VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2
MARCH 2008
FRONT MATTER
3
Editors’ Note
NOTES
5
Emerging Trends in Climate Change Policy: The Role of Adaptation
James Ford
17
Toxic Trade: International Knowledge Networks & the Development
of the Basel Convention
Jason Lloyd
ARTICLES
28
Power-Sharing: Lessons from South Africa and Rwanda
Marisa Traniello
1
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
Editorial Staff, Volume 3 (2006 – 2007)
General Editors
Georgia Berry, MSc International Public Policy, Sub-editor, Copy Editor
Nicholas Carlson, MSc International Public Policy, Style Editor
Andrew Jillions, MA Legal and Political Theory, Futures Projects
Dina Karydi, MSc European Public Policy, External Communications
Jason Lloyd, MSc International Public Policy, Secretary, Webmaster
Joshua Mendelsohn, PhD School of Public Policy, Coordinator
Nicole Salisbury, PhD School of Public Policy, Coordinator
Stavros Samouicidis, MSc International Public Policy, Submissions Editor
Marisa Traniello, MSc International Public Policy, Academic Review Board Liaison
William White, MSc European Public Policy, Editorial Board Liaison
Amy Whitelock, MSc European Public Policy, Copy Editor
Academic Review Panel
Dr. Fiona Adamson
Dr. Fabio Franchino
Dr. David Hudson, chair
Dr. Jennifer van Heerde
Dr. Mandy Turner
Editorial Board
Georgia Berry, MSc International Public Policy
Nicholas Carlson, MSc International Public Policy
Anindita Ghosh, MSc Public Policy
Victoria Hasson, MSc International Public Policy
Kalyani S. Iyer, MSc International Public Policy
Andrew Jillions, MA Legal and Political Theory
Dina Karydi, MSc European Public Policy
Joshua Mendelsohn, PhD School of Public Policy
Julio Montero, PhD School of Public Policy
Amy Ngai, MSc Democracy and Democratisation
Gisela Nicolau, MSc Public Policy
Nicole Salisbury, PhD School of Public Policy
Stavros Samouicidis, MSc International Public Policy
Marisa Traniello, MSc International Public Policy
William White, MSc European Public Policy
Amy Whitelock, MSc International Public Policy
Éomer Zwijnenberg, MSc International Public Policy
The INTERNATIONAL P UBLIC P OLICY R EVIEW (ISSN: 1748-5207) is a peer-reviewed, student-edited, and facultysupervised academic journal published semi-annually by the University College London’s School of Public Policy,
London, United Kingdom. IPPR welcomes submissions from faculty and postgraduate students of any educational institution, of both Articles (original empirical investigations, between 8,000 and 15,000 words) and Essays/Notes (empirical or scholarly commentary pieces, between 2,000 and 4,000 words). All submissions are reviewed anonymously.
The Academic Review Panel and the plenary session of the Editorial Board must also approve pieces selected for publication by anonymous referees. Manuscripts may be submitted electronically to ippr@ucl.ac.uk or sent in hard copy to
the address below. (For non-electronic submissions, two copies must be provided, and manuscripts will not be returned.) All submissions must include the Submission Form and conform to the style and formatting guidelines provided at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/ippr/submissions/
To request article reprints, to submit non-electronic manuscripts, as well as for comments or other queries, please contact: Editorial Board, INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW, School of Public Policy, University College London,
29/30 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9QU, United Kingdom.
For the most recent issue and article archives, please visit IPPR online at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/ippr/
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW, Volume 3, Number 1 (June 2007). [ISSN 1748-5207]
© 2007 by The School of Public Policy, University College London, London, United Kingdom. All rights reserved.
2
EDITORS’ NOTE
With the recent release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis
Report, which drastically improved certainty around the human contribution to climate change,
global warming and environmental protection have become permanent features of international
public policy in theory and practice. Discussions in Bali at the Conference of the Parties took place
in December 2007 on the kind of treaty that should take over from Kyoto in 2012. Yet whilst the
talks again raised the profile of climate change, they also highlighted tensions and disagreements
between states surrounding the appropriate policy solutions to tackle this international problem.
For example, booming growth in rapidly industrializing states, particularly China and India,
which are now contributing significantly to worldwide emissions, raises new challenges, and an increased sense of urgency with regard to the role and responsibility of highly industrialised world in
facilitating green development in the developing world. But for many low-income countries, the
focus remains on issues surrounding the maintenance of sustainable patterns of access to and use of
resources; defence of the natural resource base; and continuing efforts to counter deforestation, desertification and soil erosion. Despite the focus of the popular media on the politics surrounding
global warming, attention at the international level must be paid as well to what sustainable development realistically entails for a large proportion of the rural, agrarian developing world.
There is thus a growing realisation within the international community that for sustainable
development and poverty alleviation projects to have any impact, they must be combined with the
fight to tackle climate change. In a world where the use of finite energy sources devastates the
planet (through sourcing and use) and leads to ever-increasing human antagonism, projects that do
not promote the use of local, sustainable energy resources will be short-lived and harmful. The importance of a grass roots approach to develop the use of sustainable energy sources is increasingly
recognised amongst governments and international organisations. By financing an increasing number of local NGOs to implement these cost effective programmes on the ground, rural and periurban communities across the world can have access to energy, protect their landscapes, and not be
subjected to the tyranny of global energy markets.
However, while the IPCC assessment report regards global warming as “unequivocal,” the
policy solutions to curbing the production of greenhouse gasses are by no means as clear. Despite
appearing to be common-sense solutions to a truly unprecedented global problem, well-meaning
top-down international initiatives can turn into a kind of anti-politics that allows for no political
choices and results in poor policy. An effective response to climate change requires constructive
conflicts and fruitful debate at every level of governance. Successful domestic initiatives can provide convenient models for others seeking solutions to similar environmental problems. Environmental policy in South Asia is a good example of this. Juridical institutions in India have
increasingly addressed the problem of pollution; the mechanisms used in India to do this – public
interest litigation and an environmentally active high court – provide a useful model for its neighbours, Bangladesh and Pakistan, if and when environmental protection becomes a priority in those
countries. Local and regional policy solutions can be democratic, transparent, and adaptable, and
3
4
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
they allow broad international policies to be grounded in the communities in which those policies
are enacted. This bottom-up policy development is crucial in order to forge an effective, dynamic
response to the global challenge presented in the IPCC report.
Alongside this, state governments must play a role in creating a framework of incentives
within which the necessary bottom-up action against climate change can fruitfully take place. This
is why the British government is currently taking a Climate Change Bill through Parliament, which
is the first of its kind in any country. This Bill puts into statute the UK's targets to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions through domestic and international action and sets up an independent Committee
on Climate Change to scrutinise annual progress towards these targets. Such a legal framework
provides businesses with both predictability and flexibility to allow them to build meeting these targets into their growth plans. Yet domestic action alone will not be enough to slow global warming.
As the Bali talks highlighted, there is a long way to go before a concrete international legal framework might be in place. International organisations might look to the EU as a model, where the
Emissions Trading System has already had some success – during the first phase of the ETS, the
UK will have saved the equivalent of half its annual road traffic emissions in CO2. The ETS needs
to be improved, but it already demonstrates the fruits of states working together, across borders, to
tackle the unprecedented global problem of climate change.
Two articles in this issue of IPPR address some of these issues. James Ford challenges the
current discourse on climate change policy, arguing that the focus on mitigation – largely the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions – is insufficient and that local and global communities need to
shift to a policy of adaptation. Through a case study of the Inuit in Canada’s Arctic, he illustrates
how a ‘vulnerability-based’ method of adaptation can help vulnerable societies to cope with the
new challenges posed by climate change. Jason Lloyd analyses the evolution of the Basel Convention banning the trade in toxic waste, demonstrating the important role epistemic communities can
play in the development of global environmental policies, through the creation and diffusion of expert knowledge that, crucially, links local problems to the international sphere. Such a process is
fundamental to the development of international policy and global governance, but the article also
challenges an unequivocally positive view of this ‘expert’ knowledge, highlighting ways in which
such a dominant discourse may preclude other voices and alternative solutions.
The final article in this volume speaks to a different area of international public policy: that of
conflict resolution in societies divided along religious, national or ethnic lines. Marisa Traniello
looks at how power-sharing institutions can be used to mitigate conflict, comparing the experiences
in South Africa and Rwanda to tease out when such a solution is appropriate and can bring about
sustained peace. The policy lessons she offers are highly salient in the context of how policymakers can deal with the multiple effects of climate change, since dwindling resources and an everhostile climate exacerbate latent conflicts, especially in developing countries.
On behalf of the General Editors,
Georgia Berry
Jason Lloyd
Nicole Salisbury
Will White
Amy Whitelock
London & New York
March 2008
EMERGING TRENDS IN CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY: THE
ROLE OF ADAPTATION
James Ford‡
ABSTRACT
Until recently, public policy solutions to the global problem of climate change have been dominated
by the concept of mitigation: reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
This focus on prevention in both academic research and practical application of climate change
policy has resulted in the neglect of an alternative conception, that of adaptation. Adaptation offers
an alternate vision of climate change policy, one that recognises a certain degree of climatic alteration as inevitable, and offers solutions that can allow especially vulnerable populations to survive all climatic hazards, not just man-made climate change. This article discusses both why
adaptation has traditionally been neglected in the international discourse on climate change, and
also why it has come to have greater prominence in more recent studies and policy initiatives. It
further analyses and breaks down the concept of adaptation into ‘impacts-driven’ and ‘vulnerability-based’ methods, to argue that only the latter truly takes account of the socio-economic determinants of climate vulnerability, and thus offers effective adaptive solutions to the challenges posed by
climate change. A case study of the Inuit population in the Canadian Arctic is employed to demonstrate how a vulnerability-based approach works in practice, offering four possible adaptive solutions to the climactic hazards faced by the Inuit. It is concluded that the adaptation approach needs
to be mainstreamed into general socio-economic policies, in order to ensure that vulnerable populations are able to face up to the challenges of man-made climate change and everyday climatic
hazards.
Keywords: climate change policy; mitigation; adaptation; anthropogenic emissions; climatic hazards; vulnerable populations; Canada; the Arctic; the Inuit; impacts-driven policy; vulnerabilitybased policy
1. INTRODUCTION
It is widely accepted that the climate is changing and will continue to change at rates unprecedented in recent human history.1 Climate models project increasing temperatures and precipi-
‡
Department of Geography, McGill University, Canada. For questions or comments, please contact:
james.ford@mcgill.ca.
5
6
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
tation which will alter the frequency, magnitude, and geographic distribution of climate-related
hazards including flooding, drought, and heat waves; create new patterns of extreme weather; shift
the distribution, abundance, and migratory behaviour of wildlife species; and reduce the areal extent
and thickness of the Arctic sea-ice.2-3 Rising sea levels will threaten low-lying areas and accelerate
coastal retreat.4 On account of the potential wide ranging social, cultural, and economic implications, it has been argued that climate change is a major threat to global security in the coming century.5
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) guides national and
international efforts to respond to climate change. The FCCC is composed of 189 member countries
and was opened for signature at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (known by its popular title as The Earth Summit). The main focus of the
Framework Convention has been on reducing or stabilising emissions responsible for climate
change (known as mitigation). Adaptation – encompassing measures to reduce or moderate the
negative effects of climate change – also figures prominently in the FCCC, although it has been
overshadowed by mitigation in policy discussions. New perspectives on the role of adaptation,
however, are beginning to emerge, driven in part by the realisation that some degree of climate
change is inevitable and by the current effects of climate change in vulnerable regions.
This paper reviews the emergence of adaptation as a focus of climate change policy action
and assesses current approaches to adaptation policy development and research. It begins by documenting how the problem of climate change has been addressed internationally, charting the evolution of mitigation and adaptation in policy debates. Examples from Canada are employed to
illustrate how climate change policy at the national level reflects trends on the international stage.
The paper then focuses on how adaptation has been approached, illustrating how the existing FCCC
definition of adaptation – actions taken in response to climate change impacts resulting from anthropogenic emissions – is constraining the effectiveness of policy and its ability to address the
needs of the vulnerable. It is argued that the concept of adaptation needs to be reframed to allow
actions to reduce vulnerability to climatic hazards in general and not just the marginal impacts of
human induced climate change. Such reframing is necessary to broaden the range of response options aimed at reducing the negative effects of climate change to include action to address socioeconomic determinants of climate vulnerability. The paper finishes by demonstrating – using an
example from Canada – how the integration of the management of climate change risks into broader
policy goals can lead to ‘no-regrets’ adaptation, where policy reduces vulnerability to climatic risks
while addressing other priorities.
2. CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY
Political and academic attention to climate change policy has largely focused on reducing the
greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.6-7 Mitigation is the basis of the Frame1
IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policy Makers, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Geneva, 2007).
2
W. Chapman and J. Walsh, “Simulations of Arctic Temperature and Pressure by Global Coupled Models,”
Journal of Climate vol. 20, no.4 (2007), pp. 609-632.
3
IPCC, 2007.
4
R. J. Nicholls and R. S. J. Tol, “Impacts and responses to sea-level rise: A global analysis of the SRES scenarios over the 21st Century,” Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A – Mathematical, Physical and Engineering
Sciences, vol. 361 (2005), pp. 1073-1095.
5
N. Stern, The economics of climate change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
6
S. Huq, F. Yamin, A. Rahman, A. Chatterjee, X. Yang, S. Wade, V. Orindi, and J. Chigwada, “Linking climate
adaptation and development: A synthesis of six case studies from Asia and Africa,” IDS Bulletin vol. 36 (2005), pp.
117-122.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
7
work Convention and its principle update, the Kyoto Protocol, which provides the legal basis within
which many national and regional governments are responding to climate change. The protocol legally binds Annex 1 (industrialised) countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of
5% by the first commitment period (2008-2012) compared to the baseline of 1990. Countries that
have ratified the Protocol but are not able to achieve the necessary emissions reductions
domestically are permitted to purchase carbon credits from nations who have exceeded their Kyoto
reductions, or invest in green technologies or emission reduction programs in non-Annex 1 nations
(mechanisms known as The Clean Development Mechanisms and Joint Implementation).
Mitigation also figures prominently in discussions over what will replace Kyoto when the
implementation period ends in 2012, with scientists and some governments (notably in the EU)
arguing for stronger emission targets to avoid ‘dangerous climate change.’
Action on adaptation as a response to climate change has been limited and even discouraged,
especially throughout the 1990s when there was considerable faith in the ability of mitigation to be
effective in tackling climate change.8 Former US Vice President Al Gore, for example, speaking in
1992, argued that adaptation represented “a kind of laziness, an arrogant faith in our ability to react
in time to save our skins.”9 In 2007 Gore re-affirmed his opposition to adaptation arguing “We
really have to focus on prevention;”10 a stance taken by many environmental activists who feel action on adaptation directs attention and resources away from reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The politics of climate negotiations, especially in the 1990s, also contributed to the neglect of adaptation, with many developed country governments viewing discussion of adaptation as tantamount to accepting human responsibility for climate change. Fears that responsibility would
implicitly lead to discussions of liability and compensation naturally steered developed country negotiators away from adaptation.11
New perspectives on adaptation, however, have begun to emerge, captured in the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,12 reports produced by international scientific bodies
including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Arctic Council, 13-14 and a proliferation of adaptation research by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academia. As many
of these reports highlight, adaptation – despite being overlooked – has always been recognised by
the Framework Convention as an important component of climate change policy. Article 4.1b, for
example, commits parties to “formulate, implement… national and where appropriate, regional
programmes containing measures to…. facilitate adequate adaptation to climate change.”15 Article
11 of the Kyoto Protocol also commits parties to promote and facilitate adaptation to address climate change. Moreover, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – whose assessments on the science, impacts, and economics of climate change have guided negotiations among
7
I. Burton, S. Huq, B. Lim, O. Pilifosova, and E.L. Schipper, “From impacts assessment to adaptation priorities:
The shaping of adaptation policy,” Climate Policy vol. 2 (2002), pp. 145-159.
