The most recent political
crisis in Burundi raises some timely concerns about whether the state is poised
to slip back into old patterns of escalating violence between an ethnic Hutu
majority and Tutsi minority. For much of Burundi’s history, the
country has been ruled by a one-party state of Tutsi-dominated military elites.
Burundian leaders have had a habit of coming to power through orchestrating
military coups and imposing similarly exclusionist policies along ethnic lines.
In the early 1990s,
Burundian President Pierre Buyoya succumbed to domestic and international
pressures to initiate democratic reforms, including multi-party elections.
These reforms were quickly swept up in the chaos of the ensuing 1993 election
in which Hutu politician Melchior Ndadye and his party, the Front for Democracy
in Burundi (FRODEBU), won by a
landslide. Defeat of the incumbent
Union for National Progress (UPRONA) and associated Tutsi interests initiated
tremendous backlash from Tutsi communities who viewed results as an unfair Hutu
victory. Soon after, extremist
factions within the Tutsi-dominated army assassinated Ndadaye and launched a
coup. The assassination
galvanized FRODEBU supporters and incited escalating
rounds of ethnic violence from both sides, resulting in thousands of Hutu and
Tutsi casualties. The ensuing civil war finally concluded with a negotiated
settlement over a decade after it started. Power sharing became a central
component of the final agreement as well as the strategies involved in managing
the conflict.
While many peacemaking
strategies aim to facilitate the bargaining process for peace and its related
commitment problems (Stedman’s spoiler management, Walter’s outside enforcement), power sharing
has found widespread appeal because its implementation is adaptive to the
changing circumstances of reaching an agreement and governing by that
settlement. Admittedly, practical implementation of power sharing has sometimes
failed to live up to conceptual expectations. However, as conflict management
strategies go, power sharing has the advantage of being able to identify,
address and sometimes obscure different kinds of group dynamics and demands
depending on what a particular negotiation calls for. Therefore, evaluating the
success of power sharing in one particular instance—the Burundian Civil
War—means determining how mediators used it as a tool for responding to
tensions between short-term and long-term aims during peace talks.
Forms of Power Sharing
It’s helpful to conceive of
power-sharing as a spectrum of institutional arrangements based on different
rationalities for group behaviour under competitive conditions. Different
models of power allocation will operate by different levers to move the site of
ethnopolitical rivalry from the battlefield to the political arena, as well as
keep it there over time. The resulting arrangement may emphasise different
actors or sectors in society, as well as provide them with varying forms or degrees
of power.
On one end
of the power sharing spectrum are dispersive and inclusive institutions, which
rely on diversifying or expanding sites of power across different actors,
institutions and regions (Gates et al 2016; Brancati 2006; Lijphart 1969; Horowitz 1991). Inclusive and dispersive power sharing
are effective devices for co-opting a ‘moderate core’ of elites to sign onto a
peace agreement and join a transitional government where they will have
significantly expanded spheres of influence. On the other side of the spectrum
are constraining or ‘power dividing’ institutions, which balance the control that can be
exercised by a majority in a single governmental body against several
majorities in other organs. Power dividing seeks to reduce the chances that
political leaders will exit a power sharing arrangement in the long-run by
containing the cascade of escalation that groups can initiate through defection
from the political process, thereby reducing its potential gains.
Power Sharing as Conflict Management
Despite the range of differences,
power sharing models share two main dimensions of success as conflict
management strategies in civil war settings: the first is to establish mutually
acceptable terms by which
rival groups will prefer to secure their demands through power-sharing
guarantees over violent alternatives. The appeal of these postwar institutions,
in theory, carries the credibility of group commitments during the transition
period. The second benchmark is to build stable arrangement of postwar power
sharing institutions and rules, which largely comply with the initial
bargaining solution.
The juxtaposition of these
two measures reveals an evident tension between short-term and long-term successes.
Balancing these two dimensions is the moving target in many peace processes;
tactics to bolster the likelihood of reaching a settlement generates less
credible power sharing arrangements, but constraining institutions are less
conducive to consensus among elites who seek to maximise their power and
security.
The Arusha Peace Process
Burundi’s postwar
institutions constitute an inclusive power sharing arrangement, characterised
by a mutual veto, reserved legislative seats and executive positions. During the Arusha peace process, the
primary objectives were to reach a settlement with adequate buy-in to end
fighting in Burundi and initiate a peaceful transition. Power sharing at this
stage was effectively a strategy
of inclusion: negotiate a solution commensurate with the right demands for
the right people in the right bargaining
positions at the right time. The institutional design aspect of power sharing (whereby
power dividing considerations gain prominence) necessarily took a backseat to
the task of persuading elites that settlement would grant them reliable access
to power within the political process without taking up arms to do it. These
kinds of provisions and institutions were appealing for participating elites
who would ultimately wield these newly expanded stations of control. To
incorporate inclusive power sharing into the settlement, mediators at the
Arusha peace process successfully aggregated divergent interests, views and
levels of commitment across and within rival parties into a manageable
‘moderate core.' The resulting power sharing arrangement between ethnically
mixed parties effectively de-polarised the political arena and presented an
acceptable preference to continued conflict.
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