Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States examines the challenge of promoting democracy in the aftermath of civil war. Hartzell and Hoddie argue that minimalist democracy is the most realistic form of democracy to which states emerging from civil war violence can aspire. The adoption of power-sharing institutions within civil war settlements helps mitigate insecurity and facilitate democracy's emergence. Power sharing promotes 'democratization from above' by limiting the capacity of the state to engage in predatory behavior, and 'democratization from below' by empowering citizens to participate in politics. Drawing on cross-national and case study evidence, Hartzell and Hoddie find that post-civil war countries that adopt extensive power sharing are ultimately more successful in transitioning to minimalist democracy than countries that do not. Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States presents a new and hopeful understanding of what democracy can look like and how it can be fostered.

There are numerous studies on the role of power-sharing agreements in the maintenance of peace in postconflict states. Less explored, however, is the impact of power sharing on the quality of the peace. Do power-sharing institutions in fact transform the balance of power among actors in the aftermath of civil wars? And if so, how? As they address these issues, seeking to establish a new research agenda, the authors provide a rich new analytical approach to understanding how power sharing actually works.

Among the more frequent and most devastating of conflicts, civil wars--from Yugoslavia to Congo--frequently reignite and even spill over into the international sphere. Given the inherent fragility of civil war peace agreements, innovative approaches must be taken to ensure the successful resolution of these conflicts. "Strengthening Peace in Post--Civil War States" provides both analytical frameworks and a series of critical case studies demonstrating the effectiveness of a range of strategies for keeping the peace.
Coeditors Matthew Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell here contend that lasting peace relies on aligning the self-interest of individuals and communities with the society-wide goal of ending war; if citizens and groups have a stake in peace, they will seek to maintain and defend it. The rest of the contributors explore two complementary approaches toward achieving this goal: restructuring domestic institutions and soft intervention. Some essays examine the first tactic, which involves reforming governments that failed to prevent war, while others discuss the second, an umbrella term for a number of non-military strategies for outside actors to assist in keeping the peace.

The recent efforts to reach a settlement of the enduring and tragic conflict in Darfur demonstrate how important it is to understand what factors contribute most to the success of such efforts. In this book, Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie review data from all negotiated civil war settlements between 1945 and 1999 in order to identify these factors.

What they find is that settlements are more likely to produce an enduring peace if they involve construction of a diversity of power-sharing and power-dividing arrangements between former adversaries. The strongest negotiated settlements prove to be those in which former rivals agree to share or divide state power across its economic, military, political, and territorial dimensions.

This finding is a significant addition to the existing literature, which tends to focus more on the role that third parties play in mediating and enforcing agreements. Beyond the quantitative analyses, the authors include a chapter comparing contrasting cases of successful and unsuccessful settlements in the Philippines and Angola, respectively.