8
R. Pielke, G. Prins, S. Raynor, and D. Sarewitz, “Climate change 2007: Lifting the taboo on adaptation,” Nature vol. 445 (2007), pp. 597-598.
9
Ibid.
10
M. Crenson, “Scientific debate on the wane, fight brews over how to address climate change,” International
Herald Tribune, available online: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/23/america/NA-FEA-GEN-Climate-ChangeAn-Update.php (accessed 3 September 2007).
11
E. L. Schipper, and M. Pelling, “Disaster risk, climate change and international development: scope for, and
challenge to, integration,” Disasters vol. 30 (2006), pp. 19-38.
12
Stern.
13
ACIA, Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
14
IPCC (2007).
15
UNFCCC, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - Convention Text (Geneva: IUCC,
1992).
8
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
signatories to the FCCC – first stressed the importance of adaptation as “a very powerful option”
for responding to climate change in its second assessment report.16
In light of this resurgence of interest, the FCCC has moved to re-affirm the importance of adaptation on the policy agenda alongside mitigation, establishing several programs to support adaptation following the signing of the 2001 Marrakech Accord to the Kyoto Protocol. These include the
National Adaptation Programme of Action, the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Strategic Priority on Adaptation, and the Special Climate Change Fund.17
The increasing importance of adaptation in climate change policy is also evident in national climate
change plans. In Canada, for example, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development noted the urgency of adaptation and recommended the development of a national adaptation strategy in 2005. A national adaptation assessment identifying
opportunities for adaptation was completed by Natural Resources Canada in late 2007.
3. THE IMPORTANCE OF ADAPTATION
There are numerous explanations for the increasing interest in adaptation as a response to climate change. First, the experience of climate negotiations throughout the 1990s eroded confidence
in the ability of mitigation to stabilise or moderate climate change.18 The Kyoto protocol, for example, which legally binds Annex 1 (industrialised) countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by
an average of 5%, is widely considered insufficient to have any real impact on climate change.19
Confidence has been further eroded by the political difficulties of achieving mitigation: the
emissions of Annex 2 (non-industrialised) countries are rapidly increasing and offsetting emission
reductions in Annex 1 countries. Moreover, many Annex 1 countries are having difficulties meeting
their Kyoto targets. In Canada, for example, the government of Stephen Harper has indicated that
Canada will not purchase the carbon credits necessary meet its Kyoto targets, in-effect defaulting on
its Kyoto commitments. Decreasing confidence in mitigation has been compounded by recent
scientific research which indicates that some degree of climate change is unavoidable due to historic emissions.20 For instance, if atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases were capped at
2000 levels (considered unlikely), estimates indicate that temperatures would still increase by 0.4°C
to 0.6°C over the next century.21 Communities, regions, and economic sectors will therefore have to
adapt to some degree of climate change.
Second, it is widely recognised that climate change is already occurring in some regions
where populations are vulnerable.22 This is particularly relevant in Arctic regions where evidence
already points to the effect of climate change on local weather patterns, wildlife, sea ice, and livelihoods in northern regions.23 Adaptation policy can bring immediate benefits in the form of reduced
sensitivity to climatic risks and increased adaptability to future stresses. Developing nations who
have limited capacity to deal with climate change are also demanding an international response to
help them adapt to increasingly destructive climatic events. In 2002, for example, many developing
16
IPCC, Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical
Analyses, Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
17
Huq et al.
18
Pielke et al.
19
G. Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2006).
20
W. L. Hare and M. Meinshausen, “How much warming are we committed to and how much can be avoided?”
Climatic Change vol. 75, no.1-2 (2006), pp. 111-149.
21
T. M. L. Wigley, “The climate change commitment,” Science vol. 307 (2005): pp. 1766-1769.
22
IPCC (2007).
23
ACIA.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
9
nations signed the Delhi Declaration calling for greater attention to adaptation in climate change
policy negotiations.24
Finally, there is growing realisation among many developing nations, especially those with
low populations, the absence of sizable industrial base, and limited consumption levels, that there is
little they can do to slow or stop climate change because they contribute so little to global greenhouse gas emissions. In Canada too, organisations representing indigenous peoples in the Arctic –
while recognising the importance of reducing emissions to prevent dangerous climate change – are
realising that with only 100,000 people in the Arctic territories and with low levels of industrial development there are few opportunities to influence global greenhouse gas emissions.25 Adaptation
offers a tangible way in which the impacts of climate change can be reduced.
4. ADAPTATION RESEARCH AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT
A growing community of policy makers and researchers is evolving to provide support to
identify what adaptation policies are required to moderate or reduce the negative effects of climate
change, and how they can be best developed, applied, and funded. Two approaches have shaped the
adaptation research and policy agenda: impacts-driven and vulnerability-based approaches. It is argued here that the current framing of adaptation in the FCCC, and in policy debates in general, is
largely impacts-driven and therefore constrains adaptation options to addressing the marginal negative impacts of human induced climate change. Thinking of adaptation using a vulnerability-based
approach broadens the range of actions to reduce the effects of climatic hazards including, but not
limited to, human induced climate change.
4.1 Impacts-Driven Policy and Research
Most adaptation research and policy discussion has focused on modelling the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems using simulations produced by global climate models
(GCMs), with adaptation options identified to reduce exposure to predicted climate change impacts.26-27 Burton et al. term this ‘Type 1’ adaptation or ‘impacts driven research,’28 and the approach has formed the basis of numerous studies including the US Country Studies Program and
country reports prepared for the FCCC National Adaptation Programs for Action (NAPAs). Adaptive responses that have been proposed in this context are largely techno-engineering in nature, including the construction of sea defences to provide protection from rising sea levels, the
development of irrigation systems in regions predicted to be affected by increasing drought, and
construction of enhanced drainage systems in areas expected to be affected by increasing precipitation.29
The focus on reducing exposure to predicted climate change impacts is partly a reflection of
the preponderance of physical scientists in the adaptation research community. It is also a reflection
of how the FCCC (and many national governments) treats adaptation – as actions taken in response
to climate change resulting from anthropogenic emissions. Adaptive responses under the FCCC
24
UNFCCC, The Delhi Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development (Geneva: IUCC, 2002).
J. Ford, T. Pearce, B. Smit, J. Wandel, M. Allurut, K. Shappa, H. Ittusujurat, and K. Qrunnut, “Reducing
vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic: the case of Nunavut, Canada,” Arctic vol. 60 (2007), pp. 150-166.
26
B. Smit, and J. Wandel, “Adaptation, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability,” Global Environmental Change vol.
16 (2006), pp. 282-292.
27
H. M. Fussel, and R.T.J. Klein, “Climate change vulnerability assessments: An evolution of conceptual thinking,” Climatic Change vol. 75, no.3 (2006), pp. 301-329.
28
I. Burton, S. Huq, B. Lim, O. Pilifosova, and E.L. Schipper, “From impacts assessment to adaptation priorities:
The shaping of adaptation policy,” Climate Policy vol. 2 (2002): pp. 145-159.
29
Ford et al. (2007).
25
10
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
therefore have to demonstrate that they address the marginal impacts of future climate change, not
existing climatic risks. Impacts-driven research with its focus on climate change projections and
techno-engineering interventions to reduce exposure to climate change impacts naturally fit this
definition.
Impact-driven or Type 1 adaptation research has provided vital information to policy makers
on the potential impacts of climate change, and policy responses have been important in reducing
climate change exposure. However, this approach to adaptation largely neglects the complex socioeconomic dynamics that shape vulnerability to climate change. 30-31 The differential effects of current climate-related hazards, as Hurricane Katrina made clear, highlights the importance of nonclimatic factors shaping vulnerability. Focusing attention on the marginal impacts of climate change
in isolation from other conditions, as necessitated by the FCCC, distracts from other, often more
important, societal drivers of climate vulnerability. If unaddressed these social determinants can
make adaptive responses ineffective in reducing the negative impacts of climate change.
Moreover, focusing on reducing marginal future climate change impacts is often neither practical nor successfully incorporated into decision-making processes, and can direct attention away
from the real needs of the vulnerable. Climate change is one source of stress on human systems;
poverty, public health, economic development, infrastructure, and food security are often considered more pressing needs to policy makers and vulnerable populations than projections of long-term
changes in average climatic conditions. As long as adaptation is treated separately from these concerns, its importance for society will be obscured.
Impacts-driven adaptation policy development is further constrained by its dependence upon
climate change scenarios to identify the marginal impacts of climate change. Despite improvements
over the years, climate change scenarios are subject to significant uncertainty. Uncertainty is multiplied as scenarios produced by GCMs drive biophysical impact models that have their own inherent
uncertainties. Imperfect knowledge regarding the relationships between climate parameters and
other variables complicates analyses,32 and at a local level the distinctive geography of widely dispersed communities further reduces predictive capacity. This leads to a situation where policy makers are faced with the prospect of developing adaptive responses to cope with, for example,
projections of sea level rise in the range of 0.11 - 0.77m by 2100 depending on the scenario and
GCM used.33 Experience highlights that policy makers are reluctant to develop policies based on
uncertain results and uncertainty in climate projections is unlikely to be reduced in the near future.34
Where policy interventions do occur, it can result in maladaptation and inefficient use of resources
if uncertain projections do not materialize.
4.2 Vulnerability-Based Policy and Research
In the natural hazards and development literature, adaptation describes a much broader range
of actions that can help reduce the negative effects of climate change than what is considered in the
FCCC and by many national governments.35 Increasingly, researchers and decision makers in the
30
P. Tschakert, “Views from the vulnerable: Understanding climatic and other stressors in the Sahel,” Global
Environmental Change (in press).
31
Ford et al. (2007).
32
W. N. Adger and K. Vincent, “Uncertainty in adaptive capacity,” Competus Rendus Geoscience vol. 337
(2005), pp. 339-410.
33
IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the
Second Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
34
A. H. Lynch and R. D. Brunner, “The importance of context in climate change impacts assessment: Lessons
from Barrow, Alaska,” Climatic Change (in press).
35
Schipper and Pelling.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
11
climate change field are viewing adaptation through this lens. For instance, the United Nations Development Program’s Adaptation Policy Framework – designed to provide guidance for developing
climate change adaptation initiatives – defines adaptation as “a process by which strategies to moderate, cope with, and take advantage of the consequences of climatic events are enhanced, developed, and implemented” (italics are in original).36 The focus here on “climate events,” as opposed
to anthropogenic climate change, is a key departure from the approach to adaptation within the
FCCC and directs the focus of adaptation policy and research to address the root causes of climate
vulnerability – what some commentators have termed second generation or Type 2 adaptation
studies. 37-38
Policies that address vulnerability differ in key respects from attempts to reduce impacts.
Vulnerability has often been described as the ‘capacity to be wounded.’39 It is a measure of the susceptibility to harm in a system in response to a stimulus or stimuli, and is related to both exposure
and sensitivity to climatic risks and adaptive capacity to deal with those risks.40-41 Vulnerabilitybased adaptation policy, therefore, focuses on measures that reduce both climate exposure and human sensitivity, and increase adaptive capacity. This may include the prescription of traditional
techno-engineering adaptive responses designed to reduce exposure to climate change impacts.
More often, however, vulnerability-based policy development advocates initiatives to strengthen
adaptive capacity and/or reduce climate sensitivity, which are not normally considered under impacts-driven research, and can include livelihood enhancement, poverty alleviation, education, improved institutional arrangements, strengthening food security. These activities fall under the
general rubric of sustainable development and are issues often of major concern to vulnerable
populations.42-43 Moreover, integrating the management of climate change risks into broader sustainable development goals (known as mainstreaming) can lead to ‘no-regrets’ adaptation, where
policy reduces vulnerability to climatic risks while addressing other priorities.
5. VULNERABILITY-BASED ADAPTATION POLICY AND RESEARCH: AN ARCTIC CASE STUDY
The above section argues that vulnerability-based adaptation policy development is more
likely to meet the needs of the vulnerable and be more effective in addressing climate change risks.
This section draws upon an example from the author’s own work in Arctic Canada to highlight how
adaptation planning can be integrated into broader sustainable development goals at a regional and
national level.
5.1 Climate Change in the Arctic
The Inuit of Canada’s Arctic are at the forefront of climate change, which is posing significant risks and hazards to communities.44-45 Many of the risks are associated with traditional har36
B. Lim, E. Spanger-Siegfried, I. Burton, E.L. Malone, and S. Huq, Adaptation Policy Frameworks for Climate
Change: Developing Strategies, Policies and Measures (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2005).
37
Burton et al.
38
Fussel and Klein.
39
R. W. Kates, C. Hohenemser, and J.E.X. Kasperson, Perilous Progress: Managing the Hazards of Technology
(Colorado, 1985).
40
J. Ford, J. MacDonald, B. Smit, and J. Wandel, “Vulnerability to climate change in Igloolik, Nunavut: What
we can learn from the past and present,” Polar Record vol. 42 (2006): pp. 1-12.
41
Smit and Wandel.
42
F.S.I. Chapin, “Building resilience and adaptation to manage arctic change,” Ambio vol. 35 (2006): pp. 198202.
43
Fussel and Klein.
44
S. Nickels, C. Furgal, M. Buell, and H. Moquin, Unikkaaqatigiit – Putting the Human Face on Climate
Change: Perspectives from Inuit in Canada (Ottawa, 2006).
12
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
vesting activities, which have great social, cultural, and economic importance to Inuit. Increased
prevalence of hunting accidents due to changing conditions have been noted and many Inuit have
complained that changes in the sea ice and weather patterns have reduced hunting success. Given
community dependence on the physical environment, future climate change is expected to challenge
the sustainability of existing ways of life.46-47
5.2 Adaptation planning and research
In light of the impact of current changes and predictions of future vulnerability, policy makers
are seeking to identify means of promoting adaptation. The Territory of Nunavut, for example, began developing a climate change adaptation plan in late 2006. To identify opportunities for adaptation planning to reduce vulnerability to climate change, Ford et al. conducted vulnerability-based
studies with Inuit communities in Nunavut between 2003 and 2007.48-49 This work was largely undertaken in collaboration with the communities of Arctic Bay (population: 700) and Igloolik
(population: 1,500). Both are small Inuit communities, have mixed economies composed of wagedemployment and subsistence hunting, and can be considered representative of Nunavut’s 26 mostly
small communities. During four years of fieldwork, 112 in-depth semi-structured interviews were
conducted with local residents and were complimented with focus group discussion sessions and
interviews with local and territorial decision makers. Based on this work, four main areas for adaptation policy at a federal and territorial level are suggested and are summarised here (see Ford et al.
for detailed recommendations48). It is noteworthy that these recommendations address key determinants of climate change vulnerability, but more importantly they simultaneously address broader
community concerns in areas of economic, social, and cultural development, and strengthen resilience to everyday climatic risks.
