Implementation Contributes to the Normalization of Politics

We identify several paths by which the process of implementing a CPA contributes to the normalization of politics between formerly hostile and warring groups. The first has to do with the fact that peace agreements in civil wars, almost by default, are negotiated between groups that hold state power (the government) and groups that are excluded from state power (the opposition). Empirical studies confirm that a leading cause of civil war, globally, is the political exclusion of groups with the capacity to mobilize around identity.Footnote ¹⁵ The central thesis of The Logic of Political Survival describes how leaders use mass political exclusion to their advantage by tying their own survival to that of their core support base or minimum winning coalition: the smallest possible group of people whose loyalty is a necessary condition for the current regime to remain in power.Footnote ¹⁶ In small coalition systems, governing elites forge strong bonds between themselves and their minimum winning coalition by providing them with disproportionate access to state resources in the forms of military protection and private excludable goods. Leaders of small coalitions have a particular distain for providing public goods that would benefit supporters and non-supporters alike. In return for preferential treatment, coalition members reinvest large sums of resources back into the organizational power structures that sustain loyalty to the leader and that preserve the policy status quo. As might be expected, studies find that small coalition systems have the highest frequency of civil war.Footnote ¹⁷ This suggests that: (1) group chauvinism is a root cause of many civil wars and (2) there seems to be something peculiar about small coalition systems that makes them less able to negotiate an ex ante settlement so as to avoid war. It appears straightforward that the benefits of small coalition membership are often times worth the costs of fighting a civil war (for those who benefit).

It logically follows that comprehensive peace agreements will constitute an effort by the opposition group to alter the status quo distribution of political power, and that provisions implemented for that purpose should lead to such changes as increasing the share of the population that could form an alternative coalition (the selectorate). As the size of the politically relevant population increases, so does the likelihood that alternative winning coalitions will form and replace the current coalition in power. As the size of the winning coalition increases, leaders shift spending away from providing exclusively private goods to core supporters and towards providing higher level public goods, which have been shown to be associated with reductions in poverty, repression, discrimination, and civil conflict.Footnote ¹⁸

We believe that CPA implementation should lead directly and indirectly to larger-coalition systems and a larger selectorate. Existing studies show that negotiated settlements in civil wars are associated with larger coalition systems – and that those countries with larger coalition systems were less prone to the recurrence of conflict.Footnote ¹⁹ CPAs contain, on average, a large number of political and institutional reforms that should lead to larger coalition systems, if they are implemented.Footnote ²⁰ Seventy-six per cent of CPAs contain provisions for electoral/political party reform that are customarily aimed at making the electoral system more open and representative, preparing the country for its first post-accord election and/or supporting the rebel group in their transformation into a legitimate political party.Footnote ²¹ In addition to electoral reforms, constitutional reforms (found in 55 per cent of CPAs) and political power-sharing arrangements (found in 50 per cent of CPAs) are typically geared toward creating a more accountable, politically inclusive, and representative government to oversee the larger implementation process and elections. The new political parties and seat shares that result from these types of reforms directly increase the politically relevant share of the population.

Where implementation has increased the size of the selectorate, intragroup competition can develop, and rank-and-file members of the opposition have the ability to move and realign themselves politically with new leadership. This option is critical to the actors’ ability to overcome a political impasse or deadlock, which often leads to renewed violence. When an impasse occurs during the implementation process, this represents a ‘turning point’ that can lead to either increased co-operation or increased conflict.Footnote ²² Because military leaders, even great ones, are often poor negotiators, their presence and influence in the immediate aftermath of conflict often results in an unbreakable impasse. Viable implementation processes offer a way out of an impasse that is not available in non-viable implementation settings: the ability to replace ineffective leadership. Implementation, both as an outcome and as a process, creates opportunities and spaces for skilled opposition leaders to represent and promote the preferences of their constituency groups, and to gain legitimate political and financial support from doing so.

