Economic power-sharing shares the generation, collection, and distribution, of the state’s economic resources between military-political protagonists and groups at the heart of the conflict, with the aim of achieving fairness between groups in ways that are intended to address the political, social and economic divisions of the conflict (Bell, 2018b).

Economic power-sharing is not unique to conflict settings. Many countries have forms of economic power-sharing, in particular where they have devolved power to sub-state units. So called ‘fiscal federalism’ involves sharing of economic management and decision-making between central state institutions and those of sub-state units. Countries with significant natural resources also often have special mechanisms for allocating these resources, which can prioritize the territories in which the resources are found, or target particular areas of socio-economic need (Bell, 2018b).

Issues of economic distribution are particularly important in conflict-affected states due to a well-established link between wealth inequalities and the onset and durability of violent conflict. Economic power-sharing and more inclusive management of natural resources often needs addressed as part of peace processes, and can have conflict resolution functions (Bell, 2018b).

Economic power-sharing also carries some risks in terms of sustaining or renewing conflict, for example, by resourcing armed actors in ways which enable them to renew or sustain conflict, or by providing unintended incentives to new actors to take up arms (Bell, 2018b).

There are five main forms of economic power-sharing resulting from peace processes and agreements:

1. Political approaches to economic power-sharing, which share power over economic resources and decisions.
2. Territorial approaches to economic power-sharing, which involve forms of ‘fiscal federalism’ that go along with territorial power-sharing.
3. Specific arrangements for natural resources connected to the conflict, which create mechanisms for sharing power in their management, or in the redistribution of wealth gained from them.
4. More ‘invisible’ economic power-sharing which meets the economic needs of groups whose well-being is critical to stability and economic development.
5. Residual joint resource management, which allows for ongoing joint management of cross-border economic issues post secession or similarly absolute territorial division (Bell, 2018b).

There is a tension between the group accommodation ambitions of economic power-sharing, and economic reform focused on creating a broader social contract capable of delivering public goods. For peace and development, war economies and modes of controlling resources will have to be replaced by other forms of economic management and accountability. The challenge in peace negotiations is to persuade the parties to the conflict that they have something to gain from new economic arrangements, sufficient to persuading them to give up forms of privatised economic power, exercised on behalf of one group only (Bell, 2018b).

Ways to address tension between group accommodation and a broader social contract within economic power-sharing arrangements include:

1. Conflict analysis that specifically addresses the relationship between economic resources and conflict.
2. International supporters of peace processes with sufficient organizational capacity to ensure joint economic-conflict management approaches.
3. Mediation support aimed at helping re-frame economic power-sharing debates and peace agreement design in ways which help manage the tension between the political drivers of economic power-sharing design, and the need for functional and accountable economic institutions.
4. Reframing political disputes over economic resources as technical problems, and strategically sequencing talks to manage technical detail outside them.
5. Increased attention to less visible ways of addressing the distribution of economic power.
6. Ensuring marginalized communities whose socio-economic needs are invoked by the parties have access to influence talks (Bell, 2018b).

There is a need to anticipate risks of implementing economic power-sharing, and mitigating where possible. The following issues are some of the most common pitfalls:

1. If the agreement does not provide sufficient incentive and security guarantees through its economic power-sharing arrangements, the agreement in its entirety may fail to be implemented, with severe conflict and development consequences;
2. If implemented, political economic power-sharing provisions can strengthen conflict-parties economically and politically to renew conflict, or even incentivize new groups to use violence in pursuit of ‘a share of the pie’;
3. Territorial economic power-sharing tied to territorial divisions of power, can cause new grievances around inequality, for example of people in other regions, or majority populations at the centre, who feel they are losing out to a new prioritization of a conflict-affected region (Bell, 2018b).

