Power-sharing

Power-sharing means a political arrangement where previously antagonistic political parties or groups agree to share power, for patriotic reasons or because their mutual antagonism had produced a stalemate (or perhaps both). Examples of power-sharing include that between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, and, more recently, the agreement in Zimbabwe between Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - this latter is, however, a situation subject to change.