The Pieces of Peacemaking: Understanding Implementation of Civil War Settlements

This article seeks to engage scholars in a richer understanding of post-civil war settlement implementation. It examines why some parties execute the provisions of these agreements fairly extensively, whereas others abide by few, if any, dimensions. We explore four peace settlements, developing a new measure that gauges various aspects of implementation. We examine how two factors in particular affect the degree to which parties abide by their commitments. First, we find that implementation is more likely as international support increases. This occurs through three chief mechanisms: mitigating commitment problems, generating audience costs, and the contingency of aid on implementation. Second, the balance of capabilities is a significant domestic influence on implementation. Parties are most prone to abide when the government is militarily superior, but the former rebels are powerful enough to meaningfully check government action. Implementation is less successful when government capabilities far exceed those of the rebels or when the rebels are particularly strong.