Power Sharing Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Power sharing refers to a set of institutional arrangements that secures every major political force a position in government. Proportional representation, which encourages the coexistence of multiple political parties in the legislature, is a prominent example. Power sharing arrangements, however, are often a combination of mechanisms that ensure political diversity not only in legislatures, but also in executive offices—national or subnational.

Institutions of power sharing are almost always adopted as a response to actual or potential armed conflict, reflecting an attempt to manage violent rivalries of ethnic, religious, or purely political roots. Two or more parties share control of political power when the exclusion of one party would induce rebellions or escalate into civil war. Different combinations of power sharing institutions result from different types and territorial configurations of conflict.

The parliament was the main locus for power sharing in the earliest cases in the modern world—involving the introduction of minority representation in nineteenth-century Western Europe and Latin America. Such institutional innovation was oligarchic governments’ response to divisions within the elite, or to the emergence of mass political parties. Power sharing at the level of the executive power has a subnational and a national formula: federalism, which is especially suited for managing conflict among geographically concentrated political forces, and grand coalition governments, which grant every significant party a position in the national cabinet and veto power over major decisions. Both mechanisms are core elements of various peace proposals in multiethnic settings in contemporary Africa.

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