Civil War Settlements Research Articles

Power sharing with weak institutions

Democratic transitions, franchise extensions, and civil war settlements can often be seen as power-sharing agreements in which opposing factions try to use institutional structures to ‘lock in’ the terms of a settlement. But the commitment power inherent in institutions varies. When the institutional environment is weak and credibility is low, it is difficult for a powerful elite to tie its hands and give up power. This article studies a window-of-opportunity model in which an enfranchised elite faces a periodic threat. Institutional weakness is parameterized in terms of the elite’s marginal return to trying to undermine a power-sharing agreement. The analysis shows that (i) bargaining breaks down if the overall institutional environment is too weak and why it does; (ii) equilibrium agreements share more power with the opposition when the institutional environment is weak; (iii) there is a non-monotonic relation between power sharing and how often the opposition poses a threat; and (iv) power sharing is path dependent.

The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement

The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement

Civil War Settlements, Perceived Agreement Fairness, and Trust in Political Authorities: Investigating the Influence of Power Sharing on Public Opinion in Divided Societies

Little is known about civil war settlements' effects on public opinion in countries emerging from conflict, cases in which beliefs in agreement fairness and trust in political authorities may influence acceptance of the peace process. We posit that settlements designed to redistribute power and resources will be perceived as fairer and produce larger improvements in trust in the national government for individuals from marginalized groups than for those from dominant groups. Employing original survey data collected in the Philippines, we test these propositions with reference to the country’s 2014 peace agreement. We find that marginalized Muslim groups perceive a fairer peace agreement and report improved trust in comparison to the dominant Christian community. Using a survey experiment to analyze the influence of power-redistributing settlement measures, we find that trust in the government is not significantly affected by information regarding power sharing, a result that holds for members of both communities.

Peace without Impunity: Worldview in the Settlement of Civil Wars

Peace processes can bring to the fore a host of normative and practical questions that produce heated public disagreement. These disagreements can generate political obstacles to the successful neg...

Making peace to sustain war: the Astana Process and Syria’s illiberal peace

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of large-scale Russian military intervention in Syria in 2015, Iran, Russia, and Turkey established the Astana Process to manage the conflict and negotiate a post-conflict transition. The tripartite-led Astana Process has supplanted United Nations efforts through the Geneva Process to negotiate a peace agreement and political transition in Syria, highlighting important shifts in geopolitical power. As such, the Astana Process provides an opportunity to examine how peace emerges when liberal actors and norms are peripheralized and when power shifts to alternative, illiberal constellations of power that are able to craft peace. I situate my inquiry into the emergence of the Astana Process at the intersection of literature on authoritarian conflict management (ACM), civil war settlement, and peacebuilding to ask how we can understand the exercise of power in contexts in which constellations of illiberal actors are able to shape conflict and post-conflict outcomes. The Astana Process eschews liberal principles of peace-making and post-conflict transition while advancing illiberal norms and practices that reject power sharing and inclusion in favor of a post-conflict order in which society remains bifurcated and which continued violence is sanctioned. The specific constellation of domestic and international power that is reflected through Astana is contributing to the emergence of new norms of conflict management and peacemaking that directly challenge liberal norms and actors’ power to shape post-conflict outcomes. Astana thus advances a new vision for conflict management that is materializing in the emergence of an illiberal peace in Syria.

Monica Duffy Toft: Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars

Monica Duffy Toft: Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars

Selling Out or Standing Firm? Explaining the Design of Civil War Peace Agreements

AbstractWhen do rebel leaders “sell out” their constituents in the terms of peace by signing agreements that benefit group elites over the rebel constituency, and when do they instead “stand firm,” pushing for settlement terms that benefit the public they claim to represent? This article examines variation in the design of civil war settlement agreements. It argues that constituents, fighters, and rebel elites have different preferences over the terms of peace, and that rebel leaders will push for settlements that reflect the preferences of whichever audience they are most reliant on and accountable to. In particular, leaders of groups that are more civilian-reliant for their military and political power are more likely to sign agreements that favor broad benefits for civilian constituents, while leaders who do not depend on civilian support for their political and military power will sign agreements with fewer public benefits. We test this argument using original data on the design of all final peace agreements reached between 1989 and 2009, and several proxies for the group's level of reliance on civilian supporters. Using a variety of statistical tests and accounting for nonrandom selection into peace agreements, we find strong support for our hypothesis.

