Power-sharing and peace in Côte d'Ivoire: past examples and future prospects

Many scholars have expressed grave concerns over the increased popularity of power-sharing agreements in Africa, arguing that power-sharing is an unstable form of government that provides only short-term reprieve from violent conflict. While most African experiments with power-sharing have failed, this does not necessarily invalidate the case for employing such agreements. The critical importance of context has been cited as a key factor in explaining the success or failure of power-sharing. In other words, it is not that power-sharing is inherently flawed but rather that it should only be employed in certain contexts. This article examines the role of context in explaining different power-sharing outcomes by analysing power-sharing in Côte d'Ivoire. The country provides an excellent case study for examining the importance of context as power-sharing agreements have been adopted in a variety of contexts with diverging outcomes. The article systematically examines key peace agreements and resulting power-sharing arrangements since the outbreak of civil war in 2002 in order to evaluate which factors help to explain successes and failures of power-sharing in Côte d'Ivoire. The article concludes by considering how previous examples may help to shed light on future prospects for power-sharing in Côte d'Ivoire and elsewhere.     

Power-sharing after the Arab Spring? Insights from Lebanon’s Political Transition

Abstract

The article looks at the legacy of consociationalism in Lebanon with the aim of illuminating some insights on the linkages between power-sharing and conflict resolution in the post-2011 Middle East. It highlights three core dilemmas or governance traps that have recurred in Lebanon’s political dynamic: the power-sharing formula’s proneness to deadlock, its dependence on the external environment as an avenue for partisanship and sectarian leverage, and its weak responsiveness to demands from below. The article shows how these dilemmas are tightly linked to the politics of sectarianism. While Lebanon’s postwar transition (1990 onward) serves as a backdrop for exploring these dilemmas, emphasis is placed on the performance of Lebanon’s political system in the post–Arab Spring era. The aim is to assess whether Lebanon’s consociational performance has matured over time. The Lebanese experience brings into sharper focus the limitations of sectarian power-sharing. Still, it provides useful insights for reshaping the debate on power-sharing in divided societies of the Arab world.     

Emerging concepts of security in the European order: Implications for ‘zones of conflict’ at the fringes of the EU

The broadening of definitions of security has been reflected in the conceptual development of a variety of European institutions, though a credibility gap seems to exist between their goals and objectives and their ability to take decisive action. Given the fact that the path of EU expansion has now reached into zones of instability, marred by intractable conflicts related to sovereignty, identity, development, and human rights, it is important to examine the borders at the fringes of the EU, and what their conceptual and practical significance is, both for actors already inside the union, but also for actors who are located in zones outside EU borders. It is argued here that these regions present an important challenge to the structures and norms of the EU, and to the notion of sovereignty, and raises the question of international responsibility from a variety of perspectives.     

Kashmir and Tibet: comparing conflicts,states, and solutions

Five decades of conflicts in Kashmir and Tibet continue into the twenty-first century without clear signs of resolution. This article focuses on issues of collective rights, national identity, and state sovereignty in these two conflicts to ask what political recourses exist for Tibetans or citizens of Jammu and Kashmir in today's changing world. As citizens of differently organized states and subjects to dissimilar conflicts, what methods and types of conflict resolution might Tibetans and Kashmiris have shared access to? Both of these post-WWII conflicts have been framed and defined by the two core states involved, India and China. Analytically, therefore, this article draws on anthropological and political constructivist work on the state to suggest possible non-violent, community-oriented solutions to these conflicts.     

Non-Nationalist Politics in a Bi-National Consociation: The Case of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

Through a case study of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, this article examines the contention that consociational power-sharing, in its determination to include dominant and conflicting identity groups, exalts these identities and excludes others including gender, class and other ethnicities and nationalities. The article describes and assesses the Alliance Party’s arguments that the power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland are philosophically objectionable, practically ineffective, and politically detrimental to parties which, like Alliance, are designated as “others.” The article finds that the party’s critique of consociationalism as implemented in Northern Ireland is overstated and that the party has been able to play a number of pivotal roles in the new politics.     

On the Meiji Restoration: Japan's search for sovereignty?