The core overarching intention of military power-sharing provisions negotiated in peace and transition processes, is to ensure proportionate representation of opposing parties and factions, ethno-national groups, and other former combatants in the armed forces so as to stabilise the move from violent armed conflict to a post-conflict setting (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Definitions of military power-sharing are contested, but it can be understood as an agreement to share military decision-making and/or operational tasks between different armed contenders for power, or to proportionally include ethno-national groups or former combatants in ranks and file or command structures (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Military power-sharing includes measures such as: joint command structures; merger of forces; other forms of ethno-national or combatant proportionality in the army and police and associated security force institutions (for example monitoring commissions) (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Military power-sharing is often turned to in peace negotiations as a solution to providing security guarantees for groups. Like other forms of power-sharing it can offer all those at the heart of the conflict an incentive to buy into the peace process. For military leaders and personnel from non-state opponents, military power-sharing can offer an alternative to straight forward disarmament which nonetheless affirms the state’s monopoly on the use of force. However, military power-sharing also often means that militaries are expanded at a point where they should really be downsized, and their central control can become more diffuse as the price of a formal state monopoly on use of force, creating risks if the peace process breaks down (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Military power-sharing can offer a solution to contestations over military leadership and authority, and the dominance of one political or ethno-national group in state institutions, including security forces. Without this form of power-sharing, parties may have little incentive to end the conflict and disarm. There may also be principled reasons for military power-sharing, namely to make sure that military forces and power-structures are made more inclusive of former opposition interests and personnel and other forms of inclusion such as geographic, ethnic, or gender-based inclusion (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Military power-sharing arrangements focus on the inclusion of groups key to the conflict, but in doing so can create perverse incentives to smaller groups outside of the main peace agreement consensus to assert their claims violently. As in almost all peace negotiations, often the agendas of those who have carried out violent acts are central to negotiations. While military power-sharing can underwrite a commitment of the main parties to move from violence, the risk of incentivizing new forms of violence is also real (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

International militaries are often involved both in the fabric of military power-sharing arrangements, and in supporting the development of military power-sharing and the practical training and financing of its implementation. The role of international actors will depend on the military power-sharing provisions negotiated, on the relationship of international actors to the conflict, and local capacities for undertaking security functions which may be low or non-existent in cases where the state has had very little functional existence during the conflict (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Military power-sharing must be understood as one part in a wider ‘security transition’. Military power-sharing is often agreed as an alternative form of demobilization, demilitarization and reintegration (DDR) measures, or put in place as part of a wider attempt as SSR. DDR, SSR and forms of military power-sharing may all be part of a ‘security transition’, as defined in the box below – which is itself a political process. Toolkits for DDR and SSR should integrate better analysis of uses of military power-sharing, rather than assuming that the demobilization of combatants and return to civilian life or rule of law based SSR will be the norm (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Military power-sharing needs to be supported with contextual awareness and understanding of the different possible goals of the arrangements. In particular, consideration should be given to:

• The relationship of the military power-sharing arrangements to the wider group accommodation provided for by the peace agreement (notably political and territorial power-sharing).
• The role that control or membership of an army or militia plays in terms of access to other economic resources and goods and the incentives that attach to maintaining armed forces (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Understanding the potential for military power-sharing (and indeed all forms of power-sharing) to entrench division is important to anticipating to entrench division is important to anticipating implementation challenges and mitigating them (Bell, Gluckstein, Forster & Pospisil, 2018).

Territorial power-sharing is often used in peace processes, to accommodate the competing interests of conflict parties to territorial control, including competing claims to unitary statehood and to secession. Like other forms of power-sharing it can offer greater inclusion in the form of self-government for groups who have been contesting the state’s marginalization of them. However, territorial power-sharing can in turn cause other forms of inclusion and exclusion which require to be anticipated and addressed (Wise, 2018a; Wise, 2018b; Wise and Bell, 2018).

Territorial power-sharing involves the delegating of some of central government’s responsibilities to different geographical areas. Territorial power-sharing can include restructuring from a centralised to a federal state, or moving decision-making power from a central government to regional or local governments. It can also include delegation of forms of political, fiscal, or administrative self-governance to regional or local groups who make claims to govern a particular area (Wise, 2018a).

Different elements of forms of territorial subdivision (such as federalism, devolution, and autonomy) are often combined in creative and multi-layered permutations. Using territorial power-sharing to accommodate ethno-national groups is more likely to be part of a complex package of decentralizing powers to a variety of sub-state entities, sometimes building on earlier rhetorical commitments to federal principles, such as in Bosnia and Nepal (Wise, 2018a).

