On the Use of the Shapley Value in Political Conflict Resolution

This article delineates generic causes to internal conflict and proposes a coalition-forming methodology to allow for power sharing as one avenue of conflict resolution. A suitable framework to study causes to internal conflict should, at least, provide for big bad men versus people under pressure, recent versus historic events and an internal versus an external emphasis that may be employed to understand the rationale for internal conflict. As long as aggrieved parties are not allowed to address their grievances adequately, political conflict will emerge and, if not addressed timely, such conflict may lead to civil war. A conflict resolution mechanism based on the Shapley value is proposed to deal with internal conflict. The allocation of delegates, derived so that all parties have a say commensurate with their support bases, should allow for formal consensus to take place more readily than in cases where a particular party’s representation in such a forum dominates the representation of the other parties. An algorithm to determine the number of votes or seats allocated to each of the parties to ensure equitable power sharing is also given. The causal reasons for internal conflict and the proposed methodology to deal with such conflict was presented to prominent South African politicians and political scientists for comment. A favourable response regarding their acceptance of the methodology was elucidated. Introduction During the last fifty years, more than two hundred wars were fought. MishalliRam (2006), for example, analysed 133 ethnic-related conflicts over the period 1918 1 Corresponding author: Built Environment, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, P.O. Box 395, Pretoria, 0001 South Africa. 2 Fox Research Solutions, P.O. Box 40576, Moreleta Ridge 0044, South Africa.