It is generally taken for granted that the Meiji Restorationwas a watershed event that incorporated Japan into the modernsovereign state system. This conventional wisdom is misleading.The Japanese political system that existed prior to the MeijiRestoration, the so-called Tokugawa Baku-Han regime, was comparablewith many modern sovereign states in its exercise of publicauthority and its ability to control cross-border movements.Furthermore, as Krasner has shown, sovereignty itself is a problematicconcept, the fundamental norms and principles of which are frequentlyviolated. A case study of the 1862 incident known as NamamugiJiken demonstrates how Japan was recognized and treated internationally,revealing that while some aspects of Japan's sovereignty wereconveniently violated, other sovereignty norms were certainlyrespected by the Western nations. These norms constrained therange of choices available to the key actors involved in thisincident and thus significantly affected the subsequent courseof events, which ultimately led to Tokugawa's collapse in 1868.Hence, it was the complex (hypocritical) nature of Japan's existentsovereignty, and not its absence, that explains why the MeijiRestoration occurred the way it actually did.     

Principles on a collision course? State sovereignty meets peoples' right of self-determination in the case of Kosovo

Sovereignty and self-determination are central features of international relations and international law. The concepts are often depicted as conflicting and incompatible. In addition, the meaning, application and relevance of both concepts continue to form the subject of debate. In practice, they remain important, fiercely protected and centrally placed in conflicts concerning territorial integrity or political status. In this paper, we argue that our understanding of the concepts and their interrelationships can be enriched by looking past conventional and often rigid conceptualisations, instead placing more emphasis on the ways in which they are used in particular cases. The aim of this paper is to analyse how state sovereignty and peoples' right to self-determination are given meaning in state practice. The paper focuses on the case of Kosovo, and in particular statements submitted by 36 United Nations member states to the International Court of Justice. Analysing the ways in which states use the concepts to rationalize and justify their position on the Kosovo case reveals several diverging and sometimes conflicting understandings that indicate a need to go beyond and problematize the clear-cut and inflexible conceptualizations that often shape the academic debate on the concepts of state sovereignty and peoples' right of self-determination.     

Can Russia's Quest for the New International Order Succeed?

A genesis and development of the conflict in Ukraine demonstrated fragility of the international security system and its inability to guard sovereignty of the smaller or weaker nations. By creating and then manipulating conflicts, Russia is gaining leverage over the decision making on political and economic development, governance issues, and the external alliances of those countries. By challenging sovereignty of smaller states, and forcibly changing their borders, Russia is challenging existing international order and the basic principles of Helsinki Final Act on Security and Co-operation in Europe of 1975, to which the Soviet Union, and its successor state, Russian Federation, are signatories. For the interests of global stability, it is a priority to bring Russia back to the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) without any concessions on principles of sovereignty for all OSCE member states.     

重塑国家之责：人的安全保护、冲突与治理

与传统的“国家安全”观相比,“人的安全”观是非传统安全领域中的重要内容。人的安全受多维度影响。其中一个或几个维度出现问题,人的安全就受到威胁;威胁达到一定程度,就可能导致冲突。这些维度构成冲突诱因。冲突诱因呈现多元化。有的诱因与冲突相关度较低,有的诱因对诱发冲突具有乘数效应。就触发状态而言,冲突可能由单一因素诱发,亦可由多种因素叠加引发。如果治理失当,会导致冲突恶化。一个国家要有效地治理冲突,就应当对导致冲突的诱因及相关度有深刻理解,如此方可对症下药。人的安全概念、国家保护责任与新干预主义是相继形成的三个概念。应当说,尽管以人为中心的安全框架日益被全球关注,但应当采取何种治理形式,何种治理形式属于最优方案,在国际社会中并未达成共识。但是,根据《联合国宪章》的精神,保护人的安全的责任首先在于当事国政府。主权原则仍是国际关系的基本原则,是解决人的安全问题必须遵守的根本准则。     

A Tougher Gordian Knot: Globalisation,Imperialism and the Problem of the State

This article aims to provide an overview of the debates around globalisation, and to rehearse an empirical, ideological and theoretical critique of Globalisation Theories. This assessment focuses on the inability of these approaches to understand the state and modern sovereignty as, respectively, a capitalist state and a modern capitalist sovereignty, that is, as part of the social relations of power which constitute the capitalist mode of production. The globalisation debates, which were more often than not predicated on some degree of antagonism between the global process and the nation-state, have proved unable to account for a nation-state which has historically advanced in a close organic relationship with global capitalism. The problem of the state is then used to introduce a review of Marxist contributions to the understanding of imperialism. A brief genealogy of Marxist thought on this subject introduces a discussion of theories of the new imperialism, which have gained considerable purchase in the wake of the United State's reinforced pursuance of an imperial agenda after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and are again assessed from the angle of the under-theorised notion of the state. This critical review of the imperialism–globalisation debate is meant to underscore the need for a fully fledged Marxist theory of the state which will be able not only to avoid the mistakes built into liberal views about international affairs, but which will also elucidate the relationship between domestic capitals and the state administration, so as to better explain the specific forms of interstate conflict.     

