{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01619047619047619, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.331325301204819, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Executive Power Sharing in the Face of Civil War


 Scholars have debated whether executive power sharing can secure peace in multiethnic states, but concerns about endogeneity due to reverse causation render this a difficult problem for empirical analyses. In the absence of a suitable instrumental variable, I explore an actor-based approach by studying a simple formal model. This highlights the conditions under which governments are likely to share power with a domestic challenger depending on the threat of violence. I then formulate a statistical “strategic selection” model that closely mirrors the theoretical model, thereby directly incorporating endogeneity. Applied to data at the level of ethnic groups, the estimation results indicate that power sharing is indeed enacted strategically by governments in anticipation of the risk of conflict. However, shedding new light on an ongoing debate, I find that the critics have overstated the case against power sharing: rather than spurring it, power sharing robustly reduces civil conflict.