Traditional knowledge enhancement and cultural preservation
The erosion of traditional knowledge and land-based skills over the last few decades, a consequence of changing social norms and Western educational requirements, has created climate vulnerabilities among Inuit youth across Arctic Canada.50-51 Recent climate change has compounded
the erosion of traditional knowledge, increasing the dangers of an insufficient understanding of
Arctic survival skills. Strengthening land-based skills and traditional knowledge through the development and promotion of hunting camps and land skills courses have the potential to increase safe
hunting practices among vulnerable groups, thereby reducing sensitivity and increasing adaptive
capacity to current and future climatic risks. Programs of this nature have value well beyond reducing climate vulnerability and preparing for climate change: traditional knowledge forms the basis of Inuit cultural identity, spirituality, and values, the preservation and promotion of which has
importance for community well-being.
45
ACIA.
Ibid.
47
AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri, Iceland: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004).
48
Ford et al. (2007).
49
J. Ford, B. Smit, J. Wandel, H. Ittusarjuat, and K. Qrunnut, “Climate change in the Arctic: Current and future
vulnerability in two Inuit communities in Canada,” The Geographical Journal (in press).
50
S. Gearhead, W. Matumeak, I. Angutikjuaq, J.A. Maslanik, H.J.L. Huntington, D.G.T. Matumeak, and R.G.
Barry, “It's not that simple: Comparison of sea ice environments, observed changes, and adaptations in Barrow Alaska,
USA, and Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada,” Ambio vol. 35 (2006): pp. 203-211.
51
T. Pearce, B. Smit, F. Duerden, F. Katayoak, R. Inuktalik, A. Goose, J. Ford, and J. Wandel, “Travel Routes,
Harvesting and Climate Change in Ulukhaktok, Canada,” Northern Research Forum Open Meeting – The Borderless
North, Oulu, Finland and Lulea, Sweden.
46
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
13
Targeted financial support
The ability to cope with climatic stresses, including climate change, is influenced by access to
financial resources. Replacing equipment damaged or lost in climate-related hunting accidents imposes a significant financial burden on community members, especially those with limited access to
money. In these circumstances, accidents can result in loss of livelihood and with climate change
accidents are increasingly common. Programmes are currently offered by the territorial government
to provide financial support for the replacement of lost or damaged equipment, and these programs
are increasingly being used to finance climate change adaptations. These new demands, however, in
combination with rising equipment and fuel costs, are exacerbating shortcomings in funding allocation, which is widely considered to be insufficient in many communities. Subsidised insurance
schemes for hunters and targeted harvester support funds have the potential to increase livelihood
security, particularly in the context of a changing climate, and will help Inuit (especially youth) balance traditional activities with economic demands of the twenty-first century.
Resource co-management
The opportunistic nature of resource use among Inuit is widely recognised to facilitate adaptability to environmental stress. The imposition of quota systems by the federal government in the
1980s, which limit the number of animals that can be caught in a given year and, in some instances,
the times at which they can be caught, has reduced the flexibility with which hunters can respond to
environmental stress. Climate change is increasing pressure on existing quota systems and increasing demand for quotas to be developed for currently unregulated species. In this context it is important that communities, scientists, and wildlife mangers are collectively involved in the comanagement of wildlife harvesting. The development and alteration of quotas in response to climate
change or other pressures that do not take into account local hunting needs, the ecology of harvesting, or community concerns will almost certainly increase community vulnerability to climate
change and other stresses, limiting the flexibility characteristic of hunting that has traditionally facilitated adaptive capacity.
Emergency support
During times of climate stress when access to traditional food resources is constrained, those
people who rely on traditional foods have difficulty offsetting reduced traditional food consumption
with store-bought food due to the high cost of food in the North and low household income. This
can create episodes of acute food insecurity. Emergency intervention to subsidise store-food prices
for high risk groups, or ensure food access via food banks during periods of climate induced stress,
would increase adaptability to climatic events which are predicted to become more prevalent with
climate change. Emergency intervention to support fuel prices during times of climate stress would
also be important. Many adaptive mechanisms involve travelling further to avoid dangerous areas
on the ice or to find animals. Subsidised gasoline prices during times of stress would moderate the
burden of having to travel further to obtain traditional foods, particularly for vulnerable low income
hunters.
6. CONCLUSION
Adaptation has increasingly figured on the international and national climate change agenda
since the 2001 Marrakech Accords to the Kyoto Protocol, when several new programs to support
adaptation research and policy development were established. Research that seeks to identify what
adaptation policies are required to moderate or reduce the negative effects of climate change and
how they can be best developed, applied, and funded, is increasingly using vulnerability-based ap-
14
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
proaches. Vulnerability approaches broaden the scope of adaptation policy to consider measures to
increase adaptive capacity and reduce climate sensitivity, alongside measures to reduce climate
change exposure while emphasising the importance of social, cultural, and economic factors in determining the potential effects of climate change. In Nunavut, for example, where climate change is
already having considerable effects, policies that seek to preserve and promote traditional knowledge and land skills, improve access to financial resources, develop co-management of wildlife resources, and provide emergency support during times of climate stress, are likely to be effective in
reducing climate vulnerability. These policies fall under the general rubric of sustainable development.
Reframing adaptation as part of sustainable development can help ‘put the vulnerable first,’
and is increasingly being advocated by NGOs, researchers, and regional policy makers.52 Indeed, in
Arctic Canada many community members have expressed concern at how the climate change issue
at the national and international level is eclipsing what they see as more important concerns facing
their livelihoods, including suicide, lack of jobs, erosion of traditional knowledge and culture, and
the expense of undertaking traditional activities including hunting. Mainstreaming adaptation can
help address these social-economic issues, reduce vulnerability to everyday climatic risks, and reduce vulnerability to climate change. A broader treatment of adaptation by the Framework Convention and national governments is required if the needs of the vulnerable are to be addressed in a
changing climate.
REFERENCES
ACIA. Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Adger, W.N. and K. Vincent. “Uncertainty in adaptive capacity.” Competus Rendus Geoscience
vol. 337 (2005): pp. 339-410.
AHDR. Arctic Human Development Report. Akureyri, Iceland: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004.
Burton, I., S. Huq, B. Lim, O. Pilifosova, and E.L. Schipper. “From impacts assessment to adaptation priorities: The shaping of adaptation policy.” Climate Policy vol. 2 (2002): pp. 145-159.
Chapin, F.S.I. “Building resilience and adaptation to manage arctic change.” Ambio vol. 35 (2006):
pp. 198-202.
Chapman, W. and J. Walsh. “Simulations of Arctic Temperature and Pressure by Global Coupled
Models.” Journal of Climate vol. 20, no.4 (2007): pp. 609-632.
Crenson, M. “Scientific debate on the wane, fight brews over how to address climate change.” International Herald Tribune. Available online: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/23/
america/NA-FEA-GEN-Climate-Change-An-Update.php
Ford, J., J. MacDonald, B. Smit, and J. Wandel. “Vulnerability to climate change in Igloolik, Nunavut: What we can learn from the past and present.” Polar Record vol. 42 (2006): pp. 1-12.
Ford, J., T. Pearce, B. Smit, J. Wandel, M. Allurut, K. Shappa, H. Ittusujurat, and K. Qrunnut. “Reducing vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic: the case of Nunavut, Canada.” Arctic vol.
60 (2007): pp. 150-166.
52
E. Wall and B. Smit, “Climate Change Adaptation in Light of Sustainable Agriculture,” Journal of Sustainable
Agriculture vol. 27 (2005): pp. 113-123.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
15
Ford, J., B. Smit, and J. Wandel. “Vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic: A case study from
Arctic Bay, Canada.” Global Environmental Change vol. 16 (2006): pp. 145-160.
Ford, J., B. Smit, J. Wandel, H. Ittusarjuat, and K. Qrunnut. “Climate change in the Arctic: Current
and future vulnerability in two Inuit communities in Canada.” The Geographical Journal (in
press).
Fussel, H.M., and R.T.J. Klein. “Climate change vulnerability assessments: An evolution of conceptual thinking.” Climatic Change vol. 75, no.3 (2006): pp. 301-329.
Gearhead, S., W. Matumeak, I. Angutikjuaq, J.A. Maslanik, H.J.L. Huntington, D.G.T. Matumeak,
and R.G. Barry. “It's not that simple: Comparison of sea ice environments, observed changes,
and adaptations in Barrow Alaska, USA, and Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada.” Ambio vol. 35
(2006): pp. 203-211.
Hare, W.L. and M. Meinshausen. “How much warming are we committed to and how much can be
avoided?” Climatic Change vol. 75, no.1-2 (2006): pp. 111-149.
Huq, S., F. Yamin, A. Rahman, A. Chatterjee, X. Yang, S. Wade, V. Orindi, and J. Chigwada.
“Linking climate adaptation and development: A synthesis of six case studies from Asia and
Africa.” IDS Bulletin vol. 36 (2005): pp. 117-122.
IPCC. Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: ScientificTechnical Analyses. Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
----------. Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working
Group II to the Second Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
----------. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policy Makers. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. Geneva, 2007.
Kates, R.W., C. Hohenemser, and J.E.X. Kasperson. Perilous Progress: Managing the Hazards of
Technology. Colorado, 1985.
Kelly, P.M. and W.N. Adger. “Theory and practice in assessing vulnerability to climate change and
facilitating adaptation.” Climate Change vol. 47 (2000): pp. 325-352.
Lim, B., E. Spanger-Siegfried, I. Burton, E.L. Malone, and S. Huq. Adaptation Policy Frameworks
for Climate Change: Developing Strategies, Policies and Measures. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2005.
Lynch, A.H. and Brunner, R.D. “The importance of context in climate change impacts assessment:
Lessons from Barrow, Alaska.” Climatic Change (in press).
McCarthy, J. and Martello, M.L. “Climate change in the context of multiple stressors and resilience.” In Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, pp. 880-892. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005.
Monbiot, G. Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2006.
Nicholls, R.J. and R.S.J. Tol. “Impacts and responses to sea-level rise: A global analysis of the
SRES scenarios over the 21st Century.” Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A –
Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences vol. 361 (2005): pp. 1073-1095.
Nickels, S., C. Furgal, M. Buell, and H. Moquin. Unikkaaqatigiit – Putting the Human Face on
Climate Change: Perspectives from Inuit in Canada. Ottawa, 2006.
Pearce, T., B. Smit, F. Duerden, F. Katayoak, R. Inuktalik, A. Goose, J. Ford, and J. Wandel.
“Travel Routes, Harvesting and Climate Change in Ulukhaktok, Canada.” Northern Research
Forum Open Meeting – The Borderless North, Oulu, Finland and Lulea, Sweden.
Pielke, R., G. Prins, S. Raynor, and D. Sarewitz. “Climate change 2007: Lifting the taboo on adaptation.” Nature vol. 445 (2007): pp. 597-598.
16
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
Schipper, E.L. and M. Pelling. “Disaster risk, climate change and international development: scope
for, and challenge to, integration.” Disasters vol. 30 (2006): pp. 19-38.
Smit, B. and J. Wandel. “Adaptation, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability.” Global Environmental
Change vol. 16 (2006): pp. 282-292.
Stern, N. The economics of climate change: The Stern Review. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Tschakert, P. “Views from the vulnerable: Understanding climatic and other stressors in the Sahel.”
Global Environmental Change (in press).
Turner, B., R.E. Kasperson, P.A. Matson, J. McCarthy, R. Corell, L. Christensen, N. Eckley, J.X.
Kasperson, A. Luers, M.L. Martello, C. Polsky, A. Pulsipher, and A. Schiller. “A framework
for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences vol. 100 (2003): pp. 8074-8079.
UNFCCC. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - Convention Text. IUCC:
Geneva, 1992.
----------. The Delhi Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. IUCC: Geneva,
2002.
Wall, E. and B. Smit. “Climate Change Adaptation in Light of Sustainable Agriculture.” Journal of
Sustainable Agriculture vol. 27 (2005): pp. 113-123.
Wigley, T.M.L. “The climate change commitment.” Science vol. 307 (2005): pp. 1766-1769.
TOXIC TRADE: INTERNATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
NETWORKS & THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BASEL
CONVENTION
Jason Lloyd‡
ABSTRACT
The international trade in hazardous waste – particularly from wealthy industrialised nations to
developing countries – had costly ecological, public health, economic, legal and political consequences. The result was a global campaign to create an international regime capable of regulating
the trade in toxic waste, culminating in the creation of the Basel Convention in 1989. Five years
later a comprehensive ban on transfers of nearly all hazardous waste from OECD to non-OECD
countries was added as an amendment to the treaty. This paper argues that epistemic communities,
through the creation and diffusion of expert knowledge, provide the essential link between localised
issues with global implications, such as third-world toxic dumping, and international public policy
solutions like the Basel Convention. By examining the position of epistemic communities in knowledge formation and international policy, and looking at the role played by these communities in the
creation of the Basel Convention, this paper connects the creation of the Convention to the broader
discourse on transnational knowledge networks in global governance.
Keywords: Basel Convention; environment; epistemic community; globalization; hazardous waste;
international public policy
THE VOYAGE OF THE KHIAN SEA
The United States incinerates nearly forty million tons of waste each year.53 What to do with
such enormous amounts of incinerated material, in the form of ash that often contains poisonous
dioxins and heavy metals, is an increasingly urgent question as landfills close and disposing of the
waste becomes progressively more expensive.54 One solution for advanced industrial nations was
to export the incinerator ash to developing countries, where environmental laws are often lax or
‡
MSc International Public Policy, University College London, United Kingdom. For questions or comments,
please contact: jason.lloyd@ucl.ac.uk.
53
Clean Air Council, “Waste Facts & Figures,” available online: http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html
(accessed 20 February 2007). The Clean Air Council, an American non-governmental organisation, compiled figures
estimating that 108,234 tons of waste is incinerated per day in the US.
54
“Rubbish; Burning Question,” The Economist, World Politics & Current Affairs, 28 May 1988, p. 45.
17
18
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
nonexistent, and disposal is significantly cheaper. This practice resulted in incidents with costly
ecological, public health, economic, legal and political consequences.
One of the most notorious cases occurred in 1986, and involved the Khian Sea, a cargo ship
laden with 14,000 tons of municipal incinerator ash from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With permission to unload “soil fertilizer,” the ship dumped between two and three thousand tons of the ash on
a beach near Gonaives, Haiti, before authorities there ordered it to leave. The Khian Sea spent the
next two years attempting to unload its cargo on five different continents, changing its name and
country of origin several times. The ship finally arrived in Singapore in 1988 with an empty hull;
the captain later admitted to dumping the waste in the Indian Ocean.55 The toxic ash remained on
the Haitian beach for more than a decade before eventually being returned to Philadelphia.56
Similar incidents are of course not confined to the ash of US waste incinerators. It is estimated that between 1989 and 1994 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) shipped about 2.6 million metric tons of hazardous waste to poorer, nonOECD countries.57 The international transfer of all types of hazardous material,58 and several highprofile debacles like the Khian Sea, resulted in a global campaign to create an international regime
capable of regulating the trade in toxic waste. This resulted, in 1989, in thirty-five states and the
European Community signing the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements
of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. Five years later a comprehensive ban on transfers of
nearly all hazardous waste from OECD to non-OECD countries was added as an amendment to the
treaty.59 One hundred and sixty-nine countries are currently parties to the Convention.60
What is the connection between toxic ash left on a Haitian beach and a global ban on international hazardous waste transfers? How does information regarding incidents such as the Khian Sea,
scientific data about the environmental and health impacts of exposure to certain types of waste,
and the work of advocacy groups result in the creation of a waste management regime? This paper
argues that epistemic communities, through the creation and diffusion of expert knowledge, provide
the link between localised issues with global implications and international public policy solutions.
