Power Sharing and Transitional Justice in Post Conflict Contexts

This paper examines how the combination of certain power-sharing and transitional justice arrangements in civil war settlements both affects the immediate achievement of peace, and lays the foundations for long term sustainable peace, justice and democracy. Power-sharing mechanisms significantly contribute to the establishment of peace in the immediate aftermath of civil wars, while transitional justice measures seek to help society to come to terms with large-scale past abuses. Therefore, the incorporation of power-sharing mechanisms alongside transitional justice provisions in arrangements aiming to end civil wars is an increasingly frequent phenomenon. However, how power-sharing and transitional justice provisions are combined in the peace agreements and how they interact with one another, remains an under-studied aspect in the broad literature of civil war settlements. This paper fills this gap by examining 72 peace agreements signed between 1989-2009. By using both qualitative and quantitative methods of research, including content analysis of the peace agreements as well as statistical correlations and linear regressions between various identified indicators, this paper presents new findings regarding the impact of certain combinations of power-sharing and transitional justice mechanisms on the achievement of peace in the short term, and the sustainability of peace, justice and democracy in the long term.