Contemporary world politics is structured around the world order of nation-states in turn founded largely upon a Newtonian cosmology and an associated worldview. I develop a conceptual framework around the ‘epistemic engine’ which organizes and circulates the cosmological and institutional structures of Enlightenment modernity. Subsequently, I explore how the imperial Chinese world order-- functional until at least the late 19th century--reveals a different cosmology shaping a different world order and politics. I also explore the contemporary PRC view of the world order probing the extent to which its historical experiences can be seen to re-shape the hegemonic epistemic engine. In the final section, I draw from a paradigm of ‘oceanic temporality’ to grasp counter-finalities generated by the epistemic engine on the earth and the ocean itself. Can the counter-flows of social movements allow us to imagine what Katzenstein calls a post-Enlightenment, hyper-humanist cosmology?

This chapter applies a Weberian analysis to selective foreign policy decisions made by US and European elites in the twentieth century concerning war and peace. We look at the behavior of individual actors and the groups they form because, following Max Weber, individuals “give meaning” to the world around them. They interpret the historical setting in which they find themselves and act to shape the world they seek in the future. We examine two varieties of individualist worldviews: differing domestic political ideologies (e.g., liberalism, fascism, communism, and Islamism) and differing foreign policy orientations (nationalism, realism, institutionalism, and constructivism). We ask in each case how these political worldviews interact and favor certain kinds of international relationships/outcomes and preclude others. The approach places ideas and human agency at the center of the analysis of worldviews.

Given the huge number of writings covering power sharing in general, and its relationship to internal conflict in particular, it is essential to summarize what has been written in order to position the current work in this context. Thus, the first half of the chapter offers a straightforward overview of the relevant literatures. While this summary pays attention to conceptual issues and how the literature has analyzed the consequences of power sharing in broad terms, the primary focus is on conflict. Proceeding chronologically, the chapter starts with an account of the central divide in comparative politics between those perspectives that endorse power sharing, and those that oppose it. We retrace this classical divide back to the early writings of Lijphart, who introduced his consociational approach to stable democracy in divided societies in opposition to majoritarian democracy as practiced in Anglo-Saxon countries. The review of the literature covers its main stages together with work by other scholars working within this tradition as well as its main critics, including most prominently Horowitz, Rothchild and Roeder, and more recently research by Gates, Strøm and others. We then turn to the literature on post-conflict agreements. A section summarizing the main arguments for and against power sharing follows. The chapter ends with a discussion of the four challenges identified in Chapter 1.

Focusing on regional autonomy arrangements, this chapter investigates, to what extent, and in what form, territorial power sharing mitigates civil conflict (see Master Hypothesis 1b). Our point of departure is again our past research indicating that exclusion of ethnic groups increases the risk of internal conflict. As argued in Chapter 3, however, such results do not automatically imply that regional inclusiveness will guarantee peace, especially if the relationship between an excluded group and the incumbent government has already seen violence. Based on a global sample of ethnic groups as provided by the Ethnic Power Relations dataset, here we show that, in such situations and on its own, regional autonomy is likely to be"too little, too late." It is too little because only full inclusion through governmental power sharing reduces conflict propensity significantly (see Master Hypothesis 5); and it is too late since regional autonomy could be effective, but only if offered in a timely, preventive fashion before group-government relations turn violent (see Master Hypothesis 3). Accounting for endogeneity, we also instrument for autonomy in postcolonial states by exploiting that French, as opposed to British, colonial rule rarely relied on decentralized governance. This identification strategy suggests that naïve analysis tends to underestimate the pacifying influence of decentralization.

