Federalism and Decentralization
In addition to its engagement in peace processes, PILPG has 30 years of experience training civilians, civil society, and other parties on the substance and skills needed to most effectively represent their delegation’s interests in an international peace negotiation. This page offers resources on power-sharing options between the central government and regional/state/local governments. Scroll through this page for: Background Reading, Educational Material,
Expert Insights & Interactive Tools.
Background Reading
This section offers background reading including the Power-Sharing chapter from Dr. Paul R. William's’ Lawyering Peace book, which undertakes a detailed exploration of vertical power-sharing. Vertical power-sharing is devolving various powers from the national government to substate levels of government, such as regional, provincial, or municipal levels. Vertical power-sharing is intended to empower previously marginalized political constituencies at the local level. This chapter of the Lawyering Peace book notes how parties to a peace negotiation coordinated their design of vertical power-sharing arrangements with those of horizontal power-sharing. The other resources in this section provide a deep-dive into the issue of power-sharing in the 2024 Sudanese conflict context, with lessons learned applicable to other conflict contexts around the globe.
Educational Materials
This section includes a short video lecture, with accompanying speaker notes, overviewing the topic of post-conflict decentralization of government powers to local governments; and a link to a mini lesson on the topic of power-sharing.
Expert Insights
The following conversations take a Q&A format where PILPG experts answer questions posed by Sudanese civilians fundamental questions regarding the negotiation of state and governance matters during the upcoming Sudanese peace process.
Arabic
Arabic
English
English
Interactive Tools and Resources
The following decision tree, available in English and Arabic, outlines the decisions that need to be made in order to determine wealth sharing between central and local governments. The negotiation simulation on power-sharing in Yemen offer opportunities to put the knowledge acquired from this page on government power-sharing to the test. While the simulation is on the Yemen context, conducting such an exercise will help delegates in developing the skills necessary to successfully negotiate a power-sharing arrangement beyond the context of the simulation.