The first section examines the position of epistemic communities in knowledge formation and international policy. The second section looks at the role played by epistemic communities in the
creation of the Basel Convention. Finally, the conclusion connects the creation of the Convention
to the broader discourse on transnational knowledge networks and summarises the function of expert knowledge in global governance.
THE ROLE OF EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES IN INTERNATIONAL POLICYMAKING
With “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a
way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa,” to bor55
M. Williams, “Well-Traveled Trash,” Newsweek, 22 July 2002, p. 8; and H. Anderson, “The Global Poison
Trade,” Newsweek 7 November 1998, p. 66.
56
B. Geiselman, “Full Circle; Well-traveled ash will rest in peace near its PA birthplace,” Waste News, 24 June
2002, p. 3.
57
K. Kummer, International Management of Hazardous Wastes: The Basel Convention and Related Legal Rules
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 7.
58
For the purposes of this essay, “hazardous” and “toxic” waste are used synonymously, and refer to any waste
material, whether the by-product of industrial processes, the result of transportation, or products deliberately created
and used (e.g., pesticides), etc., that can cause or are suspected to cause harm to humans, animals, or the environment.
For a comprehensive list of hazardous wastes and their characteristics, see Annexes I, II, III and VIII of the Basel Convention.
59
It should be noted, however, that as of 12 December 2006, the Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention had
not yet been ratified by enough countries to enter into force.
60
Secretariat of the Basel Convention, “Parties to the Basel Convention,” UNEP, available online:
http://www.basel.int/ratif/convention.htm (accessed 21 February 2006).
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
19
row Anthony Giddens’ description of globalisation,61 even localised policy matters increasingly involve issues of global concern. Transnational communities of knowledge elites, or epistemic communities, have emerged to deal with this new spatial pattern of social relations.62 These
communities shape how information becomes knowledge, and facilitate the diffusion of that knowledge from the local to the global level, which then influences international policymaking. The dissemination of knowledge takes place through many different channels, including direct contact with
decision-makers, consultation during policy meetings, publications in academic journals, participation in ad hoc working groups and conferences, and providing expertise to various media outlets.
The direction of this knowledge’s movement is crucial: partly because of the lack of a global
government and partly because of increased economic and social integration resulting from globalisation,63 policy change in the international arena is primarily a bottom-up process.64 Thus issues
such as the proliferation of small arms and light weapons,65 anti-personnel landmines,66 and the
transfer of hazardous waste from the developed to developing world – all problems formerly overlooked or ignored by global governance regimes and institutions – are shifted from the local to
global agenda with the help of epistemic communities. Since “control over knowledge and information is an important dimension of power” that can “lead to new patterns of behavior,”67 outlining
what exactly epistemic communities are is particularly important.
An epistemic community is a loosely connected network of experts informally bound by a
shared belief in the cause of a particular problem and the correct approach to solving it.68 Members
of such a community do not necessarily come from a single discipline; in fact, with crossdisciplinary issues such as climate change, terrorism, or, as will be seen below, the hazardous waste
trade, it is beneficial for epistemic community members to be drawn from different areas of expertise. For example, in his study of the role of epistemic communities in the creation of the Mediterranean Action Plan, Peter Haas identified United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP)
officials, members of powerful agencies such as the World Health Organization, regional government officials, ecologists and marine scientists as participating in the Plan’s regional development
and implementation.69 Haas attributes the success of the Plan to the involvement of such a wide
array of participants.
Epistemic communities are distinct from other networks like interest groups and global policy
advocates, which can also play important roles in shaping international public policy. Epistemic
communities, as the name implies, are concerned with an empirical production of knowledge that
relies on accepted notions of validity – brought about through “debate, retesting and peer review” –
to achieve a consensual perspective on social and physical phenomena.70 The knowledge produced
by epistemic communities is highly appealing to policymakers because it is perceived to be more
scientific and rational than information provided by groups with ideological or political biases.
61
A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 64.
D. Stone, “The ‘Policy Research’ Knowledge Elite and Global Policy Processes,” in Non-State Actors in
World Politics, ed. Daphne Josselin and William Wallace, p. 117 (London: Palgrave, 2001).
63
Ibid, p. 116.
64
W. Reinicke, “The Other World Wide Web: Global Public Policy Networks,” Foreign Policy vol. 117 (1999),
p. 44.
65
rd
See: K. Krause, “The Challenge of Small Arms and Light Weapons,” 3 International Security Forum, Kongresshaus Zurich, Switzerland, 1998, available online http://www.isn.ethz.ch/3isf/Online_Publications/WS5/WS_5D/
Krause.htm (accessed 21 February 2007).
66
See: R. Price, “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Target Land Mines,” International Organization vol. 52 no. 3 (1998), pp. 613-644.
67
P. Haas, “Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization vol. 46,
no. 1 (1992), pp. 2-3.
68
Ibid, p. 3.
69
P. Haas, “Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control,” International
Organization vol. 43, no. 3 (1989), pp. 384-385.
70
C. Dunlop, “Epistemic Communities: A Reply to Toke,” Politics vol. 20, no. 3 (2000), p. 139.
62
20
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
Epistemic communities enjoy a perception of legitimacy that networks founded on ideological beliefs – like interest groups – find difficult to achieve. Epistemic communities’ input into the policy
process is therefore seen as apolitical and value-neutral, and important because rationality is seen as
a virtue in policymaking.71
This is not to imply that there is a perfectly clear distinction between epistemic communities
and other actors in the policy process. Because of the global nature of many of the policy areas
with which epistemic communities are involved, including trade, economics, security and regulation, actors routinely work across state and organisational boundaries in horizontal transnational
networks.72 Members of epistemic communities can be involved in a variety of international groups
simultaneously. What distinguishes epistemic communities is a commitment to empirical inquiry
that, according to Haas, requires them to withhold policy advice “if confronted with anomalous information.”73 Despite a perceived apolitical approach to knowledge creation, members of epistemic
communities can be found within groups that maintain ideological biases – especially as interest
groups became more sophisticated in their advocacy of specific policies.74 The knowledge produced by an expert or scientist working for an advocacy group will simply not be utilised if it contradicts the policy position of the organisation, although it may emerge in other contexts, such as
publications and conferences, or in support of different policy positions.
The importance of epistemic networking is largely the product of the reorganisation of societal relations that has occurred as a result of globalisation. Policymakers of the traditional nationstate now face highly technical and complex problems that are seldom purely domestic in nature,
and require “the formation of important operational links between different groups of nongovernmental actors” across state boundaries.75 The expertise required to address such problems is
often beyond the skill set of the average career bureaucrat.76 Deference to the knowledge provided
by epistemic communities is one way to remedy this information asymmetry. The consequence is a
“de-hierarchisation” of governance structures, especially in the international arena. The formation
of horizontal networks is also made easier by the rapid evolution of communication technologies
and the ease of international travel.
Thus it is no longer particularly useful – if it ever was – to think of states and their policymaking mechanisms as something akin to Weberian bureaucratic machines, wherein problems are
inserted and policy solutions are disgorged. Anne-Marie Slaughter describes an international system of “disaggregated states,” composed of interacting legislative, judicial and regulatory bodies.77
Each of these bodies is composed of different informal networks of epistemic communities, and
each has an influence on domestic and international policy. Functioning less like the cogs of a machine and more like the neural networks of the brain,78 these communities utilise localised information, personal and professional experience, and scientific knowledge in order to frame policy
debates, articulate problem causality, and suggest policy solutions.79 The aetiology of this knowledge formation is what drives all scientific inquiry: a desire to rationally understand observed social
71
T. J. Kallio, et al., “‘Rationalizing Sustainable Development’ – a Critical Treatise,” Sustainable Development
vol. 15 (2007), pp. 41-51.
72
A. Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 12-15.
73
P. Haas, Saving the Mediterranean – The Politics of International Environmental Co-operation (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 55.
74
A good example of this is the experts coordinating with Greenpeace, an environmental interest group, as discussed in greater detail in the next section.
75
K. D. Wolf, “The New Raison d’État as a Problem for Democracy in World Society,” European Journal of
International Relations vol. 5, no. 3 (1999), pp. 339-340.
76
Haas (1992), pp. 8-9.
77
Slaughter, p. 5.
78
See, for example, U. Brandes, et al., “Explorations into the Visualization of Policy Networks,” Journal of
Theoretical Politics vol. 11 no. 1 (1999), pp. 75-106.
79
Haas (1992), p. 2.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
21
and physical phenomena. Epistemic communities simply put that understanding at the service of
international policymakers.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of transnational epistemic communities in international policymaking. Thomas Risse-Kappen, for instance, convincingly gives epistemic communities – or what he identifies as a “liberal internationalist community” – at least partial credit for the
peaceful demise of the Soviet Union.80 He distinguishes four epistemic groups (the American arms
control community, European peace researchers, liberal European policymakers, and Soviet scientists and policy analysts) that cooperated through transnational exchanges of knowledge to help
formulate Mikhail Gorbachev’s accommodationist foreign policy and the United States’ response to
it, both of which helped bring about the end of the Cold War.81
Epistemic communities and the expert knowledge they produce and disseminate are deeply
involved with issues ranging from global health initiatives to climate change, economic policies to
water management.82 Despite what some scholars have argued is a democratic deficit in epistemic
communities and the institutions of global governance in which they often play a vital part,83 the
technical authority of such communities is generally accepted because of their perceived nonpartisan nature and their effective synthesis of empiricism and norms.84 The espoused rationality of
epistemic communities, which makes them appealing to policymakers, also makes their authoritative knowledge more legitimate to a modern public that prioritises a scientific worldview.
This is not to imply that the role of epistemic communities in international public policy is unreservedly positive. Epistemic communities help to create a dominant form of knowledge, and
other – especially underprivileged – groups may find challenging that discourse to be difficult or
impossible.85 Additionally, it has been pointed out that the immense output of knowledge by different epistemic communities can result in “incoherence, conflict and gridlock.”86 Scientific findings,
after all, are rarely unambiguous in their policy implications. As will be illustrated in the next section, all these concerns come into play when formulating international policy. The development of
the Basel Convention is a useful illustration of the role that epistemic communities play in policy
formation, as their role in the Convention was unprecedented and highlights both the advantages
and disadvantages of the involvement of such networks in policymaking. The drafting of the Convention is also interesting as a precursor to the heavy involvement of epistemic communities in international issues such as weapons regulation and global warming.
EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES AND THE BASEL CONVENTION
Prior to the early 1980s, international hazardous waste transfers from advanced industrial
countries to poorer developing countries did not attract much policy interest at the global level.87
This changed with several highly publicised incidents that occurred in the 1980s, including, inter
alia, the voyage of the Khian Sea; the storage of thousands of drums of toxic polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) by an Italian businessman in the port of Koko, Nigeria, which caused workers
80
T. Risse-Kappen, “Ideas do not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of
the Cold War,” International Organization vol. 48, no. 2 (1994), p. 186.
81
Ibid.
82
Reinicke, pp. 48-51.
83
Wolf, p. 334; and J. Whitman, “Global Governance as the Friendly Face of Unaccountable Power,” Security
Dialogue vol. 33, no. 1 (2002), p. 46.
84
T. Porter, “The Democratic Deficit in the Institutional Arrangements for Regulating Global Finance,” in The
Global Governance Reader, ed. Rorden Wilkinson, p. 242 (London: Routledge, 2005).
85
L. Ford, “Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil Society,” Global Environmental Politics vol. 3, no. 2 (2003), p. 126.
86
Stone, p. 118.
87
Kummer, p. 38.
22
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
handling the waste to be hospitalised with severe injuries; and the 6,000-mile journey of the Mobro,
a New York barge carrying more than 3,000 tons of solid waste, as it unsuccessfully attempted to
offload its cargo in various countries.88
Another trend occurring around the same time was the grassroots – and largely female – activism within the United States that attempted to bring attention to the domestic dumping of toxic
wastes and its negative health effects.89 Cases in towns such as Love Canal, New York90 and
Woburn, Massachusetts91 highlighted the environmental and health impacts of hazardous waste
dumping. What is striking about these cases is that the mainly experiential and highly localised
knowledge of a marginalised population (i.e., women), when broadly diffused through activism and
network-building, was able to shape the national debate and eventually influence long-term policy
creation in the US.92
Initially a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) movement, American toxic waste activism helped
lead to the increasingly strict environmental restrictions on domestic waste dumping that contributed to the international transfer of hazardous waste to poorer countries.93 This national NIMBY
perspective shifted in the mid- to late-1980s to a global NIABY (Not in Anyone’s Backyard)
movement and illustrated “a concrete recognition that toxic waste should not be produced, or at
least that any production should be substantially reduced, dealt with at source and disposed of properly,”94 in addition to an identification of the spatial connection between local and global policy
concerns.
Factors in this normative shift in perception were primarily the international incidents mentioned above, as well as the sheer increase in the amount of hazardous waste produced and consequent concerns over its disposal;95 prohibitions on hazardous waste importation imposed
unilaterally by many countries throughout the 1980s;96 and UNEP’s creation of ad hoc working
groups – themselves comprising epistemic networks, as discussed below – to create a framework
for the development of international environmental law.97 The call for an international hazardous
waste regime resulted in negotiations for the Basel Convention beginning in 1987, with the objective of minimising the production of hazardous waste and regulating its transboundary movement,98
especially from North to South.
From the initial Convention meetings in late 1987, an epistemic community of international
experts was involved in the drafting and negotiating of the treaty. Given the succinct name of The
Ad Hoc Working Group of Legal and Technical Experts with a Mandate to Prepare a Global Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes,99 the group was instrumental in contextualising highly technical information regarding complex industrial processes,
waste disposal and recycling procedures, the chemical compositions of waste materials, and the intricacies of interstate trade and international customary law. Prominent NGOs such as Greenpeace
88
Greenpeace, “The Basel Ban – The Pride of the Basel Convention: An Update on Implementation and
Amendment,” available online: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/97/toxic/bbp.html (accessed 22 February 2007).
89
P. Brown and F. Ferguson, “‘Making a Big Stink’: Women’s Work, Women’s Relationships, and Toxic Waste
Activism,” Gender and Society vol. 9, no. 2 (1995), pp. 168-169.
90
See: E. Beck, “The Love Canal Tragedy,” EPA Journal, US Environmental Protection Agency, available online: http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htm (accessed 22 February 2007).
91
See: D. Kennedy, “Civil Inaction,” The New Republic, 15 March 1999, p. 13.
92
Brown and Ferguson, pp. 156-159.
93
Ford, pp. 127-128.
94
Ibid, p. 127.
