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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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Mueller, Hannes, Rohner, Dominic
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/175145
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/175145
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Conflicts
Terrorism
Peace
Power-Sharing
Elections
Northern Ireland
Descripción
Sumario: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.