Full Answer
What is the purpose of political settlement?
A political settlement is a tacit agreement among powerful groups about the rules of the political and economic game, that keeps the peace by providing opportunities for those groups to secure a distribution of benefits (such as resources, rights, and status) they find acceptable. Why should you be interested in political settlements?
What should a political settlement look like?
a political settlement should be ‘a legitimate process of negotiation between power holders…leading to power sharing, forgiveness, reconciliation, security and peace’.
What is a political settlements lens?
A political settlements lens is viewed as a useful context analysis tool for understanding how structures and institutions actually work, as well as the agency of different actors.
How do political settlements affect statebuilding and peacebuilding?
Political settlements can often be the primary factor in determining the success or failure of statebuilding and peacebuilding efforts. Political settlements in conflict-affected and fragile areas are almost always exclusionary, and are often unstable.
What is the purpose of political settlement?
What is political settlement research?
Why is analysis of political settlements important?
What did the pragmatists characterize as a result of horse trading?
Is a positive political settlement a change of political system?
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Geography and the Early Settlements of Egypt, Kush, and Canaan - Quizlet
Start studying Chapter 7 - Geography and the Early Settlements of Egypt, Kush, and Canaan. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.
Geography and the Settlement of Egypt, Kush, and Canaan - Quizlet
Start studying Lesson 7 Quiz - Geography and the Settlement of Egypt, Kush, and Canaan. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.
Geography and the Early Settlement of Egypt, Kush, and Canaan
Chapter 7 Geography and the Early Settlement of Egypt, Kush, and Canaan How did geography affect early settlement in Egypt Kush, and Canaan? 7.1 Introduction
What is political settlements analysis?
ESID experts Tim Kelsall and Sam Hickey provide a clear and essential guide to political settlements analysis. What is it and why should you be interested?
What different political settlements are there?
Taken together these dimensions create a 2×2 matrix, with four different ‘types’ of political settlement: ‘broad-dispersed’, ‘broad-concentrated’, ‘narrow-dispersed’ and ‘narrow-concentrated’. The typology complements previous typologies that focused mainly on the question of state capability, supplementing them with insights into elite commitment.
What is a group that is repressed or marginalised?
Groups that are repressed or marginalised are ‘outsiders’, forced to acquiesce or not strong enough to overturn the settlement. In ESID terminology, the larger the share of the powerful population that is co-opted, the broader the social foundation.
How do elites respond to groups?
Governing elites can respond to these groups in two basic ways: co-optation, or repression. Groups who are co-opted receive benefits and are settlement ‘insiders’. Groups that are repressed or marginalised are ‘outsiders’, forced to acquiesce or not strong enough to overturn the settlement.
What is the meaning of configuration of power?
The configuration of power describes how power is arranged and organised within a state.
How are political settlements maintained?
How political settlements are maintained: Ruling coalitions typically establish , consolidate, or strengthen a political settlement through 1) coercion; 2) co-optation of potential threats from powerful excluded elites; 3) building and maintaining the legitimacy of state institutions established and shaped through the political settlement; or 4) using state-directed external assistance to allocate benefits to allies and to withhold benefits from groups resistant to central control. In addition, international actors can exert a stabilising influence through a wide range of mechanisms.
What is political settlements framework?
This paper presents a ‘political settlements framework’ that involves consideration of political settlements in conflict-affected and fragile areas; of how settlements are maintained; of how they change; of their historical evolution; and of settlements at subnational levels. It suggests that development organisations need to use such analysis to adapt their strategies. These should promote the best-case scenario in the short term, while investing in long-term programmes that will promote inclusiveness, development, and stability. Practical approaches to influencing political settlements are also outlined.
What is the primary factor in determining the success or failure of statebuilding and peacebuilding efforts?
Political settlements can often be the primary factor in determining the success or failure of statebuilding and peacebuilding efforts. Political settlements in conflict-affected and fragile areas are almost always exclusionary, and are often unstable. The proposed political settlements framework also involves consideration of:
What are the challenges of political settlements?
