"Political parties matter: a research agenda on interactions among elites in post- conflict democracies", G.Cama, and F.Coticchia, Contemporary Politics. (original) (raw)
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Elections and parties in post-conflict countries
In general elections are seen as the key instrument in the democratization process even in postconflict countries. On one hand there is the suggestion that the more repetitive and uninterrupted the electoral process is, the better are the chances for democracy to consolidate. On the other hand there is stream of literature that criticizes the “electoralism” paradigm. In that respect elections are portrayed as a gate way for further polarization in the society, and as such the electoral competition supports further instability, rather than aiding the democratization of the country. The question is then whether post-conflict elections contribute or impede the democratization in post-conflict countries? The question has been addressed by analyzing the effects of various electoral designs in post-conflict countries. Also the role of international actors in post-conflict elections and democracy building has been extensively analyzed. However, little attention is given to the political parties as the main actors in post-conflict elections. I claim that the prolongation or continuation of the conflict is function of the electoral strategy of the political parties. Parties can choose a strategy of symbolical extension of the conflict, as an efficient electoral strategy. I call this ‘electoral militarism’. However this is not necessarily detrimental for the stabilization and democratization of the country. On the contrary, it can structure the political competition making the elections and parties more stable. The paper follows case oriented research methods. The electoral process and outcomes in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Croatia are compared. This design holds constant most institutional factors, as well as historical legacies, while the main difference is the presence (Macedonia, Croatia) and absence (Bulgaria) of internal armed conflict. Also there is a differentiation in terms of sequence of events, whether the conflict preceded (Croatia) or interrupted (Macedonia) the democratization process. The paper is based on cross national comparison of electoral data (i.e volatility, patterns of party support) and a case study of Croatia, where process tracing is used in a longitudinal analysis of several election cycles.
Establishing legitimate political leadership through non-violent means is an essential step in the rebuilding of post-conflict societies. For this reason the successful holding of democratic elections is often seen as the crowning achievement of the peace process. In recent years, however, it has become clear that elections do not always guarantee the peace, and may in fact, make societies more dangerous. This has prompted political scientists to look more closely at other dimensions of the transition from violent conflict to democratic politics, including the role of political parties. Political parties play an essential role in all democracies, but their importance is magnified in conflict-prone societies. While some scholars have argued that political parties may help to consolidate peace by forming coalitions between groups formerly in conflict, more recent research suggests that such parties may also entrench social cleavages, especially if party formation is based along former conflict fault lines. This article considers these arguments in the case of Aceh, Indonesia, where an historic peace agreement allowed former Acehnese rebels to form their own political party—one based along both ethnic and former conflict lines.
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In a number of cases, rebel movements that won civil wars transformed into powerful authoritarian political parties that dominated postwar politics. Parties whose origins are as victorious insurgent groups have different legacies and hence different institutional structures and patterns of behaviour than those that originated in breakaway factions of ruling parties, labour unions, non-violent social movements, or identity groups. Unlike classic definitions of political parties, post-rebel parties are not created around the need to win elections but rather as military organizations focused on winning an armed struggle. Key attributes of victorious rebel movements, such as cohesive leadership, discipline, hierarchy, and patterns of military administration of liberated territory, shape post-insurgent political parties and help explain why post-insurgent parties are often strong and authoritarian. This article seeks to identify the mechanisms that link rebel victory in three East African countries (Uganda, Ethiopia, and Rwanda) to postwar authoritarian rule. These processes suggest that how a civil war ends changes the potential for postwar democratization.
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This article examines why center-right parties that have partly built their image around ethnic or religious identities reverse their positions to support peace arrangements. Political settlements in divided societies frequently run counter to the values of these parties and are also potentially damaging to their internal party cohesion.We argue that political learning through sustained interaction with external pro-peace allies transforms the positions of center-right parties by socializing them when it comes to their international agenda, yet the same effect is not observed in party actions within the sphere of domestic intra-communal politics. Drawing from the Cypriot and Northern Irish peace processes, we show that once these parties embrace peace agreements, they do so by balancing international and local considerations, choosing to compensate domestic constituencies on symbolic issues of less importance for the peace process yet of major significance to conservative constituencies. The study of center-right and conservative peace actors has important implications for research on mediation and international conflict since it suggests mechanisms through which policy makers can better engage with ethnic or religious parties in fragile peace processes.
Conflict, Security & Development, 2018
Following the end of the Cold War, post-conflict democratisation has rarely occurred without a significant international involvement. This contribution argues that an explanation of the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation requires more than an examination of external actors, their mission mandates or their capabilities and deficiencies. In addition, there is a need to study domestic elites, their preferences and motivations, as well as their perceptions of and their reactions to external interference. Moreover, the patterns of externalinternal interactions may explain the trajectory of state-building and democracy promotion efforts. These issues deserve more attention from both scholars and practitioners in the fields of peace-and statebuilding, democracy promotion, regime transition and elite research. Analyses of external actors and domestic elites in post-conflict democratisation should therefore address three principal issues: (1) the identification of relevant domestic elites in externally induced or monitored state-building and democratisation processes, (2) the dynamics of external-domestic interactions and (3) the impact of these interactions on the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation.
Rules that Matter: Political Institutions and the Polarization-Conflict Nexus
2008
One controversy in the study of civil war relates to the role that institutions play in ethnically diverse societies. ´Constitutional engineers` advance various institutional arrangements, ranging from democracy in general to specific constitutional and electoral rules, as those mechanisms that help divided societies to resolve disputes peacefully. Political sociologists, by contrast, maintain that political institutions are largely an epiphenomenon. Synthesizing the two conflicting schools of thought, we examine how different institutions in conjunction with three forms of ethnic diversity -fractionalization, dominance and polarization -affect the risk of civil war. We argue that groups perceive institutions as a constraint and that they consider the usage of political violence if they cannot achieve their goals peacefully. Our examination of these conditional institutionalist hypotheses for the period between 1950 and 2000 shows in accordance with recent theoretical work that fractionalization can indeed be linked to low-intensity civil wars and that this effect is particularly strong in democracies in comparison to autocracies. Interacting the measures of diversity with different democratic institutions, we show that rules that encourage power-sharing lower the risk of war in diverse societies. Duration models particularly show that the combination of fractionalization and majoritarian voting forebodes badly for the internal stability of a state. Within the set of democratic regimes studied in this article, presidential systems are the most war-prone institutional setting.