95
J. Krueger, “What’s to Become of Trade in Hazardous Wastes? The Basel Convention One Decade Later,”
Environment vol. 41, no. 9 (1999), p. 12.
96
Greenpeace, “The Basel Ban.”
97
UNEP Governing Council Decision 9/19A, UNEP/GC.9/19A, 26 May 1981.
98
Article 4 of the Basel Convention.
99
Kummer, p. 40.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
23
were involved in the negotiations to an atypical extent, networking with scientists and activists to
provide large amounts of data on the hazardous waste trade for the working group and to influence
the drafting of the Convention during the two-year negotiation process.100 Greenpeace was aligned
closely enough with communities of waste experts, toxicologists and other environmental scientists
to gain a reputation for “unmatched expertise” in the international hazardous waste trade.101
Reports of the working group meetings show that during the two years of the Convention’s
development, “[e]xperts from ninety-six states participated in one or more of the sessions, and representatives of over fifty international organisations and NGOs attended as observers.”102 International trade experts, for example, attempted to formulate restrictions on the waste trade within the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) framework, while toxicologists presented findings on human and animal hazardous waste exposure. This extensive participation continues to the
present meetings of the Basel Convention’s governing body. At the Conference of the Parties
(COP) to the Basel Convention in 2006, the participants and observers from specialised UN bodies
and agencies, international organisations, governmental and non-governmental organisations, and
the private sector and business groups far outnumbered the state representatives.103 Without getting
into thorny issues of the hegemony of global environmental governance and the cooptation of the
environmental justice movement,104 which lie beyond the scope of this paper, it is sufficient to conclude that epistemic networks utilising expert knowledge had a profound influence on the formation
and maintenance of a comprehensive hazardous waste trade regime.
The role that epistemic communities played in the creation of the Basel Convention, however,
is not unproblematic. The concerns noted at the end of the previous section are certainly evident in
the workings of different networks of experts. For instance, even before the international hazardous
waste trade was on the global agenda, female activists working within the United States in the late
1970s to highlight the public health hazards of domestic toxic dumping were often using their experiential knowledge to work against epistemic communities of professional scientific experts who
discredited activists as “hysterical housewives.”105 The dominant discourse was very difficult to
challenge, especially by marginalised non-experts. This difficulty is also apparent with toxic waste
trade experts attempting to place the Basel Convention within the legal framework of the World
Trade Organization (WTO), which in principle prohibits any restrictions on international trade for
reasons defended by the WTO’s neoliberal policymaking elite as crucial to the world economy.106
The creation of a dominant discourse by epistemic communities requires ignoring other issue
areas and alternative approaches to a policy problem, or highlighting what fits best within a conceptual framework, at the expense of other relevant knowledge.107 For instance, almost entirely neglected at the Basel Convention negotiations was the fact that the vast majority of hazardous waste
transfers occur between highly developed countries. According to OECD figures, in the late 1980s
the US exported only about one percent of its hazardous waste, and the majority of it (85 percent)
was sent north to Canada.108 Attempting to ban all transboundary movement of hazardous waste
thus appears to mainly affect industrialised countries that require little of this type of regulation.
100
Ford, p. 130.
J. Clapp, Toxic Exports: The Transfer of Hazardous Wastes from Rich to Poor Countries (London: Cornell
University Press, 2001).
102
Kummer, p. 40.
103
Section IV(A) of the Report of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention on the Control of
Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal on its eighth meeting, UNEP/CHW.8/16, 5 January
2007.
104
Ford, p. 130.
105
Brown and Ferguson, pp. 151-152.
106
J. Puckett, “When Trade is Toxic: The WTO Threat to Public and Planetary Health,” working paper, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange and Basel Action Network, October 1999, pp. 21-23.
107
Stone, p. 119.
108
Kummer, p. 8.
101
24
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
Also largely overlooked is the fact that in certain poor areas, the recycling of waste or the recovery
of useful metals from otherwise hazardous waste can be an engine for regional economic growth.109
A call for a complete prohibition on interstate waste transfers reveals a breaking point in the rationality of the sustainable development discourse,110 and undermines the moral superiority implied by
the North in condemning an industry that provides livelihoods – however insufficient – to many
thousands of people.
In addition, disagreements among the various groups participating in the Convention have
meant that more than fifteen years after the implementation of the treaty, a definition of what exactly constitutes hazardous waste has still not been conclusively decided.111 Varying definitions
obviously have different consequences for which waste materials may be transported and the countries that trade in them, and a lack of specific global standards results in confused and possibly ineffective policymaking. While it is unclear if the Basel Convention has been a success from the
perspective of those who helped bring it about,112 it is generally considered a good start in the
regulation of the hazardous waste trade. In addition, both the Convention’s difficulties and
achievements usefully ground some of the lofty academic debates surrounding global governance.
When examining the impact of epistemic communities in international public policy, it is necessary to address the above concerns as these communities proliferate and their influence in the
policy arena increases.113 As the problems confronting the international community become increasingly technical and complex, one can expect a greater reliance on experts in formulating policy
solutions. It is vital to recognise that these epistemic networks and the expert knowledge they provide to policymakers, whether scientific, technical, professional or otherwise, perform a complex
but fundamental function in global governance.
LANDMINES, WASTE DUMPS AND EXPERT KNOWLEDGE
The international transfer of hazardous waste is an issue unlike traditional environmental concerns such as climate change or fishery depletions – which are largely abstract concepts for most
people and thus difficult to conceptualize and locate within a particular frame of reference.114 The
issue is more akin to the problem of anti-personnel landmines in places like Southeast Asia, as toxic
dumping and dangerous weapons are both concrete and highly local concerns. Pictures of legless
Burmese children or illicit hazardous waste dumps outside Abidjan reveal the very tangible local
consequences of processes that ultimately function within a global policy framework.
These issues exemplify the idea that globalisation “embodies a transformation in the spatial
organization of social relations and transactions,” in that what was traditionally a local phenomenon
is shifted to the international arena.115 Epistemic communities acquire localised information, such
as scientific data regarding PCBs, and, through loose network connections, contextualise that information into knowledge; i.e., that high levels of PCB exposure have very negative effects on hu-
109
P. Srinivasan, “The Basel Convention of 1989: A Developing Country’s Perspective,” working paper, Liberty
Institute, Delhi, India, 24 September 2001, p. 11. One example of problematic waste recycling is the practice of “shipbreaking,” in which old ships are dismantled for their valuable steel, but which often contain hazardous materials such
as PCBs, asbestos and lead paint. For a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of ship-breaking in India, see: W. Englund and
G. Cohn, “A Third World dump for America’s ships?” The Baltimore Sun, 9 December 1997: p. 1A.
110
Kallio, et al.
111
Srinivasan, p. 6.
112
L. Elliott, The Global Politics of the Environment (New York: NYU Press, 2004), p. 64.
113
Stone, p. 129.
114
Ford, p. 128.
115
D. Held, et al., Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p.
16.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
25
man health.116 This then informs a policy prescription: PCB-containing waste should not be
dumped in open-air landfills. Decision-makers, who receive this knowledge through a variety of
different channels, can then defer to the specialised expertise offered by epistemic communities to
construct effective public policy.
Through a similar process, landmines were transformed from conventional pieces of military
hardware into human rights violations;117 the trade in toxic waste, once a necessary outcome of industrialisation and powerful market forces, is now a closely monitored and circumscribed, if necessary, practice that is regulated by the Basel Convention. Landmine use and the toxic waste trade
also politicise policy areas that were once considered apolitical and at least partially outside the
public realm,118 such as military expenditures for landmines and industrial processes for hazardous
waste. Thus the expert knowledge provided by epistemic communities – because it is perceived as
empirical and apolitical – is even more vital to the international policymakers who must deal with
these contentious issues.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Harry. “The Global Poison Trade.” Newsweek, 7 November 1988.
Asante-Duah, D. Kofi and Imre V. Nagy. International Trade in Hazardous Waste. London:
Routledge, 1998.
Greenpeace. “The Basel Ban – The Pride of the Basel Convention: An Update on Implementation
and Amendment.” Available online: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms /97/toxic/bbp.html
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their
Disposal, 22 March 1989.
Beck, Eckardt. “The Love Canal Tragedy.” EPA Journal, US Environmental Protection Agency.
Available online: http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htm
Brandes, Ulrik, Patrick Kenis, Jörg Raab, Volker Schneider and Dorothea Wagner. “Explorations
into the Visualization of Policy Networks.” Journal of Theoretical Politics vol. 11 no. 1
(1999): pp. 75-106.
Brown, Phil and Faith I. T. Ferguson. “‘Making a Big Stink’: Women’s Work, Women’s
Relationships, and Toxic Waste Activism.” Gender and Society vol. 9, no. 2 (1995): pp. 145172.
Clapp, Jennifer. Toxic Exports: The Transfer of Hazardous Wastes from Rich to Poor Countries.
London: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Dunlop, Claire. “Epistemic Communities: A Reply to Toke.” Politics vol. 20, no. 3 (2000): pp.
137-144.
Elliott, Lorraine. The Global Politics of the Environment. 2nd edition. New York: NYU Press,
2004.
116
For instance, see: R. Seegal, “The Neurotoxicological Consequences of Developmental Exposure to PCBs,”
Toxicological Sciences vol. 57, no. 1 (2000), pp. 1-3.
117
R. Price, “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines,” International Organization vol. 52, no. 3 (1998), pp. 617-619.
118
Ford, p. 127.
26
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
Englund, Will and Gary Cohn. “A Third World dump for America’s ships?” The Baltimore Sun, 9
December 1997.
Ford, Lucy. “Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and
Global Civil Society.” Global Environmental Politics vol. 3, no.2 (2003): pp. 120-134.
Geiselman, Bruce. “Full Circle; Well-traveled ash will rest in peace near its PA birthplace.” Waste
News, 24 June 2002.
Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
Haas, Peter. “Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control.”
International Organization vol. 43, no. 3 (1989): pp. 377-403.
----------. Saving the Mediterranean – The Politics of International Environmental Co-operation.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
----------. “Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination.” International
Organization vol. 46 no. 1 (1992): pp. 1-35.
Held, David, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton. Global Transformations:
Politics, Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.
Kallio, Tomi, Piia Nordberg and Ari Ahonen. “‘Rationalizing Sustainable Development’ – a
Critical Treatise.” Sustainable Development vol. 15 (2006): pp. 41-51.
Kennedy, Dan. “Civil Inaction.” The New Republic, 15 March 1999.
Krause, Keith. “The Challenge of Small Arms and Light Weapons.” 3rd International Security
Forum, Kongresshaus Zurich, Switzerland, 1998. Available online:
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/3isf/Online_Publications/WS5/WS_5D/Krause.htm
Krueger, Jonathan. "What's to Become of Trade in Hazardous Wastes? The Basel Convention One
Decade Later." Environment vol. 41, no. 9 (1999): pp. 11-21.
----------. “The Basel Convention and the International Trade in Hazardous Wastes.” In Yearbook
of International Co-operation on Environment and Development 2001/2002, edited by Olav
Schram Stokke and Øystein B. Thommenssen: 2002, pp. 43-51.
Kummer, Katharina. International Management of Hazardous Wastes: The Basel Convention and
Related Legal Rules. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
O’Neill, Kate. Waste Trading Among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental
Regulation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.
Porter, Tony. “The Democratic Deficit in the Institutional Arrangements for Regulating Global
Finance.” In The Global Governance Reader, edited by Rorden Wilkinson, pp. 239-249.
London: Routledge, 2005.
Price, Richard. “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines.”
International Organization vol. 52, no. 3 (1998): pp. 613-644.
Puckett, Jim. “When Trade is Toxic: The WTO Threat to Public and Planetary Health.” Working
paper, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange and Basel Action Network, October 1999.
Reinicke, Wolfgang. “The Other World Wide Web: Global Public Policy Networks.” Foreign
Policy vol. 117 (1999): pp. 44-57.
Report of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary
Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal on its eighth meeting, UNEP/CHW.8/16,
5 January 2007.
Risse-Kappen, Thomas. “Ideas do not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures,
and the End of the Cold War.” International Organization vol. 48, no. 2 (1994): pp. 185-214.
“Rubbish; Burning Question.” The Economist, World Politics & Current Affairs, 28 May 1988.
Secretariat of the Basel Convention. “Parties to the Basel Convention.” UNEP. Available online:
http://www.basel.int/ratif/convention.htm
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
27
Seegal, Richard. “The Neurotoxicological Consequences of Developmental Exposure to PCBs.”
Toxicological Sciences vol. 57, no. 1 (2000): pp. 1-3.
Slaughter, Anne-Marie. A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Srinivasan, Prasanna. “The Basel Convention of 1989: A Developing Country’s Perspective.”
Working paper, Liberty Institute, Delhi, India, 24 September 2001.
Stone, Diane. “The ‘Policy Research’ Knowledge Elite and Global Policy Processes.” In NonState Actors in World Politics, edited by Daphne Josselin and William Wallace, pp. 113-132.
London: Palgrave, 2001.
UNEP Governing Council Decision 9/19A, UNEP/GC.9/19A, 26 May 1981.
Clean Air Council. “Waste Facts & Figures.” Available online: http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/
wasteFacts.html
Whitman, Jim. “Global Governance as the Friendly Face of Unaccountable Power.” Security
Dialogue vol. 33, no. 1 (2002): pp. 45-57.
Williams, Margaret. “Well-Traveled Trash.” Newsweek, 22 July 2002.
Wolf, Klaus Dieter. “The New Raison d’État as a Problem for Democracy in World Society.”
European Journal of International Relations vol. 5 no. 3 (1999): pp. 333-363.
POWER-SHARING: LESSONS FROM SOUTH AFRICA
AND RWANDA
Marisa Traniello‡
ABSTRACT
On 27 April 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected President in South Africa’s first fully enfranchised
elections, ending the country’s era of apartheid. In Rwanda earlier that same month Hutu Power
began its mass genocide of up to one million Tutsis and tens of thousands of Hutu moderates.
Mahmood Mamdani reflected that “if some seer had told us in the late 1980’s that there would be a
genocide in one of these two countries [South Africa or Rwanda], I wonder how many among us
would have managed to identify correctly its location.” This article reviews the practice of powersharing institutions in mitigating conflict in divided societies. It uses the case studies of South African and Rwanda to illustrate the factors of power-sharing that led to a relatively smooth transition
of South Africa from apartheid to a unitary democratic state and why 1,500 miles north in Rwanda
the Arusha Peace Accords ended in genocide. Lastly, it concludes with the policy lessons that can
be applied to current debates and efforts to mitigate conflicts in other divided societies.
Keywords: power-sharing; consociationalism; constitutional design; Rwanda; South Africa
INTRODUCTION: THE BEST AND WORST OF POWER-SHARING IN AFRICA
On 27 April 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected President in South Africa’s first fully enfranchised elections, ending the country’s era of apartheid. In Rwanda earlier that same month, Hutu
Power began its mass genocide of between 500,000 and one million Tutsis, as well as tens of thousands of Hutu moderates, with unprecedented speed and brutality.119 As Mahmood Mamdani
stated, “if some seer had told us in the late 1980’s that there would be a genocide in one of these
two countries [South Africa or Rwanda], I wonder how many among us would have managed to
identify correctly its location.”120 This statement prompts the question of what led to South Africa’s relatively smooth transition from apartheid to a unitary democratic state, whilst 1,500 miles
north in Rwanda the Arusha Peace Accords ended in an ethnic blood bath. Although numerous
factors influenced the vastly different outcomes in these countries’ transitions to democratic states,
‡
MSc International Public Policy, University College London, United Kingdom.
