The Contribution of Democracy to Rebuilding Postconflict Societies

Abstract

The central question of postconflict societies remains political: how to construct a stable form of domestic power sharing and governance. Adversaries mutually exhausted by conflict will still set an adequate degree of influence and voice in future political arrangements as the price of terminating the conflict. Where adversarial identities have become all-encompassing or the war has gone on for too long, the only available solutions may be more radical, including autonomy or partition.The task of international mediators is to help the parties assess the available forms of sharing power. In the dominant view of the United Nations community and international financial institutions, the available choice set is the various forms of representative government—for both idealistic and practical reasons. Democracy has become the dominant political philosophy of the multilateral community, even where it is not always observed in practice, and its breadth of participation may be likeliest to placate former adversaries. But any social engineer or planner must also take into account the practical problems that democracy will probably encounter in the aftermath of conflict, including the conditions necessary for its stability and prestige. In addition, the portfolio of democracy has varied structures that may give greater confidence to both sides and persuade the combatants to lay down their arms.