Power, pacts and political settlements: A reply to Tim Kelsall

Tim kelsall raises important questions about the meaning of political settlements and methods of analysis.1 I entirely agree with Kelsall on many issues, but I also think there are gaps in the analysis he puts forward, which I address in this response. He argues that to be consistent with everyday meaning, as well as to ensure analytical usefulness, a political settlement has to be defined as an 'agreement among powerful social groups that ends a conflict and sustains a set of institutions and a distribution of power that delivers an acceptable distribution of benefits' (presumably for the powerful social groups in question). This means that for a political settlement to...