A key challenge for donors in influencing political settlements is prioritising among four interrelated and sometimes contradictory goals (stability, conduciveness to development, inclusiveness, and reducing the level of elite predation). In addition, clear definitions and limits are needed regarding legitimate roles for donors, so as to avoid sovereignty infringement.
What is the historical evolution of political settlements?
In most cases, countries that have reached stable, inclusive, developmental settlements have been through periods of extreme instability, or highly exclusionary settlements. Settlements may involve trade-offs between stability, development and inclusiveness in the short-to-medium term, in order to achieve ideal conditions in the long term.
How does development assistance help in political transition?
Maximising transition moments: During a period of political transition, development assistance can be particularly influential in helping to shape the emerging political settlement. Assistance can a) support local actors seeking to make the settlement more inclusive; b) strengthen the emerging settlement by supporting the implementation of a peace agreement or new government; and c) encourage a more pro-development settlement by creating appropriate incentives for the new elite coalition .
Which approach is best used in conditions where there is an emerging, pro-development elite class which is excluded from the dominant?
Supporting the emergence of developmental elite coalitions: This approach is best used in conditions where there is an emerging, pro-development elite class which is excluded from the dominant political settlement.
What is political settlement?
A political settlement (in our definition) is a description of the distribution of power across organizations that are relevant for analyzing a specific institutional or policy problem. 8 The distribution of power describes the likelihood of particular organizations ‘holding out’ in contests seeking to influence institutional outcomes. 9 Powerful organizations with greater holding power can outlast competitors in contests, because they can either deploy more resources to influence governments or other organizations, or inflict greater costs on them, or hold out for longer because they can absorb more pain till others give in. Powerful organizations are therefore more likely to win, and other organizations are more likely to exit or compromise. Thus, the holding power of organizations is not just based on economic capabilities, or on whether they include ‘elites’ (something that we discuss later) but primarily on their organizational capabilities, the capacity of their leadership to mobilize and enthuse, and their skill in identifying and rewarding the right people through formal or informal networks. The only way to start understanding the distribution of organizational power in a society is to look at its history and see how organizations have mobilized, won and lost in the past. This assessment is an art, and it requires a deep understanding of the history, sociology and ideological and identity cleavages in a country, and how they have overlapped with and been used to mobilize around resource issues.
Why is the political settlement framework important?
The political settlements framework argues that the distribution of organizational power is important for understanding the economic and political effects of institutions and policies. Institutions and policies describe rules that in turn determine resource allocation, and these can affect different types of organizations in very different ways. Organizations can be expected to support, resist or distort particular institutions or policies depending on their interests and capabilities. The distribution of organizational power can therefore determine the institutions and policies that are likely to persist as well as the ones most likely to be developmental in that context. This directs our attention to the importance of accurately identifying the relative power and capabilities of relevant organizations that describe a particular political settlement and how these may be changing over time. The articles in African Affairs that have used the political settlements framework demonstrate its usefulness. In this overview we examine the motivations behind the development of the framework and some of the challenges of applying it in the context of dynamic interactions between institutions and organizations. We also discuss the most appropriate definition of a political settlement, the questions the framework is most suited to answer and the challenges ahead for developing the framework and its applications.
What is a political settlement?
In his major 2010 paper, Khan argues that ‘a political settlement is a description of the “social order” that describes how a society solves the problem of violence and achieves a minimum level of political stability and economic performance for it to operate as a society’ . 6 At a ‘deeper level’, he argues, ‘a political settlement implies an institutional structure that creates benefits for different classes and groups in line with their relative power’ [emphasis added]. 7 This is necessary, he argues, for stable agreements among elites (the commonsensical view of political settlements), to be viable. 8 Thus, a political settlement is, ‘an interdependent combination of a structure of power and institutions at the level of a society that is mutually “compatible” and also “sustainable” in terms of economic and political viability’. 9
What is settlement in a human context?
A settlement in a human context implies some degree of agency, even if heavily constrained. When I settle, for example in a divorce case, I implicitly agree to something, even if I don’t much like it.
How can social groups be fluid?