119
M. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 5, and BBC
News, “Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened,” BBC, available online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/
1288230.stm (accessed 25 January 2007).
120
Mamdani, p. 185.
28
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
29
both South Africa and Rwanda were confronted with the same challenge: “Crafting representative
public institutions on a social foundation of deep-seated ethnic rivalries and economic inequalities.”121 Engineering institutions to ensure state stability and mitigate conflict in the divided societies of South Africa and Rwanda will be the focus of this article, specifically power-sharing
practices governing divided societies.
A divided society is composed of groups “formed along ethnic, racial, religious, regional, or
class lines.”122 The nature of a state’s transition to democracy is therefore determined by its institutional ability to mitigate conflict. Timothy Sisk defines the “successful regulation of conflict in a
multiethnic society [as occurring] when the predominant pattern of inter-group dispute resolution is
based on bargaining and reciprocity; unsuccessful regulation is evident when conflict degenerates
into violence.”123
Why was the use of power-sharing so successful in mitigating conflict and stabilizing the
South Africa into a democracy? Why did these same concepts fail in the case of Rwanda? In answering these questions this paper argues that the South African transition to democracy presented
the necessary and favourable conditions for a power-sharing agreement to thrive, specifically strong
moderate leadership and the motivation to accommodate. It is also contended that the consociational design of the 1993 Interim Constitution Pact stabilized the state and prevented conflict. In
the case of Rwanda, it is argued that the Rwandan power-sharing peace settlement – the Arusha
Peace Accords – failed to mitigate violence because it lacked such necessary factors as committed
leadership, a shared destiny and the will to accommodate. The Accords themselves led to the zerosum scenario that South Africa avoided, thus contributing to conflict rather than mitigating it.
The article begins with a brief review of the chosen case studies and the reasoning behind the
focus on their power-sharing institutions. The second section reviews the scholarly literature and
debates regarding power-sharing and Arend Lijphart’s consociational approach. This is followed
by a section illustrating the conditions and limits of power-sharing and the consociational concept.
Power-sharing is then examined within the case studies of South Africa and Rwanda. The final
section concludes with an analysis of policy lessons that can be applied to current debates and efforts to mitigate conflicts in other divided societies in Africa.
CASE STUDIES: RWANDA AND SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa has been deemed the miracle transition and a possible model from which other
divided societies can learn. Rwanda, on the other hand, represented the opposite extreme: a tragedy
we must learn to prevent.124 It is specifically these extreme outcomes, coinciding within weeks of
each other, which make these two countries such intriguing and significant comparisons.
Rwanda and South Africa have historical similarities. Both sub-Saharan states were former
European colonies, a contributing factor to their analogous divisions of rule and socio-economic
conditions. Both have a history of oppressive rule along with various forms of violence and economic hardship. Rwanda and South Africa are both examples of states in which a dominant minor-
121
M. Chenge, "Between Africa’s Extremes," in The Global Resurgence of Democracy, ed. L. Diamond and
M.F. Plattner (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 350.
122
D. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press) p. 3.
123
T. D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, DC: United States
Institute of Peace Press, 1996), p. 4.
124
The idea to use South Africa as a model for cases of divided societies was based upon Jung, Lust-Okar, and
Shapiro’s essay “Problems and Prospects for Democratic Settlements: South Africa as a Model for the Middle East and
Northern Ireland?” Rwanda as an opposite extreme is influenced by Michael Chenge’s chapter “Between Africa’s Extremes” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner’s book, The Global Resurgence of Democracy.
30
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
ity “can wield power to the exclusion of a significant majority.”125 South Africa saw revolts in its
townships and a provincial civil war during the 1980s. Similarly, Rwanda experienced violence in
1959, a coup in 1973 and a civil war in 1990.
The demographic and economic structures of the two countries are also comparable. The
Belgium feudal system based on cattle holding deemed the minority Tutsi the dominant race, despite comprising only 14% of the Rwandan population. The Hutu majority (85%) were mainly
farmers with the remaining 1% being Twa (pygmies).126 In South Africa the Whites, composing
14% of the population, were the original ruling class with a concentration of wealth and political
power. Consequently, even though there were four main categories of race in South Africa (White,
Coloured, Indian and Black African) the divisions in society were primarily between the privileged
Whites and all non-Whites, who were considered Black.127
In the cases of both South Africa and Rwanda, the state represented the prize. In the case of
ethnic rivalries, a critical predictor of severe ethnic conflicts is the ownership of the state or specifically the relationship between the ethnic group and the state. When the group that owns the state
controls the land, the resources and the distribution, the state becomes the prize.128 The question
surrounding institutions engineered with power-sharing concepts is whether they can actually encourage groups to accommodate each other, or will there always be a zero-sum game?
MITIGATING CONFLICT: WHY INSTITUTIONS?
In The Deadly Ethnic Riot, Donald Horowitz reveals the unpleasant truth that ethnic violence
took more lives in the 20th century than anything else. There are many questions surround the issues of ethnic violence and civil war, but the focus invariably comes back to problem of prevention.
Many academics contend that institutional design is critical in preventing and resolving conflict. As
Philippe Van Parijs observes, there exist many more severely divided societies, such as the United
States or the Netherlands, but “constitutional design (whether deliberate or not) can be so successful
in some societies that one loses sight of the fact that they are just as severely divided as others in
which conflicts rages.”129
Although there were numerous factors that contributed to the Rwandan genocide and the
ending of apartheid in South Africa, this paper will focus on institutions for two reasons. First, all
the necessary topics cannot be covered in the span of this article. Secondly, whilst we cannot control for factors such as the shooting down of Rwandan President Habyarimana’s airplane in 1994,
we can evaluate and learn from institutional structures created to stabilize states.
POWER-SHARING AND CONSOCIATIONALISM
Concepts
For divided societies, Lijphart contends that “majority rule is not only undemocratic but also
dangerous.” Although majoritarian rule is often a product of the democratic process, the resulting
majoritarian institutions can lead to minorities being continually excluded from power and dis125
The typology is based on the structure of ethnic cleavages and power relationships of multiethnic societies. It
comes from A. Rabushka and K. A. Shelpsle’s book Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability
(1972), but is cited from T. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts, pp.15-16.
126
For more information on the ethnic classification see “The Meaning of ‘Hutu,’ ‘Tutsi,’ and ‘Twa’” under
History in A. Des Forges Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999).
127
D. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa: Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 25.
128
P. Brass quoted in Sisk (1996), pp.17-18.
129
P. Van Parijs, “Power-Sharing verses Border Crossing in Ethnically Divided Societies,” in Designing Democratic Institution, ed. Ian Shapiro and Stephen Macedo, (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 300.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
31
criminated against. This can be risky as minorities may lose allegiance to the regime, resulting in
civil strife.130 An alternative is power-sharing, and a possible approach to power-sharing would be
consociationalism.
Timothy Sisk defines power-sharing “as a set of principles that, when carried out through
practices and institutions, provide every significant identity group or segment in a society representation and decision-making abilities on common issues and a degree of autonomy over issues of
importance to the group.”131 The overarching idea is that by sharing power – political, economic,
territorial and military – among different segments of society, a system of accommodation develops
that will reduce insecurities and thus reduce the likelihood of conflict.
Power-sharing is often promoted by the international community and involves a broad assortment of practices. As with most theories, many scholars disagree on the best approaches. In the
power-sharing approach most experts agree that executive power-sharing and group autonomy are
key factors affecting democratic success in divided societies. Lijphart, who has written extensively
on power-sharing, proposes two more characteristics: the mutual veto and proportionality.132 He
maintains that this consociational model “is not only the optimal form of democracy for deeply divided societies but also, for the most deeply divided countries, the only feasible solution.”133
The four elements of Lijphart’s consociational power-sharing model are as follows. First,
governance by a grand coalition of elites is meant to include political leaders – pillars, if you will –
of the significant segments within the divided society. Lijphart considers this the most important
element.134 This requires elites to negotiate in the interest of the state, recognising the dangers of
non-cooperation such as civil war. “The key to the grand coalition is not the particular institutional
arrangement but that the participation of all the leaders takes place.”135
The second component, the mutual veto, reduces the power of the majority by allowing any
minority group to block a policy change. This is paired with the grand coalition to add greater security and ease concerns that the minority may have about policy-making.
A third element is proportional representation. This extends across the electoral system, the
military and security forces and economic to financial distribution. The benefit of proportionality
vis-à-vis majoritarian democracy is that the latter is a winner-takes-all game in which minority participants have no incentive to play. In a divided society a proportional system allows for a more
inclusive, positive-sum result.
Last and no less important, the segmental autonomy component allows groups to run their
own internal affairs, such as education and culture. This can come in various forms such as federalism or decentralization.
Opponents
The consociational approach to power-sharing has been criticised as undemocratic and accused of promoting ethnic conflict. Leading the undemocratic cry are Courtney Jung and Ian
Shapiro. They argue that a healthy democracy requires opposition, and power-sharing arrangements
simply do not allow for this. Furthermore “consociational systems undermine the functional, legitimacy-generating and public-interest roles of opposition.”136 Opposition institutions are needed
130
A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 32-33.
Sisk (1996), p. 5.
132
A. Lijphart, “The Wave of Power-Sharing Democracy,” in The Architecture of Democracy: Constitutional
Design, Conflict Management, and Democracy, ed. Andrew Reynolds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 39.
133
Ibid., p. 37.
134
A. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies; A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University,
1977), p. 25.
135
Ibid., 31.
136
C. Jung and I. Shapiro, “South Africa’s Negotiate Transition: Democracy, Opposition, and the New Constitutional Order,” Politics and Society vol. 23, no. 3 (1995): p. 273.
131
32
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
to encourage healthy debate and competition among elites, for the legitimacy of a political order.
Democracy also requires the peaceful transition of power.
In his comprehensive overview of consociational democracy, Rudy B. Andeweg also finds
concerns among academics on the “quality of democracy” in consociational models, specifically
that the “absence of oppositions, a predominance of elites, and mass political apathy do not suggest
democratic vitality.”137 Another critic of the democratic quality of the model, Horowitz, further
objects that a consociational democracy doesn’t have the ability to mitigate conflict. Horowitz is an
advocate of the “incentives approach… [making] political border-crossing between ethnic groups
possible.” He argues that consociationalism does not generate electoral support for ethnic compromise, and is thus unable to mitigate conflict.138
Donald Rothchild and Philip G. Roeder agree with Jung and Shapiro with respect to the undemocratic nature of consociationalism; specifically that sharing power among the elites limits democracy to two main elements, competition and accountability. The rest of their criticisms are
more extensive and specific, suggesting that power-sharing can strengthen ethnic conflict. Rothchild and Roeder claim that “power-sharing institutions frequently empower the leaders of ethnic
groups with the means to challenge the power-sharing agreement.” 139
In the short term, Rothchild and Roeder identify a few problems that could lead to the collapse of the power-sharing agreement: governmental inefficiency due to expanded representation
and inclusive decisions can disillusion constituents. Power-sharing institutions may not be sufficiently flexible to adapt to rapidly changing social conditions during a transition period. The absence of an external guarantor to ensure stability and obligations also means that leaders may go
back on their commitments.
Is There Evidence That Power-Sharing Works?
Does power sharing work? Approaching the issue using a statistical methodology, Caroline
Hartzell and Mathew Hoddie tested the effects of power-sharing provisions in civil war settlements
on the endurance of peace. Their list was composed of 38 civil wars resolved in peace negotiations
from 1945-1998, including 15 African conflicts.140 They consistently found that the more dimensions of power sharing (political, territorial, military and economic) adopted among former combatants, the higher the likelihood of peace enduring. Specifically, territorial or military power-sharing
provisions are positively associated with the likelihood that peace will endure.141 It is important to
note states that have experienced high casualty rates during civil war and are polarised along ethnic
lines have the highest potential for settlement failure. These statistical finding are predominately
positive for promoting power-sharing. On the other hand, Hartzell and Hoddie note that there are
relatively few studies that address power-sharing success by statistical methods.
CONDITIONS OF POWER-SHARING AND CONSOCIATIONALISM
Power-sharing, particularly Lijphart’s consociational model of power-sharing, is seen as controversial. Since two extreme outcomes were derived from different power-sharing institutions –
137
R. B. Andeweg, “Consociational Democracy,” Annual Political Science Review vol. 3 (2000): p. 330.
Van Parijs, pp. 305-306.
139
D. Rothschild and P. G. Roeder, "Power Sharing as an impediment to Peace and Democracy," in Sustainable
Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, ed. D. Rothschild and P. G. Roeder (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2005),
p. 37.
140
C. Hartzell and M. Hoddie, “Power Sharing in Peace Settlements Initiating the Transition from Civil War,” in
Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, ed. D. Rothschild and P. G. Roeder, (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2005). Also published in C. Hartzell and M. Hoddie, "Institutionalizing Peace: Power Sharing and Post-Civil
War Conflict Management," American Journal of Political Science vol. 47, no. 2 (2003): pp. 318-332.
141
Hartzell and Hoddie (2005), p. 84.
138
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
33
the South African transition and the Rwandan Arusha Accords preceding the genocide – it is important to explore and evaluate academics’ suggested conditions for success of these practices and
institutions. Are there conditions that prove to be more or less conducive to power-sharing? Are
there necessary elements that must be present for these concepts to mitigate conflict?
Necessary
Sisk observes that power-sharing practices are often adopted as a direct response to a history
of violent conflict. In order to use such power-sharing practices, models or institutions to achieve
peaceful transition or prevent further violence, it is important that the actors involved understand
certain notions. Both the political elites and the masses living in the divided state must understand
that they will have to coexist, that some incentives will be required in order avoid further violence
and that the failure to accommodate each other will lead to a return to conflict. He offers that a
“necessary condition for the mitigation of conflict in deeply divided societies is the existence, or
creation, of a centrist core of moderates.” This core of moderates is to be drawn from both elites
and broader civil society. Not only should this core possess the ability to coexist with other groups,
but they must also withstand the pressures of “extremist outbidders that seek to mobilize on divisive
themes for their own power-seeking aims.”142 Sisk further notes that most adversaries as well the
political elites, their organizations and their constituents must accept the commitment to coexistence. When these conditions and sufficient moderates do exist, power sharing can be a practical
method for the democratic management of conflict. However, if these commitments are missing
the outcome may be violence, state erosion and collapse.143
Favourable
Lijphart, who has written extensively on this subject of consociationalism, has outlined various favourable conditions for its success. For the purposes of this article only his considerations
relevant to the developing world will be reviewed.144
It is no surprise that Lijphart cites leadership as the most crucial element in a consociational
democracy. Favourable leadership entails a willingness to cooperate even in the face of cleavages
and the ability to negotiate in the spirit of compromise. It is also important that leaders preserve the
support and loyalty of their constituents and have the ability to “carry them along.”145
With specific reference to the developing world, Lijphart notes that among divided societies
ancient loyalties are usually strong whilst nationalism is usually weak. However, if there is some
feeling of nationalism among the elites this enhances the chances for consociationalism. Other favourable factors for consociationalism include a balance of power, size and economic equality.
