Power-sharing is introduced in ethnic-divided and ethnic-polarised countries with the aim to prevent and/or end conflicts. The purpose is to include different groups in power-sharing positions. This paper has focused on two of most used power-sharing theories, Centripetalism and Consociationalism, and conducted two case studies in Bosnia and Hercegovina and Nigeria who both have implemented one of these power-sharing arrangements. While previous research has focused on whether power-sharing institutions are effective when wanting to meddle peace, we found that there was absence of research and understanding in who is allowed in the power-sharing and which groups are excluded from power-sharing. From the previous research we found that there is an underlying idea that the people included in power-sharing are the majorities within the context, which we found problematic. We used data from the first and the latest election of each country, as well as political manifestos from the most popular political parties, and public documents to understand if there is a correlation between power-sharing arrangements and the inclusion or exclusion of minorities. The method used to analyse the empirics was the Critical Discourse Analysis which is used when wanting to analyse social power in terms of control. The result showed that there has been a positive change over the past years where the discourse of including minorities in power-sharing is more common today than during the first election. Although there were some positive results, we also found that this discussion is more theoretical than practical and if this was to become reality, there could be a backlash on the peace. Although these power-sharing arrangements have been used for over two decades in both of the countries, both of the studied countries have discriminatory constitutions, where some groups are favoured in the society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-412217 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Pervan, Melissa |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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