Russia in the centre of the Middle East triangle

The research subject is the political processes in the Middle East. The author analyzes the current situation in Syria in the context of Russia’s regional policy in the Middle East. the author considers the political interests of the key countries participating in the process of civil war settlement in Syria: Russia, Turkey, Iran and Israel. The research is aimed at studying Russia’s role in Syrian conflict settlement, particularly, it contains the comparative economic evaluation of Russian spending on the military operation in Syria. The author gives special attention to the reasons of escalation in Idlib and analyzes the main contradictions between Russia and Turkey in the beginning of 2020. The article analyzes Russia’s role in the military operation in Syria, considers the multifaceted policy of each of the countries-elements of the Middle East triangle, assesses the political and economic advantages of Russia’s involvement in the Middle East conflict. The author concludes that the U.S. withdrawal from Syria allowed Russia to play a major role in the Middle East triangle. However, the “first violin” role in an international conflict settlement can lead to the country’s involvement into a permanent state of confrontation with the actors of the Middle East policy. Scientific and practical results of the research can be used as primary and additional source for further settlement of political problems in the Middle East.   

Battle Stalemates and Rebel Negotiation Attempts in Civil Wars

This manuscript examines how battlefield events influence belligerents’ pursuit of negotiated settlements in civil wars. We argue that successive stalemates are most likely to precipitate rebel demands for negotiations because they offer groups both the opportunity and willingness to push for a compromise settlement. Unlike rebel losses, stalemated battles demonstrate that rebels can offer military resistance to the state. Yet, unlike rebel battle gains, draws do not raise the prospects of a rebel war victory. Using monthly data on rebel demands for negotiations and battle outcomes for 63 African dyads fighting between 1997 and 2010, we find support for this argument; more battlefield stalemates decrease the time until a proposal to negotiate by rebels. Additionally, we examine whether the same battlefield dynamics explain the onset of formal negotiations. The results reveal only a relationship between rebel battle gains and the onset of talks. The contrast in these findings suggests that rebels and governments may conceive of battlefield outcomes, especially stalemates, differently. Although rebels perceive a window of opportunity from a battlefield deadlock, governments appear to be influenced most by rebel gains.

The Role of IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority for Development) in Facilitating Civil War Peace Settlements in the Horn of Africa

The aim of this study was critically examine “The role of IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority for Development) in facilitating civil war and peace settlements in the regions” horn of Africa. The political geography of the Horn of Africa primarily encompasses South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Uganda. The regional formation of the Horn has been constructed by variety of natural internal and external factors and forces. The multiplicity of internal and external problems and challenges faced by the sub region that is civil war, violent power struggle, war lordism, and state collapse, natural disaster and cold war conflict and super power rivalries played out in the Horn have led to further reconstruction and expansion of the region. The term greater Horn of Africa is used to describe the common problems faced by the Horn countries and East Africa has hegemonic ally constructed. Keywords: IGAD, Civil War, Peace settlement, Horn of Africa DOI : 10.7176/IAGS/78-02 Publication date: December 31 st 2019

Advancing the Frontier of Peacekeeping Research

The impact of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping on conflict has received a sustained amount of attention in the empirical literature. The advent of new data on UN peacekeeping and new temporal units of analysis have enabled researchers to expand the frontiers of peacekeeping research and undertake a more nuanced examination of peacekeeping effectiveness. In this special section, a series of articles examine how UN peacekeeping affects different types of violence within conflicts and leads to different types of peaceful outcomes. Factors such as the cultural affinity between peacekeepers and local communities, the size of peacekeeping operations and the specific composition of UN forces are shown to be important variables associated with lower levels of casualties and violence and also a higher likelihood of mediation and timely peaceful settlements in civil wars. In the aggregate, these articles suggest that robust peacekeeping is associated with better outcomes in many stages of conflict.