There are also less direct ways that implementation, as a process, contributes to a more inclusive polity and normalized political relations between formerly hostile groups. The day-to-day work of implementing a peace agreement requires continued negotiation, renegotiation, sustained dialogue and continuous dispute resolution between members of the warring parties, sectors of the government and population segments affected by implementation. Continuous sustained dialogue is formalized in over 50 per cent of all CPAs in the form of joint dispute resolution bodies. Moreover, every space for dialogue surrounding the core implementation process creates new political and social spaces for former rivals to enter into new forms of competitive negotiations that provide a dynamic platform capable of generating non-violent solutions to problems and episodes of violence as they arise.Footnote ²³ The physical process of implementation contributes to the normalization of politics by creating opportunities that situate the actors vis-à-vis each other as legitimate political foes that nevertheless must work together to represent their constituencies and gain recognition for themselves in the process. This, we argue, is the essence of normalized politics.

It is not only the rebel groups that are signatories to the CPA that need to be pulled into the peace process. A viable implementation process also includes paramilitary groups and other rebel factions and splinter groups that initially decided to remain outside the peace process – and that constitute a great hazard to it. Impasses and moments of crisis become focal points for outside factions, splinter groups (and those considering splitting from the main opposition group) who see an opportunity to take advantage of the current breakdown by offering dissatisfied individuals avenues for renewing the struggle. Where splinter groups and factions remain armed in the field, severe impasses in implementation predictably result in a migration of support to one or more outside groups. Conflicts often persist due to the diligence of these outside factions, which seek to derail the peace process. We posit that many of these groups choose to remain on the outside because they do not trust the government to abide by the terms of the peace agreement, and they expect to profit from what they see as the imminent or likely collapse of the agreement.Footnote ²⁴

The most important point concerning these outside groups is that there seems to be a tipping point in a viable implementation process at which their isolationist and obstructionist behavior becomes too costly and the benefits of formally joining the peace process appear too promising to forego. In a viable implementation process, in which high levels of implementation across the agreement are observed, outside groups generally lose support to political leaders now on the inside who are seen as exercising more power in the current political arrangement.Footnote ²⁵ Outside groups that wish to have some influence over the course of national politics (and some role in shaping the country’s political future) must formally join the process, or be left out. A viable implementation process offers outside groups tangible political benefits in exchange for demobilizing and joining a normalized process. Examples from Burundi, the Philippines and Nepal help illustrate some of these dynamics at work.

The implementation of the 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in Burundi offers a positive case illustration of how outside groups, which initially reject the peace agreement, become increasingly isolated when a viable implementation process gives rise to a normalized political process. In Burundi, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy–Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD), one of the largest factions, walked out of the negotiations and continued its war against the government. Two and a half years into the implementation of Burundi’s CPA, as core benchmarks of the agreement were being implemented in preparation for nationwide elections, the CNDD-FDD entered into talks with the government about joining the transitional government as a legal political party. The CNDD-FDD ran candidates in the upcoming elections and won sixty-four out of 118 seats, making it the largest party in Burundi. Shortly after the CNDD-FDD was pulled into the political process, the National Liberation Forces (FNL) and Paliphehutu-FNL, two other factions that had rejected the peace agreement, also entered into bilateral talks with the government and later joined the peace process. These events illustrate that, where the agreement is being implemented and a normalized political process is taking shape, outside groups tend to be pulled in. This generates a new dynamic in which remaining groups try to avoid being the only one left in the field to be targeted in a military campaign by a unified government.

The Mindanao region of the Philippines offers a negative companion case. In September 1996, the Filipino government signed the agreement with the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front), the main rebel group in Mindanao. Similar to the situation in Burundi, the MNLF had splintered during negotiations, with the more radical wing forming MILF. By almost all accounts, the Filipino government’s commitment to the implementation of the Mindanao Final Agreement has been low. Ten years after the signing of the agreement, the designated external reviewer reported that much of the accord had not been implemented.Footnote ²⁶ Our data for the Mindanao agreement show a similar low level of overall implementation, especially early on (only 16 per cent aggregate implementation by the end of year one).

