Economic Power Sharing

Panel A: The article is concerned with how power can be conceptualized in post-conflict situations, and more importantly, how power can be shared between formerly warring groups. As the most recent examples of conflicts in South Sudan or Syria show, policymakers see negotiated settlements that include some form of power sharing as leading to more inclusive societies. While there is already quite some literature on the forms of political (i.e. grand coalitions), territorial (i.e. asymmetric federalism) and military (i.e. reintegration of ex-combatants in the military or police force) power sharing, economic power sharing through formal state institution has been far less researched. The article aims to conceptually integrate the resource-oriented conceptions of power (beyond a Marxist interpretation) with the political concepts of power in order to understand how this plays out in situations where ethnic group rights are seen as more legitimate than liberal individual understandings of power.