Borrowing from what Horowitz calls “parallel groups,” economic equality is defined as occurring
when “each group has its own elite strata [and] the groups do not stand in a generalized hierarchical
relation to each other.”146
Necessary but Unlikely
Rothschild and Roeder agree that, under the right conditions, power sharing can have positive
outcomes. However, they argue that few if any of the necessary conditions are likely to be found in
ethnically divided societies. This is especially true of countries emerging from conflict where conditions such as elite dominance, accommodation and state strength are mostly likely to be lacking.
142
Sisk (1996), p.115.
Ibid.
144
See Democracy in Plural Societies, 1977.
145
Lijphart (1997), p. 53.
146
Ibid., pp. 173-174.
143
34
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
Elites emerging from intense conflict will have little reason to trust each other and in such a
climate a culture of accommodation may not be feasible. The sincerity of elite commitments may
be suspect if leaders treat negotiations as a time to rebuild and restock for another round of fighting,
rather than as a peaceful way to achieve their objectives. In order to negotiate credibly with other
parties, leaders will also need to assure one another that they have influence over their constituents,
a difficult thing to secure in a rapidly changing post-war environment. Moreover, even if elites
demonstrate dominance over their constituents and accommodation for other parties, Rothschild
and Roeder contend that a destructive civil war typically weakens the state. In a weak state, constituents may see the central government as illegitimate or the administration as biased, thus eroding
the success of any power-sharing institution. Lastly, they argue that power-sharing may be irrelevant if there is no state to share because it has been destroyed by war.
Limits
Ian Spears argues that whilst power-sharing is an attractive option because it offers a logical
approach to conflict management in terms of political and economic power, it is especially attractive to the international community, who see it as a model that will reduce the need for their commitment in the settlements. Nevertheless, in Africa it does have its limits. Given that most African
conflicts are internal – such as in Uganda and Rwanda – Spears argues that while forming a political alliance must be difficult, it is much less difficult allying with someone perceived to be a murderer. He questions how far power-sharing needs to extend. Is a state required to share power even
with extremists? He asserts that “power-sharing cannot be about coalitions between friends, but
rather must be about reconciliation between enemies.”147
POWER-SHARING APPLIED: SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa was originally settled by the Dutch and transferred between the British and the
Dutch at various stages until it finally came under British possession. Although some forms of segregation existed before, it was in 1948 that the Afrikaner-based National Party (NP) came to power
and quickly initiated a number of statutes to separate the races both socially and physically. Africans were a racial category, required to carry identification papers and arrested if found without
them. The early 1950s also saw a slew of laws separating the land into White and African territories.148 Limits were placed on the rights of Black Africans to reside in urbanized areas and they
were forcibly removed if they were not authorised to be living there. Public facilities and education
became segregated as well. Land ownership for Black Africans outside the designated homelands
was impossible and their citizenship within South Africa proper was devalued. To ensure the system remained in place, all non-White voters were removed from the electorate. By 1960 Prime
Minister H. F. Verwoerd had “refined, perfected and – above all – enforced” the apartheid system.149
The 1980s were a rough time for South Africa. The economy suffered from the international
economic sanctions imposed due to the country’s apartheid policies. Banks, such as Chase Manhattan Bank in 1985, felt that the political unrest in South Africa was too risky to roll over loans to
its debtors.150 The United Democratic Front (UDF) formed the largest opposition movement to
147
I. S. Spears, “Africa: The Limits of Power-Sharing,” Journal of Democracy vol. 13, no. 3 (2002): p. 125.
The following acts shaped apartheid: Population Registration Act (1950), Group Areas Act (1950), Abolition
of Passes and Coordination of Documents Act (1952), The Native Laws Amendment Act (1952), Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953), and Natives Resettlement Act (1954). Horowitz, p. 11.
149
Horowitz, p. 11.
150
R. Ross, A Concise History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 167.
148
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
35
apartheid and saw itself as representing the banned African National Congress (ANC). 1984 saw
uprising and protest in the townships and by 1986, 27 townships were under ANC/UDF control.151
South Africa was at war on many fronts. A civil war between the UDF and Chief Buthelezi’s
Inkatha Freedom Party in Natal left several thousand dead. Township revolts were being repressed
and political parties banned, including the UDF. The South African Army was scattered in conflicts
with bordering states. The defining moment to end the chaos was P.W. Botha’s mild stroke in
1989, which opened room for F.W. de Klerk to be elected the leader of Nationalist Party. As President, de Klerk began with many bold moves, such as releasing leading ANC figures from prison
and removing the bans on most political parties. In mid-February of 1990, Nelson Mandela walked
out of prison, leading South Africa into a new era.152
Despite all the turmoil of the 1980s, from the moment de Klerk was elected president and
Mandela walked free, South Africa embodied all the necessary elements and favourable conditions
to transition from an apartheid state to democracy using power-sharing and consociational models.
The author argues that it was the consociational design of the 1993 Interim Constitution Pact that
stabilised the state and prevented conflict.
Necessary Leadership and Recognition
If there is one salient lesson to learn from scholars about power-sharing and consociationalism, it is that elite political leaders are necessary. For South Africa the two candidates that lead the
opposition parties could not have been more perfect. Both de Klerk and Mandela were educated,
carried broad and deep support among their constituents and shared the common destiny of a
bloodless unified state.
De Klerk was a former academic lawyer from the heart of Afrikanerdom described as a
“mild-manner conciliator.”153 Perceived as leaning toward the right of the Nationalist Party and
with a family history of politics, he possessed Lijphart’s favourable leadership ability to preserve
the support and loyalty of their constituents and have the ability to carry them along. Sisk demonstrates that Mandela, “with broad public support and leading the country with an ethos of national
reconciliation and moderation” was even Horowitz’s ideal president.154 Despite being the celebrated leader of the African National Congress, negotiations still presented Mandela with the tough
challenge of winning the support of his own followers whilst simultaneously allaying White
fears.155 De Klerk and Mandela’s legitimacy towards the peace process was further confirmed both
in South Africa and internationally when they were awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
While both elites did possess true leadership qualities, Sisk would argue that the move towards a common ground was advanced by other motivations as well. For de Klerk and the Nationalist Party, stagnation and decline of the South African economy was putting White prosperity in
danger. There was increased pressure from the international community to reform and the revolts
and military conflicts with border countries were simply “costing too much in money and white
lives.”156 The NP knew that if it were to have any influence in this new government, it would need
to be of the power-sharing type. The African National Congress, whilst opposed to power-sharing,
was aware that it needed the economics of Whites, as well as the South African Army. The ANC
were also aware that cooperation could result in international aid, which was a particular incentive
151
Ibid., pp. 170-171.
Ibid., pp. 171-181.
153
Ibid., p. 181.
154
Sisk (1996), p. 55.
155
A. Brink, “Nelson Mandela,” Time Magazine, available online: http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/
profile/mandela.html (accessed 25 January 2007).
156
Ross, p. 183.
152
36
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
given the decline in Cold War aid.157 The power-sharing idea originated because both the NP and
ANC had a common destiny and “a realisation that consensus-based rule was needed to help get the
country through the volatility and uncertainly.”158
1990-1994 Creating the a Power-Sharing Constitution
Spears recognizes that African politics must be seen from the self-interested perspective of
elites, because even though they find power-sharing attractive, their primary concern remains which
strategies best meet their interests and, even more so, their security needs.159 The provisions of the
1993 Interim Constitution Pact were carefully constructed to ease fears and ensure securities that
the parties felt necessary to protect their power and interests.
The Government of National Unity would include all major political parties in a proportional
system. Parties winning more than five percent of the vote would be entitled to a proportionate
number of seats in the 27-person cabinet, and decision making would be consensus-based without
formal legal constraints. The electoral system – national and regional – was also based on proportional representation (PR) with every South African enfranchised.160 Choosing such a system
greatly enhanced the stability and legitimacy of the 1994 elections. This simple form of PR provided incentives for “spoilers” to join the elections. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) jumped onto
the ballots at the last moment. Even if they would be a minority, they would have a chance for representation and thus some influence in the ruling of South Africa in the Government of National
Unity.161 If the structure had followed a majoritarian form, the Inkatha Freedom Party may have
seen their votes as wasted and chosen to boycott or violently oppose, thus undermining the system.
Entering into negotiations, the National Party and other minority parties such as the Inkatha
Freedom Party were greatly outnumbered. However, each party chose to participate because the
structure of the institutions and power-sharing made concessions to their insecurities. The previous
apartheid system had given the Whites generous wealth in terms of political power and resources.
To quell their anxiety, private property rights were guaranteed. The expropriation of resources –
especially of land – was still a possibility under certain circumstances, but it would be done at fair
market values. The autonomy granted to the nine provinces allowed for the adoption of provincial
constitutions and included provisions for traditional authorities.162 This appeased the IFP, who
while a minority, were regionally strong and able to become the majority party in the contested
KwaZulu-Natal Province in 1994.
The General Assembly, which consisted of a 400-member chamber, was tasked to craft the
new charter. In order to placate the general insecurity of minorities, a two-thirds supermajority rule
was required for approval. To further ease concerns, the security forces were to be integrated
starting with the liberation force’s incorporation into the South African National Defence Force and
the creation of the police forces.163
It is no secret that the interim government and the 1993 Interim Constitution Pact were constructed on consociational elements. In September 1990, just as the discussions were beginning, the
United States Information Agency actually sponsored a debate on appropriate institutional struc-
157
Ibid., p. 188.
T.D. Sisk and C. Stefes, “Power Sharing as an Interim Step in Peace Building: Lesson from South Africa,” in
Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, ed. D. Rothschild and P. G. Roeder (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2005), p. 302.
159
Spears, p. 127.
160
Sisk and Stefes, p. 302.
161
Sisk (1996), p. 62.
162
Sisk and Stefes, p. 303.
163
Ibid.
158
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
37
tures for post-apartheid South Africa. The featured scholars were Lijphart, Horowitz and top South
African constitutional thinkers.164
Was this South Africa’s Only Option?
Despite transitioning a regime built on over fifty years of apartheid into a unified democratic
state, the cooperating elites and consociationalism of the process went widely criticised. In Jung
and Shapiro’s review of South Africa’s Interim Constitution, they felt it “combines the worst of
both worlds from the standpoint of a democratic institutional design.”165 Specifically, they cited the
elite pact as non-democratic and the institutions as leaving no room for opposition. To them, South
Africa was not a viable democratic order.
If South Africa had chosen what they deem a viable democratic order – a majoritarian democracy – it is unlikely there would have been a stable transition. It was the proportional representation
system that provided the incentives for the Inkatha Freedom Party to join the elections instead of
boycotting or violently opposing them. As previously noted, the IFP had been engaged in a civil
war over political and territorial control in Natal with the UDF, now ANC. In a majoritarian system, the ANC would have dominated, reinstating the threat to the IFP and spiralling the two parties
back into conflict. With the PR system and unity government, the IFP was able to gain a regional
majority in the Natal province and have a seat at the national level.
POWER-SHARING APPLIED: RWANDA
The Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups were actually very similar, speaking the same language and
living amongst each other. However, when Belgian colonists arrived in 1916, they identified the
Hutu and Tutsi as separate groups.166 The colonial power further polarised the groups by classifying Rwandans into one of the two ethnic identities and obligating them to carry ethnic identity
cards. The Belgians deemed the Tutsis superior to the Hutus and thus Tutsis were favoured in administrative positions, education and jobs in the modern sector.167 As resentment steadily built up
among the Hutu people, a new political elite emerged. Using their branded identity, “they made
their suffering a badge of pride: Hutu Power!”168 The Revolution of 1959 left 20,000 Tutsis dead,
and many more refugees fleeing to the neighbouring countries of Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda.169
Accession of power went to the Hutus, and Rwanda gained its independence in 1962.
The next wave of rule started in 1979, with a coup installing Juvenal Habyarimana as president, leading the single party National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development
(MRND). Habyarimana ruled as a dictator and his regime took harsh measures on its political opponents in the form of imprisonment and assassination.170 Tutsi refuges abroad were treated as second-class citizens and although many fought to be repatriated back into Rwanda, Habyarimana
refused, claiming that there was insufficient land to accommodate them.171 In Uganda, Tutsi refugees, supported by some moderate Hutus, began building the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) with
the intention of overthrowing Habyarimana and securing their right to return to their homeland.172
164
Sisk (1996), p. 95.
Jung and Shapiro, p. 277.
166
BBC News, “Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened,” BBC. Available online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
world/africa/1288230.stm (accessed 25 January 2007).
167
C. Newbury, “Background to Genocide: Rwanda,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion vol. 23, no. 2 (1995): p. 12.
168
M. Mamdani, “A Brief History of Genocide,” Transition vol. 10, no. 3 (2001): pp. 43-44.
169
BBC News.
170
Newbury, p. 13.
171
Ibid.
172
BBC News.
165
38
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
By the 1990's, Rwanda had hundreds of thousands of refugees who had lived for a generation in
exile in neighbouring countries such as Uganda and Burundi.173
In October 1990, the RPF invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda. The extreme right faction
of the Rwandan government used this to build up their army from 5,000 to 30,000 and anti-Tutsi
propaganda was launched on radio stations. In August 1993, the RPF and the government of
Rwanda signed the Arusha Accords, which included forming a power sharing government. The
United Nations sent in a peacekeeping force, which was under-funded and understaffed. Then, on
April 6, the plane carrying President Habyarimana and the President of Burundi was shot down.
Over the next 100 days, the military and Interahamwe militia groups killed between 500,000 and
1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in the Rwandan Genocide. It was not until the RPF reached
Kigali on July 4th 1994 that the war ended. Once the RPF took control of the country, two million
Hutus fled to surrounding areas such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi,
Uganda and Tanzania fearing Tutsi retribution. This created a refugee crisis.174 \
1990-1994: Power Sharing and the Arusha Accords
If South Africa is the ideal model possessing all the necessary conditions for power-sharing to
thrive, then Rwanda represents the worst case scenario that played into almost every criticism of the
concept. The power-sharing settlement, the Arusha Accords, failed to mitigate violence because it
lacked such necessary factors as an able and committed leadership, a shared destiny and the will to
accommodate. In addition, power-sharing led to the zero-sum scenario that South Africa managed
to avoid.
Able and Committed Leadership
Able and committed leadership is critical to power-sharing. As Rothschild and Roeder contend, it was highly unlikely to find this type of leadership in Rwanda, especially after the civil war.
The willingness to compromise, ability to balance hard-liners and overall commitment was lacking
from the RFP and was completely absent on the part of the government.
The RPF arrived at the talks well organised, unified and ready to negotiate on its prepared
demands and positions.175 Presenting a vision of a shared non-racial nation based on human rights,
the RPF showed promise. However, the RPF was aware of its military superiority over the government of Rwanda and exploited this in the bargaining, undermining the credibility of RPF dedication. With all parties well aware that the RPF “was prepared to return to the battlefield” if an
adequate settlement was not reached, how were the other parties supposed to feel secure about the
commitments?176
On the other side, the government was unorganised and fragmented. Prior to his death this
was led by Habyarimana, who was extraordinarily indecisive and lacked the ability to unite his own
party. Throughout negotiations he teetered between the moderates and hardliners, reversed and
vetoed commitments made by his foreign minister, Boniface Ngulinzira, and was unable to unify
173
A. Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999).
