A power sharing agreement and the inauguration of a new government in South Sudan has been put to a halt. Disagreement on the number of states and local self-government, security issues and the unifying of a national army are contested issues. Strife about how to share the power between the local and central level through federalism and decentralisation remains at the core of the controversies. Sorting out the relationship between central and local levels of…

Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie’s theoretical model of power-sharing’s four dimensions—political, territorial, military, and economic—is used here to analyze successive peace processes in South Sudan. This multifaceted power-sharing strategy was utilized within both the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), designed to resolve Sudan’s intractable North- South conflict, as well as the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Crisis in South Sudan (ARCISS) that addressed a continuation of intra-South violence. This study investigates the breakdown…

The South Sudanese parties to the conflict signed the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS) in August 2015 and essentially agreed to establish a federal system of government. This raises three critical questions. First, do the people of South Sudan support the establishment of federalism as envisioned by the warring parties? Second, does the public actually understand what it means to establish and run a federal system of government? Finally, how…

This report reviews the myriad challenes and opportunities that arise from South Sudan’s subdivision debate and practices. It touches on the connection between authority, rights and territory. Download

This research paper investigates the motivation, course, consequences and connotation of Kokora, a policy attempted at two different moments in South Sudan relating to decentralization. This examination attempts to look at the lessons of Kokora while underscoring that decentralization for the southern states did not lead to empowerment but the opposite, and in some cases expulsion. Download

This weekly review comments on current public debates on federalism in South Sudan, primarily clarifying some of the issues that appear blurred in the catechism of and demand for political transformation in the country. The paper suggests that the ongoing demands for federalism as a system of governance in the country, not the implementation of such, clearly demonstrate how misunderstood this widely discussed political philosophy truly is. As well, drawbacks of federally decentralized system are…

The research paper describes attitudes towards federalism and the ways it was presented from before Sudan’s independence in 1956, up to South Sudan’s independence today. Download

The purpose of this paper is to outline the potential benefits of fiscal decentralization and to discuss the implications of the peace protocols for the restructuring of the federal system in the Sudan. Download

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