Why do some peace agreements lead to enduring peace whereas others almost imminently result in the restart of the conflict they aim to end? We approach this question in two steps: first, we start by providing a theoretical answer (based on published theories and our own original argumentation). Second, we use a new data set of 300 peace agreements and several different statistical estimation methods to test our hypotheses. We intentionally vary our statistical models to see what role our methodological choices play for the empirical answer to our proposed research question.
In our theoretical part, we propose that peace agreements that increase the political participation for outsider groups (i.e. rebels) in political decision making have longer lasting peace than peace agreements that do not. We argue that one specific form of participation (territorial self-governance) solves one of the problems that lead to conflict in the first place (namely, the problem of exclusion of groups from political decision making). TSG arrangements in peace agreements give the rebels what they wanted to achieve through conflict and the government a form of inclusion they are willing to accept. Some critics of peace agreements suggest that peace agreements are not worth the paper they are written on. We analyse whether promises in peace agreements are enough or whether implementation is needed for peace. Using new data (300 peace agreements, 1998-2016), UCDP conflict data, and conflict control variables, in a pre-test (using a poisson regression) we found that words in peace agreements alone can already have an appeasing effect. Further, we empirically test our hypotheses then using survival analysis as well as matching analysis. Through this approach we test whether we arrive at the same conclusions when we used different statistical estimation techniques. Additionally, we reflect on the usefulness of the various approaches in answering the proposed question how and why territorial self-governance in peace agreement can have an appeasing effect.
