ABSTRACT
This chapter describes potential sources of resistance to the homogenous global discourse on peacebuilding including its institutional devices. It focuses on power-sharing as a concept containing norms and related institutions. The literature on norm diffusion is certainly at home in the political science's subdiscipline of international relations. The chapter focuses on the way in which international interdependence is shaping domestic decision-making. It concentrates on political power-sharing and select cases from Africa and Asia, as those are the two continents that have experienced similarly high numbers of armed conflicts and settlements over the period selected. The literature on peacebuilding is in general quick in using the term spoiler to characterize singular parties in the peace process when, from the perspective of peace negotiators, they fail to behave as expected. The vast majority of power-sharing occurs in Africa and this disproportionately so, even when taking into account the number of terminated civil wars.
