Ethnic Conflict and the “Generosity Moment”

After a long and bloody civil conflict, Burundi has established a new democratic regime. Does its tenuous but hopeful example hold lessons that might help its troubled neighbors?

Strategies based on transition pacts that reduce rulers' risks and cushion their retreat from total power may be the most promising route to democracy in the Arab world.

Often recommended as a means of ending intractable civil wars, power-sharing may in fact be least likely to work when it is most needed.