This engaging edited volume sets out to answer an important question: Why do countries so rarely emerge from civil wars as democracies? In the wake of the Cold War and the growth of international peace missions around the globe, most of which implicitly or explicitly include economic liberalization and political democratization as key building blocks, many civil wars have come to an end. In some of these cases, the prospects of durable peace and postwar security appear relatively promising. The empirical record of postwar democratization, however, is much more bleak. According to the authors, only 2 of 19 countries that have experienced major peacebuilding operations in the post–Cold War era are commonly rated as liberal democracies. In fact, only nine countries pass the lowest threshold to qualify as electoral democracies, according to standard definitions. Why is this the case? The answer to this pertinent question, of great relevance to both academic scholars and policymakers alike, is the focus of Costly Democracy.

In the last decades, we have seen the growth of a new strand of literature that looks closely at the prospects and challenges associated with postwar peacebuilding. The focus of much of this debate has been on the role played by external actors in these processes—particularly the characteristics, values, and practices of large-scale United Nations operations—and its implications for the likelihood that both peace and democracy will be established after war. (See, e.g., Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict, 2004; David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building, 2006; Simon Chesterman, You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration and State-Building, 2004; and Elisabeth Cousens and Chetan Kumar, with Karin Wermester, Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies, 2000.) Others have explicitly examined the dilemmas and trade-offs involved when an attempt is made to introduce or strengthen both peace and democracy simultaneously in post–civil war societies (e.g., Anna Jarstad and Timothy Sisk, From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding, 2008; and Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk, The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations, 2009).

The important and novel contribution of this book, unlike most previous research in this field, is its focus on the domestic political elite and its incentives for democratization in a postwar context. The key argument pursued is reflected in the book’s title: The introduction or strengthening of democratic reform in postwar societies may be perceived as a costly strategy to pursue by the local political elite. Such costs may be physical, political, or economic in nature. Those that benefited from the war or played key roles during the transition process may not be those who stand to gain as political leaders in times of peace. Some may even face war crimes. Others will risk not being elected. Some political leaders have gained economic benefits in the shadow of the war and are reluctant to reform a system that has served them so well. Political power is being redefined and reshaped, and not all domestic elites have the skills, resources, and connections to navigate the new political landscape in their favor. According to the authors, their adoption costs to democracy are high. Under such circumstances, the domestic political elite may attempt to refuse or stall the implementation of expected democratic reforms. At other times, however, the incentives of domestic political actors align with those of the external actors involved, and the adoption costs are perceived to be low. The domestic elite may need the support of the external actors involved and may stand to benefit from committing themselves to the democratic political system.

Together with the leverage that the concerned international actors have at their disposal, and the extent to which they are willing to use this leverage to steer the process in their desired direction, it is the adoption costs that constitute the key, critical, causal mechanism that can explain why some countries are more likely that others to see democratic progress following the end of civil wars. This is a very interesting and powerful argument, which is both elegantly presented and convincingly demonstrated.

In spite of the many authors involved, this is a remarkably well structured and cohesive volume with a clear and straightforward line of argumentation. Instead of approaching the topic from a set of case studies, the book makes sophisticated use of the comparative case study approach, systematically addressing the same set of thematically derived questions in nine cases that have all experienced large-scale peace missions by external actors yet display a puzzling variation in outcome: Afghanistan, Bosnia, East Timor, Haiti, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, and Tajikistan.

After presenting its key argument, the volume examines the impact of four alternative explanatory factors, or, perhaps rather, clusters of variables, commonly suggested as important for explaining variation in postconflict outcomes: factors related to the legacy of the war and how it ended; the size and scope of the international peace mission (or, in other words, the mission footprint); the geostrategic location of the country (good versus bad neighborhood); and the role played by bilateral donor aid, specifically democracy aid. While eventually concluding that none of these factors had a direct or systematic effect on postwar democracy, the authors are nevertheless able to convincingly demonstrate that some of them may still be important, as they are likely to affect the domestic elite’s adoption costs.

The editors’ choice of examining these four factors is perhaps one of the weaknesses of Costly Democracy. While the legacy of war, including settlement characteristics, and regional security dynamics are frequently pointed to as factors that are likely to influence the prospects for sustainable peace following the ending of a civil war, the theoretical rationale for why they should have an impact on the postwar democratization process is much less evident. In contrast, there are a number of factors frequently cited as critical in the general democratization literature that are not addressed at all or discussed very briefly, including for example, the electoral system, the character of the political parties, degree of centralization of political power, or the role of civil society.

Although the examination of the relative importance of the scale and scope of the peace mission and the role of external donor aid is more easily justified from a policymaking perspective, the theoretical rationale for the stated points of departure is also unclear at times. Why should we start from the assumption that the more intrusive the mission, the better? In light of the rather extensive debate in recent years on the importance of local ownership and the need for bottom-up approaches to peacebuilding, this may be seen as a rather surprising starting point. Likewise, why should we assume that more external aid brings more local democracy? However, in spite of these minor objections to the presentation, the value of the thorough and systematic empirical examination of these factors is still very high, and undoubtedly constitutes an important contribution to both the ongoing scholarly debate on these issues and the policy and practice of postwar democratization.