The Idea of a Political Settlement

In the past, political settlements analysis (PSA) has suffered from a lack of conceptual clarity. In this chapter we provide an extended conceptual discussion, ultimately defining a political settlement as an ongoing agreement among a society’s most powerful groups over a set of political and economic institutions expected to generate for them a minimally acceptable level of benefits, which thereby ends or prevents generalized civil war and/or political and economic disorder. The authors provide an extended and nuanced defence of this definition, arguing that in contrast to most extant versions, it is both theoretically fertile and consistent with commonsense understandings of a political settlement. Universally applicable, the concept is compatible with many different and distinct political settlement theories, frameworks, and hypotheses, yet it directs attention to what should be PSA’s distinctive contribution: an analysis of how the problem of violence shapes ruling elites’ commitment to different sorts of development policy, or not as the case may be. The chapter also briefly introduces a new typology of political settlements, based on two novel dimensions: the social foundation and the power configuration of the settlement.

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848932.003.0002