Remaining Seized of the Matter: UN Resolutions and Peace Implementation

How can the United Nations support peace implementation efforts following civil conflict? Prior research shows that third parties can use a variety of conflict management approaches to prevent civil war recurrence and that peace agreement implementation improves peace duration and quality. However, little research connects these two aspects of postwar peace. We argue that United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions are an important tool that can be quickly used to support the peace. These resolutions can shame parties who do not comply with the agreement, deploy and coordinate resources needed for implementation, and empower local actors in postwar settings. Using implementation data for thirty-four Comprehensive Peace Agreements (CPAs) since 1989, as well as new data on the targets and language of UNSC resolutions, we show that language in a resolution that names and shames actors, connects stakeholders, or marshals resources is associated with better compliance with a CPA.

Sustaining the Peace After Civil War: What Do We Know About Peace Failure Versus Peace Duration?

Once a civil war ends, there is high probability that the nation will relapse into renewed war within a few years. For a nation where a civil war has recently ended to relapse into renewed conflict, some dynamic process of contention must emerge that makes a resumption of armed conflict one—but not the only—possible outcome of that contentious episode. We can conceive of the dynamics by which contentious politics can lead to civil war recurrence as a function of three conditions. First, one or more dissident groups must emerge with the organizational and military capacity to mount and sustain an armed challenge to the postwar state. Second, one or more of those groups must have the incentive to resort to armed conflict rather than abide by the post–civil war order. Third, conditions and events in the postwar environment must evolve in a manner such that one or more of these groups must determine that they have an opportunity to revolt. This framework can be used to analyze how, in existing research, the outcome and key attributes of the now-ended civil war and conditions in the postwar environment affect whether dissident groups will resume armed conflict or sustain the peace.

Distributional effects of political power-sharing arrangements and their negative consequences for post-agreement stability

Most of the previous studies of power-sharing arrangements (PSAs) find the political PSA to be ineffective in stabilizing post-agreement peace. These studies argue that the political PSA is a signal that is not costly enough to moderate the information asymmetry or commitment problem among the signatories. In this article, I develop an alternative theory of the political PSA that identifies its “negative” effect on post-agreement stability by highlighting two issues that have attracted little attention in the previous studies, i.e. distributional effects of the political PSA and shifts in the bargaining power among the signatories. To assess the validity of the theory, I first conduct a logistic regression analysis of inclusion of political PSA provisions in peace agreements, and then conduct a survival analysis of post-agreement peace duration.

The Durability of Peace

With wars—not just global, but civil wars and other domestic infightings—still being rampant in the modern world, scholars have begun to develop interest in identifying the conditions that can help establish a durable peace. Peace is a lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between social groups. Commonly understood as the absence of war or violent hostility, peace often involves compromise, and therefore is initiated with thoughtful active listening and communication to enhance and create genuine mutual understanding. The study of the durability of peace has greatly evolved through the years, and one of its implications is that recent empirical work on this topic has focused on civil war. Most of this study has been tailored in response to the model of war, a theory of armed conflict which presents war and peace as stages of a single process. Furthermore, this analysis on peace duration revolves around for main themes: the characteristics of conflict and conflict actors, belligerent-centered dynamics, the role of third parties, and the developments in the measurement, estimation, and the study of peace duration. Under the conceptions of peace, sustainable peace must be regarded as an important factor for the future of prosperity. Throughout the world, nurturing, empowerment, and communications are considered to be the crucial factors in creating and sustaining a durable peace.

Religion as a Peacemaker? Peace Duration after Ethnic Civil Wars

What role does religion play in preventing civil war from recurring? Politicians have proposed that when warring groups share the same religion, achieving a durable peace will be easier. We test this hypothesis empirically using a large-nsample of all ethnic civil wars that began and ended between 1950 and 2006, and a measure of co-religiosity between the ethnic group in power and the main opposition group. The analysis shows that there is no positive relationship between co-religiosity and the duration of post-civil war peace, showing that sharing the same religion may not help to bring about peace following an ethnic civil war. To the contrary, the closer religious ties, the less likely it is that peace will last after the end of the conflict, and the higher the risk that conflict will recur.