Negotiated Settlement and the Durability of Peace

Book excerpt: Existing research has shown that negotiated peace agreements are less likely to sustain an enduring peace in the aftermath of civil wars. A large proportion of research concentrates on the effects of either agreement design or agreement implementation on the likelihood of civil war resumption. Generally, existing studies fail to integrate design and implementation as separate parts of an interdependent process. Studies also tend to ignore the implication of preceding agreement design on subsequent implementation. This research develops an integrative framework that engages both the agreement design and implementation stages in the civil war peace process. It also examines the effects of third-party mediation on the durability of peace agreement in the aftermath of civil wars through its in uence on the quality of agreement design and implementation. The presence of third-party mediation helps to resolve future uncertainty and fear resulting from the \commitment problem" between war combatants, and thus makes peace agreements more durable. By using compiled data from the UCDP Peace Agreement Dataset, the Civil War Mediation (CWM) dataset, and the Power-Sharing Event Dataset (PSED), this research employs a Cox Proportional Hazards model to test the implication of design and implementation on the durability of postwar peace. The results suggest that the effect of mediation on peace durability is conditional upon the stages of the peace process. Peace agreements designed and implemented by mediators are more likely to sustain lasting peace. The results also indicate that not all implementation of power-sharing pacts, as promised in the design stage, can produce pacifying effects given the fact that implementing certain types of power-sharing pacts disrupts peace processes.