Electoral Reforms and Peace Duration Following Negotiated Settlements

ABSTRACT

One of the most common features found within peace agreements is provisions that call for post-civil war elections. Unfortunately, the initial post-war elections often increase the risk of civil war recurrence. While past research has consistently confirmed this finding, it focuses only on one element of the democracy. Rather than focusing solely on elections, this article examines the laws surrounding the electoral process. Specifically, I examine how changes in electoral laws that are called for in peace agreements impacts the risk of renewed civil war. Building on research that examines the context of post-civil war elections, I argue that reforms to electoral laws that precede the initial post-war election substantially reduce the risks associated with that election. This proposition is supported with evidence from survival models of peace failures following the establishment of comprehensive peace agreements from 1989 to 2010, demonstrating that electoral reforms reduce the risk of civil war recurrence.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil War
• democracy
• elections
• negotiated settlement
• peace agreement

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank T. David Mason, J. Michael Greig, Jacqueline DeMeritt, and Idean Salehyan for all of their support in finishing this project.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ Including members of the army, rebel factions, and pro-government militias.

² Specifically, I include a count of which of the three provisions are included in the peace agreement and then divide that number by three, or .

³ As the impact of electoral reforms may relate to whether the country was previously a democracy, I include a measure of past history of democracy as a robustness check.

⁴ It should be noted that it is the implementation of electoral reforms that reduces the risk of peace failure as compared to simply including electoral reforms in the peace agreement. As a robustness check an additional model was estimated simply measuring the inclusion of electoral reforms in peace agreements. This model fails to reach statistical significance. These results can be found in the online appendix.

⁵ Information on the primary documents was drawn from the US Institute of Peace. Accessed 1/17/2017: http://www.usip.org/publications/peace-agreements-liberia

⁶ Articles XVIII and XIX of the Accra Peace Agreement (Pg. 14). Information taken from the US Institute of Peace. Accessed 1/17/2017: http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/liberia_08182003.pdf

⁷ Peace Accords Matrix. “Accra Peace Agreement: Implementation History.” Accessed 1/17/2017: https://peaceaccords.nd.edu/accord/accra-peace-agreement