Citation

Mason TD, Greig JM. Int. Interact. 2017; 43(6): 967-993.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/03050629.2017.1260012

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

About half of the nations that experience civil war eventually relapse into renewed conflict within a few years after the original war ends. This observation has motivated a stream of research into the factors that affect the risk of peace failure in the aftermath of civil war. While the outcome of the previous civil war--for example, military victory versus peace agreement--structures the post-war environment in ways that affect the risk of peace failure, the capacity of the post-war state to enact and implement policies that affect the incentives for and capacity of groups to undertake armed violence as a means of advancing their interests should also affect the risks of peace failure. Using Geddes' categories of nondemocratic regime types, we will present a theory of how different regime types have varying capacities to repress and/or implement accommodative policies that affect the risk of peace failure. We test propositions derived from this theory with a series of event history models. Our findings suggest that while peace agreements significantly increase the duration of post-civil war peace, peace agreements involving some types of nondemocratic regimes actually increase the risk of post-civil war peace failure.

Language: en

Keywords

Civil wars; peace agreements; peace duration; peace failure; regime type