Since gaining independence from colonial rule, most African countries have been struggling to build democratic and peaceful states. While African multiparty politics may be viewed as a democratic system of governance, in reality it is plagued by ethnic and regional political grievances that undermine meaningful democracy. By examining post-conflict institutional reforms in several African countries, this book sheds light on the common causes of violent conflicts and how institutional design can affect the conditions for peace and democracy in Africa. Focussing on conceptual and practical questions of designing ethnically and regionally inclusive state institutions and the way institutions are perceived by the citizenry Post-Conflict Institutional Design addresses political autonomy and control over resources, issues which are often key sources of ethnic and regional grievances. Crucially, it examines the meanings of institutional reforms as well ethnic and regional representation.

Presenting the first database of constitutional design in all African countries, and seven original case studies, Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africa explores the types of domestic political institutions that can buffer societies from destabilizing changes that otherwise increase the risk of violence.

This book deals with the question how institutional reform can contribute to peacebuilding in post-war and divided societies. In the context of armed conflict and widespread violence, two important questions shape political agendas inside and outside the affected societies: How can we stop the violence? And how can we prevent its recurrence? Comprehensive negotiated war terminations and peace accords recommend a set of mechanisms to bring an end to war and establish peace, including institutional reforms that promote democratization and state building. Although the role of institutions is widely recognized, their specific effects are highly contested in research as well as in practice. This book highlights the necessity to include path-dependency, pre-conflict institutions and societal divisions to understand the patterns of institutional change in post-war societies and the ongoing risk of civil war recurrence. It focuses on the general question of how institutional reform contributes to the establishment of peace in post-war societies. This book comprises three separate but interrelated parts on the relation between institutions and societal divisions, on institutional reform and on security sector reform. The chapters contribute to the understanding of the relationship between societal cleavages, pre-conflict institutions, path dependency, and institutional reform. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, development studies, security studies and IR.

The authors of this book have developed a new and stimulating approach to the analysis of the transitions of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia to democracy and a market economy. They integrate interdisciplinary theoretical work with elaborate empirical data on some of the most challenging events of the twentieth century. Three groups of phenomena and their causal interconnection are explored: the material legacies, constraints, habits and cognitive frameworks inherited from the past; the erratic configuration of new actors, and new spaces for action; and a new institutional order under which agency is institutionalized and the sustainability of institutions is achieved. The book studies the interrelations of national identities, economic interests, and political institutions with the transformation process, concentrating on issues of constitution making, democratic infrastructure, the market economy, and social policy.

In case studies focusing on contemporary crises spanning Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, the scholars in this volume examine the dominant prescriptive practices of late neoliberal post-conflict interventions—such as statebuilding, peacebuilding, transitional justice, refugee management, reconstruction, and redevelopment—and contend that the post-conflict environment is in fact created and sustained by this international technocratic paradigm of peacebuilding. Key international stakeholders—from activists to politicians, humanitarian agencies to financial institutions—characterize disparate sites as “weak,” “fragile,” or “failed” states and, as a result, prescribe peacebuilding techniques that paradoxically disable effective management of post-conflict spaces while perpetuating neoliberal political and economic conditions. Treating all efforts to represent post-conflict environments as problematic, the goal becomes understanding the underlying connection between post-conflict conditions and the actions and interventions of peacebuilding technocracies.

By using a method called process tracing to scrutinize institutional engineering in Iraq, it becomes clear why intensified violence followed the drafting and ratification of the Iraqi constitution. It is not surprising that institutional engineering did not forestall violence; therefore, we can conclude that the Iraqi experience does not support theories of institutional design--Publisher's description.

Constitution-making for democracy has always been a highly political and contested process. It has never been more ambitious, or more difficult, than today as politicians and experts attempt to build democratic institutions that will foster peace and stability in countries torn by violent conflict. The extended investigation out of which this book has grown has ranged across three continents. It has examined such apparently intractable cases as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sri Lanka and Fiji, as well as apparent 'success stories' like South Africa, Ghana and Uganda. Three groups of questions are explored: * How and by whom were democratic institutions (re)designed? * How have they functioned in practice: what has been the relationship between democratic institutions and democratic politics? * How have they measured up to the pressures placed on them by ongoing violence, poverty, globalization and democratization itself? The authors, while regarding democracy as a general entitlement, refuse to subscribe to a triumphalist view which sees it as a universal panacea. Instead they seek to understand how democratic institutions actually facilitate (or sometimes fail to facilitate) improved governance and the management of conflict in a variety of national settings. This thoughtful and empirical set of explorations is highly relevant to other societies wrestling with similar problems of institutional design in situations of democratic transition and/or deep-seated social conflict.

The third in a series of publications coming out of the ongoing evaluation studies at USAID's Center for Development Information and Evaluation. Based on the hypothesis that elections in a postconflict setting are fundamentally different from those organized under normal circumstances, 13 contributions examine the planning, organization, conduct, and execution of such elections; the critical roles played by international donors; and the longer-term outcomes, particularly their impact on political and social reconciliation. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Transformative peace operations fall short of achieving the modern political order sought in post-conflict countries because the interventions themselves empower post-conflict elites intent on forging a neopatrimonial political order. The Peacebuilding Puzzle explains the disconnect between the formal institutional engineering undertaken by international interventions, and the governance outcomes that emerge in their aftermath. Barma's comparative analysis of interventions in Cambodia, East Timor, and Afghanistan focuses on the incentives motivating domestic elites over a sequence of three peacebuilding phases: the elite peace settlement, the transitional governance period, and the aftermath of intervention. The international community advances certain forms of institutional design at each phase in the pursuit of effective and legitimate governance. Yet, over the course of the peacebuilding pathway, powerful post-conflict elites co-opt the very processes and institutions intended to guarantee modern political order and dominate the practice of governance within those institutions to their own ends. This title is also available as Open Access.

Conflicts over the rights of self-defined population groups to determine their own destiny within the boundaries of existing states are among the most violent forms of inter-communal conflict. Many experts agree that autonomy regimes are a useful framework within which competing claims to self-determination can be accommodated. This volume explores and analyses the different options available. The contributors assess the current state of the theory and practice of institutional design for the settlement of self-determination conflicts, and also compare and contrast detailed case studies on autonomous regimes in the former Yugoslavia, the Crimea, Åland, Northern Ireland, Latin America, Indonesia and Vietnam.