Territorial power-sharing arrangements are reached mostly during peace processes relating to intrastate, identity-based conflicts across a variety of geographical contexts, including secessionist disputes. These arrangements are often agreed at the ‘substantive/comprehensive’ agreement stage – that is, as part of an overall settlement framework, and in forms which are highly varied, which draw eclectically on existing models of state configuration – often adding layering and complexity as a result of negotiating dynamics (Wise, 2018a).

During negotiations on territorial power-sharing, there are critical decisions that have implications for inclusion. Decisions over how territory will be split, internal demarcation processes, institutional frameworks, dispute resolution, division of responsibilities, articulations of the nature of the state, and anticipating newly created ‘minority-majority’ dynamics, can all have implications for inclusion and exclusion of different groups. Reflection on these decisions may create space in negotiations to anticipate possible inclusion dilemmas, and creative ways to manage exclusive outcomes that may contribute to future conflict (Wise, 2018a; Wise and Bell, 2018).

Analysis on how to ensure that power-sharing arrangements enable inclusion beyond the main conflict parties should question the conflict dynamic which the territorial power-sharing attempts to address, and anticipate lines of resistance. For example, identifying whether negotiations are attempting to pull a fragmented state back together, or further decentralize a federal state to demobilize a geographically concentrated minority, will have implications for which party is more likely to embrace or push against, a territorial power-sharing ‘solution’ (Wise, 2018a).

Symbolic naming of the arrangements may be as contested as substance, and require creative approaches to ‘naming’. The multiple meanings associated with terminology such as ‘federalism’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘decentralization’ can lead to parties favouring particular concepts due to what they understand those terms to mean, or rejecting proposals due to their terminology, regardless of the mode of devolution of power that they establish in practice. Opening up space in the process for a diverse range of parties to express how they understand concepts of territorial power sharing, may reduce the opportunities for misinterpretation or disappointment (Wise, 2018a).

Sequencing territorial devolution of power in stages, to build incremental agreement, can help build support for territorial power-sharing as a framework for a more inclusive state. In some peace processes, comprehensive territorial power-sharing frameworks build on earlier peace plans or rhetorical commitments to power-sharing principles, even if these earlier proposals failed to be implemented. These processes raise the possible importance of having certain concepts agreed in principle at the outset of negotiations (Wise, 2018a).

Creative techniques for formalizing ‘unsettlement’ may present opportunities to promote plurinational solutions to statehood. These techniques can serve to reassure conflicted groups that they will not lose out by entering the new arrangements. Creative techniques include providing for extra territorial connections between kin groups; leaving unresolved border areas; providing for open-ended unresolved processes, such as by using postponed referendums (Wise, 2018a).

Those concerned to support both inclusion of the main groups at the heart of the conflict, and capacity for a broader self-sustaining social contract can usefully analyse the inclusion dynamics of the power-sharing arrangement by considering the function that the power-sharing arrangement has in creating a new political settlement. To influence the inclusiveness of a power-sharing arrangement, it is important to consider not just the technical issues of powersharing design, but the role that power-sharing is contemplated to play in resolving the conflict (Bell, 2018a).

Robust individual rights protections can be very important to mitigating group-based politics. They are often pushed by local actors as an integral part of the political power-sharing arrangements, rather than an abstract commitment to international norms and rule of law. International actors tend to support inclusion of human rights provisions and mechanisms in peace agreements, because they are committed to them as democratic norms. However, implementation of the agreement often prioritizes measures aimed at sustaining a fragile ‘political deal’ between elite actors, without paying attention to the implementation of human rights protections (Bell, 2018a).

International supporters of peace process often fail to understand that human rights measures are not just ‘liberal peace’ add-ons, but practical tools for balancing the power-sharing arrangement. A more political understanding of the role of human rights in building wider social legitimacy for the peace agreement, and enabling civil society to challenge elements of the political culture which perpetuate conflict, is important to achieving outcomes that are more inclusive (Bell, 2018a).

Political power-sharing involves both hazards and opportunities for the inclusion of women, depending on the function it has (Bell 2018c). While power-sharing can emerge as an elite pact that largely excludes those non-dominant groups not directly involved in the conflict, there is evidence that power-sharing peace agreements are much more likely to have provisions for women and that these are more likely to be implemented (Bell and McNicholl, 2019; Bell, 2015).

