What makes for peaceful post-conflict elections?

Elections play a crucial role in post-conflict peace and democratization processes as, among other factors, they provide an answer to the question of who is to legitimately rule the country. However, because of the competitiveness arising from their central role in allocating power they can also represent windows of vulnerability where deeply rooted societal conflicts can come to the surface. This working paper focuses on two post-conflict elections (Sierra Leone 2007; Nepal 2008) which, despite perceived high risks, did not result in widespread violence or a return to armed conflict. The aim of these case studies is to identify the factors and measures that may have played an important role in contributing to this outcome. Each of the two case studies first outlines the risks associated with the elections and then analyzes the violence and conflict preventing factors. The paper shows that that the context greatly influences the type of measures that can be taken in such situations, but that there are also some similarities in the two cases studied. In particular, it appears that that the credibility of the elections, largely attributable to a good electoral administration, was an important factor in both Nepal and Sierra Leone. Furthermore, the inclusion of all key stakeholders in decisions regarding key electoral institutions helped to diffuse potential conflict. The study also shows that in both cases the international community played an important role by providing financial, logistical and technical support and by pressuring certain important actors to comply with the rules.

Sex allocation conflict in ants: when the queen rules.

Insect societies are paramount examples of cooperation, yet they also harbor internal conflicts whose resolution depends on the power of the opponents. The male-haploid, female-diploid sex-determining system of ants causes workers to be more related to sisters than to brothers, whereas queens are equally related to daughters and sons. Workers should thus allocate more resources to females than to males, while queens should favor an equal investment in each sex. Female-biased sex allocation and manipulation of the sex ratio during brood development suggest that workers prevail in many ant species. Here, we show that queens of Formica selysi strongly influenced colony sex allocation by biasing the sex ratio of their eggs. Most colonies specialized in the production of a single sex. Queens in female-specialist colonies laid a high proportion of diploid eggs, whereas queens in male-specialist colonies laid almost exclusively haploid eggs, which constrains worker manipulation. However, the change in sex ratio between the egg and pupae stages suggests that workers eliminated some male brood, and the population sex-investment ratio was between the queens' and workers' equilibria. Altogether, these data provide evidence for an ongoing conflict between queens and workers, with a prominent influence of queens as a result of their control of egg sex ratio.