Power Sharing and the Rule of Law in the Aftermath of Civil War

AbstractWhat effect do power-sharing institutions agreed to as part of civil war settlements have on the development of the rule of law in post–civil war states? We contend that power-sharing measures facilitate the emergence of the rule of law in two ways. First, they establish a form of institutional constraint that promotes judicial autonomy and independence. Second, they foster a sense of security among judges and other political actors that bolsters commitment to the law. We demonstrate the plausibility of a positive relationship between power sharing and the rule of law through an analysis of post–civil war states between the years 1948 and 2006. Our findings suggest that civil war settlements can help to establish the rule of law when they include mechanisms aimed at allaying the insecurities of political actors in the postconflict environment.

Introducing a new dataset on leadership change in rebel groups, 1946–2010

Leaders and leadership changes are found to influence states’ foreign policy decisions, in particular with respect to war and peace between states. Although this issue is also addressed in the qualitative literature on intrastate wars, the influence of leadership turnovers in civil war has received limited systematic attention. One reason for this is the scarcity of quantitative data on rebel group leaderships. To fill this gap, we present a comprehensive dataset on leadership changes in rebel groups, 1946–2010, organized by rebel-month. The effects of leadership changes among parties engaged in civil war are argued to be more complex than those found in interstate disputes. In this article we present our theoretical argument followed by presentation of the variables in the dataset and descriptive statistics. To demonstrate the potential research value of the dataset we examine the impact of leader shifts on civil war settlement in Africa. We conclude with avenues for future research which might benefit from this dataset.

Success or Failure in the Peace Processes of Aceh and Sri Lanka: A Comparative Study

This study examines why some internal conflicts end in negotiated agreements, while negotiations fail in others. In order to address this question, I compare the cases of Aceh, where some 30 years of armed conflict ended in a 2005 peace agreement between Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM, the Free Aceh Movement) and the government of Indonesia; and Sri Lanka, where 2002–2006 negotiations between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam broke down. This study adopts ideas from bargaining theories of war, focusing on the adversaries’ power perceptions in relation to actions that led to the civil war settlements. It identifies three variables as decisive: (1) information revealed by war, (2) control over spoilers, and (3) divisions in the ranks of the rebel organization.

Outside the Battlefield: In-Group Political Dynamics of Civil War Negotiations and Settlements

What influences warring parties’ ability to reach a negotiated settlement to end civil war? In this chapter, I answer this question by examining the environment government and rebel group leadership internally encounter while seeking to unite on a consensual decision to negotiate. I disaggregate in-group dynamics of governments and rebels into their respective political elements that either grant autonomy or create constraints for resolution, namely, their constituencies and elites. Introducing original negotiations data for internal conflict-dyad-years between 1980 and 2005, this paper reveals that successful settlements cannot be thought autonomously from the wider pool of all (successful and failed) negotiations that were initiated. Moreover, autonomy from constituent and elite obstruction seem to be two important factors for conflicts to be settled successfully.

Power parity and peace? The role of relative power in civil war settlement

Theories of civil war highlight how relative power affects conflict onset, dynamics, strategy, outcome, and duration. Yet most studies of civil war have not been able to capture rebel power adequately and often rely on national-level characteristics to infer relative power distributions. This study addresses this shortcoming by using a troop strength measure to test arguments about how relative power affects the likelihood of civil conflict settlement. Drawing on the international crisis bargaining literature, while noting the inherent differences between interstate and intrastate conflicts, this study argues that the condition of power parity increases the likelihood of negotiated settlement and ceasefire. Weak rebels are unable to achieve concessions through negotiation since governments view them as minor threats. Yet governments have difficulty defeating weak rebels due to an emphasis on guerrilla warfare. On the other end of the spectrum, rebels that are superior to the government in strength are unlikely to settle given their power advantage. Strong rebels that can rival the strength of the government (i.e. they are near parity) can exact more concessions because fighting at parity exposes information about how long each side can hold out while escalating the costs of war, giving each side a greater incentive to negotiate and eventually seek a ceasefire or peace agreement. This argument is supported using data on 112 dyads in the post-Cold War period.