There was active resistance to the accord’s implementation by certain political factions in Manila, which included successful efforts to block funding for implementation. The Supreme Court also ruled certain provisions unconstitutional. The impasse soon led to increased polarization and threats. Relatively quickly, public perceptions in Mindanao became that the agreement had failed and that the leader (Nur Misuari) was ineffective. Against this backdrop of a failing implementation process, the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao continued to rank last in family income among regions each year.Footnote ²⁷ Instead of being pulled into a viable implementation process, as in Burundi, the MILF faction remained on the outside and greatly increased in strength. Studies have shown that during the first few years of the agreement, a massive shift in support took place from the MNLF over to the MILF.Footnote ²⁸ From 1996 (the year of the accord) to 1999, the troop strength of MILF increased by over 7,000 fighters, making it the dominant rebel group in Mindanao.Footnote ²⁹

Lastly, Nepal is a mixed case with variation in the types of behaviors associated with both implementation progress and breakdown. In November 2006, the government signed a CPA with the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), ending a decade-long civil war. Per the accord, the king gave up his executive rule and restored the parliament, and the CPN-M and other major political parties formed a unity government. Following the press coverage of the first twelve months, it is clear that the CPN-M and the other political parties that were part of the negotiations became actively engaged in the implementation of the CPA. We can see these changes reflected in Nepal’s Polity score, which increased from −6 to +6 in the first twelve months of the implementation process. Early on, the major parties actively negotiated in a political process to reach consensus on a large number of important implementation issues – such as the location of cantonment sites for demobilized Maoist combatants, the number of members of the Constituent Assembly, the rules of a mixed electoral system and an interim constitution. After presiding over this period of successful implementation, the Maoists won the first election. After this electoral victory, however, implementation broke down over how the government would be structured. As a result of the impasse, the Constituent Assembly failed to deliver a new constitution, even after extending the tenure of the assembly for an additional two years. The parties tried to reach consensus through the formal dispute resolution mechanism (Nepal Transition to Peace), but no solution was forthcoming.Footnote ³⁰ The impasse led to a split in the Maoist party, with the more radical faction breaking off and an effort was made by the more radical wing of the CPN-M to reassemble demobilized combatants for renewed civil war.Footnote ³¹

This remobilization effort failed. Surveys and polls conducted at the time provide public opinion data as to why this effort failed. The survey data show a growing displeasure among the Nepalese electorate with hardliners in the Maoist leadership, who they blamed for impeding the implementation of the agreement.Footnote ³² In 2007, 8,190 respondents were asked ‘Who is the most to blame for the current political deadlock?’ Around 60 per cent responded that ‘Prachanda’, the former CPN-M guerrilla leader, was responsible. In 2009, 7,495 respondents were asked about ‘the true objective of the Maoists’, and 80 per cent of those surveyed chose the response ‘total capture of state power’. Only 11 per cent responded that the objective of the Maoists was to become a mainstream political party. In response to these large shifts in public opinion that were informed by observing the implementation process, it was decided that new elections would be held so that the electorate could choose a new government. In the second Constituent Assembly elections held on 19 November 2013, the Maoist party lost massive amounts of support, becoming a third-place party.Footnote ³³ The availability of this realignment option is the essence of normalized politics – that is, the institutional capacity of the post-war state to offer non-violent avenues to overcome political deadlock and intergroup disputes. The realignment option would not have been possible without some degree of prior implementation. As we discuss in the next section, whether or not a normalized political process is able to get underway depends in large part on the earliest stages of implementation.

