Exclusion amid Inclusion - Research Project

Welcome to the ESRC research project Exclusion amid Inclusion: Power-Sharing and Non-Dominant Minoities at Queen's University Belfast.

Here you wil find information on the project as well as news and events relating to our activities.

Power-Sharing and Non-Dominant Minorities

In the search for democratic solutions to global conflicts over the last two decades, one model of post-conflict governance has prevailed. Power-sharing, which entails the representation and participation of major societal groups in the process of governing, has facilitated war-to-peace transition in some of the world's most deeply divided places, from Burundi to Lebanon, Kosovo, Macedonia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq. Yet, while power-sharing has been heralded as a democratic and inclusive approach to managing ethnic difference, it faces a significant trade-off. For the system to stabilise and pacify divided societies, it must marginalise those actors who were not directly involved in the conflict. By making inclusion of the dominant groups in society central to democratic governance, power-sharing excludes other groups who align with alternative identities.

This Economic and Social Research Council project addresses this inherent dilemma in power-sharing of exclusion amid inclusion (EAI). The three year project at Queen’s University Belfast, investigates the institutional bias in power-sharing systems in favour of large groups over “non-dominant minorities” who are not explicitly included in the settlement, such as non-ethnic collectives, women and migrant communities. This project seeks solutions to this democratic deficit in post-conflict societies. It aims to identify how power-sharing arrangements can be designed to account for the EAI problem and to offer viable recommendations towards its resolution.

You can read more here about the Rationale of the project, Project Design, and Planned Impact.

The project team includes Dr Timofey Agarin (Lead), Dr Allison McCulloch (Co-Investigator) Dr Drew Mikhael and Aleksandra Zdeb (Research Fellows).

You can follow us on twitter @eaidilemma and contact us at eai.dilemma@gmail.com