Negotiating Power-sharing

Power-Sharing

​Nicole Carle: Hello and welcome to this module on power sharing and peace negotiations. This session overviews the main conundrums and ways out of these conundrums related to power sharing. My name is Nicole Carl and I'm a counsel at the Public International Law and Policy Group. And today, I'm so pleased to be joined by Dr. Paul Williams, President and Co-founder of PILPG. Welcome, Paul. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Thanks, Nicole. It's great to be here. 

What is power-sharing in the context of peace negotiations?

Nicole Carle: To start us off, what exactly do we mean when we talk about power sharing in the context of peace negotiations? And why is it often such an important issue for parties to consider?

Dr. Paul Williams: Well, Nicole, almost all conflicts are driven by a marginalization or an exclusion of a certain percentage of the population from power, be it political power, economic power, cultural power, and this results in an armed conflict in many instances. And so, one of the cornerstones of any peace agreement to essentially, you know, put a country back on a path of peace or on a new path of peace, requires some element of power sharing among the old political, economic, cultural elite, and then those that have been marginalized, and there's two different ways of doing this. 

One is vertical power sharing, which is power sharing between the central government, the capital city, so to speak, the centralized political elite, and then the regions or the provinces and sometimes maybe even down to the municipality level, and we can talk a little bit about it later, but there's political, there's administrative, there's fiscal devolution. 

The other is horizontal power sharing, and that's power sharing across the national government. So, maybe instead of a unicameral legislature, there's a bicameral legislature, so there's additional representation in the national legislative branch from the regions and the provinces. Sometimes, there will be power sharing if one group of people, be it religious, ethnic, linguistic, whatever the identity might be, holds the President, the other one holds the Vice President. If one holds the president, the other holds the Prime Minister, or there may be certain set asides in the legislature or among the executive for those populations, which are minorities or have been previously marginalized. So, there's lots of different ways in which power can be shared horizontally and vertically. Every peace agreement has some element of power sharing in it. 

What challenges arise in vertical power-sharing arrangements?

Nicole Carle: It does seem all encompassing and it does seem like power sharing is one of the most important issues underlining most conflicts. Sticking with the first you mentioned on vertical power sharing, are there any challenges to using some of the vertical power sharing arrangements that you mentioned? 

Dr. Paul Williams: I think, Nicole, there are a number of challenges to designing and implementing an effective mechanism for vertical power sharing. The first is to ensure that whatever mechanism is designed is fit for purpose, that it actually will enable previously marginalized populations to effectively engage in the governance of the country to share power. Oftentimes, very mischievous political elites can design power sharing mechanisms that, although they look good on paper, will result in a system that continues to allow the political elite, most of them usually living in the capital, to continue to exercise political, economic, and cultural power. 

So it can't just be, you know, good words on paper. Folks have to think through whether or not these mechanisms would in effect, create an environment for effective power sharing. One of the other major Achilles heels is there's essentially a sales effort going on by federal states around the globe to pitch to sell federalism, which could be vertical power sharing to countries in conflict without realizing that, well one, many of those countries have been federal for centuries and have worked out a highly effective and highly complex system of federal governance. And, in almost all of them, they were provinces which came together to form a federal state.

Germany with the Lander, the United States with the colonies, pick any federal country and they came together, essentially. Most contemporary, if not all of contemporary conflict states that are considered federal are going from a unitary state to a federal state. It's a very different set of circumstances.

And so, I would encourage future mediators to look for examples in the last 20 years, not in the last 2 centuries. Another Achilles heel is there's oftentimes a lack of resources and a lack of talent to implement in a fairly instantaneous fashion, a federal structure, if all of the resources, the power, the personnel, the expertise, the infrastructure have been centralized in a unitary state, and now you decide that a federal state is the solution, you're going to have to build up the physical infrastructure as well as the intellectual infrastructure to govern at the regional, provincial, and municipal level. 

And then Nicole, the last Achilles heel is that oftentimes countries in conflict that are unitary states see federalism, see vertical power sharing as a panacea. We've been marginalized. We've been excluded. There's been corruption. The political elite have captured all of the power. Let's have a federal state. Everything will be great. 

Federalism is an exceedingly difficult state structure to, to implement and you may in fact cause more harm than good by moving from a unitary state to a federal state, and you may in fact derail a democratic transition or transition out of conflict by blindly insisting on federalism as a panacea for whatever it is that ails the unitary state.

Nicole Carle: Thank you for outlining those challenges in detail as they relate to vertical power sharing. Another question on this is when we have national governments or local parties which are engaged in a negotiation, how do they choose an appropriate state structure while still balancing their distinct interests?

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, well, Nicole, I think the first step is to understand that there's just quite a spectrum of state structures. There's four main categories, but think of these as signposts along a spectrum. 

The first is a traditional unitary state. If you think of Albania, Ireland, Singapore, Uganda, those are traditional unitary states, but then you have states that are devolved unitary states, some more, some less, Chile, Japan, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, you have countries like Italy and Spain, which are frequently characterized as federal states, but they're not in fact federal states, they're unitary states that are highly devolved, sometimes symmetrical, sometimes asymmetrical. We can talk about that in a second. And then you have the federal states we've talked about, but they fall into two types of categories; Malaysia, Germany, India, Australia, the United States, who have been for centuries or decades federal states and then you have the more recent federal states like Bosnia, where you could learn quite a few lessons from a situation like that. And then you even still have some confederal states like Switzerland. 

