IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v29y2008i8p1601-1620.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Danger and Necessity of Democratisation: trade-offs between short-term stability and long-term peace in post-genocide Rwanda

Author

Listed:
  • Sebastian Silva-Leander

Abstract

This paper argues that the Rwandan government's reconciliation strategy will need to be accompanied by a process of democratisation if it is to achieve its objective of fostering long-term peace. If the discourse of national unity is not reflected in an effective sharing of political power and economic resources, it is likely to be perceived with suspicion or even rejection by the country's largely Hutu population, and could contribute to aggravating ethnic tensions. Last time Rwanda—under pressure from the international community—undertook a democratisation process, however, this contributed to exacerbating the ethnic tensions that led to the genocide. Today Rwanda and its international donors thus face a stark trade-off between short-term stability and long-term peace: the longer the country puts off necessary democratic reform for fear of upsetting stability, the greater the risk of a rejection of government policies by the population and of a renewed manipulation of ethnicity in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastian Silva-Leander, 2008. "On the Danger and Necessity of Democratisation: trade-offs between short-term stability and long-term peace in post-genocide Rwanda," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(8), pages 1601-1620.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:29:y:2008:i:8:p:1601-1620
    DOI: 10.1080/01436590802528754
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436590802528754
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436590802528754?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karen Del Biondo, 2015. "Norms or Interests? Explaining Instrumental Variation in EU Democracy Promotion in Africa," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 237-254, March.
    2. Malin Hasselskog, 2015. "Rwandan developmental ‘social engineering’: What does it imply and how is it displayed?," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 15(2), pages 154-169, April.
    3. Malin Hasselskog, 2018. "Rwandan “home grown initiatives†: Illustrating inherent contradictions of the democratic developmental state," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 36(3), pages 309-328, May.
    4. Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, 2013. "Politics, political settlements and social change in post-colonial Rwanda," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-024-13, GDI, The University of Manchester.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:29:y:2008:i:8:p:1601-1620. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.