This thesis analyzes the process of civil wars and political crisis in Lebanon in a historical context, covering the period starting from the civil war of 1860 until the Doha Agreement in 2008. This thesis defines confessional system as a type of democracy implemented in multi-religious societies, which did not change along two centuries in Lebanon. This study aims to establish a different approach on questions such as how far confessionalism can contribute to internal strives and political crisis in Lebanon. The thesis claims that the confessional system that was posed as a solution after civil war periods is the main resource of intercommunal conflicts and this system is open to the manipulation of the foreign actors for their own interests. This thesis also claims that if the national citizenship is applied instead of confessional system, and if Lebanese people unify in terms of national identity, civil wars, political crisis, and foreign intervention could be prevented.

Like so many other developing nations, Brazil has suffered from extreme inequality. Even though it has a healthy economy, free elections and multiple political parties, there are deep divides and unstable political institutions. The relatively recent transition to democracy has allowed a large and growing Evangelical community to emerge which is causing a religious shifting. The Pentecostal faith is providing alternative structures for social and political expression previously denied to many. Through community networks, many of Brazil's marginalized are accessing legitimacy, making them an undeniable force. The focus of this paper is to determine if Pentecostalism undermines or strengthens democratic consolidation in Brazil, and what role it has to play in power sharing.

This thesis considers the extent to which decentralisation in the Republic of Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has been effective in reducing ethnic inequalities that exacerbate social divisions and can lead to conflict. Guided by the concept of horizontal inequalities, it identifies the factors which influenced the decision to devolve responsibilities to the municipalities after 2001. It examines the particular institutional design that Macedonian decentralisation took, and demonstrates how its use of local power-sharing mechanisms was intended to address the concerns of the Albanian and Macedonian communities simultaneously. This thesis takes an integrative approach to studying the political, administrative, and fiscal dimensions of decentralisation's implementation, and considers whether the reform has indeed contributed to the reduction of inequalities between Macedonia's ethnic groups. Where decentralisation's potential has not been reached, obstacles to its successful implementation are identified. While decentralisation alone may be unable to address all of the grievances raised by the Albanian community prior to 2001, this thesis argues that the reform has the potential to address many of the horizontal inequalities that were responsible for raising inter-ethnic tensions during the 1990s. However, decentralisation in Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has only been partial, and advances in the administrative and political aspects of the reform have been undermined by limited progress in its fiscal dimension. Attempts to solve self-determination conflicts through decentralisation will fail if local self-governance exists only in form but not in substance.

Magister Legum - LLM (Public Law and Jurisprudence) / With approximately 450 tribes and 250 ethnic groups in a territory of 2 345 095 km2,1the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the world's largest, populous, and multiethnolinguistic countries. Since the departure of the Belgian coloniser in 1960, this Member State of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) is facing a myriad of institutional crises, bloody conflicts and wars, mainly caused by the design of political institutions and the side-lining of some ethnic groups from political institutions. For many decades, Congolese provinces have seen numerous violent ethnic-driven conflicts, which led to institutional instability, political crisis, secessions, massacres and wars. The bloodiest of them all were the first and second Congolese wars. From 1996 to 2002, these so-called "African first world war" cost the DRC the lives of millions of people, divided it into many small "republics" and destroyed the few political and economic infrastructures that survived four decades of institutional instability and dictatorship.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between reserved seats for ethnic groups in national legislatures and corruption. In 2008, over 30 countries were reserving seats for ethnic groups in their national legislature. The share of seats that was reserved ranged from a 2 percent reserved seats arrangement for a small ethnic minority, to a 100 percent reserved seats power-sharing arrangement between two or more ethnic groups. By applying theories of informal power, this essay hypothesizes that reserving seats reduces corruption. In contrast to the theory, an initial bivariate regression shows that reserved seats are associated with higher levels of corruption. However, when controlling for conflict history, democracy, ethnic fractionalization, GDP/capita, fuel exports, newspaper circulation, and region, this association turns into a negative one, indicating that reserved seats might reduce corruption. The main finding of the study is that having less than 25 percent of the total amount of legislative seats reserved for ethnic groups reduces corruption more than having no reserved seats at all or more than 25 percent reserved seats. This suggests that certain types of reserved seats arrangements are useful for fighting corruption.

