Self-determination as a concept within political philosophy has developed exponentially in the last few decades. This thesis maps the most prominent conceptions and establishes three main arguments. Firstly, that self-determination is a universal right for all self-identified peoples. Secondly, that secession should not be universal, but instead is dependent on the level of cohesiveness of a given people, as well as historical or contemporary injustice. Third, that while Palestine does have a right to secession, there is a risk of neglecting the refugees and their right of return in the quest for statehood. Alternatives to secession, i.e. power-sharing solutions, are discussed as well, and applied to Palestine. Critiques of nationalism, intergenerational justice and group rights are evaluated as well.

M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2012 / The past two decades have seen the rise of power sharing agreements as a means to end protracted civil wars. Following from the perceived success of these agreements, power sharing has become an important tool in the mediator’s arsenal and has increasingly been advocated in periods of democratic deadlock and civil strife following highly-contested elections. The viability of this model has rarely been questioned. This study will undertake a deep analysis of the success or failure of the power sharing agreements undertaken in Kenya and Zimbabwe in 2008 following the outbreak of violence in both countries. It will explain the different results seen in these two cases through an examination of the agreements, the roles played by regional and international actors as well as through an analysis of the influence of local political culture and inter-elite relations. The relative success of the Kenyan agreement can be attributed to a culture of cooperation amongst the elite alongside consistent and concerted pressure exerted by the mediation team and international actors. In contrast, the Zimbabwean government of national unity has hobbled along and little progress has been made to implement the agreement. This can largely be attributed to a badly drafted document which allowed for an inequitable distribution of power, the obduracy of the ZANU-PF elite and the unwillingness of the agreement guarantors to place sufficient pressure on the parties for reform. In a context where inter-elite relations are characterised by opposition and intransigence, the framing of the document and the actions of enforcer parties become particularly important. Due to the political cultures in both countries, it is unlikely that the power sharing agreements will have produced significant gains for democracy or have reformed the prevailing culture of impunity. This report concludes that in spite of the problems with the power sharing model, there are currently few alternatives to help mend torn societies. In order to overcome the problems that have been highlighted within this report, it is necessary for mediators to undertake innovative and reflexive strategies to ensure the full implementation of future agreements.

After the Cold War, international state-building has taken place in several countries as a response to ethnic conflicts. The dissolution of Yugoslavia was also characterized with ethnic conflicts, which ended after international interventions. The inter-ethnic violence destabilized the nexus between eponymous states, nationalizing states, and the minorities living in the latter. The international actors - primarily the EU and the US - involved in state-building saw consociational power-sharing arrangements as a key feature in multi-ethnic state-building processes, notably in post-war Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Using Smith’s quadratic nexus and Germane’s “fifth element” as a theoretical framework, this thesis examines one segment of the nexus - the correlation of international relational field and national minorities relational field – in a ‘top down’ approach. Two central questions are asked: how have international actors influenced power-sharing arrangements in reaction to separatism; and how has the interplay between different ethnic groups from the same ethnic minority living in the same state affected power-sharing arrangements? These questions are addressed by engaging in a comparative case analysis of two ethnically divided states, namely Kosovo and Macedonia, having adopted consociational power-sharing arrangements under the international influence. The work in this thesis examines the international influence on power-sharing arrangements in reaction to separatism through three processes: international mediations, implementation of power-sharing arrangements into the constitutions and the functionality of power-sharing systems in practice. The thesis revolves around these central arguments: the role of international actors in reaction to separatism and the degree of local ownership in the drafting and constitutionalisation of power-sharing arrangements is reflected in asymmetric power-sharing arrangements between the two compared cases and on the functionality of the power-sharing systems; and, relationship between different groups of minorities from the same ethnicity living in the same state - “the sixth element” - has an impact on the functionality of power-sharing systems, giving rise to “the sixth element” as a new relational field within the quadratic nexus, proposed in this thesis.

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The thesis considers an understudied form of third party peacemaking, namely peacemaking interventions with kin-state involvement. The main research question this thesis seeks to analyse is how local actors, their kin-states and third party peacemakers interact within the context of a peacemaking intervention for power-sharing in deeply divided societies. The literature on third party peacemaking largely neglects the role of kin-states in peacemaking, while in the literature on power-sharing the role of external actors, including kin-states, remains understudied. This thesis aims to address these gaps by investigating the recent peacemaking interventions for power-sharing with kin-state involvement in Cyprus, Bosnia and Northern Ireland. The findings of the case studies are combined and assessed through the use of a five-level analytical framework, which includes the local actors level; the local actors-third party peacemaker level; the local actors-kin-state(s) level; the third party peacemaker-kin-state(s) level; and the kin-states level. The analysis identifies a number of conditions pertinent to each of these levels which affect peacemaking interventions for power-sharing in deeply divided societies with kin-state involvement. There are two main original contributions of this thesis to the above mentioned literatures. First, it proposes a typology of kin-state involvement in peacemaking, which categorises kin-state involvement into four roles: promoter; quasi-mediator; power-broker; and enforcer. Second, through the use of game theoretical analysis, more specifically a nested games approach, it illustrates how the interaction between local actors, their kin-states and third party peacemakers can be modelled in the context of a peacemaking intervention for power-sharing. The empirical and theoretical conclusions of this study indicate that kin-state involvement in third peacemaking interventions is more complex and fluid than widely assumed.

