Often recommended as a means of ending intractable civil wars, power-sharing may in fact be least likely to work when it is most needed.
About the Author
Ian S. Spears is assistant professor of political science at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. He is currently coediting a volume on the phenomenon of “states-within-states” in the developing world.
In severely divided societies, ethnic cleavages tend to produce ethnic parties and ethnic voting. Power-sharing institutions can ameliorate this problem, but attempts to establish such institutions, whether based on a consociational or…
