With the conclusion of each presidential election, scholars, commentators, and political junkies begin the quadrennial exercise of discussing reform of the presidential nomination system. If we could alter the process in just the right way, goes the thinking, we would get better nominees, a more informative campaign, and everyone, or at least a lot of people, would be happier with their choices on the next presidential ballot.

And why not? How hard can it be to improve our presidential nominating system? After all, in 2016, both Gallup and Pew reported that voters had historically negative impressions of both major party nominees, so changes that would improve voter satisfaction must be low-hanging fruit. Indeed, the authors in this volume have offered up a number of thoughtful, intelligent suggestions for reform.

This chapter focuses on tests of the relationship between power sharing and the transition to minimalist democracy in the aftermath of civil war. We begin by explaining the need to account empirically for the effect that difficult post-conflict environments may have on countries’ ability to make a transition to democracy. We then conduct an empirical test of our central hypothesis regarding the existence of a positive relationship between extensive power sharing and the transition to minimalist democracy in post-civil war states. Finally, seeking to respond to critics who argue that power sharing impedes the development of forms of democracy that might be considered more “aspirational” than minimalist democracy, we examine the effects that power sharing has on democratization two, five, and ten years after the end of civil war using V-Dem’s measures of electoral, liberal, and egalitarian democracy.