Abstract The struggle for Swedish foreign policy – How Swedish foreign policy was defined and established between the years 1867–1905 as a result of prevailing political power-sharing   AIMS – The aim of this master thesis is to problematize how the Swedish foreign policy was defined politically in the context of the existing constitutional power-sharing model between the bicameral parliament and the ruling monarch. The period 1867–1905 is considered an earlier phase in the political process towards modern parliamentarianism in Sweden. DESIGN – An overall theoretical perspective of a correlation between domestic- and foreign policy is applied, and complemented with a theoretical position of which actor has the priority to define Swedish foreign policy. The thesis uses a methodology of extensive argumentation analysis, with a thematic division between the internal political arena on one side, and on the other side the parliamentary arena. The first arena is analyzed by combining political programs with the monarchs’ autobiographies and memoir. The second arena uses parliamentary debate protocols, parliamentary bills. In this way the thesis generates a selection and a greater understanding of various political issues which is of concern to the actual foreign policy definition in the annual official political throne speeches of the Swedish monarch. RESULTS – A variety of political issues are regarded as of foreign political importance within the internal political arena and is distinguished by a degree of correlations with ideological, ideal and political domestic issues. Such issues are then reflected in the parliamentary arena, through debates in both first and second chambers. The range of issues addressed is not only of constitutional importance, regarding the monarch’s executive power over the different foreign policy areas, but also concerning which political approach should be applied to define the main principle of Swedish foreign policy. Together, the parliamentary debates reveals which arguments influence the definition of foreign policy and which actors who claim the priority to define Swedish foreign policy – all within the existing frame of the power-sharing system. CONCLUSIONS – The thesis concludes that the actors of various parliamentary committees, and especially the constitutional committee, not only had the crucial argument which determined the outcome of the numerous parliamentary debates. Same actors also had the priority to define the main arguments on which the foundations of the monarch’s foreign policy political guidelines where dictated.

<p>\abstract</p><p>This dissertation seeks to explain the role of governmental and non-governmental actors in increasing/reducing the emergence of intergroup conflict after war, when group differences have been a salient aspect of group mobilization. This question emerges from several interrelated branches of scholarship on self-enforcing institutions and power-sharing arrangements, group fragmentation and demographic change, collective mobilization for collectively-targeted violence, and conflict termination and the post-conflict quality of peace. This question is investigated through quantitative analyses performed at the sub-national, national, and cross-national level on the effect of elite competition on the likelihood of violence committed on the basis of group difference after war. These quantitative analyses are each accompanied by qualitative, case study analyses drawn from the American Reconstruction South, Iraq, and Cote d'Ivoire that illustrate and clarify the mechanisms evaluated through quantitative analysis. </p><p>Shared findings suggest the correlation of reduced political competition with the increased likelihood of violence committed on the basis of group difference. Separate findings shed light on how covariates related to control over rent extraction and armed forces, decentralization, and citizenship can lead to a reduction in violence. However, these same quantitative analyses and case study analysis suggest that the control of the state can be perceived as a threat after the end of conflict. Further, together these findings suggest the political nature of violence committed on the basis of group difference as opposed to ethnic identity or resource scarcity alone. </p><p>Together, these combined analyses shed light on how and why political identities are formed and mobilized for the purpose of committing political violence after war. In this sense, they shed light on the factors that constrain post-conflict violence in deeply divided societies, and contribute to relevant academic, policy, and normative questions.</p> / Dissertation

Does political power sharing foster or inhibit democratisation in post-civil war states? Previous research dedicated to the study of power sharing and democratisation has been limited to the early post-conflict period and used minimalistic definitions of democracy. This thesis uses a wider definition of democracy and hypothesise that the empowerment of elite actors from relevant communities would strengthen democratisation in the short-term, as these groups would gain a patron that could protect their democratic liberties. Meanwhile, a digression was expected in the longer term as power sharing would equip these elite patrons to avoid accountability and suppress opposition. Democracy score changes were analysed using an OLS regression on 127 cases of civil war settlement between 1945-2006. Findings suggest that political power sharing promotes democratisation in the short term. Moreover, no negative long-term effects were found. Practitioners should therefore host no hesitations against introducing political power sharing when resolving conflicts. The absence of negative long-term effects could be attributed to criticisms not recognising the different setups that power-sharing institutions can take which promote accountability. Possibly, there are also other mechanisms which facilitates interaction between elite actors and their communities at play, counterbalancing the negative effects that power sharing would otherwise entail.

Do terrorist organisations have an effect on the sustainability of peace agreements? In this paper, I investigate the potential consequences of including armed non-state actors in peace agreements. Specifically, I focus on the most controversial type of actor: terrorist organisations and how they affect the sustainability of peace agreements. I utilise a unique dataset covering all intrastate peace agreements and designated terrorist organisations between 1998 – 2011, and employ a survival analysis through a cox proportional hazard model. I find strong evidence suggesting that the presence of terrorist organisations – both in conflicts and in peace agreements – have a significantly destabilising effect on the sustainability of peace agreements. I also find evidence which suggest that more complex power sharing arrangements could be a viable option to combat the destabilising effect of terrorist actors, although this effect might not be as strong in peace process agreements.

This thesis examines the factors which impact societal willingness to integrate in a post conflict, post power sharing agreement environment. Utilizing the Northern Ireland case, this study analyzes variance in willingness to integrate between Protestant and Catholic groups. Analysis of the Northern Ireland Life and Times survey data illustrates the shifting relationship between political trust and ingroup/outgroup frustrations on levels of willingness to integrate since the Good Friday Agreement. Statistical analyses indicate confirmation of ingroup attachment and elite political trust hypotheses, and reduced impact of outgroup benefit perceptions on willingness to integrate since the Good Friday Agreement.