Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges

by Allison McCulloch (Editor), John McGarry (Editor)

Overview

Power-sharing is an important political strategy for managing protracted conflicts and it can also facilitate the democratic accommodation of difference. Despite these benefits, it has been much criticised, with claims that it is unable to produce peace and stability, is ineffective and inefficient, and obstructs other peacebuilding values, including gender equality.

This edited collection aims to enhance our understanding of the utility of power-sharing in deeply divided places by subjecting power-sharing theory and practice to empirical and normative analysis and critique. Its overarching questions are:

• Do power-sharing arrangements enhance stability, peace and cooperation in divided societies?
• Do they do so in ways that promote effective governance?
• Do they do so in ways that promote justice, fairness and democracy?

Utilising a broad range of global empirical case studies, it provides a space for dialogue between leading and emerging scholars on the normative questions surrounding power-sharing. Distinctively, it asks proponents of power-sharing to think critically about its weaknesses.

This text will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of power-sharing, ethnic politics, democracy and democratization, peacebuilding, comparative constitutional design, and more broadly Comparative Politics, International Relations and Constitutional and Comparative Law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138640368
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/19/2017
Series:	Routledge Studies on Challenges, Crises and Dissent in World Politics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Allison McCulloch is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brandon University, Canada. Her research explores the processes and institutions that facilitate the building of democracy and stability in deeply divided places, with a particular emphasis on power-sharing.

John McGarry is Professor of Political Studies and Canada Research Chair in Nationalism and Democracy in the Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. His academic work is mainly concerned with the design of political institutions in deeply divided places.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Contemporary Challenges to Power-Sharing Theory and Practice

1. Centripetalism, Consociationalism and Cyprus: The "Adoptability" Question
2. Power-Sharing in Kenya: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
3. Power-Sharing Executives: Consociational and Centripetal Formulae and the Case of Northern Ireland
4. Consociationalism in the Brussels Capital Region: Dis-Proportional Representation and the Accommodation of National Minorities
5. Mandatory Power-Sharing in Coup-Prone Fiji
6. Ethnic Power-Sharing Coalitions and Democratization
7. Lebanon: How Civil War Transformed Consociationalism
8. Power-Sharing in Burundi: An Enduring Miracle?
9. Mostar as Microcosm: Power-Sharing in Post-War Bosnia
10. Power-Sharing and the Pursuit of Good Governance
11. Good Fences Make Good Neighbours: Assessing the Role of Consociational Politics in Transitional Justice
12. Gendering Power-Sharing

Conclusion: What Explains the Performance of Power-Sharing Settlements?