Why share? An analysis of the sources of post-conflict power-sharing
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | William G Nomikos |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343320929732 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Why share? An analysis of the sources
of post-conflict power-sharing
William G Nomikos
Department of Political Science, Washington University in St Louis
Abstract
Why do former belligerents institutionalize power-sharing arrangements after a civil war ends? The choice of power-
sharing institutions shapes the nature of governance in many post-conflict settings. A better understanding of how
belligerents come to choose institutionalized forms of power-sharing would thus help us explain how belligerents
come to make a seemingly simple institutional choice that may have immense consequences. Existing scholarship
emphasizes the nature of the conflict preceding negotiations, international actors, or state institutional capacity as
critical factors for determining whether former belligerents will agree to share power or not. Yet these accounts
overlook the importance of political considerations between and within ethnic groups. This article argues that elites
create power-sharing institutions when the most significant threat to their political power comes from an outside
group as opposed to from within their own group. That is, forward-looking and power-minded leaders of former
belligerents push for the type of power-sharing at the negotiating table that affords them the greatest opportunity to
influence country-level politics after the conflict has concluded in full. For elites facing competition from outside, this
means securing power-sharing through institutional rules and guidelines in the settlement of the civil war to ensure
that they are included in the governance of the state. By contrast, for elites fearing in-group rivals, complex
governance institutions are at best unnecessary and, at worst, a significant concession to weaker opponents. I test
the argument with a cross-national analysis of an original dataset of 186 power-sharing negotiations from 1945–
2011. The empirical analysis suggests that elites are most likely to institutionalize power-sharing when no single
ethnic group dominates politics and when most ethnic groups are unified. The quantitative analysis is complemented
with illustrative examples from cases of power-sharing negotiations that offer insight into the proposed theoretical
mechanisms.
Keywords
ethnic conflict, fractionalization, peace agreements, post-conflict, power-sharing
Introduction
A vast literature has investigated the connection between
power-sharing institutions and intrastate conflict, argu-
ing that power-sharing decreases (Cederman, Gleditsch
& Buhaug, 2013), increases (Roeder, 2005; Sriram,
2008), or has no effect on the likelihood of conflict
recurrence (Jarstad & Nilsson, 2008). Moreover,
power-sharing is now the international community’s
default negotiated solution for nearly all civil wars in
which there is not total military victory by one side.
Indeed, the idea that former enemies should come
together to share power now pervades academic and
policy writings as well as post-conflict practice from
Angola right after the Cold War to Libya more than two
decades later. However, relatively little is known about
why former belligerents choose to share power following
peace negotiations and why some parties seek institu-
tional power-sharing guarantees during negotiations
while others rely on electoral results alone to form gov-
erning coalitions. Existing scholarship emphasizes the
nature of the conflict preceding negotiations,
Corresponding author:
wnomikos@wustl.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2021, Vol. 58(2) 248–262
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343320929732
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