Ethnic Conflict and the “Generosity Moment”

Strategies based on transition pacts that reduce rulers' risks and cushion their retreat from total power may be the most promising route to democracy in the Arab world.

Often recommended as a means of ending intractable civil wars, power-sharing may in fact be least likely to work when it is most needed.

After four years of sharing power with the opposition, Zimbabwe’s longtime president Robert Mugabe and his party claimed a huge victory in the 2013 elections. What accounts for the opposition’s…