Can power-sharing foster peace? Evidence from Northern Ireland

In the absence of power-sharing, minority groups in opposition have powerful incentives to substitute the ballot with the bullet. In contrast, when power is shared among all major groups in society, the relative gains of sticking to electoral politics are larger for minority groups. After making the...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Mueller, Hannes, Rohner, Dominic
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Data de publicação:2018
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositório:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/175145
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/175145
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Conflicts
Terrorism
Peace
Power-Sharing
Elections
Northern Ireland
Descrição
Resumo:In the absence of power-sharing, minority groups in opposition have powerful incentives to substitute the ballot with the bullet. In contrast, when power is shared among all major groups in society, the relative gains of sticking to electoral politics are larger for minority groups. After making the theoretical argument, we provide in the current paper an empirical analysis of the impact of power-sharing at the local level, making use of fine-grained data from Northern Ireland’s 26 local district councils over the 1973–2001 period. We find that power-sharing has a sizable and robust conflict-reducing impact.