Power sharing no substitute for reform

The recent Zimbabwe power-sharing agreement, fashioned with the involvement of outgoing South African President Thabo Mbeki, raises familiar questions.

What’s in a name? What do power-sharing accords signify? How much do they accomplish? What does power sharing have to do with democracy, or with the reconstruction of weak or failed states?

In some ways power sharing has become a “flavour of the month,” succeeding another one that gained ascendancy earlier in the era of democratic transitions — “pact making.”

What the terms share is the idea that a bargain between political elites — who may really dislike and feel politically threatened by each other — may preserve political stability and somehow keep democracy alive.

“Pact making” achieved currency as a necessary follow-up to an initial national competitive multiparty election. The idea of power sharing has gained currency as an approach to ending civil wars.

More recently, the idea has been invoked where electoral processes have broken down during and after voting to end the prospect of spiralling instability, as in Kenya and Zimbabwe, or intensified authoritarian rule as in Ethiopia.

Power-sharing deals have varied significantly, both in content and the circumstances they are meant to address. One way they have differed has been in the prior relationships of the political adversaries.

In Kenya, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga were once political allies before they fell out.

By contrast to Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have known each other almost entirely as opponents.

People who unsuccessfully called for power sharing in Ethiopia confronted the reality that the regime and the leading opposition party fought not only over who should rule, but also over the merits of the ethnic confederal constitution imposed by the EPRDF regime.

The Zimbabwe deal appears, to me at least, to be much more flimsy than the one now in effect in Kenya. In Kenya, at least, the parties came to terms on the sharing of ministries, at the price of a greatly enlarged Cabinet.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai shook hands without agreeing on the division of ministries. Moreover, the agreement seems to split hairs by differentiating the council of ministers from the cabinet in unexplained ways. Mugabe will chair the latter, Tsvangirai the former.

The idea of power sharing has been received with increasing scepticism in academic circles. For example, my late colleague and friend, Donald Rothchild, contended that power sharing is inevitably only a short-term measure.

Fear of deepening political instability, exhaustion from prolonged conflict producing what William Zartman termed a “hurting stalemate” and external pressure on combatants may lead them to come to terms.

But maybe all the combatants are seeking is a breather while they regroup for renewed combat later. After the power-sharing agreements are concluded, maybe the rivals’ circumstances will change significantly so that the accords no longer seem to be even in their short-term interests.