Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places (National and Ethnic Conflict in the Twenty-First Century) - Hardcover

 
9780812245011: Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places (National and Ethnic Conflict in the Twenty-First Century)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0812245016 ISBN 13: 9780812245011
Verlag: UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA PR, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Power sharing may be broadly defined as any set of arrangements that prevents one political agency or collective from monopolizing power, whether temporarily or permanently. Ideally, such measures promote inclusiveness or at least the coexistence of divergent cultures within a state. In places deeply divided by national, ethnic, linguistic, or religious conflict, power sharing is the standard prescription for reconciling antagonistic groups, particularly where genocide, expulsion, or coerced assimilation threaten the lives and rights of minority peoples. In recent history, the success record of this measure is mixed.

Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places features fifteen analytical studies of power-sharing systems, past and present, as well as critical evaluations of the role of electoral systems and courts in their implementation. Interdisciplinary and international in formation and execution, the chapters encompass divided cities such as Belfast, Jerusalem, Kirkuk, and Sarajevo and divided places such as Belgium, Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa, as well as the Holy Roman Empire, the Saffavid Empire, Aceh in Indonesia, and the European Union.

Equally suitable for specialists, teachers, and students, Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places considers the merits and defects of an array of variant systems and provides explanations of their emergence, maintenance, and failings; some essays offer lucid proposals targeted at particular places. While this volume does not presume that power sharing is a panacea for social reconciliation, it does suggest how it can help foster peace and democracy in conflict-torn countries.

Contributors: Liam Anderson, Florian Bieber, Scott A. Bollens, Benjamin Braude, Ed Cairns, Randall Collins, Kris Deschouwer, Bernard Grofman, Colin Irwin, Samuel Issacharoff, Allison McCulloch, Joanne McEvoy, Brendan O'Leary, Philippe van Parijs, Alfred Stepan, Ronald Wintrobe.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joanne McEvoy is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Aberdeen and former Sawyer Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Brendan O'Leary is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and former Senior Advisor on Power Sharing to the Standby Team of the Mediation Support Unit of the United Nations, with extensive practical advisory experience on power sharing in Northern Ireland, Somalia, Nepal, Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa, Sudan, and Iraq. He has authored and coedited twenty books, including The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Chapter 1
Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places: An Advocate's Introduction
Brendan O'Leary

The Mafia makes offers that cannot be refused. In one peace process a politician was once accused of making offers that no one could understand (O'Leary 1990). Do these statements explain the difference between power and power sharing? Is power coercive capacity, whereas power sharing is incomprehensible?

Power sharing is not incomprehensible, but it is frequently misunderstood. To aid comprehension a comparison is useful. In standard English, power is the ability to act, to be able to produce an intended effect (Russell 1992 [1938]). The powerless lack the capacity to do things they might want to do. The powerful are in the opposite situation. Power sharing, therefore, suggests spreading access to the capacity to get things done. Power is also a synonym for authority, jurisdiction, control, command, sway, or dominion, as well as the capacity to persuade, induce, constrain, oblige, or force. It follows that power sharing minimally means widening the access of persons or groups to the same domains or attributes. In standard usage power is also "a possession," "held" by those with authority or influence over others, especially public officials, governments, officers, managements, or establishments who constitute what Paul's Letter to the Romans described as "the powers that be." Power sharing, therefore, broadens membership of "the powers that be." It also requires that the included parties have access to key and observable "decision making." There must be no important "non-decision making" taking place off stage, that is, no hidden possessors of power who control the agenda or exclude some issues from being addressed. There must instead be an open and negotiable public agenda among the power-sharers, or at least among their leaders. Any suppression of (controversial) issues must be mutually agreed upon among those who share power.

Theorists contrast "power to" and "power over" (see Morris 2002; Parsons 1969). "Power to" is ability, "power over" is domination. The contrast resembles that between "positive-sum" and "zero-sum" relationships. "Positive-sum" power is joint, collaborative, or cooperative. All gain from its exercise, even if the benefits are not the same for all. "Zero-sum power," by contrast, describes a distinct antagonism: if power could be measured, then A's gain and B's loss would sum to zero. Positive-sum and zero-sum conceptions do not exhaust the logical possibilities of power relations. The exercise of power may generate net losses (a "negative sum") or the mutual ruin of the contending parties. It may create winners and losers; there may be disparities in benefits among the winners as well as in losses among the losers; and only one party may gain, while the others experience no net losses. Power sharing, for its proponents, is defended as "power to." It enhances collective capacity; it is "positive sum." Those who share will gain from a constructive way of making public decisions, from which all stand to gain, notably through the preservation of order and peace. Critics, by contrast, suggest that power sharing shapes public life at the expense of other and better kinds of politics—more competitive, individualist, or harmonious.