This chapter opens by stating the main research question, namely whether power sharing reduces civil conflict or not. After briefly illustrating successful and unsuccessful cases of power sharing, we introduce our approach, which builds on a stream of work in conflict research stressing how exclusion of ethnic groups increased the risk of civil conflict. If this relationship is correct, one would expect the reverse to be true as well. That inclusion of ethnic groups through both territorial and governmental power sharing brings peace is indeed our working hypothesis. Still, there are good reasons to expect that this relationship may be more complicated. There are four main challenges that need to be addressed. First, it is essential not to lose sight of how power sharing is channeled through practices rather than merely being expressions of formal institutions. Second, analysts need to consider full samples rather than focusing only on cases that experienced conflict. Third, rather than being exogenously imposed, power sharing is usually enacted with an eye to future outcomes and is therefore profoundly endogenous to conflict. Finally, it is insufficient to analyze territorial power sharing without considering how pacific outcomes may hinge on whether this type of power sharing is being combined with governmental power sharing at the center. In fact, a failure to come to grips with these difficulties go a long way toward explaining why some researchers find no conflict-reducing effect, and sometimes even a conflict-increasing impact.

Taking a step back from the question whether power sharing reduces conflict, this chapter investigates the drivers of power sharing itself. While there is a growing consensus that ethnic inclusion produces peace, less is known about what causes transitions to power sharing between ethnic groups in central governments in multi-ethnic states. The few studies that have addressed this question have proposed explanations stressing exclusively domestic factors. Yet, power sharing is spatially clustered, which suggests that diffusion may be at play. Inspired by studies of democratic diffusion, we study the spread of inclusive policies with an "open polity model" that explicitly traces diffusion from inclusion in other states. Our findings indicate that the relevant diffusion processes operate primarily at the level of world regions rather than globally or between territorial neighbors. Thus, the more inclusive the region, the more likely a shift to power sharing becomes. Shifts away from inclusion to dominance are less common since World War II, but they are more likely in regional settings characterized by ethnic exclusion.

This chapter offers a full-throated, albeit limited, exposition and defense of the Enlightenment/Weberian worldview that underlines modern social science. It rejects the relationalist argument that a quantum world of relationality (entanglement) and holism replaces a Newtonian world of rationality (conflict) and individualism. The Enlightenment liberated the individual human mind from the clutches of Nature and the Divine and spawned a cornucopia of worldviews from liberal to authoritarian. Liberal worldviews emphasized rational and individualistic factors, authoritarian views non-rational (emotion, intuition, ethnicity, psychological, etc.) and holistic factors. In all worldviews, reasoning human beings gave meaning to the world around them, made choices and took responsibility. Now, applying quantum science, relationalist worldviews say the individual (independent observer) no longer exists but blends into the observed world, the observed world is the only world there is and no longer subject to testing against an objective background, and quantum entanglement implies a cosmological worldview of cooperation and harmony which individual human beings cannot affirm or resist. But quantum mechanics neither eliminates the individual, as the independent investigator persists who asks the questions and triggers the quantum world, nor proscribes an objective reality against which it might be criticized.

Focusing on regional autonomy arrangements, this chapter investigates, to what extent, and in what form, territorial power sharing mitigates civil conflict (see Master Hypothesis 1b). Our point of departure is again our past research indicating that exclusion of ethnic groups increases the risk of internal conflict. As argued in Chapter 3, however, such results do not automatically imply that regional inclusiveness will guarantee peace, especially if the relationship between an excluded group and the incumbent government has already seen violence. Based on a global sample of ethnic groups as provided by the Ethnic Power Relations dataset, here we show that, in such situations and on its own, regional autonomy is likely to be ``too little, too late.'' It is too little because only full inclusion through governmental power sharing reduces conflict propensity significantly (see Master Hypothesis 5); and it is too late since regional autonomy could be effective, but only if offered in a timely, preventive fashion before group-government relations turn violent (see Master Hypothesis 3). Accounting for endogeneity, we also instrument for autonomy in postcolonial states by exploiting that French, as opposed to British, colonial rule rarely relied on decentralized governance. This identification strategy suggests that naïve analysis tends to underestimate the pacifying influence of decentralization.

This chapter discusses the concept of worldview; relates it to paradigms and substantialist and relational reasoning; maps Newtonianism and Post-Newtonianism (quantum mechanics) and humanism and hyper-humanism (scientific cosmology) as two different dimensions structuring implicit worldviews; specifies four analytical perspectives on world politics; and concludes briefly with two illustrative applications.