Social groups can be quite fluid, as new political and social identities emerge or dissolve, as disruptive potential waxes and wanes, or as new coalitions among groups get formed. The implication is that the composition of the political settlement’s social foundation is unlikely to be static over time.
How does Mushtaq Khan's political settlements work?
2 Here, Khan goes further than he has before in explaining how his political settlements framework differs from institutionalist approaches such as that of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, 3 arguing persuasively that the same institutions, for example liberal democracy or formally free markets, will have very different effects depending on the distribution of organizational power in society. 4 In addition, he explains how his framework can offer powerful insights to policymakers on such questions as the prevalence of corruption in developing countries, or the feasibility of state-led industrial policy. Such insights are unavailable, he thinks, to a political settlements approach which focuses on elite pacts or agreements, as is typical in contemporary peace and conflict studies. ‘ [T]he elite pact definition of a political settlement should’, he argues, ‘be treated as a distinct approach that can provide complementary information, rather than essentially the same analytical framework articulated in a different language’. 5
When was the Northern Ireland political settlement?
Government of Northern Ireland, ‘Political settlement: Statements issued on Friday 24 March 1972 by the Prime Minister and the Government. Presented to parliament by command of His Excellency the Governor of Northern Ireland, March 1972 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Belfast) < http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1972/proni_CAB-4-1649_1972-03-24.pdf > ...
Can parties keep fighting?
Parties can keep on fighting, provided there is no drastic alteration in the distribution of power. This seems consistent with an idea of a settlement as a natural or physical process of sedimentation, as contained in some of the dictionary definitions above.
What is political settlement?
Over the past five years, several major international development policy statements and declarations have adopted ‘political settlement’ as a framing concept to guide statebuilding practice in fragile and conflict-affected states, and encouraged efforts towards achieving an inclusive, or inclusive enough, political settlement in order to underpin stability. Despite the policy enthusiasm, the concept itself remains elusive.1 This discussion paper explores how the concept ‘political settlement’ arose and where it came from, identifies its essential elements and the level of consensus around them and tests out some of its normative content. Finally it considers where the concept might go from here.
What is the idea of elite settlement?
The concept of ‘elite settlement’ was launched in 1987 by Burton and Higley ‘as a major, but largely overlooked, form of political change’ that paved the way to stable democracy (Burton and Higley 1987:295) and it has continued on as a small niche area of comparative politics. Their initial article characterised elite settlements as ‘relatively rare events in which warring national elite factions sud-denly and deliberately reorganize their relations by negotiating compromises on their most basic disa-greements’ (ibid). Elite settlements are triggered by a sharp and profoundly dangerous crisis — a necessary but not a sufficient condition — which drives elites to abandon competition and cooperate to effect a change of regime. The effect is to funda-mentally transform relations among existing elite factions, creating a consensually unified elite struc-ture that provides a foundation for lasting political stability. The authors characterise this phenomenon as the ‘taming’ of politics (Burton and Higley 1987, 1998; Higley and Burton 1998).
What is the purpose of political settlement?
One person noted that they should ‘ideally promote more stability and social justice’, whilst another argued that: a political settlement should be ‘a legitimate process of negotiation between power holders …leading to power sharing, forgiveness, reconciliation, security and peace’ .
What is political settlement research?
The Political Settlements Research Programme is a four-year research programme, undertaken by a North-South Consortium, led by the University of Edinburgh. This article reflects insights gained from our first yearly internal learning session. These will share and test emerging findings and their practical application in Conciliation Resources programme contexts.
Why is analysis of political settlements important?
Analysis of political settlements was also identified as an important vehicle to enable more legitimate peace processes, to address localised insecurities and to encourage accountability.
What did the pragmatists characterize as a result of horse trading?
The pragmatists amongst us characterised political settlements as ‘coercive and patriarchal’, and the result of ‘horse-trading ’ whereby ‘exclusionary’ deals were made ‘under the table’.
Is a positive political settlement a change of political system?
Interestingly, whilst some felt a positive political settlement would herald a ‘change of political system’ there was an acknowledgement that even more accountable and representative political settlements would ‘not always be inclusive’.