Approaching peace in Patani,Southern Thailand—some anthropological considerations

This article analyzes ways of approaching peace building and peace negotiations in Patani. Choosing an anthropological approach, the article argues that participant observation helps identify indigenous, local peace instruments. Hence, the design of local sovereignty is the most important step to durable peace in internal conflicts. The Surayud government has identified the recommendations of the National Reconciliation Commission as guide-posts and has praised the peace agreement in Aceh as model to emulate. There is an opening for peace talks, in which the solution to historical and cultural grievances will be a key to peace.     

Politicising European security: from technocratic to contentious politics?

Security provision in and by the EU has become an issue of increasing public interest and controversy. There are diverse and growing demands and critiques from different political camps towards the EU while EU institutions, in turn, utilise their security function as a resource for authority construction and self-legitimation. More recently, European security has also become intertwined with contemporary “crises” that turned it into an arena for the negotiation of fundamental conflicts, often revolving around questions of identity and sovereignty. This paper argues that these developments represent a significant change of European security and its politics that existing approaches linking the field to depoliticisation cannot adequately capture. To fill this gap, this paper suggests applying a politicisation perspective that, so far, has focused on the European integration project as such or the “Eurozone crisis” to the purportedly special security field.     

Civil War Settlements,Size of Governing Coalition,and Durability of Peace in Post–Civil War States

We examine the ways in which the size of the governing coalition in a post–civil war state affects the durability of the peace. Previous studies relate the durability of the peace to the outcome of the civil war, the extent and forms of power-sharing arrangements, and the role of third-party security guarantors. We argue that the way conflict terminates and the power-sharing agreements between former protagonists structure the composition of governing coalition in the post–civil war state. Any settlement to civil war that broadens the size of the governing coalition should increase actors' incentives to sustain the peace rather than renew the armed conflict. Peace is more likely to fail where the governing coalition is smaller because those excluded from the governing coalition have little to lose from resuming armed rebellion. To test these propositions, we analyze data on post–civil war peace spells from 1946–2005.     

Veto power and power-sharing: insights from Burundi (2000–2018)

Veto power is a key institutional pillar of consociational power-sharing. However, the literature is divided on its impact for institutional functionality. While the founding father of consociational theory, Arend Lijphart, expects veto rights to be exercised sparingly by segmental elites, more recent scholarship emphasizes the need for restrictions (in terms of veto players, veto issues, veto points and procedure) in order to avoid abusive and disruptive veto practice. Burundi’s transition from ethnic conflict to ethnic pacification was strongly based on the use of military and political power-sharing, including consociationalism. This article examines the design of veto rights and their practice in Burundi over the past two decades. The analysis confirms that the institutional design of veto power matters, but it counters the hypothesis that a too enabling veto design induces the abuse of veto rights and disrupts consociational functionality. The Burundi case-study shows that the impact and “shelf-life” of veto rights are best understood by taking into consideration the intersection of veto power with other power-sharing institutions and practices, both formal and informal.     

Incentives for Talking: Accepting Mediation in International and Civil Wars

This paper examines the conditions under which warring parties will accept an outside party's offer to mediate. Specifically, we explore variation in the incentives for accepting third-party offers in interstate conflicts as compared to civil wars. We argue that since mediation in civil wars transfers legitimacy to the non-state actor and can generate a precedent of exceptions to the norm of sovereignty, the political cost associated with accepting international mediation will be substantially higher in civil wars compared to international conflicts. States should therefore only accept mediation in the most serious disputes, or when the costs of legitimizing an opponent are outweighed by the benefits of conflict resolution. Building on this theoretical reasoning, the paper analyzes the implications of differences in incentive structures between inter- and intrastate conflicts for offer and acceptance of mediation. We find an empirical discrepancy between interstate and civil wars in regard to demand-side (acceptance) of mediation, and to a somewhat lesser extent the supply-side (offer) of international mediation. In line with our argument, we find that the historical ties between the potential intermediary and at least one of the disputants play different roles in regard to acceptance of mediation in interstate compared to civil wars. This is important to take into consideration in the emerging debate on mediation bias.     

