Citizen Inclusion in Power-Sharing Settlements

Negotiated peace settlements are at the cornerstone of international relations, peace-making, and democratic governance. In conflict zones and deeply divided societies around the world, from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Burundi to Cyprus and Syria, international third-party conflict mediators frequently recommend power-sharing between rival ethnic groups as a means of ending wars and building peace. Yet we still know very little about whether past and current proposals (e.g., by the UN) are seen as acceptable from a citizens' perspective or about how precisely to negotiate, implement, and adapt the most advantageous trade-offs among parties in conflict. Answering these questions is critical to ensure the durability of peace processes, the consolidation of democracy, and potentially the restoration of multi-ethnic societies. In INCLUSIVEPEACE, we propose a comparative and multi-methods research program that investigates how power-sharing settlements emerge, perform, and evolve. We specifically aim to address two common critiques in the study of power-sharing settlements focusing on adoptability and adaptability. First, power-sharing settlements cannot be easily negotiated and adopted and are often negotiated between political elites, excluding the wider society. Secondly, when they are adopted, parties struggle to renegotiate, adapt, or even identify their most problematic provisions, while citizens are given little opportunity to effect change in the new political arrangement. We will address these critiques by using qualitative approaches, including archival research and elite interviews as well as quantitative methods, including experiments and longitudinal public opinion surveys focusing on citizens, community leaders, and government policies in six representative cases around the world.