World Politics

This article focuses on the role that power-sharing arrangements play in making it possible for some countries to make the transition to democracy successfully after civil war. The authors hypothesize that the adoption of multiple forms of power sharing, measures constructed to end particularly difficult civil wars, facilitate the emergence of a minimalist form of democracy following some intrastate conflicts by helping to assuage warring groups’ security concerns. The authors use a bivariate probit model to account for the possibility that the decisions by wartime rivals to engage in power sharing and whether to adopt democracy or not are interrelated. Employing panel data for all civils wars concluded between 1945 and the end of 2006, they find support for their hypothesis.