Taif and the Lebanese State: The Political Economy of a Very Sectarian Public Sector

Abstract

The political reforms adopted in the 1989 Taif Agreement created a veritable postwar paradox: a more balanced consociational power-sharing arrangement led to a bigger, more clientelist, more corrupt, less autonomous public sector, one preoccupied by predatory rentier practices along sectarian and clientelist lines. The more durable the power-sharing arrangement the less the state in Lebanon acts as a state with a measure of bureaucratic autonomy, extractive capacities, and a national agenda. This article problematizes this postwar anomaly by examining the instrumental role played by the public sector in the reproduction of the political elite’s clientelist ensemble undergirding the political economy of sectarianism.     

Military Dialogue in the Euro‐Mediterranean Charter: An Unjustified Absence

The summer 2006 war in Lebanon can be perceived through at least five different frames of reference. The US administration saw the war in Lebanon as a local manifestation of the global war on terror. According to this framework, Hezbollah is an Al Qaeda-type enemy, not a national group with a local agenda and constituency; bargaining with Hezbollah is not possible. This point of view makes fighting global terror more difficult and jeopardises the search for stability and peace in the region. Many Israeli and European politicians saw the war as a confrontation between radical Islam and a modern Israeli state, a clash of cultures between Islamic fundamentalists and Western civilisation. This frame of reference, however, fails to recognise the fault line within the Muslim world itself, between those who want to integrate their societies into a globalised world and those who do not. The conflict in Lebanon can also be interpreted as a consequence of the weakening of a state, a framework which underlines the need to strengthen Arab institutions, or as an asymmetrical war between an armed nation state and a guerrilla movement. Finally, the war in Lebanon can be seen as a conflict over power, land, resources and sovereignty–the classic realist perspective. If the international community fails to work toward a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East, another framework will gain strength in the Arab world: one that interprets events according to a theory of non-negotiable conflicts between Western imperialism and radical Islamic resistance.     

Setting Aside the “Others”: Exclusion amid Inclusion of Non-dominant Minorities in Peace Agreements

This article analyzes the exclusion-amid-inclusion of “Others” within territorial power-sharing arrangements. While territorial power-sharing is often used to accommodate national minorities, it risks excluding non-dominant minorities at sub-state levels of governance. The article charts how negotiated settlements have addressed this dilemma by formally acknowledging the plurality of non-dominant minorities within territorial power-sharing arrangements, including de facto minorities and other “non-aligned” or less politically relevant minorities. Using the PA-X Peace Agreements Database, this article conducts a qualitative content analysis of 1518 peace agreements from 1990-2016, to shed light on the EAI dilemma within negotiated settlements in divided societies.     

国家主权、思想自立与发展权利——试论当代非洲国家建构的障碍及前景

由松散分割的传统部族社会,向统一聚合的现代主权国家过渡,是当代非洲国家政治发展的核心主题与基本目标。在此发展阶段上,非洲国家需要形成有效能的中央政府,且致力于国家的经济发展、政治稳定和民族融合,以国家力量来集中资源,动员民众,培植国家情感,追求发展目标。迄今,国家成长与民族融合这两大任务在许多非洲国家都没有真正完成。为此,非洲需要一种新的思想变革运动,从自身的现实需要来追求理解政治的意义,从经济的角度来把握政治的本质,以经济发展为中心来建设国家,维护国家主权,追求思想自立,方能最终实现国泰民安,富强稳定。在维护非洲国家主权、推进非洲国家成长方面,中国可以发挥更多建设性的作用。     

Sovereignty a-venir: Towards a Normative Understanding of Sovereignty

This article draws upon Derridean philosophy to argue for a more holistic understanding of sovereignty, a reading of the concept that alternatively envisages sovereignty as home, is prone to normativity, and bestows sovereignty with an ethical perspective. The first section shows how scholarly efforts to approach sovereignty, the English School of international relations theory in particular, do not go far enough in engaging with the concept in normative terms. In the second section we employ the Derridean notions of aporia, to-come and hospitality to synthesise sovereignty a-venir and link it with the normative positiveness of home. The article empirically proceeds with the case of Kosovo to illustrate how sovereignty a-venir points to a promised sovereign condition, normatively understood as hospitable home, but suggests that it will never exist in the present because it remains aporetic. The concluding section reflects on how sovereignty a-venir paves the way for follow-up research in the discipline.