Implementation Solves Credible Commitment Problems

The fundamental problem with attempting to end a civil war by implementing a set of agreed-upon measures is that civil war destroys the usual necessary conditions for the emergence of joint co-operation. Starting a viable implementation process is difficult, even when that is the desired outcome of all parties, due to the reluctance of each actor (especially the rebel group) to be the first to put themselves in a position of vulnerability by participating in disempowering activities. This is especially problematic early in the post-accord environment, when anxiety levels are high, trust has yet to be established, and both sides remain armed and mobilized. Relatedly, the rebels know that there are no absolute guarantees that the government will keep its word and implement the peace agreement once they have disarmed. Overcoming these hurdles requires honest communication between former enemies, which is implausible, and the actors have clear incentives to misrepresent their true positions. Bargaining theorists of conflict and violence refer to these obstacles as problems of credible commitment.Footnote ³⁴ As Walter prominently argued, the main barrier to reaching a civil war settlement is that the rebel group is asked to disarm and give up its territory before the accord is implemented. Her proposed solution involved third-party involvement or ‘any implicit or explicit promise given by an outside power to protect adversaries during the treaty implementation period’.Footnote ³⁵ While third-party enforcement certainty adds a layer of accountability to the immediate post-accord environment, we do not think conflict actors would rely solely on the promises of a third party for their safety and protection.

In The Evolution of Cooperation, Axelrod demonstrated that co-operation will consistently emerge under anarchy if three conditions are met: (1) the long-term gains of co-operating are greater than the short-term gains of defecting or cheating, (2) there is a high probability that the same actors will soon interact with each other again in the future and (3) the process is transparent and the actions of each agent are observable.Footnote ³⁶ There is considerable case evidence that enemies manage the intense on-the-ground security dilemmas of the early stages of implementing a civil war peace agreement via reciprocal implementation.Footnote ³⁷ Extending from negotiations into the post-accord period, rivals build trust by engaging in costly behaviors that each side knows the other side would prefer not to do. If each actor keeps their word with regard to several agreed-upon actions, each side is more likely to agree to the next step, and so on. If one group reneges, however, it is difficult to conceive of further co-operation until the dispute is settled. Mozambique and Angola provide examples of how security dilemmas are gradually resolved (or not) through reciprocal, iterative moves in the implementation process.

The 1992 General Peace Agreement that ended the civil war in Mozambique included twenty-four provisions and established the United Nations Operation in Mozambique. Despite strong third-party intervention, the insurgency (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, RENAMO) was reluctant to demobilize and give up the large amount of territory it held in the north without additional security guarantees. RENAMO’s President Afonso Dhlakama devised and submitted a four-stage plan of reciprocal demobilization that would start with government troops in Maputo, the capital.Footnote ³⁸ By July 1993, 12,337 government troops had been moved to confinement areas.Footnote ³⁹ After the government agreed, RENAMO balked at some prior points of agreement and insisted that its security depended on maintaining control of its northern territories.Footnote ⁴⁰ In an unprecedented move, President Chissano set up a five-day talk with Dhlakama in August 1993 – the first ever meeting on Mozambican soil. Among other issues, President Chissano agreed to Dhlakama’s demand for the further demobilization of government troops as a precondition for RENAMO troops to begin to demobilize.Footnote ⁴¹ After this further demobilization of government troops, RENAMO began to submit larger and larger numbers of troops to the confinement areas, and then withdrew from some of its northern territories.Footnote ⁴² In Mozambique, Chissano used the implementation process to establish dialogue and to send costly signals to RENAMO troops regarding his trustworthiness, integrity as a leader and personal commitment to peace. Chissano’s commitment and ability to send the right signals in Mozambique to save a stalled peace process stands in stark contrast to the signaling behavior demonstrated in Angola several years later – to dramatically different effect.

In Angola following the signing of the Lusaka Protocol in November 1994, Jonas Savimbi and other UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) leaders were likewise reluctant to leave the field and demobilize the personal forces that protected them. While the Lusaka agreement called for a UN peacekeeping force, their deployment was delayed for security reasons. Four months after the Lusaka Protocol was signed, the secretary-general’s report to the Security Council halted the deployment of peacekeeping troops until their safety could be guaranteed:

