or the interference of neighbouring states may undermine agreements
Resource link: Peace as governance? Critical challenges to power-sharing peace deals [PDF] - 129K