The opposite of power sharing is power's monopolization by a person, faction, group, organization, or party. On inspection, it is usually true that the chief power-holder has to delegate some power to organize and maintain the monopoly. But to delegate power is not to share it. The principal who delegates requires the delegated agent to perform specified tasks and may withdraw the mandate.

Monopolies of power exist, at least formally, in tyrannies, despotisms, military autocracies, monarchies, lordships, papacies, theocracies, and one-party dictatorships. They also exist, however, in democracies, a more unsettling idea. To say that democracy may coexist with monopolistic domination requires no commitment to theories suggesting that behind the façade of electoral competition lies the power of a ruling class or a power elite (see, e.g., Miliband 1980 [1969]; Domhoff 1990; Mills 1956). For example, no matter how competitive or free elections may be, critical political power can be monopolized between elections by the incumbent president, prime minister, cabinet, and nominated judges associated with the dominant party, ethos, or ideology. Even a temporary domination (between elections) is nevertheless domination, and the opportunities for elected leaders to dominate their societies against widespread or deeply held public preferences are significant (see, e.g., Nordlinger 1981, 92-94, 111-12, 130-32).

That democracy might lead to domination was the theme of the "tyranny of the majority," which deeply concerned eighteenth-century republicans, such as James Madison, and nineteenth-century liberals, such as Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. They were mostly preoccupied, however, with the impact of that possible tyranny on the individual's property and liberty (including the individual's religious beliefs) rather than on national, ethnic, or linguistic minorities as such (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 1987 [1788]; Mill 1997, 5-6, 81-82, 192-94; de Tocqueville 1988 [1835, 1840], vol. 1., chap. 7, esp. 250ff).

Democracy is, however, also straightforwardly compatible with the (temporary) tyranny of a minority, especially democracies with institutions that encourage the "winner" to take all. For example, an ideological faction, not supported by a majority of voters in a country, may nevertheless control a cabinet, which in turn controls a party, and which in turn controls a legislature. In consequence, law or public policy may be dictated in the interests of the faction as long as its control is maintained.

Defining Power Sharing, Deeply Divided Places, and Well-Ordered States

These considerations suggest the following broad definition of power sharing: Any set of arrangements that prevent one agent, or organized collective agency, from being the "winner who holds all critical power," whether temporarily or permanently. This suggestion explains why the synonyms of power sharing usually include the following generally positive connotations: "coalition" or "cooperative" government and "consensual" and "inclusive" decision making. Critics of power sharing just as powerfully insist upon negative connotations. They refer to power-sharing arrangements as "rudderless" or "leaderless," and they complain of "stalemated," "deadlocked," or "blocked" decision making.

The general definition of power sharing just suggested is broad if not vague. It does not, for example, specify how power is shared among the parties. It is capacious enough to include arrangements such as the Roman Republic's executive, based on the annual election of two consuls, and its tribunes, who were able to veto legislation; ancient Sparta's two kings and ephorate; the mercantile republican aristocracy of Venice; and the Institutes promoted by Calvin in Geneva. These are examples of power-sharing arrangements, and the definition thereby displays a key advantage: it does not presume that all power-sharing arrangements are virtuous by our current standards. A definition is of considerable merit if it makes it possible to approve or disapprove of the use to which power-sharing systems are put.

In this book our authors' attention is mostly on contemporary power-sharing systems. The major exception is Benjamin Braude's discussion of limited power-sharing provisions under the Ottoman and Safavid empires (Chapter 6). In contemporary political science, to summarize a very large literature, power sharing is defined both by a regulatory goal and by specific instruments. The goal is the arrangement of political institutions to prevent the monopoly, permanent or...

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Verlag
UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA PR
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812245016
ISBN 13 
9780812245011
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
436
Herausgeber
McEvoy Joanne, O'Leary Brendan
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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