The Ingredients of Peace: Lessons from Intra-State Peace Processes

Ending civil wars and promoting reconciliation in conflict-affected societies are some of the most pressing challenges we face as political scientists and practitioners. But what is the recipe for a successful peace agreement? Which ingredients (or provisions) are key to successful peace processes? This paper evaluates whether specific provisions consistently contribute to successful peace processes in countries affected by civil war and conflict, moving beyond the current emphasis on military and political clauses to also encompass cultural provisions and territorial reforms. It employs the Negative Binomial Regression Method to model the relationship between provisions in the 292 peace agreements collected in the new dataset of Political Agreements in Internal Conflict, thereby adding to the methodological toolkit of peace and conflict studies.