Like Dhlakama, Savimbi argued that he and his army could not demobilize until the government withdrew its troops and made it clear that UNITA troops would not be killed or arrested. Within days of the signing of the Lusaka agreement, military engagements took place near the town of Huambo. The amnesty bill that was passed only covered actions up until the signing of the Lusaka agreement. UNITA leaders began to push for the rapid implementation of a new comprehensive amnesty bill, the legalization of UNITA as a party and political power sharing (as called for in the Lusaka accord). Power sharing would not be implemented for over two years (no positions were given to UNITA members until 1997), and the implementation of a partial, limited amnesty would become a central issue in the ensuing breakdown.Footnote ⁴⁴

Within weeks of the Lusaka accord, UNITA leaders argued that the amnesty bill allowed for the civil prosecution of UNITA leaders and only covered the period up until the signing of the agreement.Footnote ⁴⁵ After five months of impasse, Savimbi put forward several measures claiming publicly that he would ‘reciprocate’ if the government was willing to act first.Footnote ⁴⁶ UNITA’s representative to the UN, Marcos Samondo, asked President Dos Santos in April 1996 (eighteen months after the accord) to come back to the joint political commission created by the accord for dispute resolution (the government had not been participating in the commission, in violation of the accord). The government later announced that it was permanently dropping out of the joint commission and would strengthen its military offensive to defeat UNITA.Footnote ⁴⁷ Over the next two years, UNITA leaders made several more pleas for a comprehensive amnesty bill and to legalize UNITA as a political party. By 1998, the conflict had escalated to civil war.Footnote ⁴⁸ Three years after the signing of the Lusaka accord, the Angolan parliament passed a bill making UNITA a legal political party with Savimbi as chair.Footnote ⁴⁹ But by this time it was too late to shift behavior onto a path of co-operation, and the war raged on until Savimbi was killed in February 2002. We shift the discussion in the next section to the medium- to long-term challenges facing peace processes and argue that in order for peace to hold for 5 to 10 years, the stakeholders must believe that the CPA accomplished its larger objectives – which requires implementing the reforms negotiated for that purpose.

Implementation Addresses the Root Causes of Conflict

Prior research on the topic of civil war recurrence finds that civil war is a chronic condition for many states. Countries with a recent history of civil war have a baseline risk of a future civil war that is much higher than that of countries with no recent conflict experience. As Collier notes, countries in civil war ‘presumably had risk factors which made it atypically prone to conflict and these are likely to have persisted’.Footnote ⁵⁰ For many countries, civil war worsens these initial (poor) conditions. On a positive note, existing research on civil war recurrence finds that countries which experience reform and quality of life improvements following a civil war are more likely to avoid renewed conflict than those in which conditions got worse or stayed the same. Studies find strong evidence that civil wars are less likely to recur in countries that were able to increase economic well-being and levels of democratization, as these improvements undermine insurgency recruitment.Footnote ⁵¹ Recent studies have found strong empirical connections between the way in which a civil war ends and subsequent improvements in political and economic development. Several works find higher levels of post-conflict democratization in nations where the civil war ended in a negotiated peace agreement.Footnote ⁵² Similarly, studies have shown that peacekeeping missions tend to be followed by higher levels of economic growth, while government victories tend to be followed by lower levels of economic growth.Footnote ⁵³ Negotiated settlements in civil wars have been found to lead to larger coalition systems compared to government and rebel victories.Footnote ⁵⁴ This is an important link, given that existing research has already established a strong connection between larger coalition systems and improvements in public welfare and government spending on public goods. A central finding in selectorate theory is that ‘core public goods are substantially promoted by larger-coalition systems and discouraged in polities that depend on smaller coalitions’.Footnote ⁵⁵ We conclude from these studies that a sensible strategy for breaking the conflict trap is to negotiate and implement a set of mutually agreed upon socio-political reforms in a CPA.