Institutional settlements such as forms of power-sharing that that privilege stability over transformation, and recognise and accommodate difference along only one dimension, work to incentivise and fix the gender status quo, dilute gender reforms, and marginalise and stigmatise women. The logic links the gendered status quo of dominance and deference with the delivery of stability, predictability, and predominant norms of ethno-nationalism (Mackay and Murtagh, 2019).

Territorial power-sharing comes with potential opportunities and risks for women’s inclusion.  New post-conflict institutions can be designed to be more inclusive but fundamental rights and protections can also be at risk. Risks are also different for different women depending on whether they are part of the majority or minority community in the sub-national territory (Wise and Bell, 2018; Wise, 2018a).

Peace agreements that create sub-state entities only rarely contain provisions that support the participation of non-dominant minority groups within sub-state or devolved institutions.  They do however tend to include provisions for non-discrimination based on gender. This means there are opportunities for alliances between non-dominant groups, women and other civic actors who do not fall within the main social divisions to support a broader inclusion agenda (Wise, 2018b).

The following activities can be useful in making power-sharing proposals more inclusive:
– Producing strong gender-responsive conflict analysis of group power dynamics and incentives
– Modelling power-sharing proposals for their possible gender impact
– Supporting and resourcing the building of alliances between and across women’s groups
– Supporting and resourcing the building alliances with other groups, for example with civil and human rights groups, other equality constituencies and political groupings pushing for equality
– Formulating clear proposals for women’s inclusion
– Pushing for representation in the structures set up to advance the transitional deliberation
– Asking for support and technical advice from gender advocates and advisors (Bell, 2018c; Wise and Bell, 2018).

Political Power-sharing and Inclusion: Peace and Transition Processes

This report sets out how peace negotiations and peace agreements formalize political power-sharing arrangements, using data from the PA-X database. In particular, it aims to consider the tensions between the inclusion of political and military elites in the new dispensation and broader projects of social inclusion, including for example women and ‘non-aligned’ minorities. The report addresses the key tension between the ‘elite pact’ of the peace process captured in a political power-sharing arrangement necessary to short-term stability, and the ambition that it evolves to comprise a broader, more inclusive social contract, capable of sustaining peace and preventing conflict in the long term.

Territorial Power-sharing and Inclusion in Peace Processes

This research report provides information and analysis on when and how peace agreements provide for territorial power-sharing, and the implications for broader projects of social inclusion. Territorial power-sharing is often used in peace processes, to accommodate the competing interests of conflict parties to territorial control, including competing claims to unitary statehood and to secession. Like other forms of power-sharing it can offer greater inclusion in the form of self-government for groups who have been contesting the state’s marginalization of them. However, territorial power-sharing can in turn cause other forms of inclusion and exclusion which require to be anticipated and addressed.

Economic Power-sharing, Conflict Resolution and Development in Peace Negotiations and Agreements

This research report argues that there is a tension between the group accommodation ambitions of economic power-sharing, and economic reform focused on creating a broader social contract capable of delivering public goods. For peace and development, war economies and modes of controlling resources will have to be replaced by other forms of economic management and accountability. The challenge in peace negotiations is to persuade the parties to the conflict that they have something to gain from new economic arrangements, sufficient to persuading them to give up forms of privatised economic power, exercised on behalf of one group only. This report reviews when and how peace agreements achieve this, and provide for economic power-sharing, including sharing of access to and revenue from natural resources at the heart of the conflict.

Military Power-Sharing and Inclusion in Peace Processes

Military power-sharing is used frequently in peace processes to accommodate the competing interests of conflict parties to be included in the state’s power structures. Security forces are often a central issue because they control the state’s use of force. Military power-sharing is therefore agreed as part of a political package of measures relating to inclusion in the state and the logistics of ending violence, rather than being focused on issues of good management and administration of military matters understood to be central to security sector reform. Military power-sharing may, however, be a key part of a wider security transition which aims to deliver a reformed security sector, notably in terms of who is included in security forces and their oversight.