Landmines, language, and dismemberment: Mia Couto's imperial residues

Mia Couto's The Last Flight of the Flamingo, set during the UN-monitored peace settlement of Mozambique's decade-long civil war, directs our eyes towards the places and people ignored and unseen by the dominant narratives of globalization. The novel asks that we pay attention to the sundry residues of empire in Mozambique – the severed penis of a UN peacekeeper, bullet holes and landmines, the rural poor, living and dead – because revealing these residues forces recognition of the hidden, leftover injustices of colonialism, globalization, and modernity. Couto's oral narrative models what I call ‘residual epistemology’, a way of knowing that draws on the residues of previous stories and storytellers and so assumes an always-mediated engagement with others, rejecting ideas of independence and objectivity. Drawing primarily on Raymond Williams' notion of the residual, I consider the material and conceptual residues of empire as simultaneously symbols of the invisible and as alternative or oppositional models for reading the lives of the poor.

Ronald Reagan in Ireland, 1984: A Different Cold War?

On 2–5 June 1984, Ronald Reagan toured Ireland. He was met by widespread protest regarding US policies in Central America, including reproofs from the Irish government, and snubs from the Catholic hierarchy. Yet for Irish diplomats, engaged in a long-term effort to encourage Britain towards a settlement of the civil war in Northern Ireland, the visit was a success. This article argues that these immediate resonances have wider meanings, which complicate our understanding of the Cold War. Both large and small “cold wars” (the US in Central America; the US versus the Soviets; Ireland versus Britain) got mixed up with each other during this visit, contributing to the resolution of all three: the Europeans pushed the US to the negotiating table in Central America; following re-election, Reagan began his rapprochement with Mikhail Gorbachev; in September 1984, the President began nudging his closest ally, Margaret Thatcher, towards a rapprochment with the Irish Republic. The relationship between these overlapping frames underlines the article's claims that “cold wars” are a useful category of international relations, in which small nations can be significant factors. Tensions over Ronald Reagan in Ireland remind us that the global Cold War was always much more complex than superpower rivalries.

Commitment Problems or Bidding Wars? Rebel Fragmentation as Peace Building

After highly fragmented civil wars, order is often secured through the selective co-optation of rebel field commanders and atomized insurgents. This paper presents a formal model of civil war settlement as a coalition formation game between various regime and rebel factions. This approach emphasizes the ability of installed civilian rulers to lure warlords into the state based on promises of future wealth, then use divide-and-rule tactics to pit different warlord factions against one another. Quantitative and qualitative data from Tajikistan, including an original data set of warlord incorporation and regime purges during wartime reconstruction, are used to evaluate the model.

The Demand for Reparations

In analyzing peace processes in postconflict societies, scholars have primarily focused on the impact of prosecutions, truth-telling efforts, and reconciliation strategies, while overlooking the importance of individual demands for reparations. The authors argue that normative explanations of why reparations are granted in the aftermath of regime change are useful in understanding a need for reconciliation, but inadequate for explaining victim demands for compensation. The authors extend this research to study civil war settlement. In the aftermath of civil war, when some form of reparation is offered giving individuals the opportunity to seek redress of grievances, what types of loss and political and socioeconomic characteristics are likely to lead some individuals to apply for reparations but not others? Using primary data, collected through a public opinion survey in Nepal, the authors investigate individual-level demand for reparations. The findings suggest that understanding loss and risk factors may be important to civil war settlement and reconciliation.