Caroline A. Hartzell

Institutionalizing Peace: Power Sharing and Post-Civil War Conflict Management

This article examines how power-sharing institutions might best be designed to stabilize the transition to enduring peace among former adversaries following the negotiated settlement of civil wars. We identify four different forms of power sharing based on whether the intent of the policy is to share or divide power among rivals along its political, territorial, military, or economic dimension. Employing the statistical methodology of survival analysis to examine the 38 civil wars resolved via the process of negotiations between 1945 and 1998, we find that the more dimensions of power sharing among former combatants specified in a peace agreement the higher is the likelihood that peace will endure. We suggest that this relationship obtains because of the unique capacity of power-sharing institutions to foster a sense of security among former enemies and encourage conditions conducive to a self-enforcing peace.

Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables

In the wake of negotiated settlements to civil wars, one critical problem involves reassuring people who have been killing one another that conflict is not about to break out again, endangering peoples lives. Those concerned with the success of negotiated settlements have debated how best to enhance the prospects of a stable peace. We address this question by exploring variables that may explain the longevity of negotiated peace settlements. These variables are divided into two categories—one tapping into the potential effects of the environment in which settlements are negotiated and another focusing on the impact of settlement arrangements. On the basis of our analysis of thirty-eight civil war settlements negotiated between 1945 and 1998 we identify the environmental factors and institutional choices that affect the short-term stability of the peace following civil war.

Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars

Although the majority of civil wars end when one warring party achieves a victory over the other, negotiated agreements are growing more common as a means of ending intrastate conflict. To explain why some negotiated settlements prove stable and others do not, scholars have examined the impact of factors such as superpower conflict, group identities, and third-party guarantors. This article argues that those negotiated settlements that are the most extensively institutionalized—that is, that provide institutional guarantees for the security threats antagonists face as they move toward a situation of centralized state power—are the ones most likely to prove stable. An analysis of all settlements negotiated to end intrastate conflicts during the period between 1945 and 1997 supports this proposition.

Civil War Settlements and the Implementation of Military Power-Sharing Arrangements

This article considers the role that the implementation of peace agreements has on the prospects for fostering a durable peace following the negotiated resolution of civil wars. Focusing on the 16 peace agreements between 1980 and 1996 that have included provisions for the sharing or dividing of military power among former combatants, the authors find that the complete implementation of this aspect of settlements significantly improves the prospects for maintaining peace. They suggest that this proves to be the case because of the important and credible signals of conciliatory intent among former enemies that are made through the process of implementation. They find that implementation serves as a concrete signal of a genuine commitment to peace as signatories to an agreement prove willing to endure the costs associated with both compromising their original war aims and withstanding potential challenges from within their own groups. Based on these results, the authors offer policy recommendations focusing on the role that third-party actors and aid donors might play in facilitating the successful implementation of negotiated peace agreements.

Economic Liberalization via IMF Structural Adjustment: Sowing the Seeds of Civil War?

Previous studies that have explored the effects of economic liberalization on civil war have employed aggregate measures of openness and have failed to account for potential endogeneity bias. In this research note, we suggest two improvements to the study of the relationship between liberalization and civil war. First, emphasizing that it is processes that systematically create new economic winners and losers rather than particular levels of economic openness that have the potential to generate conflict, we consider the effects of one oft-used means of liberalizing economies: the adoption by countries of International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment programs. Second, we use a bivariate probit model to address issues of endogeneity bias. Analyzing all data available for the period between 1970 and 1999, we identify an association between the adoption of IMF programs and the onset of civil war. This finding suggests that IMF programs to promote economic openness unintentionally may be creating an environment conducive to domestic conflict.

The Art of the Possible: Power Sharing and Post–Civil War Democracy

This article focuses on the role that power-sharing arrangements play in making it possible for some countries to make the transition to democracy successfully after civil war. The authors hypothesize that the adoption of multiple forms of power sharing, measures constructed to end particularly difficult civil wars, facilitate the emergence of a minimalist form of democracy following some intrastate conflicts by helping to assuage warring groups’ security concerns. The authors use a bivariate probit model to account for the possibility that the decisions by wartime rivals to engage in power sharing and whether to adopt democracy or not are interrelated. Employing panel data for all civils wars concluded between 1945 and the end of 2006, they find support for their hypothesis.

Settling Civil Wars

Two different positions regarding the impact the fate of factions has on the duration of the peace appear in theories of civil war termination. One holds that the peace will be long-lived when the organizational structures of all but one of the factions that compete in a war are destroyed or dismantled at the conflict’s end.The other position maintains that the peace can best be preserved when rival groups agree to share state power at the war’s end. I examine the evidence for these competing arguments, drawing on a new dataset on the fate of factions that participated in civil wars between 1945 and 1999.The results of this analysis indicate that although destroying opposing groups’ organizations has little effect on the duration of the peace, an agreement among rivals to share power can help to prolong the peace.

From anarchy to security: Comparing theoretical approaches to the process of disarmament following civil war

This essay offers a critical evaluation of two contending theoretical approaches to achieving disarmament and an enduring peace following the negotiated resolution of civil war. The neorealist approach is associated with the work of Barbara Walter and suggests that third party enforcement of the terms of the peace is critical to fostering the confidence necessary for rival groups to lay down their arms and renew the process of intrastate cooperation. In contrast, we identify an alternative neoliberal approach, one that does not depend entirely on the unreliable goodwill of the international community. We suggest that former enemies have the opportunity autonomously to build the trust necessary to achieve disarmament through an agreement to create a network of power sharing and power dividing institutions.

Nation-state Crises in the Absence and Presence of Segment States: The Case of Nicaragua

Abstract This study provides a critical examination of the relationship between segment states and nationalist crises through a consideration of Nicaraguas recent history. Nicaragua experienced a nationalist crisis from 1981 to the mid-1980s. That crisis ended with the creation of two autonomous regions on the Atlantic Coast. Although relations between the common state and the new segment state proved difficult over the next few years, the new arrangement held for two decades. Roughly around 2007, however, a new nation-state crisis emerged in Nicaragua. Taking advantage of the fact that Nicaragua provides an opportunity to compare two nation-state crises across time, this study asks whether the countrys pattern of nation-state crisis, creation of a segment state, and emergence of a second nationalist crisis may mean that segment states are endogenous to nation-state crises. In addition, it raises the question of whether, if fully followed through, autonomy arrangements may prove stabilizing under certain contexts.

The State and Violence: A Discussion of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History

Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009) offers a theory of the evolution of the modern state and an even more ambitious framework “for interpreting recorded human history.” The book raises fundamental questions about the political structuring of violence, the functions of the rule of law, and the establishment and maintenance of political order. In doing so, it speaks to a range of political scientists from a variety of methodological and subfield perspectives. We have thus invited four prominent political science scholars of violence and politics to comment on the book: Jack Snyder, Caroline Hartzell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Larry Diamond.