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Scholars have debated whether executive power sharing can secure peace in multiethnic states, but concerns about endogeneity due to reverse causation render this a difficult problem for empirical analyses. In the absence of a suitable instrumental variable, I explore an actor-based approach by studying a simple formal model. This highlights the conditions under which governments are likely to share power with a domestic challenger depending on the threat of violence. I then formulate a statistical "strategic selection" model that closely mirrors the theoretical model, thereby directly incorporating endogeneity. Applied to data at the level of ethnic groups, the estimation results indicate that power sharing is indeed enacted strategically by governments in anticipation of the risk of conflict. However, shedding new light on an ongoing debate, I find that the critics have overstated the case against power sharing: rather than spurring it, power sharing robustly reduces civil conflict.

Scholars have debated whether executive power sharing can secure peace in multiethnic states, but concerns about endogeneity due to reverse causation render this a difficult problem for empirical analyses. In the absence of a suitable instrumental variable, I explore an actor-based approach by studying a simple formal model. This highlights the conditions under which governments are likely to share power with a domestic challenger depending on the threat of violence. I then formulate a statistical "strategic selection" model that closely mirrors the theoretical model, thereby directly incorporating endogeneity. Applied to data at the level of ethnic groups, the estimation results indicate that power sharing is indeed enacted strategically by governments in anticipation of the risk of conflict. However, shedding new light on an ongoing debate, I find that the critics have overstated the case against power sharing: rather than spurring it, power sharing robustly reduces civil conflict.

"Aufbauend auf der bekannten empirischen Regelmäßigkeit, dass einige Länder wieder und wieder von Bürgerkriegen befallen werden, kritisiert der Beitrag die statische Konzeptualisierung und fehlende Dynamik (in Theorie und Analyse) allgemeiner quantitativer Modelle von Bürgerkriegsbeginn. Entgegen dem gängigen Fokus auf statischen und zeitnahen strukturellen Bedingungen (Kriegsanfälligkeit) wird argumentiert, dass Bürgerkriege nicht in einem historischen Vakuum entstehen, sondern (auch) Folge von wichtigen zeitdynamischen Prozessen sind. Die empirischen Analysen stützen dieses Argument und zeigen, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Bürgerkriegsausbruchs nicht 'geschichtsfrei' ist, sondern systematisch als Funktion vorhergehender Konflikte und Friedensdauer variiert." (Autorenreferat)

Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects.

Does power sharing bring peace? Policymakers around the world seem to think so. Yet, while there are many successful examples of power sharing in multi-ethnic states, such as Switzerland, South Africa and Indonesia, other instances show that such arrangements offer no guarantee against violent conflict, including Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe and South Sudan. Given this mixed record, it is not surprising that scholars disagree as to whether power sharing actually reduces conflict. Based on systematic data and innovative methods, this book comes to a mostly positive conclusion by focusing on practices rather than merely formal institutions, studying power sharing's preventive effect, analyzing how power sharing is invoked in anticipation of conflict, and by showing that territorial power sharing can be effective if combined with inclusion at the center. The authors' findings demonstrate that power sharing is usually the best option to reduce and prevent civil conflict in divided states.

AbstractPostulating grievance‐based mechanisms, several recent studies show that politically excluded ethnic groups are more likely to experience civil conflict. However, critics argue that endogeneity may undermine this finding since governments' decisions to include or exclude could be motivated by the anticipation of conflict. We counter this threat to inference by articulating a causal pathway that explains ethnic groups' access to power independently of conflict. Focusing on postcolonial states, we exploit differences in colonial empires' strategies of rule to model which ethnic groups were represented in government at the time of independence. This identification strategy allows estimating the exogenous effect of inclusiveness on conflict. We find that previous studies have tended to understate the conflict‐dampening impact of political inclusion. This finding suggests that grievances have been prematurely dismissed from conventional explanations of conflict, and that policy makers should consider conflict resolution methods based on power sharing and group rights.

While there is a growing consensus that ethnic inclusion produces peace, less is known about what causes transitions to power sharing between ethnic groups in central governments in multiethnic states. The few studies that have addressed this question have proposed explanations stressing exclusively domestic factors. Yet, power sharing is spatially clustered, which suggests that diffusion may be at play. Inspired by studies of democratic diffusion, we study the spread of inclusive policies with an "open-polity model" that explicitly traces diffusion from inclusion in other states. Our findings indicate that the relevant diffusion processes operate primarily at the level of world regions rather than globally or between territorial neighbors. Thus, the more inclusive the region, the more likely a shift to power sharing becomes. Shifts away from inclusion to dominance are less common since World War II, but they are more likely in regional settings characterized by ethnic exclusion.

Many scholars have detected a decrease of political violence, but the causes of this decline remain unclear. As a contribution to this debate, we revisit the controversy over trends in conflict after the end of the Cold War. While many made ominous predictions of surging ethnic warfare, Gurr presented evidence of a pacifying trend since the mid-1990s and predicted a further decline in ethnic conflict in an article on 'the waning of ethnic war'. Leveraging more recent data on ethnic groups and their participation in ethnic civil wars, this study evaluates if Gurr was right about the decline of ethnic conflict, and if he was right for the right reasons. We assess whether an increase in governments' accommodative policies toward ethnic groups can plausibly account for a decline in ethnic civil war. Our findings lend considerable support to an account of the pacifying trend that stresses the granting of group rights, regional autonomy, and inclusion in power-sharing, as well as democratization and peacekeeping.