See “The Genocide,” available online: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/
174
N. Alusala, “Disarmament and Reconciliation: Rwanda’s Concern,” Paper 108, Pretoria: Institute of Security
Studies, 2005, p. 2.
175
J. Stettenheim, “The Arusha Accords and the Failure of International Intervention in Rwanda,” in Words over
war: Mediation and arbitrational to prevent deadly conflict, ed. J.H. Barton, M.C. Greenberg and M.E. McGuiness
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
176
Stettenheim, pp. 225, 230.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
39
the government.177 Rene Lemarchard describes Habyarimana as lacking vision and “very much the
captive in his extremist, northern-based entourage.” 178
Neither Habyarimana nor the third party could negotiate the inclusion of the Committee for
the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) extremist party with the RPF. This had negative consequences. A common saying about this situation was “it is better to have the CDR inside the tent
than outside, threatening to burn it down.”179 As Sisk contends, a necessary condition to mitigate
conflict in deeply divided societies is the existence or creation of a core of moderates that “can
withstand the pressure of extremist outbidders that seek to mobilise on divisive themes for their
own power-seeking aims.”180 Because the core was lacking, the CDR was able to recruit more and
more moderates who were upset with the final provisions of the accord.181 Unlike in South Africa,
where reformers came forward, “the reformers in Rwanda’s regime never had a chance, while the
extremists in the opposition never ceased to gain influence.”182
A Shared Destiny and the Will to Accommodate
In contrast to the South African transition, where the African National Congress and the Nationalist Party had a common understanding of a unified democratic state, in Rwanda this vision
and will to accommodate was very weak.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front and the opposition members within the government of Rwanda
were the only two groups to demonstrate effort or accommodation. The RPF sought to recruit the
opposition members to create a post-Habyarimana regime based on the rule of law and a society
free from ethnicity. However, as mentioned previously, the RPF often wielded their military power
as an alternative option and consequently the opposition was suspicious of their true commitments.
This falls in line with Rothschild and Roeder’s observation that it is hard to judge the sincerity of
elite commitments after the civil war. The RPF’s offensive in February 1993 confirmed that uncertainty.183
It is obvious that with the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution that there was no vision of co-existing. Once excluded, the CDR became a “spoiler” in the implementation process.
Christopher Clapham argues groups like the CDR and the Interahamwe saw the negotiations as a
façade to build up their support.184 Their vision is confirmed by the public statement made by the
leader of the CDR, who suggested that the “extermination of the Tutsis would be the inevitable consequence… of the implementation of the Arusha Accords.”185
Habyarimana also lacked credibility in terms of commitment. In a speech in 1992 he called
the Arusha Accords mere “pieces of paper.”186 In contrast with South Africa, where Mandela was
making speeches encouraging reconciliation and negotiation and implementing the hard bargains he
had struck, Habyarimana was silent and had to be dragged to the negotiating table.187 The president
was not doing anything to ensure that he and the government would keep their side of the obligations.
177
Ibid., pp. 226, 231.
R. Lemarchand, “Managing Transition Anarchies: Rwanda, Burundi, and South Africa in Comparative Perspective,” The Journal of Modern African Studies vol. 32, no. 4 (1994): p. 595.
179
This saying is widely quoted and is found in various forms. As quoted in this essay it is from Stettenheim, p.
230. Another version is “better to have the hardliners inside the tent, pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
Mamdan (2001a), p. 212.
180
Sisk (1996), p. 115.
181
L. Scorgie, “Rwanda’s Arusha Accords: A Missed Opportunity,” Undercurrent vol. 1 (2004): p. 72.
182
Lemarchard, p. 595.
183
Stettenheim, p. 226.
184
C. Clapham, “Rwanda: The Perils of Peacemaking,” Journal of Peace Research vol. 35, no. 2 (1998): p. 205.
185
Scorgie, p. 72.
186
Stettenheim, p. 226.
187
Lemarchard, p. 595.
178
40
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
As Sisk warns, if the commitments to co-exist are not accepted broadly among adversaries or
deeply in society, then the outcome may be violence, state erosion and collapse. From the above
evidence we can see clearly that the commitments did not appear to be sincere. In fact, the commitments resulted in the exact outcomes that Sisk predicted.
Zero-Sum
When ethnic rivalries are present and the state is the prize, as in the case of Rwanda, a zerosum/winner-take-all outlook can be deadly to power-sharing. Why would a group wish to accommodate an enemy when they could have it all? Sisk illustrates that in divided societies an unbalanced power leads actors to either believe they can dominate or fear that their opponent will
dominate; both situations lead to a zero-sum game. In South Africa, the conflict moved to a positive-sum perception because there was interdependence and a balance of power between the parties.188 Unfortunately that was not the case in Rwanda and the situation was exacerbated by the
outcome of the Arusha Accords.
In the negotiations, the balance of power was tipped towards the more organised and militarily stronger Rwandan Patriotic Front, as demonstrated in the results of the negotiations. More importantly, the outcome of the Arusha Accords themselves was perceived as a win-loss situation.
Mamdani attributes this win-loss mentality to four parts of the settlement. First, the RPF received
forty percent of the soldiers and fifty percent of the officers. Second, the RPF was given the important position of Ministry of the Interior. Third, the RPF received eleven seats in the parliament
and five in the ministry while the CDR was excluded. Lastly, they also secured the right of return
for refugees.189 For the RPF the provisions filled their security needs, their representation in the
rule of the new state and a solution to the long needed refugee problem. Hutu Power perceived the
outcome as “having won at the conference table what it had yet to win on the battle-field.”190 The
Arusha Accords had the unintended consequences of pushing power-sharing to a winner-takes-all
game, which is potentially violent.
CONCLUSIONS
Mitigating Conflict: Evaluations
A successful transition to democracy was defined above as the institutional ability to mitigate
conflict. This is based on Sisk’s understanding that the “successful regulation of conflict in a multiethnic society [occurs] when the predominant pattern of inter-group dispute resolution is based on
bargaining and reciprocity; unsuccessful regulation is evident when conflict degenerates into violence.”191
Numerically, South Africa saw nearly 14,000 deaths related to political violence in the first
three years of negotiations. However, in a country of about 33 million at the time, this was a very
small percentage. Significantly, scholars such as Sisk and Stefes have noted that the high-level
talks led by Mandela and de Klerk continued despite this violence and that these high-level talks
spread to many other strata of society, “to virtually every arena of politics, society, and economics.”192 Mandela and de Klerk’s deep commitment were reflected in society and overcame the violence.
188
T. D. Sisk, Democratization in South Africa: the elusive social contract (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991), p. 285.
189
Mamdani (2001a), pp. 210-211.
190
Ibid., 210.
191
Sisk (1996), p. 4.
192
Sisk and Stefe, p. 300.
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
41
In Rwanda, the violence was never really mitigated. Even during the power-sharing negotiations the ceasefire broke down numerous times, notably in February 1993 when the RPF left the
bargaining table to remind its opposition of its military superiority. In October 1994, the United
Nations estimated that the war had reduced Rwanda’s population (death and displacement) by about
37 percent, from 7.9 million to 5 million.193
The Arguments
This paper set out to explore why the power-sharing principles in South Africa were so instrumental in its transition from apartheid and why during the same four years those same powersharing concepts where unable to mitigate conflict in Rwanda, leaving the Tutsi population devastated by genocide.
This paper argues that the South African transition to democracy presented the necessary and
favourable conditions for a power-sharing agreement to thrive, specifically strong moderate leadership and the motivation to accommodate. It was the consociational design of the 1993 Interim Constitution Pact that stabilised the state and prevented conflict. In the case of Rwanda this paper
argues that the Rwandan power-sharing peace settlement – the Arusha Peace Accords – failed to
mitigate violence because it lacked such necessary factors as committed leadership, a shared destiny
and the will to accommodate. The negotiated outcomes of the Accords led to the zero-sum scenario
that South Africa managed to avoid, thus leading the state into conflict rather than mitigating it.
Mandela and de Klerk received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their committed leadership on
the most difficult and decisive issues on the bargaining table. In contrast Habyarimana did little to
show any type of commitment to the power-sharing negotiations, in fact wavering on his pledges.
Whilst the PRF originally showed some promise of committed leadership, their actions soon spoke
otherwise as they reverted to military violence during tough times instead of grand gestures like de
Klerk.194
In terms of institutional design South Africa, with features such as the proportional representation systems, was able to turn the Interim Government into a positive-sum scenario where parties
recognised that it was better to cooperate and be included rather than boycott the process and undermine it. This was demonstrated by the last-minute inclusion of the Inkatha Freedom Party for
the 1994 elections. Unfortunately Rwanda was unable to avoid the outcomes of the Arusha Accords turning the state into a prize to be won. The importance of inclusion in a contested state was
simply not recognised. The extreme CDR party was excluded, a majority vote was chosen despite
the arguments for consensus rule and even though refugee repatriation was addressed, there was no
power-sharing provision on the territory. 195-196
Lessons Learned
Recounting history, it is much easier to identify the absent factors that led to the demise of the
power-sharing negotiations in Rwanda. It is also easy to cite the successes of power-sharing when a
country is led by a dream team of elites, as was the case in South Africa. This is not to conclude
that South Africa is free of all problems; the success of South Africa is illustrated in its transition
from apartheid to a democratic state without a major civil conflict or genocide. Today issues such
193
Stettenheim, pp. 215-216, 231.
An example of de Klerk’s grand gestures to commitment would be his release of political prisoners and the
removal of bans on political parties in the 1990’s.
195
Stettenheim, p. 230.
196
Rwanda is classified as having three of the four power sharing agreements classified in Caroline Hartzell and
Mathew Hoddie analysis. The absent power-sharing provision is territorial. Hartzell and Hoddie (2003), p. 326.
194
42
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY REVIEW
as AIDS and violent crime still loom over its current government and the country faces significant
challenges.
This paper agrees with Roeder and Rothchild that under the proper conditions power-sharing
can work well. Unfortunately, in ethnically divided societies few if any of these necessary conditions are likely to be found, especially in countries emerging from conflict. Sisk warns that if certain pertinent commitments are missing, the outcome may be violence, state erosion and collapse.
Nevertheless if the conditions are present, then power-sharing can be a practical method for democratic conflict management. Ironically, as Spears observed, perhaps power sharing works best where
it is least needed.
As we look toward current situations in the world, it is important to understand that the necessary components of a power-sharing strategy so that we can identify in which situations it is a viable option and in which situations an alternate political route to peace should be pursued. Do
conflicting societies possess the leadership and motivation to resolve the struggle between factions
through power-sharing tactics? Can a power-sharing agreement quell the conflict and revive the
collapsing state of Sudan, or have the crimes committed against the Dafurian people under the control of the Khartoum government created a zero-sum situation where the state cannot be shared?
It comes down to the fact that power-sharing is risky business, especially when the state is
seen as prize to be won rather than shared. There are two critical lessons to be considered in designing power-sharing governments. The first is that power-sharing requires strong, committed and
influential leadership, not only at the negotiating table but in the community at large as well. Secondly, the drive for a unified democratic state must come from within the communities themselves,
for it is their own common destiny that they are building and if the necessary conditions do not exist
we cannot force power-sharing upon them. We have already seen what a devastating end result this
can breed.
REFERENCES
Alusala, Nelson. “Disarmament and Reconciliation: Rwanda’s Concern.” Paper 108, Pretoria: Institute of Security Studies, 2005. Available online: www.issafrica.org/pubs/papers/108/ Paper108.htm
Andeweg, Rudy B. “Consociational Democracy.” Annual Political Science Review vol. 3 (2000):
pp. 509-536.
BBC News, “Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened.” BBC. Available online:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1288230.stm
Brink, Andre. “Nelson Mandela.” Time Magazine. Available online:
http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/mandela.html
Chenge, Michael. “Between Africa’s Extremes.” In The Global Resurgence of Democracy, edited
by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, pp. 350-358. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Clapham, Christopher. “Rwanda: The Perils of Peacemaking.” Journal of Peace Research vol. 35,
no. 2 (1998): pp. 193-210.
Des Forges, Allison. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights
Watch, 1999. Available online: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/
VOL. 3, NO. 2 – MARCH 2008
43
Hartzell, Caroline and Mathew Hoddie. “Institutionalizing Peace: Power Sharing and Post-Civil
War Conflict Management.” American Journal of Political Science vol. 47, no. 2 (2003): pp.
318-332.
----------. “Power Sharing in Peace Settlements Initiating the Transition from Civil War.” In Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, edited by Donald Rothschild and
Philip G. Roeder, pp. 86-103. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2005.
Horowitz, Donald. A Democratic South Africa: Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Jung, Courtney and Ian Shapiro. “South Africa’s Negotiate Transition: Democracy, Opposition, and
the New Constitutional Order.” Politics and Society vol. 23, no. 3 (1995): pp. 269-308.
Lemarchand, Rene. “Managing Transition Anarchies: Rwanda, Burundi, and South Africa in Comparative Perspective.” The Journal of Modern African Studies vol. 32, no. 4 (1994): pp. 581604.
Lijphart, Arend. Democracy in Plural Societies; A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale
University, 1977.
----------. Patterns of Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
----------. “The Wave of Power-Sharing Democracy.” In The Architecture of Democarcy: Constitutional Design, Conflict Management, and Democracy, edited by Andrew Reynolds, pp. 37-54.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001a.
----------. “A Brief History of Genocide.” Transition vol. 10, no. 3 (2001b): pp. 43-44.
Newbury, Catharine. “Background to Genocide: Rwanda.” Issue: A Journal of Opinion vol. 23, no.
2 (1995): pp. 12-17.
Ross, Robert. A Concise History of South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Rothchild, Donald. Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute
Press, 1997.
Rothschild, Donald and Philip G. Roeder. “Power Sharing as an impediment to Peace and Democracy.” In Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, edited by Donald Rothschild and Philip G. Roeder, pp. 29-50. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2005.
Scorgie, Lindsay. “Rwanda’s Arusha Accords: A Missed Opportunity.” Undercurrent vol.1 (2004):
pp. 67-76.
Sisk, Timothy D. Democratization in South Africa: The Elusive Social Contract. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995.
----------. Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts. Washington, DC: United
States Institute of Peace Press, 1996.
Sisk, Timothy D. and Christopher Stefes. “Power Sharing as an Interim Step in Peace Building:
Lesson from South Africa.” In Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars,
edited by Donald Rothschild and Philip G. Roeder, pp. 293-317. Ithaca: Cornell University,
2005.
Spears, Ian S. “Africa: The Limits of Power-Sharing.” Journal of Democracy vol. 13, no. 3 (2002):
pp. 123-136.
Stettenheim, Joel. “The Arusha Accords and the Failure of International Intervention in Rwanda.”
In Words over war: Mediation and arbitrational to prevent deadly conflict, edited by J.H.
Barton, M.C. Greenberg and M.E. McGuiness, pp. 213-236. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Van Parjs, Philippe. “Power-Sharing verses Border Crossing in Ethnically Divided Socieites.” In
Designing Democratic Institutions, edited by Ian Shapiro and Stephen Macedo, pp. 296-315.
New York: New York University Press, 2000.