A brief examination of one case of low CPA implementation (Bangladesh) helps illustrate the direct causal connections that can be made between: a non-viable implementation process, the persistence of widespread grievances among the stakeholder population and an acknowledged ‘high risk’ of future civil war.Footnote ⁵⁶ In Bangladesh, the twenty-five-year-long Shanti Bahini insurgency in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) ended in 1997 with the signing of a CPA. The main objective of the agreement was to reverse a process of ethnic displacement by putting political control of the region into the hands of the native Jumma population and reversing the ‘Bengalization’ process brought about by government-sponsored migration. To accomplish this goal, the accord called for a sweeping array of reforms including decentralization, electoral reform, police reform, indigenous rights, citizenship reform, ending military occupation and refugee rehabilitation with land restitution. A careful examination of the CHT accord and all of its provisions reveals a failed implementation process from the very start. On the one-year anniversary of the accord, Shantu Larma, the former guerrilla leader, remarked that progress was lacking because a ‘particular quarter in the government is involved in delaying implementation of the peace accord’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Three and half years later, researchers from the University of Dhaka conducted public opinion surveys of the Jumma people in the CHT region regarding the peace accord.Footnote ⁵⁸ When CHT residents were asked ‘What is the post-accord situation like?’, 80 per cent indicated that conditions were either ‘worse’ or ‘the same’ as before the peace accord. On the question of refugee rehabilitation, 98 per cent of CHT residents surveyed said that the refugees ‘have not been properly rehabilitated’, and 94 per cent reported that the autonomy arrangement was not working properly. Concluding her interviews, the principal investigator wrote that:

In 2012, fifteen years following the accord, Shantu Larma warned in an interview about the continued unrest in the region that ‘the Chittagong Hill Tracts may plunge into violence and bloodshed’ once again, because ‘the accord, one of the major points of which is the immediate settlement of land ownership, remains mostly unimplemented’.Footnote ⁶⁰ We now summarize our three arguments and derive two hypotheses to be tested.

Summary and Hypotheses

In the preceding sections we have argued that the process of implementing a CPA normalizes politics, solves credible commitment problems and addresses the root causes of civil war. Taken together, the arguments and comparative case evidence suggest that when CPAs are properly implemented, the capacity and incentive to resume war will be greatly diminished. Conversely, when implementation does not meet popular expectations, support for the peace process declines and remobilization for war may occur. This leads to the following hypothesis:

An overlooked dynamic in remobilization processes is that they often include increased support to outside factions that are opposed to the peace process. When the implementation process is seen as viable, outside actors are pulled in as they attempt to avoid both political isolation and becoming the target of a concentrated military campaign. We also argued that CPA implementation leads to a more inclusive and normalized political system and subsequent improvements in quality of life that undermine the recruitment efforts of non-signatory and signatory groups alike. This leads to the final hypothesis:

The Dependent Variable

Our dependent variable is the duration of peace in country-years following the signing of the peace agreement. We propose two different hypotheses related to the duration of peace and CPA implementation. The first examines the duration of peace between signatories, and therefore we are interested in explaining the survival of peace between the government and the groups that negotiated the accord. We code peace as ending if the signatories return to armed conflict based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP; peace failure is coded as 1, while all other years are coded 0). This coding starts in year 2 and extends through year 10 for each accord.Footnote ⁶¹ All accords are allowed to survive the first year, that is, from the date of the accord to 31 December. This ensures that violence that took place before the accord was signed will not be considered post-accord violence and that the case (accord) will not be dropped from the analysis before any implementation could have reasonably taken place. The second dependent variable is the duration of peace between the government and any non-signatory groups within the same UCDP conflict ID that produced the CPA. Across our sample, there were ten instances (29 per cent) of peace failing between signatories (future armed conflict resulting in twenty-five or more battle deaths), and eleven instances (32 per cent) of future armed conflict between the government and a non-signatory group.

