Police reforms in peace agreements, 1975–2011

Abstract

This article presents new data on provisions for police reform in peace agreements (PRPA) between 1975 and 2011. The PRPA dataset complements past research on the determinants and effects of specific terms in agreements with detailed data on police reform provisions. The PRPA dataset also adds a quantitative dimension to the thus far largely qualitative literature on post-conflict security sector reform (SSR). It includes information on six subtypes of police reform: capacity, training, human rights standards, accountability, force composition and international training and monitoring. We show that there is currently a high global demand for the regulation of police reform through peace agreements: police reform provisions are now more regularly included in agreements than settlement terms that call for power-sharing or elections. We observe interesting variations in the inclusion of police reform provisions in relation to past human rights violations, regime type, or the scope of international peacekeeping prior to negotiations, and illustrate the implications of police reform provisions for the duration of post-conflict peace. Finally, we stimulate ideas on how scholars and policymakers can use the PRPA dataset in future to study new questions on post-conflict police reform.