"The constitutions of Rwanda and Burundi both contain provisions to support democracy as well as the notion of power sharing. Despite the fact that democracy can be enhanced by a government that comes to power through the popular will of the people, that is, universal adult suffrage, it must be noted that this shall depend on the use of [an] electoral system that ensures greater proportionality of representatives to the popular vote. This paper aims to analyse the impact of power sharing on democracy. Furthermore, this paper compares the approach of Burundi and Rwanda in their constitutions to the concept of power sharing. ... To achieve its objective, the study is structured as follows: the first chapter contains the general introduction, which encompasses the background of the study, the relevance of the study, the research methodology, the literature review and the limitation of the study. The second chapter deals with the concept of power sharing and analyses its application in the constitutions of Rwanda and Burundi. Chapter three will focus on the concept of constitutionalism, analysing if the constitutional provisions of Rwanda and Burundi comply with [it], and chapter four will analyse [if] the constitutions of Rwanda and Burundi comply with democracy. In chapter five a general conclusion will be drawn and recommendations will be made." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2005. / Prepared under the supervision of Professor Pierre de Vos, Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

After the Cold war, most African countries have strived to be democratic States by accommodating the idea of liberal democracy. Although these countries adopt this kind of system of governance, most of them do not adhere to the tenets which this type of democracy ascribes. The political systems in most African countries are organised and based on what is referred to as politics of identity. This is where the set up of political institutions is based on interest groups with an ethnic, religious or any peculiar identity configuration. The practice of identity politics based on ethnic, religious or merely any identity, leads to exclusion of some segmental groups from the governance system in most African countries. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2011. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / nf2012 / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

The book reviewed depicts husband and wife, Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d'Este, who worked together to direct the domestic and diplomatic affairs of Mantua far more than the scholarship on Isabella has usually assumed.

This thesis considers the extent to which decentralisation in the Republic of Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has been effective in reducing ethnic inequalities that exacerbate social divisions and can lead to conflict. Guided by the concept of horizontal inequalities, it identifies the factors which influenced the decision to devolve responsibilities to the municipalities after 2001. It examines the particular institutional design that Macedonian decentralisation took, and demonstrates how its use of local power-sharing mechanisms was intended to address the concerns of the Albanian and Macedonian communities simultaneously. This thesis takes an integrative approach to studying the political, administrative, and fiscal dimensions of decentralisation¿s implementation, and considers whether the reform has indeed contributed to the reduction of inequalities between Macedonia¿s ethnic groups. Where decentralisation¿s potential has not been reached, obstacles to its successful implementation are identified. While decentralisation alone may be unable to address all of the grievances raised by the Albanian community prior to 2001, this thesis argues that the reform has the potential to address many of the horizontal inequalities that were responsible for raising inter-ethnic tensions during the 1990s. However, decentralisation in Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has only been partial, and advances in the administrative and political aspects of the reform have been undermined by limited progress in its fiscal dimension. Attempts to solve self-determination conflicts through decentralisation will fail if local self-governance exists only in form but not in substance.

Post-civil conflict nations have a strong incentive to attract foreign capital because it is vital for redevelopment and economic growth which in turn reduce the likelihood of conflict resumption. Although foreign investors tend to be risk averse and view states that have recently experienced conflict to be high risk environments, this paper argues that power-sharing mechanisms address the roots of civil dissent and therefore provide a positive signal to potential investors. By focusing on a particular peacebuilding mechanism this work is able to single out the impact of one strategy, namely power-sharing, and assess its effectiveness in attracting foreign direct investment.