So, there's a whole array of models, and I think it's important for mediators and parties in a conflict to be comfortable designing their own model that would fit somewhere along that spectrum. There's no real good copy paste model that can be brought over. One of the mechanisms that I think is important for parties to think about and to utilize in designing a state structure of power sharing is asymmetrical. Not every province, not every region has to have the same level of power, be it fiscal, administrative, or political as the other regions.

Some may not have the capacity to absorb all of that power, alternatively, some may have been so disenfranchised in the past that they need more power initially, you know, other provinces and regions probably are fairly agnostic about whether it's centralized or or devolved, and the drafters of a peace agreement should be comfortable doing an asymmetric relationship. You can also phase it in over time, not every province will be ready to immediately assume all of the powers and responsibilities of a vertically decentralized state, and there's no harm in, usually with international assistance or regional assistance, having a country, having a province wait three to five years before it builds out its infrastructure to assume those powers.

And then the last thing that I would mention is that it's important to always be thinking about synchronizing political devolution, administrative devolution, and fiscal devolution. One of the tricks that a political elite will seek to deploy during a negotiation is to devolve political power, but they don't devolve the fiscal authority, and so the provinces actually can't implement their political decisions. They don't have any money to do it, or they don't devolve the administration. They make political decisions, but it will still be administered by the central government, the ministry of interior or the ministry of finance, etcetera. 

And so, you get a feeling of political power, but you're still disenfranchised because you don't have administrative or fiscal power or alternatively, you get all the administrative and fiscal power, but you don't get the political decision making. So, you end up just taxing your people and implementing the decisions made at the national government. I've been surprised in how many negotiations the political elite have been very mischievous about claiming to have devolved power, but it only really being one of the three of those different elements.

What is next for parties after the state structure has been decided?

Nicole Carle: A lot to consider there. What is next for parties to peace negotiations after the state structure has been decided? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Once the state structure has been designed, there's the question of what degree of power is actually devolved and what different categories? So, you'll often find that there's a fairly ready agreement that things like foreign affairs, national defense, fiscal policy need to stay with the central government. There's a handful that need to stay there. And then there's also those that they're quite readily comfortable with devolving to the local level. Oftentimes it's environmental protection, land use, fish and game license, sometimes language, sometimes culture, sometimes education, that can be somewhat controversial.

And then there's a whole basket of powers and responsibilities that are in the middle. That both the national government and the provincial governments will want to have either sole exclusive jurisdiction or at least primacy. And that's where a lot of the negotiations take place. Matters relating to transportation, to sometimes regional trade, surprisingly, a lot of provinces want to engage in trade independent of the national government, natural resource exploitation, the management of revenue from local natural resources, agriculture, these are all things that both the national government and the provincial governments will be interested in.

So, you either divide those up. Or oftentimes, they'll be called concurrent powers, which sounds good. Mediators will like to split the difference. Well, you both want this power. Why don't we make it a concurrent power? But that even complicates the situation more. Okay, you have a concurrent power. What if the national government wants to go one way, a provincial authority wants to go another way.

How do you resolve that dispute? Okay, maybe you bring it into the court system. But, you'll have a brand new federal court system that will be facing all of these challenges and interpretations of the constitution. And, that'll make it very, very difficult. 

Germany has taken a very clever approach. Well, they'll do framework legislation, so where there's a concurrent power, the national government has the ability to set a framework around the law, around the issue. And then, each of the launder, each of the provinces and Germany then fills in that framework with specifics and details for its particular or its unique situation. So it's concurrent, but there's a limit as to what the federal government can do. And then, there's a limit as to what the launder can do within that. So there's lots of issues with respect to once you get the state structure, allocating the power and sorting out disputes that arise from that allocation of power. 

What else should parties keep in mind when addressing power sharing issues?

Nicole Carle: Thanks for going through those. Is there anything else for parties to peace agreements or peace negotiations to keep in mind when addressing such power sharing issues? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, Nicole, I think timing is something that's very important to keep in mind, most things in a peace agreement happen on a relatively quick timeline. For security provisions, there will be a deployment of peacekeepers, oftentimes quite instantaneously, there'll be a DDR, demilitarization demobilization reintegration program, it'll come up pretty quickly. Security sector reform policy, at least. But devolving power can take a while.

If you rush it and do it too quickly, you end up with a dysfunctional state, both at the national level and at the provincial level. And I think this was part of the problem in Yemen. They so quickly tried to move from a peace agreement that called for federalism to a constitution that provided for federalism, and that essentially rushed into federalism and tipped it into conflict. 

Now, on the other hand, if you wait eight to ten years before you implement the federal structure, everyone has forgotten about the compromises made in the peace agreement, the non state armed actors will have disarmed, and then the government will have no incentive to engage in federalism, and so the parties will keep their non-state armed actor infrastructure active, until the federal state is implemented. But if they're sitting around for eight to ten years with nothing to do, they're going to turn to organized crime. They may turn to further mercenary work, or they may revolt against the government on other issues. So, it's really difficult to find that sweet spot of the timing of, you know, three to four or five issues for federalism, and ways of beginning to do some initial devolution of power, some redesign of the state structure, as soon as the peace agreement is signed. Don't rush it, but don't let it take a decade.

Nicole Carle: And with that, it brings us to the end of today's discussion. Thank you for joining us, Paul, and for enlightening us on power sharing as a key issue in peace negotiations. And thank you to our listeners for watching. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Thanks, Nicole. It was my pleasure.