The constitutional development process and the nature of legislative, legal and other institutions of government play an important role in reconciliation and democratization of conflict prone societies. The choice of an electoral system which is able to accommodate the aspirations of different groups also contributes towards conflict management.
Political parties – key players in the political process - have an important role to play in mediating conflict. The growth of non-sectarian and broadly based political parties can serve to break down previous cleavages within a society.
This project analyzes the experience of the regulation of political parties in order to mediate conflict and assesses the capacity of external regulation to achieve this goal. Examples of constitutional provisions, legislation and voluntary mechanisms are described from a number of countries.
In 2008 the project partners (International IDEA, the Centre for Democratic Institutions (Australia) and the UN University (Japan) published and launched the book entitled Political Parties in Conflict-Prone Societies: Regulation, Engineering, and Democratic Development.
