In the absence of power-sharing, minority groups in opposition have powerful incentives to substitute the ballot with the bullet. In contrast, when power is shared among all major groups in society, the relative gains of sticking to electoral politics are larger for minority groups. After making the theoretical argument, we provide in the current paper an empirical analysis of the impact of power-sharing at the local level, making use of fine-grained data from Northern Ireland's 26 local district councils over the 1973-2001 period. We find that power-sharing has a sizable and robust conflict-reducing impact.

中文翻译：

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权力共享可以促进和平吗？来自北爱尔兰的证据*

在没有权力分享的情况下，反对派的少数群体有强大的动机将选票换成子弹。相反，当社会所有主要群体共享权力时，少数群体坚持选举政治的相对收益就更大。在作出理论论证之后，我们在本文中利用北爱尔兰26个地方议会在1973-2001年期间的细粒度数据，对地方权力共享的影响进行了实证分析。我们发现，权力共享具有可观且强大的减少冲突的影响。