Gaining Ground: Women and Territorial Power-sharing in Peace Processes

This brief presents the different forms of territorial power-sharing that arise in peace agreements, and the potential opportunities and risks for women’s inclusion that these can entail. It proposes critical questions that women could ask of peace processes if territorial power-sharing is likely to be negotiated, and highlights strategies and tactics that women and allies have used in conflict-affected contexts to navigate inclusion issues. This brief is part of a Gender Briefing Series to support women’s meaningful participation and the integration of gender perspectives in peace processes that aim to end violent intrastate conflict.

Accessing Political Power: Women and Political Power-sharing in Peace-Processes

This brief sets out the various contexts in which different forms of political power-sharing are established in peace agreements. It indicates the challenges for women but also for other groups who are not at the centre of conflict, who may be useful allies in any struggle for greater inclusion. This brief is part of a Gender Briefing Series to support women’s meaningful participation and the integration of gender perspectives in peace processes that aim to end violent intrastate conflict.

Unsettling Bargains? Power-Sharing and the Inclusion of Women in Peace Negotiations

This report observes that there is a need for more sustained engagement of the women, peace and security agenda with power-sharing arrangements. It further observes that the data on peace agreement provision and subsequent election practice indicates that power-sharing arrangements typically make some provision for women. This suggests that there is no automatic assumption by negotiators or parties to the conflict that inclusion of women in executives and legislatures is destabilizing of power-sharing arrangements.

Power-Sharing, Conflict Resolution, and Women: A Global Reappraisal

This article focuses on political power-sharing, drawing qualitatively on a global data-set of peace agreements (PA-X Peace Agreements Database). It argues that peace agreements indicate three main functions for political power-sharing: permanent group accommodation, equitable representation of minorities in autonomy regimes, and transition management. Each of these power-sharing types raises different opportunities and challenges for women’s inclusion and equality. The analysis aims to inform women’s engagement with power-sharing design and implementation in fragile and conflict-affected states.

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. Drawing on the PA-X Peace Agreements Database, 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.

New Institutions, New Gender Rules? A Feminist Institutionalist Lens on Women and Power-Sharing

This article examines the apparent tension between power-sharing as the dominant approach to conflict settlement and the inclusion of women and provisions for gender equality as promoted through the Women, Peace and Security agenda. It argues that applying a feminist institutionalist (FI) lens – which attends to the interactions between political and social institutions, and the interplay between formal and informal rules, norms and practices – provides a means of explaining the so-called ‘gendered paradox of power-sharing’, including the gap between the promise of formal frameworks and outcomes for women in practice. It provide a basis for identifying what institutional mechanisms might be needed to embed the inclusion of women and the integration of the WPS norms in power-sharing frameworks in the future.

The Feminist Institutional Dimensions of Power-Sharing and Political Settlements

This article applies key insights from feminist institutionalist analysis to power-sharing and political settlement in postconflict societies. Drawing on the concept of “gender orders,” allied with considerations of the informal and highly masculine rituals and rules that pervade institutional political life, the article demonstrates how apparent gendered gains in power-sharing are limited in their transformative effect. Despite a greater emphasis on female inclusion, as mandated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, women’s capacity to shape postconflict politics in power-sharing is limited. These limitations are shaped not only by the complexity of postconflict political landscapes but by women’s restricted access to closed informal spaces pivotal to the masculine functioning of power-sharing.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbours: Assessing the Role of Consociational Politics in Transitional Justice

This working paper reflects on the relationship of transitional justice theory and practice with consociational theory examining how both interact with respect to enabling or limiting conflict transformation in deeply divided ethnic polities. In particular, the paper examines how transitional justice interacts with different forms of power-sharing; the tensions in the peace versus justice debates which are central to TJ theory and practice and how they interact with consociational forms of governance; the relationship between community versus individual rights in consociational settlements; and how the emphasis on TJ theory and practice on ‘bottom-up, victim led’ processes interact with consociational debate on grassroots versus elite interactions.

Power-sharing Infographics Series

Infographic: Economic Power-Sharing	Infographic: Territorial Power-Sharing	Infographic: Military Power-Sharing	Infographic: Gender  Perspectives	Infographic: Political Power-Sharing