The Independent Variable

To test our hypotheses, we use a new dataset on the implementation of CPAs from the Peace Accords Matrix project. The project has identified and collected data on a unique set of agreements that is comprehensive in two respects. A peace agreement is considered ‘comprehensive’ if it resulted from negotiations that included the main conflict actors (that is, either the central rebel group or a majority of groups) and the main issues underlying the conflict (that is, negotiations were not limited to one policy or issue area). These criteria produce a sample of thirty-four CPAs negotiated since 1989. The collection of implementation data took place in several phases. In phase one, content analysis of the thirty-four CPAs produced a typology of fifty-one provisions that make up the corpus of issues found in these agreements. We define a ‘provision’ as a goal-oriented change to the status quo that falls inside a relatively discrete policy domain (for example, police reform, legislative branch reform).Footnote ⁶² For our sample of thirty-four CPAs, 724 provisions were identified (the average number of provisions per accord was twenty-three). In phase two, for each provision in an agreement, annual historical narratives were written covering the major events that took place in each implementation year for a period up to 10 years.Footnote ⁶³ This process produced several thousand annual qualitative narratives.Footnote ⁶⁴ In phase three, these narratives were quantified into numerical data using a codebook that provided rules and implementation benchmarks for each type of provision.

We used the concept of a viable implementation rate as a practical way of gauging the pace of annual implementation for each type of provision. Using this concept, each provision was coded on an annual basis according to whether the aggregate level of implementation reached by the end of a given year could be considered minimum [1], intermediate [2], full [3] or not initiated [0]. Minimum was used to describe a non-viable implementation rate, or a rate that contemporary observers (at the time of implementation) would likely perceive as unlikely to produce full implementation if continued at that same rate (based on the specific stipulations in the text of the accord). Intermediate suggests a rate of implementation that could be expected to produce full implementation if continued at the same rate. Full implementation represents a complete or nearly complete process. We also coded reversals in implementation if progress was rolled back at some point (for example, remobilization after demobilization, sacked ministers in a power-sharing government, revoking previously passed legislation).

Next, we created an aggregate implementation rate for each peace agreement by summing the annual level of implementation for the provisions contained in each accord.Footnote ⁶⁵ We calculated the aggregate implementation rate for each accord by summing the actual implementation scores for each provision in an accord each year, and divided that sum by the highest possible score that could have been achieved (that is, full implementation for each provision each year).Footnote ⁶⁶ For example, the Philippine’s 1996 Mindanao Final Agreement discussed above contained twenty-four provisions. The highest possible score attainable in any given year is 100 per cent (72/72).Footnote ⁶⁷ The actual aggregate implementation score in year 1 was 16.67 per cent (12/72). The lowest annual aggregate implementation score in the sample is 1.39 per cent (the 1996 Abidjan Peace Agreement in Sierra Leone), and the highest was 93.94 per cent (the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Agreement in El Salvador). Figure 1 shows the aggregate implementation rate for our sample of thirty-four CPAs in the decade following the accord (31 December 2012 is the last day of observation in the dataset).

Fig. 1

Annual rate of aggregate implementation for thirty-four CPAs.

As seen in Figure 1, there is a substantial amount of variation in the implementation rate of CPAs. For some accords, like the 1997 CHT Accord in Bangladesh, or the 1996 Mindanao agreement in the Philippines, aggregate implementation is low. For others, like Mali, the implementation rate remained low for several years but took off 5 years into the implementation process. In Bosnia and Northern Ireland, commitment to the implementation of the accord appears to have been quite strong from the start.

The Control Variables

We include several control variables in our analysis that may impact future conflict or the level of implementation. It has been argued that the cost of the previous war could influence the risk of future war.Footnote ⁶⁸ For the armed conflict that produced the CPA, we use UCDP data on battle deaths and conflict duration. We also control for whether the conflict was fought over territory [1] or the government [0]; this variable is also taken from the UCDP. Out of thirty-four CPAs analyzed in this study, sixteen (47 per cent) were territorial. In the analysis, infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births) is used as a measure of the state’s capacity to deliver basic public goods.Footnote ⁶⁹ Similarly, we control for GDP growth per capita. Since refugee flows increase the risk of armed conflict, we control for the number of refugees using data from the World Bank.Footnote ⁷⁰ We also control for democracy using Polity data from the Polity IV Project.Footnote ⁷¹ The descriptive statistics for all indicators used in the analysis are presented in Table 1.

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics