Why Peace Fails : The Causes and Prevention of Civil War Recurrence 9781589018945, 2011036106

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Tragedy of Civil War Recurrence
The Importance of This Book
The Central Argument
Contributions to Theory
Research Design and Methodology
Organization of the Book
Notes
Part I. Why Peace Fails: Theory
1 What Do We Know about Why Peace Fails?
What We Know about Civil Wars and Ethnic Conflict
Four Approaches to Peacebuilding
Clarifying Concepts: Exclusion, Inclusion, and Legitimacy
Conclusion
Notes
2 Is Civil War Recurrence Distinct from Its Onset?: A Quantitative Analysis and the Limits Thereof
A Regression Analysis of Civil War Recurrence
The Contributions and Limitations of Quantitative Methods for Studying Civil Wars
Conclusion
Notes
Part II. Examining the Cases
3 Liberia: Exclusion and Civil War Recurrence
The First Civil War
The Onset of Peace
The Second Civil War: A Brief Summary
Charles Taylor’s Exclusionary Behavior
Alternative Explanations
Insights from Liberia’s Second Postwar Peace Process
Conclusion
Notes
4 Separatist Recurrences of Civil War
Sudan: The Marginalization of the South
Chechnya: Reneging and Resistance
Georgia and South Ossetia: Integration Backfires
China and Tibet: Compelled from Autonomy
Analyzing Cases of Reneging on Territorial Autonomy
Notes
5 Nonseparatist Recurrences of Civil War
Precipitating Exclusionary Behavior
The Central African Republic: Exclusion and State Weakness
Haiti: Political Exclusion and Recurrence
East Timor: Liberation, Statehood, and Exclusion
Zimbabwe: Liberation, Statehood, and Exclusion
Burundi and Rwanda: Chronic Exclusionary Behavior
Alternative Explanations and Conclusions
Notes
6 Recurrences That Defy the Argument
Lebanon: Failed Powersharing
Mali: Failed Powersharing
Nicaragua: Externally Driven Recurrence
Peru: Exclusion, Coca, and Rebel Resurgence
Conclusion
Notes
7 Making Peace Stick: Inclusionary Politics and Twenty- Seven Nonrecurrent Civil Wars
Inclusion, Powersharing, and Peacebuilding Success
Powersharing and Peace Consolidation: Examining the Pool of Cases
Beyond Powersharing: Inclusionary Behavior and Peace
Peace and Exclusionary Behavior?
International Troops and “Frozen” Conflicts
Notes
Part III. Implications for Theory and Practice
8 Conclusions for Theory: Legitimacy-Focused Peacebuilding
The Main Findings of the Book
Rethinking the Aims and Approaches of Peacebuilding
Addressing Limitations
Notes
9 Conclusions for Policy and Practice: Can External Actors Build Legitimacy after War?
Why Legitimacy Building Is Exceptionally Difficult
Beyond Blanket Inclusionary Formulas: Four “Moments” for Key Choices and External Strategy
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

WHY PEACE FAILS

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WHY PEACE FAILS The Causes and Prevention of Civil War Recurrence C H A R L E S T. C A L L

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS Washington, DC

Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC www.press.georgetown.edu © 2012 by Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Call, Charles. Why peace fails : the causes and prevention of civil war recurrence / Charles T. Call. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58901-894-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Peace—Political aspects. 2. War—Causes. 3. Peace-building. 4. War—Causes—Case studies. 5. Peace-building—Case studies. I. Title. JZ5538.C34 2012 303.6'4—dc23 2011036106 o This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. 15 14 13 12 First printing

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Printed in the United States of America

To Tracy and Shayla, Dash, and Jag

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Contents List of Tables Acknowledgments

x xi

Introduction: The Tragedy of Civil War Recurrence The Importance of This Book The Central Argument Contributions to Theory Research Design and Methodology Organization of the Book Notes

1 2 3 6 7 17 20

Part I. Why Peace Fails: Theory

1

What Do We Know about Why Peace Fails? What We Know about Civil Wars and Ethnic Conflict Four Approaches to Peacebuilding Clarifying Concepts: Exclusion, Inclusion, and Legitimacy Conclusion Notes

2

Is Civil War Recurrence Distinct from Its Onset? A Quantitative

Analysis and the Limits Thereof A Regression Analysis of Civil War Recurrence The Contributions and Limitations of Quantitative Methods for Studying Civil Wars Conclusion Notes

25 26 30 36 47 48

50 51 59 65 66

viii

Contents

Part II. Examining the Cases

3

Liberia: Exclusion and Civil War Recurrence The First Civil War The Onset of Peace The Second Civil War: A Brief Summary Charles Taylor’s Exclusionary Behavior Alternative Explanations Insights from Liberia’s Second Postwar Peace Process Conclusion Notes

71 72 74 76 78 81 88 91 94

4

Separatist Recurrences of Civil War Sudan: The Marginalization of the South Chechnya: Reneging and Resistance Georgia and South Ossetia: Integration Backfires China and Tibet: Compelled from Autonomy Analyzing Cases of Reneging on Territorial Autonomy Notes

96 100 106 110 115 118 120

5

Nonseparatist Recurrences of Civil War Precipitating Exclusionary Behavior The Central African Republic: Exclusion and State Weakness Haiti: Political Exclusion and Recurrence East Timor: Liberation, Statehood, and Exclusion Zimbabwe: Liberation, Statehood, and Exclusion Burundi and Rwanda: Chronic Exclusionary Behavior Alternative Explanations and Conclusions Notes

122 123 124 129 136 146 150 158 160

6

Recurrences That Defy the Argument Lebanon: Failed Powersharing Mali: Failed Powersharing Nicaragua: Externally Driven Recurrence Peru: Exclusion, Coca, and Rebel Resurgence Conclusion Notes

162 163 167 173 177 179 181

7

Making Peace Stick: Inclusionary Politics and Twenty-Seven

Nonrecurrent Civil Wars Inclusion, Powersharing, and Peacebuilding Success Powersharing and Peace Consolidation: Examining the Pool of Cases

183 186 192

Contents

ix

Beyond Powersharing: Inclusionary Behavior and Peace Peace and Exclusionary Behavior? International Troops and “Frozen” Conflicts Notes

195 196 202 209

Part III. Implications for Theory and Practice

8

9

Conclusions for Theory: Legitimacy-Focused Peacebuilding The Main Findings of the Book Rethinking the Aims and Approaches of Peacebuilding Addressing Limitations Notes

213 213 218 230 235

Conclusions for Policy and Practice: Can External Actors Build

Legitimacy after War? Why Legitimacy Building Is Exceptionally Difficult Beyond Blanket Inclusionary Formulas: Four “Moments” for Key Choices and External Strategy Conclusion Notes

References Index

236 237 245 273 275 277 303

Tables I.1

All Civil Wars and Recurrences, 1946–99

14

I.2 Fifteen Core Cases of Recurrence

15

1.1 Risk Factors for Civil War Onset and Recurrence: Quantitative Findings

29

2.1 Comparing Civil War Onset and Recurrence: A First Cut

53

2.2 Civil War Recurrence, Adding Ethnic Fractionalization Squared

55

2.3 How Robust Is Ethnic Fractionalization?

56

4.1 Fifteen Core Cases of Civil War Recurrence

98

7.1 Mode of Civil War Termination by Historical Period, All Nonrecurrent Civil Wars, 1944–2007

185

7.2 Powersharing by Type, All Cases of Recurrence and Nonrecurrence, 1944–2007

187

7.3 Incidence of Powersharing among All Recurrences and Nonrecurrences, 1944–2007

193

7.4 Inclusion and Peace after the Cold War: All Cases of Recurrence 199 and Nonrecurrence, by Political Behavior, 1988–2007 8.1 Key Contributions and Shortcomings of the Main Theoretical 225 Approaches to Peacebuilding

Acknowledgments long in the making, and I am grateful for the support of many institutions and individuals in that process. I was honored to receive a senior fellowship at the US Institute of Peace in 2008–9 for this project, then titled “Making Peace Stick.” My fellowship at the Institute was rewarding not just for the stimulating intellectual environment but also for my supportive colleagues, including Ginny Bouvier, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, and Shira Lowinger. I am also grateful for support I received as a visiting scholar at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University. Thanks to the director, Bruce Jones, and to the former deputy director, Rahul Chandran, for their support and friendship. This book benefited in many intangible ways from my close collaborations with the International Peace Institute (IPI), especially with Elizabeth Cousens, Jenna Slotin, and Vanessa Wyeth, as part of IPI’s peacebuilding project. Indeed the idea for the book first emerged during a 2006 event organized by IPI for the UN Peacebuilding Commission, its first informal meeting even before it was formally convened. The policy implications of the book have been honed through my ongoing engagement with the UN System, often through IPI and the Center on International Cooperation. I am grateful to my colleagues in the School of International Service at American University, including our encouraging deans, Lou Goodman and Maria Green Cowles. I especially want to acknowledge my supportive colleagues in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program, notably our dedicated director, Ron Fisher, our inspirational founding director, Abdul Aziz Said, and our talented coordinator, Becca Davis. Many thanks also to Georgetown University Press and especially to my editor, Don Jacobs, for his support and flexibility. Numerous individuals contributed directly to the research and content of this project. The economist John Schmitt worked with me to prepare a quantitative analysis of civil war recurrence that was presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the International Studies Association. His quantitative skills and thoughtful analysis were invaluable in my drafting of that paper, which lay the groundwork

THIS BOOK WAS

xii

Acknowledgments

for the quantitative analysis and the analysis of quantitative methods in chapter 2. Several research assistants provided indispensable help. Yolande Bouka and Heather Svanidze were especially helpful in researching the entire pool of civil wars to determine which qualified as full-fledged “recurrences” and “nonrecurrences.” Leah Gates and Heather Svanidze provided research support with the statistical tables and the fifteen core cases of recurrence and the twenty-seven cases of nonrecurrence. A number of people also provided feedback on portions of the draft, for which I am very appreciative: Peter Andreas, Pierre Englebert, Tracy Fitzsimmons, Leah Gates, Sanjeev Khagram, Madalene O’Donnell, Jim Ron, Susan Shepler, and Bill Stanley. My thanks also to International Studies Association panelists who commented on the quantitative portion: Pamela Aall, Michael Brown, Chantal Jonge de Oudraat, and Roy Licklider. I also thank the anonymous reviewers whose feedback improved the manuscript, including the reviewers of an early version of the Liberia case study for the journal Civil Wars. Of course, I am responsible for any errors of fact or judgment. Several friends have provided intangible but very welcome support as I worked on the volume. I owe an enormous debt of thanks to Carol Bergman, Bob Burke, Andy Fleischmann, David Holiday, Libby Ingham, Will Ingham, Sanjeev Khagram, Robert Lynch, Caroline Moser, Madalene O’Donnell, Peter Sollis, Bill Stanley, and Missy Wolff-Burke. My thanks also to my extended family, from my parents, David and JoAnn Call, and my siblings, to my parents-in-law, Don and Carolyn Fitzsimmons, whose support in different ways aided my ability to complete the book. Finally, my wonderful wife, Tracy, and fantastic children, Shayla, Jag, and Dash, have been unfailingly patient and supportive, and it is to them I dedicate this enterprise.

Introduction The Tragedy of Civil War Recurrence

WHY DOES PEACE,

once it is widely seen as consolidated, fail? Consider the tragic experience of Liberia. In 1996 a cease-fire between rebel factions and an embattled government ended a bloody war that had taken 200,000 lives and displaced most of the country during the previous seven years. With the election of a new president in 1997 and the cessation of combat, the war was deemed over. Peacekeepers went home, postconflict reconstruction drew to an end, and scholars analyzed the causes of the war’s beginning and end. However, by 2000, a new civil war, involving many of the same fighters and same issues, broke out in Liberia. The second war displaced hundreds of thousands anew, and another 150,000 were killed. Many of these new casualties were women and children who had developed cautious optimism with the end of the prior war, only to see their hopes dashed and their loved ones once again threatened, conscripted, or brutally killed. Liberia’s experience—a devastating relapse into armed conflict after having achieved apparent peace—is shared by other countries: Lebanon in 1975, Nicaragua in the early 1980s, Russia in Chechnya in 1999, Burundi in 1993, the Central African Republic in 2001, Haiti in 2004, and East Timor in 2006. In the latter two cases, as in Liberia, renewed hostilities followed lengthy expensive international peacekeeping operations that concluded amid declarations of success. Given the expanding investment of troops and international resources to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Iraq, and Kosovo, ensuring that peace “sticks” is more important than ever. What explains why peace sticks in some cases but not in others? Other scholars have only partially addressed this question. Many have studied peace agreements and have postulated that successful implementation depends alternately on the character of the agreement, on the degree of commitment among the parties, on the commitment of outside third parties, or on implementation efforts (Fortna 2004a, 2004b; Hampson 1996; Harbom, Högbladh, and Wallentsteen 2006; Walter 2004; Stedman, Rothchild, and Cousens 2002). Yet these studies

2

Introduction

omit cases of civil wars (often with salient international elements) that have not ended in peace agreements, such as Kosovo and East Timor in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Haiti in 2004, and Sri Lanka in 2009. These cases of victory (and, for opponents, defeat) constitute an important and growing component of civil wars today. Other researchers have examined the effectiveness of peacekeeping as a tool. Yet their research does not address societies where peacekeeping has been viewed as successful but armed conflicts still recur, as in Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor. Much statistical work and survival analysis examine recurrences after a cease-fire, with either no minimal threshold once a cease-fire is reached, or a minimal threshold of only one or two months of a cease-fire holding to enter the data set as a terminated war (e.g., Fortna 2004a). Such data sets lump together very “young” cease-fires, where the population or parties may well believe that the cease-fire is temporary or tactical, with stable cease-fires, where most citizens genuinely believe the war to have ended. Here I am not interested in short-lived cease-fires that unsurprisingly fail but rather cease-fires characterized by widespread expectation that the prior war is over and where citizens act according to that expectation—that is, where most former combatants demobilize, most refugees return, most political parties compete for power, and civil society modifies its behavior to reflect a stable cease-fire. Rather than examine cases where the seed of peace has been planted but its emergence remains uncertain, this book is concerned with countries where the sapling of peace has sprung forth and survived its first year.

The Importance of This Book This book’s inquiry—why does peace fail?—is important for four reasons. First, civil wars are devastating. During the past fifteen years, civil wars have collectively caused more deaths than any other form of organized mass violence—international wars, genocide, or terrorism. In addition a large portion of civil wars occur in countries that have experienced prior civil war. According to one data set, 30 percent of all civil wars that started between 1988 and 1999 represented recurrences of prior civil wars that had ended in the previous ten years.1 The recent World Development Report (World Bank 2011, 1.10) claims an even higher percentage of onsets in postwar countries for the 1990s—67 percent—and a much higher rate, 90 percent, for the first decade of the 2000s. Thus the failure of peace is a principal factor in the outbreak of the most common and deadly form of warfare in the world today. Second, once a process of peace consolidation is on the path to success, its failure is doubly devastating. Renewed conflict is destructive for the populations that are once again uprooted after beginning to rebuild, that again fear for their

Introduction

3

loved ones’ survival, and that see fragile economic regeneration evaporate. But it is deeply demoralizing as well. Investing in a renewed peace in one’s country and community is more difficult when prior hopes and investment have been shattered. The disillusion inspired by bloodshed after its apparent end extends also to outside peacemakers, peacekeepers, and peacebuilders. Failure after apparent success calls into question the entire effort and industry of peace. Third, these cases represent a new burden for international peacekeeping. Many observers are familiar with cases where international troops have been redeployed after peacekeepers withdrew amid failure (e.g., in Angola in 1991, and the former Yugoslavia in 1992). However, redeploying peacekeepers after a prior peacekeeping operation seemed to succeed—and then peace failed—is a new challenge for the international community. In only three cases has a UN peacekeeping operation been deployed after another had been previously withdrawn amid widespread perception of a successful peace process. These cases—Liberia in 2003, Haiti in 2004, and East Timor 2006—all occurred in the past decade and only three years before the formation of a new United Nations body designed to tackle these challenges, the UN Peacebuilding Commission. Fourth, these cases go to the heart of the contemporary peacebuilding challenge: How, in the wake of bloody war, can external actors help foster a society that can resolve its conflicts without recourse to mass violence? With the exception of the United States–led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in recent years the international community can claim some successes in stabilizing postwar societies. From Bosnia and Kosovo to Sierra Leone and Liberia, from Georgia and Moldova to Azerbaijan and Haiti, international troops have enjoyed some success in quashing destabilizing threats to postwar societies and their regimes. However, the threat of renewed warfare underlies the decision to retain external troops in all these cases. What is the exit strategy for these international troops? For many analysts, postwar state building is the answer to the challenge of consolidating peace. Building self-sustaining legitimate and effective states obviates the need for foreign troops, reduces the international peacekeeping burden, and advances numerous international security objectives. As Fukuyama (2004, ix) says, “State building . . . should be at the top of our agenda.” These cases— where peace has been secured but subsequently failed—offer a window into the factors that determine state-building success and failure, and its relation to successful peacebuilding.

The Central Argument The first finding of this book, which precedes the main argument, is that no single factor or variable accounts for success in consolidating peace and averting war recurrence. Although this may seem unsurprising, some scholarly studies

4

Introduction

suggest that only one or two variables are responsible for the onset or recurrence of war. This examination of the pool of cases of reversion to internal armed conflict after civil war decisively undermines such monocausal claims. Nevertheless, this study finds that one factor seems to play a more common causal role in civil war recurrence than others. This central finding is that political exclusion, rather than economic or social factors, plays the decisive role in most cases of civil war recurrence: Political exclusion acts as a trigger for renewed armed conflict.2 Conversely, political inclusion, including but not limited to powersharing arrangements, is highly correlated with consolidation of peace. The contribution of this book lies not only in its identification of this factor in almost all recent cases of nonrecurrence of war and in cases of renewed armed conflict after apparent peace, but also in its critique and subsequent development of current postwar peacebuilding theory in ways that respond to this finding. Political exclusion here refers to the perceived or actual deprivation of an expected opportunity for former warring parties, or the social groups associated with them, to participate in state administration, through either appointed posts or elective office. In separatist struggles, those opportunities are concentrated in authority over a substate territory. Inclusionary postwar policies respond both to the need for security guarantees among former rebels and to the need for some degree of voice in governance among formerly mobilized elites. Inclusionary behavior corresponds very closely (but not perfectly) to an ability to avoid civil war recurrence. Two further characteristics define exclusion. First, political exclusion here refers to processes rather than substantive policy outcomes.3 It refers to participation in political or policy processes: the opportunity either to compete in the electoral arena or to enjoy representation in appointed state offices. Political processes signify both the potential and the actual exercise of power, and thus they provide a means of attaining desired ends. Chief among these ends is security for the group and its adherents or associated populations. As such, participation in the security forces (military or police) is an especially important arena of state inclusionary or exclusionary behavior affecting the likelihood of subsequent violent conflict. It is especially perilous for postconflict regimes to violate expectations about the ability of formerly armed and mobilized social groups to participate in the policing and defense of their own country or territory. Second, political exclusion is contextually defined rather than measured by a single objective standard of participation. Exclusion triggers a return to armed conflict if it violates the expectations of either a faction of the prior war or a social group associated with that faction. That is, exclusion refers here not to a globally applicable objective level of political participation but to subjective perceptions among former warring factions about whether the state engages in

Introduction

5

exclusion based on prior understandings that emerged from prior war termination. As noted above, these expectations may concern either an opportunity for electoral participation or for representation within the armed forces, the police, legislative posts, or Cabinet positions. And these expectations are often heavily shaped by peace agreements, which serve as an initial indicator of minimal expectations. However, expectations are also shaped by promises by one party to others and by initial practices that are subsequently changed. Actions that may not be formally proscribed in an agreement can constitute a violation of expected inclusionary behavior, such as firing or persecuting a number of members of one or more parties associated with the prior war. Such a definition complicates, but also enriches, cross-national comparisons. The book also reaches a number of other conclusions. First, the nature of peace and the factors that shape peace depend in important ways on the global normative context. The findings suggest that how wars ended during the Cold War, and the role of exclusion and inclusionary behavior, were not the same as after the Cold War. Having been shaped by changes in great power policies and transnational expectations, the parties to warfare reach negotiated settlements more often. More pertinent, exclusionary behavior, which correlated with nonrecurrence of armed conflict during the Cold War, has since then ceased to successfully suppress the recurrence of armed conflict. The implications of this finding are explored in the concluding chapters. The research also finds that inclusionary behavior closely corresponds to successful peacebuilding in the post–Cold War era. In separatist struggles, inclusionary behavior involves a satisfactory degree of representation in the governing apparatus of the relevant territory, through either appointive or elective positions, including the forces providing security in the separatist territory. In this sense inclusivity refers to perceived chances to participate in state institutions more broadly than simply the integration of former enemies into state institutions. This form of “territorial powersharing” is a form of powersharing broadly defined. I find that the integration of former enemies into state political or security institutions is the norm among successful cases of peace consolidation after civil wars ended through negotiated settlements. Similarly, powersharing broadly defined (either through integration of given state institutions or through divvying up different state agencies without internal integration of each) is the norm among successfully consolidated peace agreements. However, neither integration nor powersharing is necessary for inclusionary peacebuilding. Inclusionary peacebuilding also includes the opportunity to compete electorally, without any given guaranteed state offices. Thus inclusionary peacebuilding generally involves powersharing but may also involve “power dividing” (Roeder 2005), so long as the expectations of the chances for participation in politics, including key

6

Introduction

state offices or posts, are not violated. Ultimately, the importance of inclusion and exclusion leads this book to emphasize the role of legitimate authority and to advocate an approach I call legitimacy-focused peacebuilding.

Contributions to Theory This book’s findings contribute to theory by calling into question four dominant understandings or approaches to civil wars and postwar peacebuilding. First and foremost, it challenges prevailing theories that economic factors, especially poverty and a decline in economic growth, are the first place to look for factors in civil war recurrence. The influential work of Paul Collier and his colleagues has especially given rise to approaches emphasizing poverty, declining economic growth, and the role of natural resources and export dependency.4 Instead, this book shows that political decisions that exclude certain groups—whether they are in governance, security, or economic policy—are the first line of factors in understanding why certain countries experience recurrence and others do not. Drawing on processes within qualitative studies of numerous cases, rather than risk factors in quantitative analysis, the book may offer the most compelling antidote to the prevalent economy-centered approaches. Second, the book’s findings point to a central role for national actors in the success or failure of peace. Much of the recent literature on civil wars and peacebuilding explores the role of peacekeeping troops, “liberal” or “republican” models, or mediators in the duration of peace settlements (e.g., Fortna 2008, 2004a; Paris 2004; Barnett 2006; Ghani and Lockhart 2008; Walter 2004). The book’s case studies confirm some of the important findings of this research. Most important, the presence of third-party military troops in maintaining stability once a cease-fire is reached seems very important in some cases. Three recurrences took place within two years of the departure of international troops, and most analysts believe that several “frozen conflicts” would fall into recurrence if foreign peacekeeping troops were to depart. However, this book finds that national actors’ calculations hold a privileged and underemphasized role in the determinants of civil war recurrence. The decisions by national elites about how to treat former enemies, both in the state and in society, prove crucial in peacebuilding’s failure and success. The book suggests that international actors might have more impact through engagement with strategies for more inclusionary behavior by elected governments. Third, the book points the recent state-building literature in a new direction: a focus on state legitimation rather than state capacity. Several scholars and policymakers have embraced “state building” as the principal solution to the problem not only of “failed states” but also of postconflict reconstruction

Introduction

7

and peacebuilding (Fukuyama 2004; Ghani and Lockhart 2008; Chesterman, Ignatieff, and Thakur 2005; Call 2008a; Brinkerhoff 2007; Barnett 2006). In addition, international organizations like the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and donor governments have moved to institutionalize state building as an element of development and postconflict recovery (Stewart and Brown 2006; Keating and Knight 2004; Whitman 1999). Although this work conceives state building as encompassing both legitimacy and capacity, scholarship and policy work have actually stressed capacity over legitimacy (see Fukuyama 2004). Doyle and Sambanis (2000, 2006), for instance, emphasize the role of “local capacity” and “international capacities.”5 Ghani and Lockhart (2008) discuss legitimacy, but they treat it as one sector among ten whose capacity requires strengthening. In contrast, the approach here demonstrates the salience of legitimacy of postwar regimes—especially that component of legitimacy that derives from inclusionary practices of salient social groups—rather than capacity. Fourth, the book finds that the emphasis on electoral democracy by international actors as the framework for postwar governance (Ponzio 2010) is insufficient, and perhaps harmful. In particular recurrence in Liberia and three other cases occurred once elected governments, absent the presence of international peacekeeping troops, felt sufficiently secure in power to exclude certain social actors or factions from the state, and thus sparked renewed armed conflict. These findings contradict prevalent international practice more than scholarship, which has long criticized placing elections at the center of democracy promotion. Recent research has proposed expanded understandings of governance in postconflict societies beyond “democracy” to encompass different forms of distributing power and animate inclusion and participation. This book reinforces these trends. In sum the research here contrasts with and challenges four dominant trends in postconflict scholarship: the emphasis on economic factors in the literature on civil wars, a separate emphasis in the peacebuilding literature on international determinants of peace, the focus on state capacity in the state-building literature, and the promotion of electoral democracy as the unquestioned and optimal framework for governance in postwar societies.

Research Design and Methodology What is the best way to approach this research endeavor? This section establishes key definitions and thresholds of concepts and variables. It starts by clarifying the threshold for the “failure” of postwar peace, then sets forth the pool of cases, and then explains my methodology.

8

Introduction

The Object of Study: When Has Peace “Failed”? A number of standards for “failed peace” exist. Some of these are economic in nature (poor countries are structurally violent), some are political (dictatorships cannot experience “true” peace), and some are institutional (weak states are never stable).6 As its main object of study, this book adopts a circumscribed definition of the failure of peace: the recurrence of internal armed conflict where a prior civil war is widely perceived to have ended. This definition is for a minimalist “negative peace,” or the absence of armed conflict (Galtung 1964, 1–4). Most studies of “peacebuilding” adopt a broader concept of peace, something that is more than the simple absence of war. Some scholars (Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Call 2008c; Call and Cousens 2008) advocate a standard that includes some minimal level of nonauthoritarian politics, to which I am sympathetic. Others adopt a “root causes” discourse that addresses structural violence (Paris 2004; Richmond and Franks 2009). Why, then, have I adopted this minimalist standard of success / failure? For two reasons. First, the purpose of this study is strictly to examine the recurrence of warfare, and the recurrence of organized mass violence is the sole universally accepted indicator of the failure of peace. For anyone who has lived in the midst of war, its recurrence is a worthwhile phenomenon of study. No matter how broad the concept of peace one embraces, the unique, commonly shared standard of failure in armed contests for state power is the return of organized armed conflict.7 Even though statistical research indicates that peace is more likely to be sustainable without poverty, inequality, or political unrest, peace is defined here so it can coexist with poverty, economic inequalities, social inequalities, and even nondemocratic or authoritarian regimes. Second, the study grew out of a lacuna regarding a core need in the realm of policy. In May 2006 I was an invited guest at the first informal meeting of a new UN body, the Peacebuilding Commission. At this meeting, which had been organized by two think tanks (an analysis of which I drafted; see CIC and IPI 2006), the just-named thirty-one members of the commission deliberated what its purpose and methods might be. One striking thing about the meeting was the assumption, articulated by several nations’ ambassadors to the United Nations, that preventing war recurrence was the central aim of the new body.8 Despite the vast and growing literature on peacekeeping, postconflict reconstruction, and peacebuilding, few scholars had analyzed civil war recurrence, and not a single book addressed the topic. That meeting led to a proposal (which received support from the US Institute of Peace, from New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, and from American University) to research this question of primary concern for this new UN body: how to prevent internal armed conflicts from recurring, especially where UN efforts had seemed to succeed.

Introduction

9

One of the motives of this study was specifically to inform policymaking in cases where postconflict peacebuilding operations involving significant international efforts had failed. For the purposes of this exercise, I heuristically examined the universe of UN peacebuilding operations that had succeeded, failed, or resulted in mixed outcomes. Aside from peacekeeping operations that never reached any level of recognized stability (e.g., Angola and Somalia), there were only three cases in which perceived peacekeeping “successes” ended in recurrent armed conflict to such an extent that it was necessary for the UN to redeploy a new peace operation. In each of these three cases—Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor—despite an earlier perception that the mandate had been fulfilled and a minimal level of stability had been achieved, subsequent armed conflict nevertheless erupted to such an extent that a new UN peacekeeping force was necessary.9 These cases exclude UN peacekeeping failures where troops withdrew amid widespread perception of failure, as from Somalia in 1995 and Angola in 1997.10 Measuring the Failure of Peace: The Pool of Cases How can one measure the recurrence of organized armed conflict in a post–civil war society? To preclude bias in selecting the pool of cases, I drew on a wellregarded data set, specifically that of Fearon and Laitin (hereafter F&L), as the best one for civil wars for quantitative analysis across a large number of years, with a relatively large number of control variables available. Following this data set, I use countries rather than civil wars themselves as units of analysis, and I develop a pool of cases from a list of countries that have experienced recurring civil wars. As with the data sets of Doyle and Sambanis (2000) and Sambanis (2004), F&L draw on the industry standard first introduced by David Singer and Melvin Small of using 1,000 minimum battle-related deaths (including civilians) for inclusion in the pool of cases of “wars” in their Correlates of War Project.11 F&L code a civil war where a state in a given year engages against an organized nonstate challenger for state power in an internal armed conflict resulting in at least 100 deaths in that year, with a cumulative total of 1,000 battle deaths (including civilians). The resulting data set includes sixty-eight countries that experienced civil war onsets between 1946 and 1999.12 However, many cases of civil wars revert to armed conflict sufficient to mark a failure of peace but whose levels of violence do not reach 1,000 battle deaths. These armed conflicts (of a lesser status than “civil wars”) are seen both inside their societies and by outside actors as failures of consolidation of peace. These cases should not be counted as successes but as failures. Consequently, I lower the level of “recurrence” from the 1,000 battle deaths conventionally required for a full “civil war” to include armed conflicts that appear in the data set of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program

10

Introduction

(hereafter the PRIO data set). Their threshold to count as an “armed conflict” requires only 25 battle-related deaths in a single year. This choice has three flaws. First, the data for these lower-level armed conflicts are not available for all countries before 1988. Where they are available, they are less reliable because news sources were themselves not as reliable, available, or accessible as in more recent years. Consequently, I have used internal armed conflicts to supplement and bring up to date the F&L data set, covering only the period 1999–2007. Second, it also includes a number of cases that do not correspond to common concepts of “civil war” or even a smaller-scale armed conflict. Some of these cases may be better characterized as coups that involved organized violence (as in the Central African Republic), sporadic and poorly organized violence with ill-defined nonstate armed factions (e.g., Haiti in 2004), or conflicts with very few deaths (e.g., East Timor in 2006). Nevertheless, these armed conflicts do represent a failed peace process, and they should be included even though our language and concepts prove inadequate. Including these lower-level armed conflicts as recurrences offers the advantage of including a number of cases widely considered relevant for the failure of peace. Internal armed conflicts often prove destabilizing for the state or regime and hold tragic consequences for the population. Indeed, a civil war with thousands of battle deaths is not necessarily more destabilizing than an armed conflict of a few dozen. Consider East Timor, where riots and armed combat between different factions of the army and police in 2006 led to the fall of the government, the displacement of tens of thousands of people, and an Australian-led peacekeeping intervention of 1,300 troops. Yet only thirty-four persons died in the fighting. Conversely, few would maintain that the Aceh independence struggle, which resulted in more than five thousand deaths in its 1998–2005 phase, threatened the stability of Indonesia. Or consider Haiti’s recurrence in 2004 that involved few armed confrontations and “only” dozens of casualties yet led to political upheaval, an interruption of the regime, the ouster of the president, and the deployment of foreign troops and a UN operation that remains as of this writing. In truth this book is about civil wars that recur as “internal armed conflict recurrences after 1999,” but this seems rather cumbersome as a moniker. Thus I still use “civil war recurrence,” even though this label should be understood in a broader sense. Third and last, the lowering of the threshold of deaths to twenty-five for recurrences also may draw in cases that are never referred to by international or national analysts as even an armed conflict. After reviewing the secondary literature, I have therefore excluded a single case that would fall into this category— Azerbaijan’s 2004 instances of violent attacks involving a few dozen deaths—

Introduction

11

from inclusion in the pool of cases of “recurrence.” I could find no record of any secondary literature referring to this as a “new” or second armed conflict, but only as isolated instances of violence. Having offered the above explanation of what count as “civil war” and “recurrence” in the definition of “failed peace,” I offer the following list, which gives a more detailed characterization of the definition used here of the failure of postwar peace: the recurrence of internal armed conflict where a prior civil war is widely perceived to have ended: • “Armed conflicts” do not necessarily rise to the level of a “civil war,” and thus generally involve a lower minimum threshold of deaths. Thus recurrences include both recurrent civil wars and renewed violence that does not rise to the level of a civil war but qualifies as the lesser “internal armed conflict.” • “Civil wars” and “armed conflicts” involve contestation for political power over a given territory, usually either the state or a region seeking some characteristics of a state (autonomy). This definition thus excludes social violence that involves no attempt to capture some state power. • An “internal” armed conflict does not preclude the involvement of external armed actors. The definition holds so long as one nonstate armed group credibly claims to represent an internal population. • The requirement that the prior conflict is “widely perceived” to have ended excludes short-term cease-fires, and it limits the cases to those that have seen a longer period (defined here as at least a calendar year) without armed combat. • Although “new” armed conflicts in postwar societies can also be devastating, a “recurrent” conflict conceptually requires some relation to a prior armed conflict. Hence, the definition here requires that at least one nonstate actor (either the organization or its senior leaders) be active in both conflicts. • The definition does not prejudge the juridical status of the territory where the conflicts occurred. Thus recurrent conflicts are included even if the state’s name or borders shift in the interim. In practice, it is extremely difficult to measure these characteristics of a war or a society sufficiently to create a pool of cases. The distinction between an “armed conflict” and a “civil war” also runs into problems. Despite rapidly expanding research on society-based internal armed conflicts that do not involve government forces, the term here is restricted to those in which government forces are a

12

Introduction

faction and the acquisition of some state power is at stake.13 All major data sets of internal armed conflict use a total of 1,000 battle-related deaths as the threshold for when an “internal armed conflict” qualifies as a “civil war.” This distinction is arbitrary but useful.14 Similarly, knowing when a war is “widely perceived” to have ended is difficult to judge and impossible to standardize across numerous cases over time. Certainly such perceptions can be documented through an examination of how observers describe wars, describe periods after a cease-fire, and describe the events that may constitute recurrence. For instance, Liberia and Chechnya are unusual cases insofar as scholars and average citizens speak of a “first” and a “second” civil war—a clear indication of a widespread perception of war termination. However, such language is not employed in some other cases that constitute recurrence, such as the counterrevolution in “postrevolutionary” Nicaragua from 1981 to 1990. In cases like Cambodia (1975–78), quantitative indicators misleadingly suggest that situations of one-sided violence, or even genocide, be scored as periods of interwar “peace.” As a proxy for countries “at peace,” I start with countries in which Fearon and Laitin (2003) show that a civil war ended for at least a calendar year. In determining a perception of peace, I supplement the F&L list with an analysis of discourse in public news accounts and policy analysis that recognizes an end to the first war. Because survey data are rarely available, I rely on analysts’ claims and the secondary literature about the extent to which the population understood the war to be over. I also draw secondarily on these analysts’ own perceptions about whether the first civil war ever was concluded. I count cases as having concluded a prior war if at any time in the intervening period the widespread perception emerges that the first civil war had ended. Hence it does not matter if the population distrusted a cease-fire or peace accord in the immediate aftermath of its adoption or if the parties had little faith in a peace accord at the moment of signing it. What matters is whether, at some point subsequent to a cease-fire or peace agreement (but before any recurrence), the majority of citizens perceived the prior war to have ended and acted accordingly. One indicator of this perception, for instance, is the return of many refugees. Another is the demobilization or incorporation into the armed forces of a significant majority of former combatants. This standard is still compatible with some minority of people believing that the “peace” was illusory and that postwar stability represented only a lull in the fighting and prelude to renewed combat. Ultimately, where secondary works clearly belie the F&L categorization of a period of interwar peace, such cases are dropped. Omitted cases include Cambodia (1970–75, 1978–92), Senegal (1989–2001, 2003), and Somalia (1981–2002, 2006–). Nevertheless, expectations and perceptions about warfare are fluid, contextual, and hard to determine.15 They are also shaped by interaction among the parties

Introduction

13

(Hampson 1996) and by third parties (Walter 2004). In addition, the parties to conflict are often divided and their interests change. This study tries to be faithful to the available evidence about expectations and their evolution, but this remains an imperfect process. Finally, a change in the status of a state poses challenges for categorizing such wars as internal versus external. Consider the difficulty of coding the wars of the former Yugoslavia after the 1991 declarations of independence by Croatia and Bosnia, or the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo in which the Kosovo Liberation Army played an enormous role as the ground troops. Analyzing war recurrence where the status of the territory changes across decades is especially difficult.16 Many wars for independence (excluded from most data sets) are shortly followed by related internal armed conflicts.17 None of the options is appealing, whether it means (1) counting the recurrence as a single new war within the new state (ignoring the prior war), (2) counting the two wars as new wars in each of two states (ignoring their relation to one another and dropping the recurrence), or (3) counting them as two wars within the new state (which did not exist during the first war). Although I adopt the third option here (namely, regarding East Timor, whose war for independence within Indonesia was followed by an internal armed conflict in 2006), no choice here is optimal. What, then, is the pool of cases of recurrence of armed conflict? Given the difficulties described above, I develop a list using these data sets that approximates the definition above. I use F&L’s sixty-eight cases as the initial pool, and add any cases of recurrence of these civil wars as armed conflicts in the PRIO data set. Thus the pool of cases of “recurrence” consists of • any country among F&L’s sixty-eight countries that experienced a civil war after a prior civil war followed by at least one calendar year of peace (thus Nicaragua in 1978–79 and 1981–88 counts as a recurrence, whereas Afghanistan’s entries of 1978–92 and 1992– do not); • added to this list, any subsequent civil war or internal armed conflict in the PRIO data set in a country that appears on F&L’s list of civil wars; • recurrence requires at least one nonstate actor common to both armed conflicts (possibly subsequently as the state, or vice versa), so I thus exclude cases of “new wars” in the same country (or the same territory under a different name) in which none of the prior nonstate actors are involved, and I focus instead on only “repeat” or “recurrent” conflicts. These categories permit one to sort all countries into three categories: those that did not experience any new wars after a given civil war (nonrecurrence),

14

Introduction

Table I.1 All Civil Wars and Recurrences, 1946–99, plus Recurrences as Internal Armed Conflicts, 1999–2007 Nonrecurrent Civil Wars Angola, 1975–2002 Bangladesh, 1976–97 Bolivia, 1952 Bosnia, 1992–95 Costa Rica, 1948 Croatia, 1992–95 Cuba, 1958–59 Cyprus, 1974 Djibouti, 1993–94 Dominican Republic, 1965 El Salvador, 1979–92 Greece, 1945–49 Guatemala, 1968–96 Jordan, 1970 South Korea, 1949–50 Laos, 1960–73 Moldova, 1992 Morocco, 1975–88 Mozambique, 1976–95 Nepal, 1997–2006 Papua New Guinea, 1988–98 Paraguay, 1947 Sierra Leone, 1991–2000 South Africa, 1983–94 Tajikistan, 1992–97 United Kingdom, 1969–99 South Vietnam, 1960–75

New Civil War, Same Country or Territory

Civil War (and Internal Armed Conflict) Recurrences

Algeria, 1962–63, 1992–present Argentina, 1955, 1973–77 Chad, 1965–2002, 2005–present China, 1946–50, 1991–present Colombia, 1948–62, 1963– present Democratic Republic of Congo, 1960–65, 1977–78, 1996– 2001, 2006–present Ethiopia, 1974–92, 1997–present Georgia (Abkhazia), 1992–94 Indonesia, 1950, 1953, 1958–60, 1965–present Iran, 1978–79, 1979–93, 1984 Iraq, 1959–59, 1961–74, 2004– present Kenya, 1963–67, 1991–93 Nigeria, 1967–70, 1980–85 Pakistan, 1971, 1973–77, 1993–99, 2004–present Philippines, 1946–52, 1968– present Turkey, 1977–80, 1984–present Yemen, 1962–69, 1986–87, 1994

Azerbaijan, 1992–94, 2005a Burundi, 1972, 1988, 1993–2006 Cambodia, 1970–75, 1978–92a Central African Republic, 1996–97, 2001–2 China, 1950–51, 1956–59 East Timor (Indonesia), 1975–99, 2006 Georgia (South Ossetia), 1992–94, 2004 Haiti, 1991–95, 2004 Lebanon, 1958, 1975–90 Liberia, 1989–96, 1999–2003 Mali, 1989–94, 2007 Nicaragua, 1978–79, 1981–88 Peru, 1981–95, 2007 Russia (Chechnya), 1994–96, 1999–present Rwanda, 1962–65, 1990–2002 Senegal, 1989–2001, 2003a Sri Lanka, 1971, 1983–2002, 2003–presenta Somalia, 1981–2002, 2006– presenta Sudan, 1963–72, 1983–present Zimbabwe, 1972–79, 1983–87

a

Insufficient interwar peace.

those that experienced a “new” civil war or multiple civil wars simultaneously (or, after 1999, internal armed conflict), and those that experienced a related “recurrent” or “repeat” civil war (or, after 1999, internal armed conflict). Table I.1 presents all cases of civil wars that originated between 1946 and 1999, plus any instances of renewed civil war during that period, plus any renewed internal armed conflict from 1999 to 2007.18 As one can see, the total pool of what I shall for simplicity call “war recurrence” (recognizing that this refers to civil war recurrences from 1946 to 2007, plus internal armed conflicts from 1999 to 2007) contains twenty countries.19 The cases of interest to this book are the twenty-seven countries of nonrecurrence in the first column and the twenty countries in the third column that experienced “recurrent” or “repeat” civil wars (including, as described, countries

Introduction

15

Table I.2 Fifteen Core Cases of Recurrence Burundi, 1872, 1988, 1993–2006 Central African Republic, 1996–97, 2001–2, 2006 China, 1950–51, 1956–59 East Timor (Indonesia), 1975–99, 2006 Georgia, 1992–94, 2004 Haiti, 1991–95, 2004 Lebanon, 1958, 1975–90 Liberia, 1989–96, 1999–2003 Mali, 1989–94, 2007 Nicaragua, 1978–79, 1981–88 Peru, 1981–1995, 2007 Russia, 1994–96, 1999–present Rwanda, 1962–65, 1990–2002 Sudan, 1963–72, 1983–2005 Zimbabwe, 1972–79, 1983–87

that experienced civil war, then peace, then a recurrent internal armed conflict after 1999). As indicated above, some “recurrences” are more clearly cases of an internal war, followed by a widely shared perception of peace, followed by reemergence to the level of armed conflict. In seeking to advance qualitative studies, I sought to exclude cases where the perception of peace was questionable. Thus, cases such as Cambodia’s interwar period between 1975 and 1978 (the most intense period of genocide) were not widely perceived periods of “peace.” Similarly, although the qualitative nature of the armed conflict in Somalia after 2006 differed from that of the prior few “interwar” years, the absence of a coherent state calls into question the comparability of this case. In addition, no widespread perception of “peace” prevailed. If we remove these cases, we are left with what I call the “core cases” of occurrence of destabilizing internal armed conflict after a post–civil war period of peace. (Note that no time limit for recurrence is used here.) Table I.2 contains these fifteen clearer core cases. These core cases serve as the basis for qualitative exploration (presented principally in chapters 3 through 7) of the book’s main question. Methodology The main research objective is to discern causal patterns that explain the recurrence of organized political violence after a civil war has concluded. I use three methods. First, drawing on qualitative and quantitative studies of all types of civil wars, I briefly present a series of linear regression analyses conducted in collaboration with the economist John Schmitt (Call and Schmitt 2009). The purpose of this quantitative component of the study is to determine whether and how

16

Introduction

recurrence differs from the more widely studied onset. I also explore the limits of quantitative methods and demonstrate the utility of qualitative methods for understanding the causes of civil war recurrence and its absence, nonrecurrence. Second, I present an extensive analysis of Liberia’s civil war recurrence as a heuristic case study of an exemplary recurrence of civil war. This case was selected initially as one of only three instances of reintroduction of UN peacekeeping troops after the completion, amid perceived success, of a prior UN mission. In addition, the Liberia case represents perhaps the clearest instance of a civil war that was considered concluded amid great fanfare with heavy international involvement, but then resumed with some of the same leading actors after a minimum period of stability. The case study is theory oriented, and thus is organized around and explicitly engages competing arguments about the causes of civil war onset and recurrence. To the extent that the case advances the hypothesized argument over economic or resource-based arguments, it constitutes what Eckstein (1975, 127) calls a “least-likely” case—one that holds particular significance to call a theory into question as a relationship is found where it is least likely (see also King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 209–12). This is because Liberia is generally considered one of the principal examples of resource-based arguments. Although I conducted brief field research in Liberia in 2004, the case study relies mainly on the extensive primary and secondary materials available. Because the Liberia case was instrumental in generating the argument, it is solely illustrative and thus does not test the argument about the role of exclusion in the context of understandings at the close of a prior war. I also explore the role of hypothesized factors in the recurrence of internal armed conflict, and I examine interaction among these factors. Third, I use structured, focused theoretically driven “mini–case studies” of the remaining fourteen cases of recurrence of armed conflict. Here I employ what Eckstein (1975, 108) calls a “plausibility probe” to explore the extent to which “candidate-theories” seem to be causally operative in other cases of recurrence of internal armed conflicts. Alexander George and Andrew Bennett (2005, 67) set forth the case method of “structured, focused comparison,” describing a structured case study as one where a common set of questions “are asked of each case,” and a focused comparison as one that “deals with only certain aspects of the historical cases examined.” I conduct structured, focused mini–case studies of the other fourteen “core” cases of recurrence. In them I probe the extent to which inclusion or exclusion underlies civil war recurrence, and thus examine the role of factors such as poverty, economic downturn, ethnic and religious fractionalization, dependence on natural resources exports, and geography. These mini–case studies run the risk of failing to provide sufficient detail for a rich and contextualized understanding of the case and processes, and they surely do not capture all the causal dynamics or even all the variables that a lengthier

Introduction

17

treatment might identify. Country experts may be frustrated. Nevertheless, I believe that a brief, focused analysis of the most pertinent hypothesized variables provides a persuasive and useful probe of the plausibility of the hypothesized causes of recurrence of armed conflict. Furthermore, each mini–case study explicitly seeks out variables or factors that might be relevant in examining other cases. In this sense the mini–case studies also perform a heuristic function of generating new (or reviving neglected) causal relationships. Because of their length, these fourteen case studies are broken into three separate discussions according to specific criteria: cases of recurrences of separatist armed conflicts, cases of nonseparatist armed conflicts that support the role of political exclusion, and four cases that seem not to conform to the main argument of the book. I then turn to the twenty-seven cases of civil wars that did not experience civil war between 1944 and 2007. Here I use midlevel generalizations rooted in mini–case studies that are not presented. However, correlations between nonrecurrence and hypothesized variables are shown for a handful of key variables. This analysis points strongly to a positive correlation between political inclusion of former enemies in political, security, or territorial mechanisms. Thus inclusionary behavior comes close to representing a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for nonrecurrence. Although each of these three methods is rather conventional, the methodological novelty of the book lies in showing the divergent results of each method and explicitly displaying its strengths and weaknesses. This book seeks to contribute to the study of civil wars and peacebuilding by clarifying, in a single book with a single object of inquiry, the strengths and weaknesses these three different methods offer.

Organization of the Book The book is divided into three parts. Part I includes two chapters, one containing theory and the other a quantitative exploration of civil war recurrence that establishes the need for the sort of qualitative research that follows. Chapter 1 examines what we know about the failure of peace, beginning with the extensive literature, mainly quantitative, on civil war onset and recurrence. The chapter then draws on the full range of literature on peacebuilding—distinguished by its a priori focus on external and national efforts to consolidate peace—to review the four main theoretical approaches to peacebuilding—liberal, republican, governance / state building, and critical—that frame the book’s theoretical issues. The final section of this chapter defines and expounds upon the key concepts of exclusion, inclusion, and state legitimacy. Chapter 2 draws on the earlier literature on civil war onset and recurrence to apply methods and identify what can be learned from the broader universe of

18

Introduction

cases of civil war onset and recurrence. After specifying variables and their rationale, I conduct a handful of linear regression analyses that specify how civil war onset differs from recurrence based on a well-known data set. The chapter then reflects on some of the systematic weaknesses of quantitative methods in the study of civil wars that also apply to my own findings. This analysis cautions scholars and policymakers against excessive reliance on quantitative research, including the celebrated causal role of poverty in civil war recurrence. It points to the need for extensive qualitative studies of civil war and its recurrence. Part II contains the qualitative empirics of the book. Chapter 3 contains the most extensive qualitative case study in the book, an examination of the causes of civil war recurrence in Liberia. This and the other mini–case studies in chapters 4 through 6 explicitly address competing or prominent arguments. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 then extend the analysis to the fourteen other core cases of internal armed conflicts, using the structured, focused mini–case studies. Chapter 4 examines separatist recurrences in the North / South recurrence in Sudan in 1983 after a decade of peace; the recurrence of Tibet’s independence struggle in 1956 after five years of stability following the 1950–51 uprising under Mao Zedong’s new Communist regime; South Ossetia’s recurrent armed conflict in 2004 after ten years of stability (my analysis stops before the 2008 Russianbacked conflict that led to de facto secession from Georgia of this province and Abkhazia); and Russia’s recurrent civil war in Chechnya in 1999 after three years of a negotiated settlement providing for provisional autonomy. Chapter 5 turns to nonsecessionist recurrences that support the main argument. The chapter begins by examining two cases of weak states that experienced recurrences: Haiti in 2004, after ten years of United Nations–supported peace following the United States–led restoration of President Aristide in 1994 after three years of violence; and the Central African Republic’s recurrence of armed conflict in 2001 after four years of stability. The chapter then takes up two cases whose recurrences of armed conflict represent a distinctive pattern (noted also by Atlas and Licklider 1999): victorious liberation movements that engage in exclusionary behavior against former allies once independence is achieved. These cases are East Timor’s destabilizing violence in 2006, and Zimbabwe’s relapse into violence in 1983 four years after independence had been achieved from Great Britain. Finally, the chapter analyzes Burundi and Rwanda in conjunction with one another, arguing that exclusion played a particular, chronic role in the recurrences in these two countries’ interrelated recurrent episodes of violence and civil war. Chapter 6 examines the cases of Lebanon, Mali, Peru, and Nicaragua, as well as, where the argument about exclusion is insufficient, pointing to other causal factors. In particular, regional dynamics, both neighboring states as well as the cross-border flows of goods and services and matériel, prove decisive in these

Introduction

19

cases. The interests and strategies of great powers also drive war recurrence in a certain small portion of the cases in the pool. Weak state institutions and poverty certainly correlate with most cases, but these factors require further specification and theoretical claims. In chapter 7 I turn to cases of nonrecurrence of civil war—twenty-seven civil wars that had not yet recurred as of 2007. Cases of nonrecurrence include Cuba in 1959, Jordan in 1970, Vietnam in 1975, El Salvador in 1992, Mozambique in 1992, South Africa in 1994, Guatemala in 1996, Papua New Guinea in 1998, and the United Kingdom / Northern Ireland in 1998. The chapter begins with observations about the historicity of civil war termination since World War II, and then examines different types of inclusionary behavior, especially different types of powersharing. I classify these cases by whether or not postwar regimes acted in ways that were inclusionary or exclusionary against the expectations of the main opposition groups. The chapter ends by examining exclusion and inclusion for the combined pool of the fifteen core cases of recurrence and the twenty-seven cases of nonrecurrence. The analysis shows that, in contrast to the Cold War period, exclusionary conduct in the contemporary era is likely to yield armed recurrence and resistance. Conversely, different forms of inclusionary conduct are a factor in virtually all cases of successful peace consolidation. Part III represents a twofold conclusion to the book. It consists of a chapter of conclusions related to theory, and another of conclusions related to policy and practice. Chapter 8 recaps the central findings of the empirical analysis, and it then reexamines theory in light of them. I first summarize how the empirics of the book call attention to specific shortcomings of the four dominant approaches to peacebuilding. I then propose a “legitimacy-focused peacebuilding” approach that draws on elements of the main approaches but differs from each, offering especially an alternative to the dominant “liberal peacebuilding” and political economic approaches. The chapter also considers some of the limitations of the research and of the concepts used in this field of inquiry, along with their broader implications for the study of civil wars and peacebuilding. Even as I was pleasantly surprised to identify certain causal patterns, the project simultaneously deepened questions I had about some of the concepts, terms, methods, and approaches found in the study of war and peace. Many of the assumptions of students, policymakers, and practitioners are based on rather rudimentary concepts and causal claims that do not capture the complexity and variation of these armed conflicts, the multiple paths to termination and recurrence, and the fluid cross-national and subnational processes and dynamics that shape what we call “civil wars” and “stability.” Chapter 9 turns to policy and practice. Social scientists tend to conclude their works by briefly explicating some policy implications of their research, then leaving those implications unanalyzed and untested. Unfortunately, even

20

Introduction

where research findings are sound, choices to take action to transform social reality in the theoretically desired direction can fail or even prove harmful. This chapter explores the policy implications and challenges posed by the findings of the previous chapters. I seek to anticipate negative consequences and to make considered judgments about how policymakers might incorporate these findings in ways that minimize harm. Notes 1. In this interval, Fearon and Laitin (2003) record thirty-seven civil war onsets worldwide. Of these, 11 (29.73 percent) were in states that had civil wars in the previous ten years, and twenty (54.05 percent) had experienced a prior civil war since the start of the data set in 1945. NB: This does not account for civil wars fought with different actors (i.e., not recurrence in the complete sense), nor does it include wars involving nonstate actors within a territory before it became an independent state. 2. Recent quantitative work similarly finds that political exclusion is crucial in civil war onset and secession movements. See Wimmer, Cederman, and Min (2009). 3. The relevant aspects of political exclusion evolve over time and geographical space, shaped by international interests and norms. Although policy outcomes seem to have been more relevant in earlier periods, the ability to participate in state institutions of decision making and security are the most frequent triggers of recurrence in the contemporary period. 4. See Collier (2002, 2007, 2008, 2009); Collier and Hoeffler (2002, 2004, 2006); Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom (2006a, 2006b); and Collier et al. (2003). Also see Ballentine and Sherman (2003). 5. For international capacities, Doyle and Sambanis (2006) refer to the presence of international troops as well as the breadth of their mandate, inter alia. Sambanis’s work (2007) identifies other risk factors for civil war onset and recurrence. 6. For a lengthier discussion of these concepts, and their advantages and disadvantages, see Call (2008c). 7. This definition excludes organized criminal violence as a standard of failure, as has occurred in postwar El Salvador, Guatemala, and South Africa, inter alia. For a discussion of the breadth of the problem of postwar criminal violence, and case studies, see Call (2007). 8. For more on the UN Peacebuilding Commission, see Martinetti (2007); Murithi (2008); Scott (2008); Street, Mollet, and Smith (2008); and CIC and IPI (2008). 9. Note that I am not equating peacekeeping and peacebuilding here. Instead, the redeployment of a peacekeeping force is used as an indicator of peacebuilding failure. To see the breakdown of all UN peacekeeping operations, and whether they were coded as successfully ending the prior war, see Call (2008c, table 1, 179). 10. For Eckstein (1975, 108), plausibility probes fall short of testing theories with “crucial cases” but are more disciplined than heuristic case studies.

Introduction

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11. David J. Singer and Melvin Small’s 1963 Correlates of War Project (most recent version 1997, also adapted and updated by several others, including Paul Collier and his colleagues in 2001) set the “industry standard” for quantitative cross-national analysis of warfare by social scientists. See the official Correlates of War Project homepage, www.correlatesofwar.org. 12. This formulation draws on their replication tables (which exclude their list of colonial wars) and condenses overlapping wars because for this study the country-year, rather than the war itself, is the unit of analysis. See Fearon and Laitin (2003, “Additional Tables for ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War,’ February 6, 2003,” appendix with list of wars, p. 7). 13. See the work of the Human Security Report Project of Simon Fraser University, especially its MiniAtlas on Human Security (2010), and Uppsala Conflict Data Program. 14. Classification of particular conflicts by states themselves is often highly political, as seen in the 2005–6 debate in the United States over whether Iraq was experiencing a civil war. States also resist the classification of a conflict as an internal armed conflict (much less a civil war) in order to elude the application of the laws of war. 15. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this point. 16. Fearon and Laitin (2003, 76), for instance, include colonial wars for independence in their data set of civil wars on the understanding that these should not a priori be excluded, counting Algeria’s war for independence as internal to France, etc. Yet when conflict recurs in Algeria, it appears as a new war altogether. Such problems are inherent to cross-national data collection and comparison. 17. Examples include recurrent armed conflicts in newly independent Algeria, Rwanda, Vietnam, and Burundi. 18. The table includes the initial civil war, which appears in the “recurrence” column if it corresponds to any repeat war, and in the “new war” column if subsequent wars involve none of the same nonstate actors. Walter (2004) refers to these types of civil wars as “repeat wars.” 19. Five of these countries—Burundi, Iraq, Lebanon, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka— experienced more than one repeat civil war. In addition, some countries (viz., China, Iraq, and Yemen) also experienced more than one “new” civil war as well as a “repeat” or “recurrent” civil war.

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Part I Why Peace Fails: Theory

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1 What Do We Know about Why Peace Fails? WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT why peace fails? Most relevant for answering this question are two key literatures that overlap: that on civil wars, and that on peacebuilding. The former addresses the causes and character of civil wars: why they occur, why they end, what makes them persist, what consequences they have, and so on. Part of this analysis involves the roles of external actors, but the units of analysis are generally countries (that experience civil wars or do not) and civil wars themselves. The latter literature—on peacebuilding—proposes and tests claims about the role of external, and sometimes internal, actions or interventions on the process of peace consolidation, stabilization, or war recurrence. Although the term “peacebuilding” has expanded to encompass preconflict prevention and wartime peacemaking efforts at mediation or negotiation, the bulk of publishing on peacebuilding refers to postconflict societies, and thus de facto exclusively addresses those societies that have experienced conflict and a cease-fire, either through victory or a negotiated settlement. Therefore, the bulk of peacebuilding research directly addresses the recurrence of armed conflict; however, the unit of analysis is not so much wars and countries at war as peace processes; international organizations and their structures, policies, or programs; or the combination of programs and actions undertaken by external and / or internal actors. Although some quantitative works can be considered to lie in this field (as well as in the “civil wars” literature, in some cases), the majority of the research in this peacebuilding literature is qualitative, either case studies, comparative work, policy analysis, or midlevel generalizations across several cases of peace processes or institutional structures or programs. In this chapter I first examine the literature on the onset and recurrence of civil wars. Some of this research is qualitative, but most works that are both influential and recent have tended to rely upon quantitative methods. The chapter then presents the dominant approaches found in the peacebuilding literature. I focus on four broad categories of understandings: the “liberal,” “republican,”

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Why Peace Fails: Theory

“state-building,” and “critical” approaches to peacebuilding. The concluding chapters (8 and 9) revisit these theoretical approaches in light of the book’s empirics. The third and final section of this chapter seeks to define and clarify the key concepts used throughout the book: exclusion, inclusion, and legitimacy.

What We Know about Civil Wars and Ethnic Conflict Civil war theorizing reflects the multiple disciplines of history, sociology, political science, social psychology, and economics. Influential understandings of civil war from the 1950s to the 1970s focused on national or ethnic groups and their desire for autonomy. Much of the early literature examined whether, and to what extent, ethnicity played a role in civil wars (e.g., Deutsch 1953; Shils 1957). Different perspectives prevail.1 Early analyses of the postcolonial struggles recognized the role of international power configurations, including the interaction of colonial authority patterns and tribal elites (Young 1965; Geertz 1963). Other approaches emphasize the role of social group (especially ethnic) composition, group capabilities, and group opportunities for insurrectionary challenges to the state. Gurr (1970) emphasized rational response to frustration, ethnic group capacities, and later the social opportunities for overcoming the collective action problem (Gurr 2000; Hegre et al. 2001). Following the Cold War, some researchers adapted the “security dilemma” to internal armed conflict, arguing that ethnic group misperceptions and fears regarding other groups’ actions trigger offensive armed actions (Walter and Snyder 1999; Posen 1993). In such approaches, externally provided guarantors of credible commitments (Fearon 1998) or third-party guarantees (Walter 1997, 2002) played a role in overcoming the security dilemma and ensuring peace. Others (Gagnon 1994) argued that ethnicity is a tool of entrepreneurial political leaders, or more broadly a basis for political or economic organization. Under this view, ethnic composition is not so determinative but interacts either with individual leadership or with forms of participation and representation that shape whether mass violence occurs. These approaches all share an emphasis on political or group grievance in civil wars’ onset. Greed over Grievance? In the 1900s scholars began to challenge the emphasis on grievance and identity. Most prominently, the Development Research Group of the World Bank, under the direction of Paul Collier, produced influential research that “spurred the creation of new paradigms for the study of civil war and its associated resource curse” (Ron 2005). This work was initially presented under the catchy moniker “greed versus grievance,” and its earliest formulations emphasized the predatory

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acquisition of primary commodity exports, using the examples of diamonds in Sierra Leone and Angola, timber in Cambodia, and drugs in Colombia (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). Warfare grew out of economic competition among rebel commanders over primary commodities, was fueled by external investors, and enlisted the participation of mass-level rational economic actors who enlisted— all of which led to a spiral of deepening armed conflict.2 Subsequent formulations diminished the role of elites and of primary commodities. Instead Collier and his associates argued that valuable primary commodities offered economic opportunities to which rational, utility-maximizing male individuals responded. They explicitly compared the business of war to common organized crime (Collier and Hoeffler 2004, 3; Kaldor 1999). Other factors, such as poverty and a recent decline in growth, also assumed greater importance (Collier et al. 2003). Fearon and Laitin (2003, 75) drew the same conclusion, stating that “the factors that explain which countries are at risk for civil war are not their ethnic or religious characteristics but rather the conditions that favor insurgency. These include poverty, political instability, rough terrain and large populations.” Collier and his colleagues also found significance in these variables, and in their subsequent work they saw these variables as proxies for the opportunity for individuals to take up arms to rationally pursue economic gain. Fearon and Laitin (2003), conversely, saw them as indicators of weak and underinstitutionalized states that fostered armed resistance. A second generation of scholars of political-economy explanations of civil war and peace has emerged, adding nuance to the original research. Such research draws on earlier research on rentier states and the resource curse of abundant natural resources.3 Researchers have also sought to combine these explanations with more purely political factors, such as forms and patterns of governance, state institutional capacity, and power-driven irrational leaders (Humphreys 2005; Fearon 2005; Dunning 2005). Recurrence I now turn to the quantitative research on civil war recurrence. Although research on civil war’s recurrence is less developed than that on its onset, scholars have offered analogous explanations. The dominant views of the causes of civil war’s onset emphasize the political economy of war, including risk factors related to poverty. Walter (2004), for instance, uses data from the Correlates of War Project and finds that indicators of “quality of life”—infant mortality, life expectancy, and adult literacy rates—are the best predictors of war recurrence.4 She argues that low quality of life fosters war recurrence, although it is difficult to see why such factors operate differently from war onset. She finds that factors

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alleged to explain war onset—including ethnic difference, the combatants’ goals, and the extent to which those grievances were settled—make no difference in war recurrence. She also distinguishes “repeat wars” from “new [recurrent] wars” on the basis of whether the actors and goals of the recurrence match those of the prior war (Walter 2004, 382–84). Her conclusions rest on a small number of observations—only fourteen repeat wars between 1946 and 1996, and only eight “new wars.” Some scholars emphasize the role of coercion, especially in the likelihood of averting recurrence via negotiated settlements. Walter and Snyder (1999) emphasize the role of third-party guarantors of cease-fires, especially peacekeeping deployments. Fortna (2004a) and Hegre and Sambanis (2004) point to the size of a state’s armed forces as crucial, though with opposing views. Collier and others (2003) also argued that the existence of a demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration program would help prevent recurrence, although Humphreys and Weinstein (2007) found such programs of limited utility. Apart from these views emphasizing coercion or military force, others stress various political tools or conditions. Some scholars focus on grievances or political opportunities (Gurr 2000; Hegre et al. 2001), whereas others focus on the presence, degree, or character of democratic regimes (Esty et al. 1995; ReynalQuerol 2002; Mansfield and Snyder 2005; Hegre and Sambanis 2004). Although many researchers have argued in favor of powersharing arrangements, Roeder and Rothchild (2005) argue that “power-dividing” arrangements, with checks and balances over branches of government, result in longer-lasting peace. Hoddie and Hartzell (2005), by contrast, find that certain forms of powersharing yield sustained peace. Table 1.1, though not exhaustive, depicts these various broad approaches to explaining war recurrence, along with the corresponding authors (who are illustrative, but should not be exclusively associated with the variable mentioned). Other variables pertain to the dynamics of the prior armed conflict. On whether the duration of the prior war makes a difference, some authors found that longer wars make for longer peace (Fortna 2004b; Walter 2004), but others found no statistical relationship (Doyle and Sambanis 2000). On the severity of the war (e.g., the number of battle deaths), Doyle and Sambanis (2000) find a significant and negative correlation with the recurrence of violence, but Walter (2004) finds no such relationship. In terms of identity or ethnic composition, scholarship is ambiguous. Some researchers argue that greater ethnic diversity of a society makes civil war more likely (Gellner 1991). However, more discriminating theories have gained currency, some of which draw on linguistic fractionalization indices that measure the chance that two randomly selected individuals will speak the same language. Ethnic fractionalization, which applies the same test to ethnic identity, has

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Table 1.1 Risk Factors for Civil War Onset and Recurrence: Quantitative Findings Political factors Powersharing agreements Nonmajoritarian democratic system

Hartzell and Hoddie 2003, 2007 Mukherjee 2006

State institutions Weak state institutions Local capacity

Fearon and Laitin 2003 Doyle and Sambanis 2006

Coercion / military factors Third-party guarantees International military capacity (multidimensional) to support negotiated settlements State with large military Existence of DDR program Military spending Political economy indicators Low infant mortality rate Low GDP per capita Economic growth Social factors / conflict dynamics Ethnolinguistic fractionalization Identity wars Duration of war Partition Lack of large diaspora War ending in victory

Walter and Snyder 1999; Walter 1997, 2004; Hartzell and Hoddie 2003 Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Collier et al. 2003; Fortna 2004a Fortna 2004a Collier et al. 2003 Collier and Hoeffler 2006 Walter 2004 Collier et al. 2003; Fearon and Laitin 2003 Collier et al. 2003; Fearon and Laitin 2003 Collier and Hoeffler 2000 Doyle and Sambanis 2000 Walter 2004; Fortna 2004a, 2004b Walter 2004; Sambanis 2000 Collier et al. 2003; Lyons 2006 Collier et al. 2003; Suhrke and Samset 2007; Quinn, Mason, and Gurses 2007; Licklider 1995; Hartzell and Hoddie 2003

yielded mixed results. Walter finds no significance in her study specifically of war recurrence. However, Sambanis (2000) finds that Fearon and Laitin’s (2003) variable ethnic fractionalization holds negative statistical significance for war recurrence. He also finds that ethnic heterogeneity and ethnolinguistic fractionalization have no statistical significance for peacebuilding (a dependent variable that includes a measure of recurrence). Related to the questions of ethnic and religious identity is that of whether a state breaks apart or achieves independence. Walter (2004) and Sambanis (2000) found a high correlation between partition and war recurrence. Because secession is generally tied to group identity and the nationalistic claims arising therefrom, partition may signify a preemptive or failed attempt to manage ethnic conflict. It is apparent, however, that explanations emphasizing ethnicity or

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religious identity have fallen out of favor in the relatively limited scholarship on civil war recurrence. In sum I find tremendous disparity among scholars about whether certain factors are important or not, and about the degree to which they are important. Many variables are relatively static and do not lend themselves to easy manipulation. Chapter 2 returns to this topic and draws on the variables mentioned in this section, for there I present a quantitative analysis of the question of civil war recurrence. However, it bears mention here that such methods require using indicators for variables, and finding accurate proxies for the variable is often difficult, especially in poor or war-torn societies where data are often unavailable or have been destroyed. These methods have particular difficulty getting at international strategies. An early creative effort to address the role of international actors and their different efforts was the work of Doyle and Sambanis (2000, 2006), who measured the presence of different types of UN peace efforts. Fortna (2008) uses quantitative methods and case studies to show that peacekeeping contributes to the duration of peace. She utilizes hazard or survival models to address the problem of “censored” data whose projected future values cannot be known (Fortna 2008, 10–11).5

Four Approaches to Peacebuilding The contemporary scholarly debates on peacebuilding represent the culmination of two decades of rapid evolution of thinking among scholars and policymakers. Only twenty years ago, the study of peacemaking efforts to end civil wars was a neglected field. That neglect partly reflected the marginal status of civil wars more generally within scholarly inquiry and policy analysis, especially in the United States. Wars between states—especially major powers—dominated US security studies and policy debates, and peacemaking in civil wars was limited to those who chose to examine regional dynamics (e.g., Central America or Southern Africa). Since then, however, internal wars have assumed prominence in both policy and scholarship on international security. Postconflict reconstruction, the related concept “peacebuilding,” and the problems of fragile states represent new widely studied subfields within international relations. A number of competing scholarly approaches, often conflated, have emerged. These have emerged in historical and conceptual relation to one another. This evolution was heavily shaped by the perceived “lessons” of successive experiences of peace operations among international actors. Especially influential here are the policy documents and thinking of actors engaged in militarized peacekeeping or humanitarian operations, such as Central America, Cambodia, Southern Africa, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, West Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq.6 The evolution of thinking about peacebuilding failure (and success) shows increasing

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attention to the multiple relationships among elements of peace operations; the aggregation of new tasks and priorities with each set of “lessons learned” (rather than discarding prior ideas that have more properly been superseded); greater technification of core tasks, such as constitution writing and the rule of law; emphasis on coordination achieved in form more than fact; and a greater consensus (with lagging practice) on the role of national and local actors. This section presents what I consider the four dominant, coherent conceptual approaches to peacebuilding in postconflict societies. A large literature on peacebuilding that emphasizes social-level dialogue and reconciliation is not explicitly included here, although it has much to offer that complements, and critiques, some of the state-centered peacebuilding approaches considered below. In addition, the literature on mediation and conflict resolution—or “peacemaking” in Boutros Ghali’s (1992) terms—serves as a backdrop to my understanding of peacebuilding. However, that literature largely focuses at arriving at a cease-fire among warring parties rather than how to consolidate peace once a cease-fire has been established. The four approaches presented here are (1) liberal peacebuilding, (2) republican peacebuilding, (3) peacebuilding as governance and / or state building, and (4) critical approaches to peacebuilding. Liberal Peacebuilding The most prevalent alternative to an economic opportunity model of civil war and peacebuilding is a political approach that has come to be called “liberal peacebuilding.” Although no theorist holds himself or herself up as the avatar of “liberal peacebuilding,” the concept is useful because it depicts a collection of elements that seem to underlie and infuse international policies and programs, seen as a whole. In essence, liberal peacebuilding consists of the promotion of democracy and of market-based economic reforms in postwar societies. Roland Paris (2004, 5) defines it thus: “In the political realm, liberalization means democratization, or the promotion of periodic and genuine elections, constitutional limitations on the exercise of governmental power, and respect for basic civil liberties, including freedom of speech, assembly and conscience. In the economic realm, liberalization means marketization, or movement toward a market-oriented economic model, including measures aimed at minimizing government intrusion in the economy, and maximizing the freedom for private investors, producers, and consumers to pursue their respective economic interests.” In the early years of the twenty-first century, liberal peacebuilding became the label capturing the overall thrust and assumptions of Western donors and international organizations in their policies toward postconflict countries. Liberalism inconvertibly captured common elements of international strategies, which included the explicit expectation that relatively free elections would mark the

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transition of conflict resolution from the battlefield to the political realm. These strategies also included liberal notions about providing the necessary supportive social environment for electoral competition through civil liberties enshrined in constitutions as well as space for civil society to represent interest groups and check government behavior. A sophisticated example of liberal peacebuilding is the work of Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, whose 2000 article was the most serious quantitative attempt to identify factors that account for peacebuilding success. They found that international capacities deployed (including multidimensional mandates in peacekeeping missions), local capacities (measured with indicators like electrical capacity), and the ease of the conflict context (e.g., fewer and more coherent insurgent groups) proved decisive in increasing the chances for peacebuilding success. They found that UN mediation efforts alone and traditional deployments, without expansive efforts to build state institutions and hold elections, had no statistical influence on peacebuilding success. However, more multidimensional efforts—those “with extensive civilian functions, including economic reconstruction, economic reform, and election oversight”—were statistically significant for success. One of the most significant implications of their research, enhanced in their book Making War and Building Peace (Doyle and Sambanis 2006), was to ratify the importance of expansive UN peace operations that aspired to the liberal goals of transforming societies. Thus, although Doyle and Sambanis did not label their work “liberal,” it set a foundation for liberal peacebuilding approaches by emphasizing elections and economic reform. The liberal character of international policies has been most explicit in the economic domain. International actors, especially international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, used their influence to advance minimal states in postconflict countries. These programs assumed that minimizing the state would animate free enterprise and international investment and provide the space for the private sector to create growth and jobs, and thus help to ease poverty and integrate the local economy into the globalized economy. One aspect of the liberal approach merits reconsideration: its combination of economic and political liberalism. Paris (2004), for instance, defines the “liberal international” approach to peacebuilding as including both neoliberal economic policies and liberal democratic models centered on elections. However, “liberal” political actors and policies frequently diverge from neoliberal economic prescriptions, as shown in an early critique by the UN diplomats who mediated the peace agreement in El Salvador. In a seminal article, de Soto and del Castillo (1994) bemoaned the neoliberal policies of the economic wing of the international community (mainly the international financial institutions), which worked at odds to their efforts at political (liberal) peacebuilding. Conversely,

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advocates of Asian models of economic development have argued that neoliberal policies are best pursued by nonliberal, nondemocratic political regimes. It seems prudent to eschew the conflation of economic and political liberalism in conceptualizing peacebuilding. Republican Peacebuilding Illiberal peacebuilding, however, is not necessarily authoritarian. Michael Barnett (2006) proposes a “republican” alternative to liberal peacebuilding. His approach comes closer to providing the scaffolding for an inclusionary, legitimacyfocused approach to peacebuilding by offering valuable remedies for liberalism’s neglect of issues of exclusion and legitimacy. For instance, Barnett argues (2006, 94) that modern republicanism (represented by Niccolò Machiavelli and James Madison, rather than their republican predecessor Aristotle) is concerned largely with stability in the face of contentious factions. Drawing on republican theory, Barnett suggests three core elements of republican postconflict peacebuilding: deliberation, representation, and constitutionalism. On deliberation, Barnett (2006, 94) praises Machiavelli’s view of “the domesticating influence of public deliberation; by compelling individuals to speak in the language of community they might develop a greater sense of patriotism, that is, a love of country.” In line with the need for the multivalent forms of participation I advanced above, he suggests that representation go beyond democratic elections to include alternative forms of participation (p. 102). Such participation may include consultations but rests principally with representatives that eschew direct participation by the masses. Finally, Barnett calls for constitutional constraints that divide power and regulate the behavior of representatives. He contends that “all constitutional systems have (1) an agreement over the rules of the game and the underlying principles that are to maintain the political order; (2) rules and institutions that limit the exercise of power; and (3) rules that are relatively difficult to amend” (p. 105). In this Barnett falls not far from liberal theory and its concern with the social contract. Peacebuilding as State Building Although political approaches to negotiation and postconflict reconstruction have long existed, they came to the fore in a more coherent manner by the early 2000s. The failed cases of Angola in 1992 and Rwanda in 1994 showed that successfully reaching a peace agreement was not sufficient to secure peace. Research on peace implementation (Stedman, Rothchild, and Cousens 2002) emerged that explored the various challenges of preventing war recurrence. By 2000 the experiences of Bosnia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and East Timor had shown

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that international peacekeeping troops could maintain stability, but it was apparent that the withdrawal of peacekeepers meant a renewed risk of conflict. By 2001, for instance, the Dayton-negotiated cease-fire had held for five years in Bosnia, with no end in sight for the need for NATO troops. The main instrument of self-sustained peace, it was increasingly believed by policymakers, was a self-sustaining polity or state with the ability to resolve conflict without reliance on outside troops. In essence the success of these peace operations depended on the emergence of a successful state, which made governance the key to peace (Caplan 2004a, 2005; Chesterman 2001, 2004; Beauvais 2000). Some of the works in this field focus on governance broadly, especially whether democracy emerges or not. Thus a burst of scholarship unfolded on postwar democracy (Call and Cook 2003; Bermeo 2003; Ottaway 2000), on powersharing (Sisk 1996; Hartzell and Hoddie 2003, 2007; Hoddie and Hartzell 2005), on partition (Kaufmann 1996, 1998), and on governance (Sriram 2008). These approaches argued that the formula or the institutions of governance constituted key factors in the sustainability of postwar peace. They are considered in more detail below. In addition, scholars took up the question of the state as it relates to consolidating peace. Some scholars believed that the liberal peacebuilding model was at fault, and that its central weakness was insufficient attention to institutions and the state. As exemplified here by the work of Roland Paris (2004), policymakers and analysts concluded that spoilers were taking advantage of liberal practices to block peace consolidation. Consider, for example, how former armed parties in West Africa and the Great Lakes region used multiparty elections and liberal freedoms to mobilize voters via hate, to engage in exclusionary behavior once elected, and to mobilize opponents of peace through liberal democratic mechanisms. Paris’s answer was “institutionalization before liberalization.” Stronger state institutions must first be in place in order to moderate politics, to check extreme behavior by elected officials, and to provide controls on hate-mongering in the media and in public discourse (see also del Castillo 2008). In Paris’s (2004, 187) words, “What is needed in the immediate postconflict period is not democratic ferment and economic upheaval, but political stability and the establishment of effective administration over the territory.” The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, attributed to a “failed state” in Afghanistan, elevated the emphasis on “state building” in both fragile states and postwar countries. Thus a spate of new research focused on state building emerged (Fukuyama 2004; Ghani and Lockhart 2008; Chesterman, Ignatieff, and Thakur 2005; Call 2008a; Ghani, Lockhart, and Carnahan 2005), which contributed to a new understanding of peacebuilding as consisting largely of state building. The state-building approach focused international efforts on strengthening the capacity and legitimacy of state institutions. It struck a contrast to prior emphases on replacing the state (as in East Timor; see Krasner

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2004), to liberal peacebuilding and to the development community’s emphasis on civil society programming. To be clear, state building was developed principally as a response to “failed,” “failing,” or “weak” states—not specifically to postconflict countries. However, given that the multiple definitions of “state failure” tend to include at-war and postwar societies (Call 2011), the concepts have become increasingly conflated. Scholarship elaborated further on the challenges of state building. Fukuyama (2004) drew on new institutional economics and public administration theory to chart recommendations for international state builders. Ghani and Lockhart (2008) set forth ten state functional areas of primary importance on which national and external actors should concentrate in the creation of a viable state. Newer works, including case-specific accounts of efforts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and elsewhere (Rubin 2006; Berdal and Caplan 2004; Caplan 2004a, 2004b; Fayemi 2004) pointed to the complications and tensions in state building in postconflict environments (Call 2008a; Paris and Sisk 2009; Brahimi 2007; del Castillo 2008). Critical Theories of Peacebuilding A group of scholars has recently launched a concentrated critique of state building, folding it into what it depicts as the liberal peacebuilding model. This approach has come to be broadly referred to as critical peacebuilding. It is critical of what it sees as the status quo policy frameworks and of the hegemonic (Taylor 2010) or neo-imperial character of the peacebuilding activities of the world’s dominant bilateral and multilateral actors. Critical peacebuilding theorists reject liberal peacebuilding as a universalizing, disciplining exercise of power by Western and other powerful countries on poor societies. Richmond and Franks (2009, 6) claim that, through liberal peacebuilding, “international actors draw on the epistemic knowledge that liberalism supplies and represents in order to reorder the distribution of power, prestige, rules and rights.” He continues, “The balance of power, hegemony, institutionalism and constitutionalism, and civil society converge in this version of peace in an era of governmentality.” In this view (Richmond and Franks 2009, 6), the state’s institution-building agenda is part and parcel of liberal constitutionalism, because these two “have recently converged on a contemporary notion of ‘peaceas-governance,’ whereby the liberal state provides the framework for the creation of peace at the local, state and international levels.” This notion “in state-building terms focuses on the institutions of the state as the basis for the construction of the liberal peace.” Along these lines, Chandler (2006, 1) criticizes peacebuilding efforts as “highly intrusive.” This emergent literature is the most sustained, cogent scholarly alternative to the liberal peacebuilding approach. However, its conflation of state building

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with the liberal approach seems mistaken. The liberal vision is not philosophically or historically rooted in an emphasis on state building. As Paris emphasizes (2004), classic liberal philosophers like Locke and Kant assumed the presence and prevalence of institutions of governance with some degree of state capacity. Political liberalism emphasizes liberal civil rights, the individual as the key unit of analysis, and elections as an elevated expression of individual preferences. However, states and state institutions were not central to their understanding of political development, of freedom, or of rights. These institutions were ancillary. Liberal theory includes institutions but does not emphasize them. In contrast state builders emphasize limitations on rights, the collective as the unit of analysis, and institutional strength (rather than elections) as the keys to effective governance. State institutionalization may reflect Western assumptions and values, but it is not liberal. Instead, the emphasis on state institutionalization reflects the conservative, republican value of order more than it does the emphasis on rights and individual freedom inherent in liberalism (Barnett 2006). To paint state building and its concerns with the same brush as liberalism and its concerns is to conflate important and distinct approaches to peacebuilding. Furthermore, neither political liberalism nor state-building theorists necessarily embrace conventional neoliberal economic policies, as Richmond and Franks (2009) and Paris (2004) suggest. At the same time, critical theorists’ contributions merit attention. They have called for greater attention to the particularities of cultural and social context, and have decried cookie-cutter bureaucratic approaches. Richmond and Franks (2009, 182) argue that “the local, the everyday, the customary, human needs, human security, and the social contract need to be positioned far higher up the practical agenda than they currently are.” Richmond and Franks (2009, 33) have called for “a detailed understanding (rather than co-optation or ‘tolerance’) of local culture, traditions, and ontology.” They have also called for unmasking the interests of powerful states and economic elites that underlie peacebuilding programs. Richmond and Franks (2009, 34) insist that “international support for these processes” not introduce “hegemony, inequality, conditionality, or dependency.” Critical peacebuilding theorists reflect frustration with the absence of local voices in deciding what governance models will be adopted in their society, and the injustices of external and self-serving imposition of certain economic and political institutions.

Clarifying Concepts: Exclusion, Inclusion, and Legitimacy These multiple approaches to peacebuilding help one understand the process and explain why some countries have such difficulty attaining a self-sustained peace, even once stability seems at hand. The recognition of the importance of institutionalization of authority, and the important challenge to state legitima-

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tion, remain underemphasized and undertheorized. Because the concept of legitimacy lies at the center of this book, I spend some pages here mapping the concept and how it operates in postwar societies, recognizing the variety of states that have experienced warfare. This section seeks to clarify the main concepts used in the empirics and in the theoretical discussion of the book. It begins by elaborating on the discussion of the concept of exclusion in the introduction. I then explain how exclusion and inclusion relate to state legitimacy, a difficult but useful concept that is especially important in improving theoretical approaches to postwar peacebuilding. Finally, powersharing figures prominently in inclusionary arrangements and also merits some discussion. In addressing these important concepts, where appropriate I relate them back to the four main theoretical frameworks for peacebuilding. In seeking conceptual clarity, this section does not summarize the extensive relevant literature on these terms. Exclusion and Civil Wars As indicated above, scholars have long looked to grievance as a cause for collective violence, including internal armed conflicts. Among these grievances is the exclusion of important social groups, often those rooted in ethnic and religious identities. Exclusion is generally associated with “social exclusion,” a term advanced by social scientists in the 1970s as a more discerning concept than “poverty” per se, which did not distinguish between those whose poverty also involved a lack of access to public or social goods (Levitas 2005; Hunter and Jordan 2010). Scholars have written less on cross-national political exclusion, often in connection with citizenship (Wimmer 2002). One influential research project is based on the collective action of minorities and associated with Ted Robert Gurr (1993) and his colleagues, who created the Minorities at Risk data set. Exclusionary behavior is mediated by factors such as political opportunity structures and electoral systems (inter alia, Horowitz 1985), demographics (Saideman and Ayres 2000), and the strength of loyalties and attachments to group and state (Cohen 1997; Dowley and Silver 2000; Elkins and Sides 2007). As defined in the book’s introduction, “exclusion” here refers to the perceived or actual deprivation of an expected opportunity for former warring parties, or the social groups associated with them, to participate in state administration, through either appointed posts or elective office. In separatist struggles those opportunities are concentrated in authority over a substate territory. As specified above, exclusion is conceptualized here vis-à-vis state processes rather than substantive outcomes, and its specific manifestation (not the definition) will vary across cases depending on the expectations generated among the parties. The fulfillment of expectations regarding access to state positions—or “inclusionary”

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postwar behavior—responds both to the need for security guarantees among former rebels and the need for some degree of voice in governance among the formerly mobilized elites associated with them. Inclusionary behavior closely corresponds to an ability to avoid civil war recurrence. Exclusion takes different forms. Exclusionary behavior varies along three important lines: by who does the excluding (the agent), by who is excluded (the target), and by its severity. In terms of the agent, the excluding agent can be either the state or a nonstate actor—the latter either an unarmed / social or armed / military-political insurgent force. However, for a nonstate actor to engage in exclusionary conduct to an extent that provokes armed conflict, that nonstate actor would need to exercise quasi-state functions. The most likely scenario here is an autonomous substate authority that exercises authority over a territory, and then engages in exclusionary behavior in political, economic, security, or economic arenas. Because the cases here yield no such cases of nonstate exclusionary behavior sparking armed conflict, exclusionary behavior here refers exclusively to states as agents.7 In postwar settings, exclusionary behavior varies also by targets, principally the treatment of former combatant groups and the populations associated with them.8 Having fought and sacrificed loved ones in a bloody struggle against an enemy renders it difficult to coexist peaceably, much less endorse placing those former enemies into positions of authority. Where civil wars end in victory by one side, it is unsurprising that the incorporation of former enemies is difficult. As such (see the next chapter), exclusionary behavior after victories has in earlier decades not always led to war recurrence. Three types of targets of exclusionary behavior are relevant for war recurrence after a prior war has ended: (1) the former insurgent forces that have relinquished their arms and either been reincorporated into civilian life or the state’s armed forces;9 (2) the social or ethnic groups associated with prior insurrection; and (3) former allies in the prior armed struggle. Although other social groups and elites may spark new internal armed conflicts, these three types of targets are those that prove relevant for related, rather than new and unrelated, recurrences. The severity of exclusion varies in self-evident ways. At the worst, states can completely subordinate a given ethnic or other social groups in ways that deprive them of access to education, cultural rights and patrimony, jobs, social services, positions of authority, and / or a host of human rights including physical integrity in the face of repression.10 However, the severity of exclusionary behavior does not necessarily serve as the trigger or a precipitating factor for armed conflict. Severe repression against a people or a political group can persist for decades or centuries without resulting in armed conflict.11 To be sure, exclusionary behavior is rooted in broader social configurations shaped principally by struggles among elites within a society. Elites mobilize national, ethnic, or religious identities in pursuit of interests, and these processes

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are embedded in long historical processes of industrialization and colonization, and in periods of history with certain ideas of which political forms and relations are legitimate and which are not (Greenfield 1992; Tilly 1975; Mann 1993). In recent decades the interaction of elite struggles with international incentives, ideas, and coercion constrain or even reformulate the lines along which exclusionary behavior by elites takes places (Chatterjee 1993). These complex and interactive historical processes are not the focus of the theoretical distinctions offered here. Nor are they taken up explicitly in the empirics of this study. Instead their eventual culmination in exclusionary behavior, like the visible tip of an iceberg, is what tears the ship of postwar stability. The submerged historical and complex social relations underlying the recent expression of exclusionary behavior are not analyzed. Inclusion and Powersharing Given that inclusionary behavior is here defined as the opposite of exclusionary conduct, it consists of behavior that does not exclude former parties to warfare or the groups associated with them from access to state positions in ways contrary to their expectations. This broad definition encompasses multiple behaviors and thus extends well beyond an agreed-upon fixed share of state offices. Most particularly, inclusion here includes electoral regimes where a former party to warfare fails to win many parliamentary seats but the process and outcome comport with prior expectations about governance. Thus democratic governance or electoral regimes in concept (and based on expectations) offer just as acceptable forms of inclusion as powersharing. “Inclusion” here is compatible with controlling a tiny portion of a country’s local districts or mayorships, with controlling the production and profits of a valuable natural resource even in the absence of parliamentary representation, and even with a degree of exclusion from state offices—so long as these circumstances did not violate the expectations of the relevant parties. As seen below, the empirics of this book demonstrate that inclusionary conduct is associated with the nonrecurrence of civil wars. Moreover, the case studies permit more specific claims about one form of inclusionary behavior: powersharing. Consequently, I discuss some of the main conceptual debates and empirical findings about powersharing here. This focused analysis of and discussion of powersharing, here and later in chapters 7 and 8, should not be taken to equate inclusionary behavior with powersharing. On the contrary, inclusionary behavior is (forgive me) an inclusive concept, one that allows for a plurality of manifestations that do not constitute exclusion. I define powersharing as a system of governance in which social, political, or ethnic groups are guaranteed a role in their own governance either through allocated positions in the state or through institutionalized group participation

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in administrative, electoral, or appointive procedures.12 Powersharing is often associated with Arendt Lijphart’s (1977) concept of consociational democracy, but in fact it is a broader concept that encompasses other mechanisms of guaranteed access to state authority. Two decades ago the main lines of debate over powersharing contrasted consociational approaches with “integrative” approaches, emblemized by Horowitz’s (1985) sweeping comparative work on ethnic formulas for governance. Integrative approaches offered incentives for groups to work across ethnic or group lines in electing or selecting state leaders, whereas consociational approaches emphasized guarantees to those groups that reinforced their identities. More recent theoretical and empirical work has honed these categories considerably (McGarry and O’Leary 2003, 2004; Sisk 1996; Sriram 2008; Wolff 2009; Mitchell, Evans, and O’Leary 2009; Milante and Skaperdas 2009). The research on powersharing is divided about its effectiveness in preventing recurrence to warfare. Some studies find that powersharing has little impact on reversion to civil war, yet a preponderance of recent studies find that powersharing has a statistically significant impact in reducing the chances for civil war occurrence and reversion. Jarstad (2008), for instance, finds that when powersharing precedes parliamentary elections in postwar societies, peace generally lasts longer. Norris (2008) also finds that political forms of powersharing help peace persist. More recently, Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie have added both concept and empirics to the analysis of powersharing. Historically, powersharing has referred mainly to “political powersharing” (referring to government posts or processes in the legislature or the executive branch). However, Hartzell and Hoddie (2007) and Hoddie and Hartzell (2005) identify four types of powersharing: political, security (referring to the military, police, or security forces), economic (referring to access to resources or processes of economic decision making), and territorial (referring to forms of territorial autonomy). I adopt this concept of powersharing in the case studies that follow. Peace processes have experienced increasing incorporation of multiple forms of powersharing in the past two decades, and Hartzell and Hoddie (2003) argue that the success of peace agreements is enhanced where multiple forms of powersharing are adopted. Using survival analysis (which acknowledges that the chances of failure are higher in earlier years after war ends), Hoddie and Hartzell (2005) found that in 38 negotiated settlements, peace endured longer the more types of powersharing that were adopted. They also (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003, 2007) found that powersharing in military and police institutions has a statistically significant favorable correlation with longer periods of postwar peace. Binningsbø (2006) also found that two forms of powersharing—territorial autonomy and proportional representation—led to longer periods of peace in 118 postconflict societies.

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Powersharing has enjoyed wide acclaim in policy approaches to settling armed conflicts in recent years. For example, Ted Robert Gurr (quoted by Sriram 2008, 17) states that powersharing and resource sharing have become part of emerging doctrine for conflict management. However, critics of powersharing have also grown in number and scholarly influence. The main criticisms are that powersharing exhibits (1) inflexibility; (2) a tendency to marginalize broader participation, at the expense of “vertical legitimacy”; and (3) exclusion of the most marginal or tertiary ethnic, social, or political groups.13 Powersharing arrangements, in their quest to reassure insecure parties, often make no provision for their own alteration, which creates incentives for those who see themselves losing under these arrangements over time to resort to violence. As Rothchild and Roeder (2005, 38) state, powersharing institutions tend to be “unable to adapt to rapidly changing social conditions during a transition from intense conflict.” Powersharing also exhibits inflexibility in its reification of the very identities that underlie division and potential violence. Where power is apportioned according to identity, it reinforces those identities relative to others, undermining the potential to erode those distinctions in society. It “privilege[s] issues of interethnic allocation of power and resources,” at the expense of other issues (Rothchild and Roeder 2005, 37). According to Sriram (2008, 12), powersharing “may be counterproductive, channeling existing conflicts and mistrust into institutions of governance.” These deficiencies are explored in the case studies that follow, as well as in the book’s concluding theoretical reflections. The empirics that follow suggest that powersharing and other forms of inclusion, as well as exclusion, are important empirical elements of civil war recurrence. However, their theoretical significance is less apparent. To relate these concepts to competing theoretical approaches to peacebuilding, it is necessary to explicate their relationship to the broader character of the state and its relationship to society. I now turn to state legitimacy. How Do Exclusion and Inclusion Relate to State Legitimacy? Fueled by increased policy and scholarly attention to failed states and state building, the state has enjoyed a revival in research on war and peace. Defining Legitimacy I adopt here a definition from Mark Suchman (1995, 574) of legitimacy drawn from organization theory that encompasses both the relationship between an institution and its external environment as well as its relations with its internal components or constituents: “Legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.”

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Why Peace Fails: Theory

Three points are worth noting about this conceptualization of legitimacy. First, legitimacy is an objective quality, but one that rests on subjective evaluations. The perceptions or assumptions of people are inherent in whether legitimacy exists or does not. At the same time it rests not with specific individuals but a collective. Second, legitimacy is socially constructed, and thus it cannot be understood outside a temporal and spatial context. Consequently, understandings and assessments of legitimacy can and do change over time and space. Third, the definition explicitly encompasses the three main forms or perspectives on the nature of legitimacy—what Suchman (1995, 572) calls “pragmatic” legitimacy, based on the self-interest of the constituents; “moral” legitimacy, based on oughtness or normative appeal; and “cognitive” legitimacy, based on appropriateness, taken-for-grantedness, or embeddedness. Pragmatic legitimacy accrues when constituents perceive a particular organization to serve their interest and lend it their support, loyalty, and eventually perhaps a moral or cognitive legitimacy.14 Legitimacy is a notoriously difficult concept to measure without making assumptions about the freedom of the public or constituents to express their opinions, which in the extreme can, unfortunately, directly reflect legitimacy. One measures or “knows” the legitimacy of a regime or state given the extent to which its authority is accepted or unquestioned. Yet the degree to which conformity to rules represents consent, as opposed to obeisance in the face of coercion, is difficult to determine. The absence of opposition or of vocal expressions of support for a particular regime may reflect the effective application of coercion. It is impossible in an authoritarian or totalitarian regime to have confidence in the results of even the best designed methods of gauging public opinion (polling, focus groups, written surveys, etc.). The possibility of psychological and social habituation to coercion among regime opponents or victims renders it impossible to discount (or even adjust for) respondents’ fear and suspicion. No concept of legitimacy embraces “support” deriving from coercion or its threat. And yet authority involves the potential or actual application of force. Moreover, history is replete with examples of states or regimes that emerged through coercion and repression yet eventually came to be seen as “legitimate” among their populations. Legitimacy based on performance or pragmatism can be transformed into a legitimacy that is more cognitively sensible and even morally “right,” which undermines the notion of individual choice and moral clarity. Does this defect undermine the concept of legitimacy? Not as a rule. However, it imposes a certain minimal threshold of freedom of expression in order for the possibility of perceptions to be empirically captured with some confidence. In most societies perceptive analysts know when pervasive fear exists and undermines freedom of expression. Here serious problems of legitimacy exist, and nu-

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anced measurements are impossible. Where fear and its habituation are not apparent, however, it should be possible to measure degrees of relative legitimacy. State Legitimacy: Vertical and Horizontal State legitimacy here is defined as a generalized perception of a political community that the claim to authority by a collection of institutions over its territory is proper or appropriate. State legitimacy is thus defined by the acceptance by a political community of the “oughtness” of the state’s exercise of authority and coercion over the territory. It signifies the perception by the population of the territory that the underlying political order is appropriate, moral, or proper, including as it relates to the state’s borders. Because “legitimacy” is often used to refer to a polity’s regime, it is useful to distinguish state legitimacy and regime legitimacy. Regime legitimacy refers to the perception by the population of a political community that the norms, principles, rules, and procedures governing the forms and access to government positions, and the resources and strategies available to office holders, are proper or appropriate. Regime legitimacy is thus more narrowly conceived than state legitimacy. The legitimacy of a regime refers more particularly to who governs and how their power relates to the rights and obligations of citizens. In addition the relationship of authority to the territorial boundaries is an element of state legitimacy in a way that is absent from regime legitimacy. Kalevi Holsti (1996, chap. 5) usefully distinguishes two dimensions of state legitimacy, which pose distinct challenges for would-be legitimacy builders. Vertical legitimacy refers to the broad sense of appropriateness of the state and its functioning, including the rules by which leaders are selected. A state enjoys vertical legitimacy based on an undifferentiated sense of the degree to which the state is appropriately intervening, regulating, representing, or advancing the interests of society.15 The extent to which the national state matters vis-à-vis different levels of authority also forms part of vertical legitimacy. Thus states where the idea, weight, and activities of the national state are relatively weak—for example, Afghanistan, Malawi, and East Timor—exhibit low vertical legitimacy. Horizontal legitimacy refers to the extent to which various social groups and communities within a territory “accept and tolerate each other” (Holsti 1996, 87). It refers to the socially differentiated perceptions of social groups about one another and their relation to the state. Horizontal state legitimacy is low if it is divided; that is, if one ethnic or social community considers the state to be extremely legitimate but another community rejects its legitimacy. A lack of horizontal legitimacy means that legitimacy is bifurcated among at least two social or ethnic communities within a country. As Holsti points out, “ethnicity” connotes a narrow dimension of social division, because religion,

44

Why Peace Fails: Theory

class, caste, tribe, and language can serve to distinguish social groups (Holsti 1996, 106). Thus, the state’s legitimacy within Israel is extremely high among Israeli Jews but is low among those living in the West Bank and Gaza. This translates into a diminished level of horizontal legitimacy for that state. A regime can also suffer divided legitimacy if the norms, rules, and procedures governing the inclusion or selection of rulers are not perceived as proper or appropriate by a salient social group. The depth and breadth of that sense of impropriety—and thus of state or regime legitimacy—can vary. These concepts of legitimacy are linked in important ways to the theoretical debates over peacebuilding. Liberal peacebuilding, for instance, is founded on the individual unit of analysis, one that sees the state’s relations to society mediated by individuals who hold the state accountable. This perspective emphasizes vertical legitimacy rather than horizontal legitimacy. Liberal theory sees individuals as the undifferentiated central agent in society, rather than as social groups. Republican peacebuilding, with its recognition of minority communities and dialogue among salient social groups, has a place for both vertical and horizontal legitimacy. The state-building perspective explicitly embraces legitimacy as a necessary component for consolidation of peace, but theorists emphasize legitimacy versus capacity to different degrees. Moreover, state-building approaches to peacebuilding generally fail to distinguish between vertical and horizontal legitimacy. How, then, does exclusion relate to state legitimacy? Exclusion is not an explicit component of the four principal approaches to peacebuilding. Certainly republican theory’s notion of different factions involves social groups as important units of analysis. Exclusion would contradict this vision. Critical peacebuilding theorists eschew the collusion of international and national elites in the manufacture of a modus vivendi that leaves the population out of procedural and substantive agreements about postwar authority. However, these approaches emphasize distinct roles for international actors rather than particular concepts of intrastate and state–society relations as the foundation for peace. Horizontal legitimacy provides the conceptual entry point of exclusionary conduct into peacebuilding theory. Horizontal legitimacy requires some degree of inclusion of the main social groups into the polity. Inclusionary practices or institutions are not sufficient for horizontal legitimacy, but they are necessary. Thus, the concept of inclusionary peacebuilding, with its focus on the inclusion of important social groups, leads to a theoretical concern with horizontal legitimacy. Legitimacy is a more difficult, historically rooted, and broader concept than inclusion. If inclusion offers a causal mechanism tied to sustained peace, then legitimacy, especially horizontal legitimacy, offers the “why” that such inclusion is necessary and a frame for understanding and advancing a holistic concept for

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45

inclusionary behavior. Chapters 8 and 9, with their conclusions for peacebuilding theory and policy, return to these questions and address them in more depth in light of the empirics of the book. International Sources of Legitimacy and Their Impact on Exclusion and Inclusion The main sources of state legitimacy are internal. Jones and others (2008, 17) identify types of state legitimacy reflecting three distinct sources: (1) embedded legitimacy, which is derived from “prior state formation or other historical dynamics”; (2) performance legitimacy, which reflects the “effective and equitable” delivery of expected services; and (3) process legitimacy, which reflects how accepted and proper the rules, procedures, and institutions of policymaking and governance are perceived to be. Yet state legitimacy derives not only from internal sources but also from international sources. This conceptual understanding of legitimacy provides a framework for understanding the role of international actors in inhibiting or fostering exclusionary behavior in postwar states. In any given collectivity of social actors or agents, membership derives from not just the decision or behavior of the agent but also from the acknowledgment of the other members of the collectivity that a specific agent or individual unit is “one of us” (Bull 1977). For all states, internal legitimacy, whether vertical or horizontal, can be enhanced, generated, or undermined by external actors. International actors shape legitimacy in two salient ways. First, they shape where a state’s borders lie—and even whether it exists. The underlying causes of many present-day armed conflicts in the postcolonial Middle East, Africa, and Asia can be traced to great power decisions about how to demarcate the borders of their colonies (Mamdani 1996; Herbst 2000; Englebert 2000). Colonialism and its aftermath did much to destroy or distort structures of authority in the colonies, and constructed ephemeral institutions or rules that were not consistently implemented and systematically undermined the ability of national or local elites to build relationships of representation and accountability with their populations. As we jump to the twenty-first century, the international community faces similar challenges in confronting the legacy of its earlier conduct, which is now aggravated by additional causes of wars. In separatist struggles like those of East Timor, Kosovo, Palestine, Moldova, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and NogornoKarabakh, the decision by several or many states to recognize the status of an independent state is definitive in its coming into existence. Of course, this international decision is heavily shaped by factors internal to the territory, including whether secessionist armed forces have ousted the army of the recognized state authority. In this sense, the military and political realities on the ground are

46

Why Peace Fails: Theory

necessary conditions for status as an independent state to receive consideration by most states. And where disputes over borders occur, international recognition, often through the International Court of Justice, is often determinant. Second, external legitimacy or recognition shapes who speaks for or represents the population of a state. External actors can strengthen or weaken a particular group’s claim to hold sovereign authority within a state. International recognition holds the key to status, a seat at the United Nations, and the appointments of diplomats to other capitals. It confers whatever power derives from the political and social connections with other states, given that they and the intergovernmental bodies they create deal almost exclusively with the externally recognized government as the expression of popular will and consent in a state. The group recognized externally as holding state power is the counterpart for international treaties, trade negotiations, and agreements on regulations for exports or for the production and removal of natural resources. Equally important, that group controls access to the development aid and other revenues provided by other states and international organizations. External and internal sources of legitimacy interact in complex ways that make it inadvisable to try to examine solely one absent reference to the other, as if in a vacuum. For instance, external recognition of a particular government may provoke a backlash, which undermines claims to internal legitimacy. Internal support for a government, where based on ethnic or religious loyalties, may make external powers reluctant to extend their support. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of the international dimension in most postconflict countries, where questionable authority presents opportunities for external actors to influence initial processes of state legitimation or relegitimation. In addition, many states, especially in Africa, have polities whose principal sources of legitimacy lie outside their borders. As Jackson and Rosberg (1986, 2) said in a seminal article, “most Tropical [sic] African states exist primarily by means of international legitimacy.” The legitimacy of war-torn states also reflects the interaction of force and persuasion, and international organizations and outside states are often active both in deploying troops and in exercising leverage. What are the implications of the external sources of legitimacy for international engagement with exclusionary behavior? Theorists of legitimacy have developed nuanced understandings of the interaction of external and internal actors in the complex production of state legitimacy. Their analysis offers insights into the range of ways that external actors shape the exclusionary policies and practices of postwar states. Concepts of exclusion and legitimacy form the foundation for the empirical work and theoretical arguments that follow in this book. State legitimacy is, the cases will reveal, in many situations foundational to the persistence of peace in

What Do We Know about Why Peace Fails?

47

postwar societies. Capacity is important, as recent work has underscored. However, inclusionary behavior occurred in the vast majority of cases of nonrecurrence. State legitimacy—especially horizontal legitimacy, including its interactive external and internal sources—offers concepts whereby one can understand some of the persistent failures of peace.

Conclusion Understanding the question of why peace fails or succeeds requires examining two overlapping and related clusters of scholarship. The first is highly quantitative in nature and focuses on risk factors for civil wars’ onset and recurrence. A good deal of research on civil wars’ onset emerged in the wake of the Cold War. The most influential body of this research is quantitative, and it points to widely agreed-on variables as risk factors for onset. These variables include low gross domestic product per capita, falling gross domestic product per capita, infant mortality rates, mountainous terrain, and the prior experience of civil war. This literature largely downplays the importance of ethnic or religious identity, and other factors that may correspond to grievance-based approaches to the question of civil war. The second cluster of research focuses on external, and to a lesser extent internal, efforts to maintain and consolidate peace, which I bring under the widely used term “peacebuilding.” Although many distinct approaches to peacebuilding might be identified, I have focused here on the four coherent approaches linked to theoretical traditions and roots—liberal, republican, state building / governance, and critical. In the past few years liberalism has become the prevailing framework for peacebuilding. As with realism in the theory of international relations, liberal peacebuilding in its diverse guises occupies a central reference point for most theoretical work. Those alternatives have offered criticism aimed at either replacing or improving the dominant liberal peacebuilding framework, but they have not yet supplanted it with a coherent alternative. As is seen in later chapters, this book follows in this vein; it chips away at the dominant liberal model and ultimately offers a theoretical approach that is sympathetic to state building but explicitly challenges some of the assumptions, emphases, and recommendations of liberalism. My theorizing relies heavily on the concepts of exclusion, inclusion, and state legitimacy explicated above. But before taking up this endeavor, I present the book’s empirics. The next chapter thus begins with the widest possible scope of analysis, by examining the entire pool of civil wars and analyzing those that have experienced recurrence and those that have not. It takes up the quantitative findings and knowledge presented in this chapter and applies them to the phenomenon of civil war recurrence.

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Why Peace Fails: Theory

Notes 1. For discussions of multiple perspectives, see Brubaker and Laitin (1998) and Horowitz (1985). 2. Note that Collier and Hoeffler (2002) found that countries with an ethnic group composing between 45 to 90 percent of the population were more likely to experience civil war onset, although they dismissed these findings later. Also see Collier et al. (2003) and Collier and Hoeffler (2004). 3. This is from Ron (2005), giving these examples: Mahdavy (1970); Karl (1997); Ross (1999). 4. See the website of the Correlates of War Project, www.correlatesofwar.org. 5. Fortna (2008, 11) uses Cox proportional hazard models and Weibull models, which are robust. 6. Outstanding here are the knowledge created around all of the US military’s wars since Vietnam, UN peacekeeping operations, and NATO’s interventions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. 7. Discriminatory treatment of ethnic groups that belong to majorities nationally but minorities within a region (e.g., the maltreatment of Azeris by authorities within Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan) would count here, but such treatment was not found to be a factor in armed conflict recurrences. One case that comes close is the Marxist FARC’s abuses of Colombian government sympathizers within its autonomous zone in 1998–2002, largely leading to a renewal of offensive actions against the zone; however, this civil war never ended during this period, and thus does not constitute a recurrence. Armed attacks (as in Dagestan by Chechen warlords and in Mali) would count as recurrences themselves. 8. Obviously, social exclusion occurs in virtually all societies. The threshold here consists of an identifiable state policy or decision that abrogates the expectation of the target population. 9. Note, as in the case of Afghanistan in 2001, that taking power by force in a successful regime change does not necessarily mean battlefield “victory” and the end of warfare but may transform insurgents into the state, and the state into insurgents in an ongoing war. 10. Physical extermination, or politicide or genocide, is of course the most extreme treatment of one group by another. However, this would come under a different label, and is not commonly thought of as “exclusion.” 11. The exclusion of women in many societies exemplifies this absence of a correlation or causal relationship between severe exclusion and an armed uprising. 12. With this definition I have tried to be broader than the conventional guaranteed posts within the state, yet simpler than Roeder and Rothchild (2005, 30), who define powersharing institutions as rules that “seek to guarantee . . . inclusive decisionmaking, partitioned decisionmaking, predetermined decisions, or some combination of these.”

What Do We Know about Why Peace Fails?

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13. Critics like Sriram 2008 and Roeder and Rothchild (2005) also criticize the inefficiency, costliness, and perverse policy incentives of powersharing. I consider these to be less important, partly because alternatives also exhibit such deficiencies. 14. These concepts do not have to compete and may complement one another. 15. Holsti (1996, chap. 5, esp. 84–87) uses this term in a relatively narrow manner, almost equivalent to regime legitimacy. However, this concept is too narrow to capture the more embedded and performance elements of state legitimacy that go beyond the selection of rulers.

2 Is Civil War Recurrence Distinct from Its Onset? A Quantitative Analysis and the Limits Thereof ONE OF THE FIRST QUESTIONS to arise in this inquiry concerned the character of civil war recurrence. Is the phenomenon of recurrence any different from that of onset? If not, then it would make more sense not to pursue an inquiry into recurrence at all but to draw on the more numerous and better-trodden ground of civil war onset in thinking about recurrence. If recurrence does differ from onset, then how does it differ? Although recurrence may differ from onset in its manifestation, its consequences, or its modes of termination, I am here concerned with the causes or risk factors associated with recurrence. One can imagine that societies that have experienced civil war once may be more prone to turn to violence again, because of the availability of arms, of former militarized networks, of prior training and capacity among rebel groups, and / or of the socialization toward war. One can also imagine that war weariness, scars of warfare, social and individual traumas, the depletion of resources and social capital brought about by prior warfare, and other aftereffects may make recurrence less likely. Microlevel violence (Kalyvas 2006) may aggregate or articulate in different ways as well, with unforeseen consequences. This chapter seeks to do two things. First, I endeavor to answer this question: Do the causes or risk factor of civil war recurrence differ from its onset? I explore this question through a quantitative exploration of the question drawing on well-known data sets. I draw on research conducted in collaboration with the economist John Schmitt (Call and Schmitt 2009), using linear regressions to determine the extent to which the recurrence of armed conflict differs in its causes from that of initial onset. If recurrence were not to differ appreciably from onset, then this inquiry would best be served by analyzing all civil war onsets. After explaining the pool of cases, I proceed to specification of variables and then present results. Second, the chapter demonstrates why one should be deeply skeptical of the findings of much of the quantitative literature in the absence of other methods

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that can confirm or provide greater causal sustenance to correlation-based theses. The quantitative exercise also demonstrates the severe limits of quantitative methods generally for explaining the phenomenon of civil war recurrence, not to mention possible responses to it. This chapter details several of the reasons readers should be extremely cautious, though not disregard entirely, findings about armed conflict that rely exclusively on quantitative methods. The second section of this chapter calls into question the weight one should give to poverty and to primary export dependency as factors in analyzing and responding to civil war recurrence.

A Regression Analysis of Civil War Recurrence How does one determine whether civil war recurrence differs from its onset? I draw on a strong data set to seek to replicate the findings of one serious quantitative study and then to see how that analysis applies specifically to recurrence. This section presents the pool of cases, data sets, and variables, as well as the results of the analysis. The Pool of Cases Several databases of civil wars exist. One of the earliest and most frequently utilized is the Small and Singer data set, used by Walter (2004), for instance. However, this data set was created initially for interstate wars, and its criteria for classifying the initiation and termination of civil wars were not as nuanced as other data sets. The Small and Singer data also suffer from a large number of missing values and imputations for important variables over periods of many years. James Fearon, in his collaboration with David Laitin (Fearon and Laitin 2003), improved and updated the Small and Singer data set, drawing on others.1 In his collaborations with Michael Doyle, Nicholas Sambanis (Doyle and Sambanis 2000, 2006) prepared a strong data set with detailed analysis of specific cases, but this set has the disadvantage for many purposes of not containing data on countries (and years) without civil wars. The Fearon and Laitin (2003) data set includes data on countries and years with no civil war, which permits the introduction of more numerous variables. Therefore, I here draw on Fearon and Laitin’s data set, which includes country-years from 1945 to 1999, with a total of 6,610 observations, including both interstate wars and colonial wars. Their definition of civil war includes (1) an insurgency that either seeks to shape or take state power or to take control of a territory; (2) a minimum of 1,000 battle deaths total, with (3) an average of 100 deaths / year; and (4) 100 total deaths on each side of the conflict.2

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Why Peace Fails: Theory

Variables and Regressions This section examines all the variables contained in the Fearon and Laitin data set for their significance in a series of regressions. My colleague and I started by replicating their own findings. We replicated their findings on civil war onset very closely, using their publicly posted data and estimation code (Call and Schmitt 2009).3 Without elaborating, for the moment, on the substantive significance of the variables, three variables—per capita gross domestic product (GDP), the size of population, and whether or not the country became independent in the prior two years—all carry high statistical significance (p < 0.001).4 Other variables— the portion of mountainous terrain, the degree of dependence on oil exports, and whether a country had experienced a prior civil war or prior instability—are also statistically significant (p < 0.01). As per the central message of Fearon and Laitin (2003), ethnic fractionalization and religious fractionalization are not statistically significant determinants of civil war onset.5 This finding echoes that of Collier and his colleagues (see Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom 2006a, 2006b; Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Collier et al. 2003). We include the side-by-side comparisons in columns 1 and 2 of table 2.1. We then ran the same regressions using a new dependent variable, recur1, which identified countries experiencing civil war during a given year, after that country had already experienced a civil war and then experienced at least one year of peace.6 This and all our regressions drew solely on the publicly available Fearon and Laitin data set, which shows sixty-nine countries experiencing ninety-seven instances of civil war onset or recurrence between 1945 and 1999.7 Twenty-one countries experienced civil war recurrence, including six countries that experienced more than one recurrence (of these, Pakistan had two recurrences). Thus a total of twenty-eight civil war recurrences were recorded between 1945 and 1999. We found that several of the variables that were statistically significant for civil war onset were also significant for civil war recurrence. Table 2.1 compares the effects of the Fearon and Laitin variables on civil war onset and recurrence. Column 3 presents the marginal effects implied by the logit coefficients for the variables found in column 2.8 The marginal effects give a more intuitive idea of the political impact of the variables than the logit coefficients. Being an oil exporter (oil makes up more than one-third of exports), for instance, increases the chances of civil war onset by almost exactly 1 percentage point, and being a new state increases it by 3.5 percentage points. The four variables (or risk factors) shared by civil war onset and recurrence include being an oil exporter, having a large population, experiencing recent instability, and the percentage of the territory deemed mountainous. All

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Table 2.1 Comparing Civil War Onset and Recurrence: A First Cut Variable or Parameter Data sourcea Estimation Dependent variable Mean of dependent variable Prior war (0 / 1) GDP per capita (lag) Log of population (lag) % mountainous Noncontiguous (0 / 1) Oil exporter (0 / 1) New state (0 / 1) Instability (0 / 1) Democracy (Polity IV) Ethnic frac. (ELF) Relig. frac. (RLF) Constant Sample size

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)b

F&L 2003

C&S 2009

C&S 2009

logit onset 0.017

F&L 2003 by C&S 2009 logit onset 0.017

logit, mfx onset 0.017

logit, mfx recur1 0.040

–0.954** –0.377** 0.263** 0.219** 0.443 0.858** 1.709** 0.618** 0.021 0.166 0.285 –6.731** 6,327

–0.954** –0.344** 0.263** 0.219** 0.443 0.858** 1.709** 0.618** 0.021 0.166 0.285 –6.731** 6,327

–0.00587** –0.00288** 0.00220** 0.00183* 0.00430 0.01009* 0.03498* 0.00650* 0.00017 0.00139 0.00238 — 6,327

0.14375** –0.00028 0.00254** 0.00168** –0.00125 0.01281** — 0.00624** –0.00008 –0.00635** 0.01225** — 6,165

Statistical significance: # at 10% level; * at 5% level; ** at 1% level. a F&L = Fearon and Laitin (2003); C&S = Call and Schmitt (2009). b New state predicts failure perfectly.

these are correlated with war recurrence in the same direction as onset, and all have a roughly comparable impact.9 Thus oil exporters have on average a 1-percentage-point greater chance of experiencing civil war than non–oil exporters, but a 1.2-percentage-points greater chance of experiencing recurrence. Similarly, a doubling of the population (a 1-unit increase in the log of the population) increases the chances for civil war onset by 0.22 percentage point and for recurrence by 0.25 percent.10 Three other variables point to important differences between recurrence and civil war onset. At the same time, ethnic fractionalization and religious fractionalization are statistically significant for civil war recurrence but not for onset. The absence of significance of these variables was a key factor in the central conclusion of Fearon and Laitin (and Collier and colleagues) that ethnic and religious grievance did not underlie civil war onset. Instead, they posited that civil wars reflected opportunity for insurgency provided by poor or weak states, as signified by the confluence of poverty (GDP per capita) and primary commodity dependence (proxied by the oil exporter variable). One of the most important substantive findings of this chapter is that per capita GDP (lagged) is not a significant predictor of civil war recurrence. Although

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Why Peace Fails: Theory

we confirmed Collier and others’ (2003) and Fearon and Laitin’s findings that GDP per capita (lagged) is negatively correlated with onset, the coefficient loses its statistical significance for recurrence. This finding—that poverty makes no difference in a country’s risk of civil war recurrence—cuts against much of the current thinking and policy emphasis on the economic conditions of poor people in the wake of war.11 Ethnic fractionalization also seems to cut against long-standing theoretical claims about civil war risks. The coefficient is negative, which suggests that an increase in ethnic fractionalization (the chance that two random persons are from different ethnic groups) by half a unit (say, from 0.25 to 0.75, for a variable ranging from 0.001 to 0.925) lowers the chance of civil war recurrence by 0.3 percentage point. Although 0.3 percentage point may sound small, this effect is sizable compared with other effects considered to be large in the literature on civil war onset, such as being an oil exporter, which raises the chance of civil war onset by about 1 percentage point. The average probability of civil war recurrence in the sample is only 4 percentage points. Religious fractionalization (RLF) is also highly statistically significant for recurrence (p < 0.001). RLF (which runs from 0 to 0.783 in the sample) behaves as theoretically expected, damaging chances for postwar peace. An identical halfunit increase in the degree of religious fractionalization raises the chances of civil war recurrence by about 0.6 percentage point. Its impact on recurrence is thus more than half that of oil dependence and twice that of a doubling of GDP on Fearon and Laitin’s onset variable. Recall that these last two marginal effects have sent the field into a tizzy in the past several years. What import do these findings carry at first glance? Most important, they suggest that civil war recurrence is worth studying. Its causes seem to be different from those of onset. These differences are not simply a matter of degree but also reintroduce into one’s understanding of civil wars variables that have been dismissed in recent research on civil war onset. The factors that pointed to poverty as a central risk factor of civil wars are not, in fact, crucial for whether countries emerging from war risk relapse into armed conflict. Specifically, our research suggests that the social composition or character of society is an important factor in whether peace can be consolidated. Our initial findings confirm that some cases are “hard” for consolidating postwar peace, specifically where religious fractionalization is high and where ethnic homogeneity prevails. Refining the Analysis of War Recurrence Having discovered that the portions of ethnic and religious fractionalization in a society have unexpected impact on the chances of war recurrence, we examined whether the linear assumption of the relationship was sound. By adding

Is Civil War Recurrence Distinct from Its Onset?

55

Table 2.2 Civil War Recurrence, Adding Ethnic Fractionalization Squared Recur1

dy / dx

Std. Err.

z

P > |z|

[

95% C.I.

warl* gdpenl lpopl1 lmtnest ncontig* Oil* instab* polity2l ethfrac ethfrac2 relfrac

.1200274 –.0006387 .0025729 .0009761 .0000593 .0109419 .0065471 –.0000444 .0239523 –.0346829 .0126473

.0158 .00023 .00047 .00039 .00106 .00347 .00191 .00007 .007 .00854 .00278

7.60 –2.84 5.48 2.48 0.06 3.15 3.42 –0.62 3.42 –4.06 4.55

0.000 0.005 0.000 0.013 0.955 0.002 0.001 0.537 0.001 0.000 0.000

.089065 –.00108 .001653 .000204 –.002017 .004134 .0028 –.000185 .010232 –.051422 .007204

]

.150989 –.000198 .003493 .001748 .002135 .01775 .010295 .000097 .037672 –.017944 .018091

X .136577 3.66926 9.08865 2.18254 .179562 .127494 .149392 –.40438 .385665 .230602 .364796

Note: The variable nwstate was dropped because it predicts failure perfectly, and 162 observations were not used.

the square of ethnic fractionalization, we concluded that the relationship indeed seems nonlinear. Table 2.2 shows the marginal effects using war recurrence (recur1 again) as the dependent variable. Ethnic fractionalization remains highly significant (p < 0.001), but its overall impact (taking into account both its linear and squared impact) is concave. For countries at the middle and lower ends of the scale of ethnic fractionalization, an increase in fractionalization augments the chance of war recurrence. But beyond a certain degree of heterogeneity (0.69 ethnic fractz), greater fractionalization bodes well for peace, with a reduced chance of war recurrence. Even including the square of ethnic fractionalization, religious fractionalization remains highly significant, and the same half-unit increase in fractionalization increases the chance of war recurrence by roughly 0.6 percentage point. Recall that being an oil exporter only increases the chances of onset or recurrence by about 1 percentage point, and a doubling of GDP per capita only has about a 0.3-percentage-point impact on the onset or recurrence. The distinction between the factors accounting for civil war onset versus recurrence remains; even when the squared ethnic fractionalization variable is added to Fearon and Laitin’s Model 1, neither ethnic nor religious fractionalization is statistically significant for onset. Note, however, that when the square of ethnic fractionalization is introduced, GDP per capita becomes statistically significant, albeit with a very small substantive impact (a doubling of national GDP decreases the likelihood of recurrence by only 0.06 percent). We also tested Fearon and Laitin’s Model 1, substituting various other measures of ethnic and religious fractionalization. These included using Fearon and Laitin’s plural religion, the percentage of the largest ethnic group, as well as

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Table 2.3 How Robust Is Ethnic Fractionalization? Variable or Parameter Estimation Dependent variable Mean of dependent variable ethfrac ethfrac2 relfrac

(A)

(B)

(C)

(D)

logit, mfx recur1 0.04

logit, mfx recur2 0.018

logit, mfx recur3 0.036

logit, mfx recur4 0.014

0.02395** –0.03468** 0.01265**

0.01434** –0.01978** –0.00013

0.01617** –0.02309** 0.01007**

0.00679* –0.00914* –0.00127#

Statistical significance: # at 10% level; * at 5% level; ** at 1% level. Sources: Call and Schmitt (2009), using Fearon and Laitin (2003).

combinations of squared ethnic variables with unsquared religious variables, and vice versa. We found that religious fractionalization was statistically significant in some models and not in others, but always in the same direction. To explore the robustness of these correlations, we also ran the regressions using three alternative dependent variables, as shown in table 2.3. Our second dependent variable (recur2) identified cases where civil war recurred after one year of peace but within five years of the end of a prior war. A third dependent variable (recur3) scored whether war recurred at any point before 2000 after two consecutive years of peace immediately following a civil war. And a final dependent variable (recur4) scored cases where war recurred within five years after two consecutive years of peace after a prior war. Table 2.3 demonstrates that ethnic fractionalization and its square remain statistically significant with the same sign (though not identical form or comparable impact) for all four definitions of civil war recurrence. Religious fractionalization loses much of its statistical significance when civil war recurrence is limited to within the first five years of the end of armed conflict (recur2 and recur4). Note that the differences across the four dependent variables reflect not just different definitions but also a different sample of countries and years that meet these definitions. Reflections on Ethnicity and War Recurrence All these tests suggest that ethnic fractionalization has a complex but statistically significant correlation with civil war recurrence, and that religious fractionalization also works against consolidating peace. In particular, the better fit for the nonlinear specification of ethnic fractionalization (and considering the specific coefficients on the two variables) suggests that ethnic fractionalization raises the chances of recurrence over a substantial range but that the effect diminished at high levels of ethnic fractionalization. Thus, in keeping with Fearon and Laitin’s

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findings for onset, societies with many small ethnic groups are not at the apex of risk for civil war recurrence either. Of course these theories of ethnic diversity are replete with dated assumptions that ignore transnational influences on identity, even if empiricists test for a regional risk of conflict generally. Moreover, they are based on time-invariant and often decades-old measures of ethnic composition in a given country. This revised analysis also suggests that large population, oil exporters, and instability all retain some influence on war recurrence, with comparable influence as with onset. One important exception is the impact of per capita GDP, which has only one-fourth the impact on recurrence as it has on onset. Terrain also loses half its impact relative to onset. In general we find that the same economic and geographic variables remain significant in explaining war recurrence, although some have less impact. To repeat, the most important finding of the quantitative exercises presented in this chapter is that ethnic and religious fractionalization have an important and complex impact on civil war recurrence that they do not have for onset. Thus it appears worthwhile to study civil war recurrence as a phenomenon in its own right, especially examining the role of ethnic and religious fractionalization that should have a lesser impact at the extremes of its values (i.e., very much or very little fractionalized). Three considerations—conceptual, theoretical, and empirical—call for caution in relying too heavily on the findings given here concerning the role of ethnicity in civil war recurrence. First, at the conceptual level, as with other variables identified by quantitative research, ethnic fractionalization and religious fractionalization remain relatively static variables. Fractionalization and diversity measures of ethnicity fail to identify which ethnic groups matter (Chandra and Wilkinson 2008) and do not capture the relationship between ethnicity and the state. The generally static and thus unstrategic conception of these variables represents one of the biggest obstacles to reliance on this application of Fearon and Laitin’s data set to the study of war recurrence. Second, there are important theoretical gaps in relying on quantitative correlations from the quantitative analysis given above. Even if the ethnic structure of a society constitutes a risk factor, this relationship tells us little about how and why the ethnic composition of society influences the chances of converting social intercourse into armed conflict. Statistical analyses in and of themselves offer no theoretical rationale for the correlations identified. One theoretical rationale for the causal role of ethnic fractionalization (up to a certain point, but thereafter) and religious fractionalization playing a role is one of opportunity for political manipulation. That is, this structure indicates something of the opportunities that political leaders have to mobilize social divisions and conflict toward political ends—possibly toward violent means. This account comports with political entrepreneurial accounts of ethnic conflict (Gagnon 1994).

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A second potential theoretical rationale is that ethnic fractionalization signifies the degree of insecurity perceived by particular ethnic groups. This account comports with the internal security dilemma (Walter and Snyder 1999) and with commitment problems (Fearon 1998) that different groups experience once either the state or other security guarantees are lifted. Yet the quantitative data do not come close to being sufficient to confirm or disconfirm these theoretical rationales, nor would it be easy to devise statistical analyses that would discern among these competing theoretical hypotheses about the role of ethnicity and a fractionalized ethnic or religious structure in a society. Third, and finally, recent empirical work calls into question the reliance on ethnic or religious fractionalization in analyzing armed conflicts. Wimmer, Cederman, and Min (2009) offer a quantitative test of the strategic role of ethnic identity that merits special attention here. They create a data set that measures the extent to which a population is excluded from senior executive state offices (e.g., cabinet-level posts and senior army and other top posts) for countries from 1946 to 2005. They claim (Wimmer, Cederman, and Min 2009, 329) that their quantitative study “is the first time that the ethnic exclusion argument has been statistically confirmed based on a global data set that measures exclusion directly and at the polity level.” They find that ethnic exclusion is statistically significant in accounting for the onset of civil wars. Their argument finds that ethnic exclusion is especially robust in explaining what they define as ethnic conflicts. In such cases an increase of 1 standard deviation—from 6 to 32 percent, for instance— of the excluded population increases the chances of ethnic conflict by 25 percent, slightly higher than the 22 percent increase for a comparable increase in GDP per capita and much greater than the impact of population size or mountainous terrain (Wimmer, Cederman, and Min 2009, 331). Moreover, once exclusion is tested, ethnic diversity and fractionalization disappear as significant variables in explaining the onset of civil war (defined with by 1,000 battle-related deaths). As Wimmer, Cederman, and Min report (2009, 329), “Rather than diversity as such, it is political exclusion along ethnic lines that breeds ethnic conflict.” In essence, it is not the ethnic demographic structure of society that matters but what political or individual actors do with this difference, how they emphasize and reify it, or how they downplay and diminish it. Wimmer, Cederman, and Min (2009, 329) also find that “ethnic exclusion is as consistently related to conflict as is GDP per capita,” which undercuts claims that economic motives are preeminent in civil war onset. They point out that political exclusion cuts across the greed / grievance debate, because unequal access to state office translates into unequal access to political, social, and economic goods (p. 324). Their findings also reinforce the weak state approach, because they find that conflict is more likely “in incoherent states” where central authority has historically been absent or minimal (p. 334). Their study suggests dif-

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ferent causal pathways whereby ethnicity might affect rebellions and infighting within powersharing arrangements, including those where external events (like the US civil rights movement for Catholics in Northern Ireland, or the onset of the North American Free Trade Agreement for the Zapatistas) trigger excluded populations to mobilize or ethnic groups in power to seek to expand that power. The study by Wimmer, Cederman, and Min (2009) provides a foundation for understanding the causal relations examined in the case studies that follow. For two reasons, however, I have not drawn on their data set or definition of exclusion. First, their concept restricts exclusion to ethnic identity. Instead, different types of exclusion may be relevant in ways that are not captured in their data set’s single set of indicators or by other universal measures of exclusion. The proclaimed basis of exclusion (e.g., religious or ethnolinguistic) or the institutional configuration may vary across societies. Second, the perception of exclusion is pertinent and rests on prior expectations. Although quantitative methods do not permit such a contextualized understanding, qualitative methods do. Perceptions provide a more detailed understanding of causal pathways. For this reason, the concept of exclusion in this book is contextually specific, rooted in expectations by elites of the main sociopolitical groups. Before turning to the qualitative analysis, however, it is worth reflecting on how much one can infer from statistical methods in general. There is good reason to question the reliability and robustness of quantitative findings, both in the analysis presented above and in research more broadly. Despite the many positive contributions of such methods, a number of systematic problems tend to be overlooked. The next section examines both these positive and negative aspects.

The Contributions and Limitations of Quantitative Methods for Studying Civil Wars This section assesses the positive contributions and especially several oftenoverlooked limitations of quantitative methods.12 Quantitative methods carry some obvious advantages in the study of civil wars and peace. They permit the testing of theoretical claims across the pool of cases of civil wars. Linear regression analysis offers the chance to control multiple variables, something that is necessary where no single factor can plausibly account for the occurrence of civil wars. Indeed, the acknowledged multiplicity of factors that shape civil war onset can best be sorted via statistical methods. As seen above, despite divergent findings in much of the literature, some degree of consensus about variables like poverty, terrain, and high oil exports has emerged. At the same time, several shortcomings of quantitative methods are often overlooked. Drawing policy conclusions from research that elides these constraints may produce misguided or harmful policies. Some of our findings call

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into question the reliability and perhaps utility of quantitative analysis based on numerous observations. The questions raised here go beyond long-standing general objections to the application of statistical inference in a scientific framework to social phenomena. Too Few Observations First, the number of observations is small. The number of civil wars in the period covered by this data set (1945–99) reaches ninety-seven, but one should proceed with great caution in interpreting results inferred at standard levels of statistical significance from a total number of recurrences, which is twenty-eight.13 Few people would take an experimental drug that had been tested on only twentyeight people. Unit Heterogeneity The small sample size also effectively imposes the uncomfortable requirement that researchers assume that the underlying data generation process is identical across all cases of civil war recurrence, which is a strong assumption. To continue the medical drug analogy, we know that some drugs can affect men and women, children and adults, or other groups differently, but the small size of our experiment forces us to assume that the effects are the same across all countries, religious groups, ethnic groups, and other groups. How comparable are Russia’s two civil wars (in Chechnya) with Nicaragua’s? Or Indonesia’s conflicts over Aceh with Rwanda’s society-sweeping war–cum– genocide? Or Argentina’s insurgency against the military dictatorship with China’s? The idea is that control variables are designed precisely to control for differences, but these controls may not be effective in complex social environments. Because regression analysis requires setting aside this limitation and trusting the controls, I elect to elide this objection. However, it is useful to keep in mind the potential limits of control variables in comparing such disparate units of analysis. Arbitrary or Questionable Estimation Slight changes in the data used to proxy for different political concepts or in the particular specifications (including or excluding particular variables, linear vs. nonlinear terms, linear vs. nonlinear estimation techniques) result in substantially different outcomes (e.g., see the broadly differing results across research produced by a range of leading researchers in the field, using different data sets, variables, time periods, and estimation techniques). The alteration of either a

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single variable or the exclusion of a few country cases changes our result in important ways. A few examples suffice. First, in our regressions on war recurrence, adding a single variable (viz., the square of ethnic fractionalization) restored the statistical significance of per capita GDP for recurrence. Second, perfectly reasonable alternative definitions of some variables lead to divergent outcomes. Whereas ethnic fractionalization is negatively associated with war recurrence, introducing its square points to a largely positive, but concave, relationship. Another example from modeling ethnic diversity underscores this point. When we used various definitions of ethnic fragmentation, the variable proved significant in virtually all versions. However, the sign of the ethnic fractionalization variable was not consistent across all specifications! Thus even with statistical significance, the fundamental causal direction was wholly unreliable. We have no a priori reason to presume that one model of ethnicity (e.g., ethnic fractionalization squared) or religious structure is better than another. Analysts have a tendency to conclude that a better fit means a better explanatory variable. Consequently, concluding that ethnic fragmentation is linearly related to war recurrence or concluding it is a concave function is somewhat arbitrary, which relies heavily on the particularities of the variables used to proxy for ethnic fractionalization, the countries and years in the sample, and the estimation techniques used. Drawing either scholarly or policy implications from such choices seems ill advised. A third, simple example comes from the work of Paul Collier and colleagues. Since 2002, he and various colleagues have produced several publications citing the rate that armed conflicts recur within five years, statistics that have found their way into pronouncements by the UN secretary-general. Yet between 2002 and 2006, they reported remarkably divergent rates of armed conflict recurrence, including 50 percent, 44 percent, 23 percent, and 21 percent (the latter two refer to recurrence within four years).14 That the same person reports such divergent figures over a span of four years is another argument for caution against drawing strong conclusions from statistically based exercises under these conditions. Poor Proxies Often, the connection between proxies and the things they purport to measure is thin or questionable. As Gleditsch and Ruggeri (2010, 299) aver, “Many of the indicators used in empirical studies of civil war are relatively crude indicators of the underlying concepts and only loosely related to the theoretical rationale.” Fearon and Laitin, for example, use per capita GDP and oil export dependence as proxies for state weakness, whereas Collier and colleagues see these same

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variables as proxies for limited economic opportunities. Walter (2004) uses infant mortality rate as a proxy for economic opportunities, and Doyle and Sambanis (2000) use electricity consumption as a proxy for local capacity. Creative use of the available cross-national data is admirable and necessary. However, scholars should be much more modest in declaring that these imperfect proxies confirm or reject the underlying theoretical relationships that the proxies are meant to represent. For example, infant mortality responds much more to trends in health provisions in a society, reflecting factors unrelated to the possibilities of employment. States and international organizations run risks when they base policies on research that rests upon poorly measured or only loosely connected proxies. Omitted Variable Bias In addition, the things one can measure do not adequately get at the things that theorists say are important. Put another way, the supply of variables does not meet the demand of theoretical explanations for war onset or recurrence. As discussed above, theorists posit myriad explanatory variables for civil war onset. We have no cross-national direct measures for several of these, including state institutional capacity, powersharing arrangements, manipulative ethnic leaders, limited employment opportunities for youth, exploitation of one social group by another, social exclusion, personal insecurity, and group insecurity. Most important for this study, “legitimacy” (which is notoriously hard to conceptualize) and “inclusion” cannot be readily measured, and certainly not when actors’ expectations are taken into account. Proxies are necessarily used, but more often than not researchers proceed without including many of these arguably important variables in their statistical analyses. This omitted variable bias points to the need to use qualitative methods—and thus the case studies in this book—to examine the role of hypothesized variables (e.g., capacity building, relevance to Western security interests, and legitimacy) in postconflict societies. Policy Applicability Related to the prior problem are challenges of policy relevance and utility. The variables for which we have data and that have the most significant impact are ones over which policymakers typically have little control, especially in the short run. A handful of variables repeatedly appear in statistical analyses of civil war onset and recurrence: the level of GDP, infant mortality rates, size of population, primary commodity dependence, and ethnic or social fractionalization. At best, these correlations can guide policymakers in identifying and addressing the long-term risk factors for armed conflict. The most direct logical

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implication of the research findings given above is that peace can be advanced by reducing poverty, infant mortality rates, and diversified economies. And yet does anyone really think that reducing infant mortality rates in a specific country is the ticket to peace, or that national or international actors can reduce infant mortality quickly enough to shape the dynamics of a recent, impending, or ongoing civil war? Such variables may provide guidance on detecting where armed conflict may be a few percentage points more likely, but they are not helpful for developing policy responses to existing or recently ended conflicts. Some of these variables—like population, terrain, and the national demographic profile—cannot be effectively manipulated by authorities unless those authorities engage in mass human rights violations. In addition, specific steps to reduce these risk factors for civil war onset and recurrence may themselves cause armed conflict more acutely than the marginal effect of the risk factor. For example, Collier’s advocacy for adherence to the World Bank’s neoliberal macroeconomic prescriptions as the best route to development may in fact deepen other proximate causes of warfare, because the dislocations of privatization or reducing the state payroll may foster instability. This is precisely the finding of Hartzell and Hoddie (2010), who show that adoption of the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment programs between 1970 and 1999 made countries more likely to experience civil war onset. As another example, diversifying the economy quickly through expanded agroexports may leave thousands of peasants landless and may prompt armed uprisings. Even if one accepts the risk factors identified in statistical analyses of civil wars, these tools provide little undisputed guidance for nuanced, midlevel policymaking, much less for country-specific remedies. Conversely, the variables that policymakers care most about are often difficult to put into quantitative models. Some scholars have in recent years made headway in testing quantitative models of international peacebuilding efforts, or actions designed to reduce war recurrence. Collier and colleagues, for example, have drawn conclusions about the impact of international aid, the timing of this aid, and the particular type of aid that helps prevent conflict recurrence.15 Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis have performed the most significant work in this area, based on Sambanis’s civil war data set. They code UN-authorized international missions based on their degree of authority and mandates. Namely, they distinguish among (1) monitoring, (2) consent-based traditional peacekeeping, (3) multidimensional peacekeeping, and (4) peace enforcement (Doyle and Sambanis 2000, 781). They examine the impact on peacebuilding success as measured by both a return to violence and a minimal level of participation or democracy. Their salient findings regarding international agency are that (1) treaties have a positive impact; (2) any sort of UN involvement has a positive but limited impact compared with treaties, with which it is highly correlated; and (3) only

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multidimensional peacekeeping operations have a statistically significant impact (positive) on consolidating peace. More recently, Sambanis (2008) has built on this earlier work with more nuanced definitions of peacebuilding success that have involved sustainability after the departure of a UN peacekeeping operation. He also devises ways to mitigate the impact of potential selection bias about where the UN intervenes. His thoughtful treatment of variables and coding have led to interesting conclusions that few troops are better for peacebuilding success and that UN missions have a diminished impact after a few years.16 He has also drawn similar conclusions about multidimensional peacekeeping. Most important here, he finds that “high fractionalization has a significant (p = 0.007) negative effect on peace duration” (Sambanis 2008, 19). Doyle and Sambanis (2006) had found this result, which coincides with my own findings, earlier as well, but they did not emphasize its significance. Although they reported testing the square of ethnic fractionalization for onset (without finding significance), they did not indicate having tested it on recurrence.17 Sambanis’s analysis devotes welcome attention to factors beyond war recurrence that are normatively attractive and more attuned to policy concepts and interests. Even here, however, the policy utility remains limited, for two main reasons. First, if scholars cannot find agreement on the factors that account for simple war recurrence, then one should have less confidence regarding more ambitious definitions of peace (including, e.g., participation, civil rights, and democracy) upon which there is less agreement on measurement. Second, even these admirable efforts by Sambanis, Doyle, and Fortna (2004a, 2004b, 2008) offer only blunt answers to basic questions: Are peace treaties good? Yes. Does peacekeeping help? Yes. Should states invest in peacekeeping? Yes. Should peacekeeping entail multidimensional operations that involve institution building? Yes. Are demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration programs worthwhile? Maybe. Statistical analysis of other policy instruments has added to our knowledge. Despite the work questioning powersharing (Roeder and Rothchild 2005; Sriram 2008), an increasing number of studies suggest that multiple forms of powersharing, and powersharing by security institutions, increase the chances for sustained peace (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003, 2007; Hoddie and Hartzell 2005). Gurses, Rost, and McLeod (2008) study the effect of several variables, including types of mediation interventions, on the duration of peace after civil wars. They find that “ethnic and bloody wars” have shorter periods of peace, whereas democracies and large armies favor longer periods of peace (p. 150). Somewhat confusingly, they find that mediation attempts favor more durable peace but that mediation agreements themselves (along with superpower mediation) undermine stable peace. They admit that their study is unable to capture

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the quality of the peace agreement, which may be the key to success, and thus they call for case studies (p. 151). These research findings show the limits of statistical methods for studying civil war recurrence. These methods have great difficulty providing clear answers to questions such as these: What elements of a political settlement are most important? How can external actors foster elections that do not themselves spark renewed violence? How can exclusionary power arrangements be transformed? What state institutional reforms are most important? How are their capacity and legitimacy enhanced? How can countries that are dependent on primary commodities reduce their risk of war and its recurrence without provoking conflict? How important is justice for past atrocities? Although scholars can create proxies for some of the variables relevant to these questions, they are the exception. Where such variables do exist, the nexus is distant and the cross-national data are inadequate and usually incomparable. Even Sambanis’s efforts, which go well beyond most others’, do not go far enough to address these kinds of policy concerns.

Conclusion This chapter serves two purposes. First, it determines, based on one of the best and most appropriate data sets available, whether civil war recurrence differs from civil war onset. The answer is a muted yes. Onset and recurrence share a number of risk factors—including having a large population, relying heavily on oil exports, and political instability—and these factors have a comparable influence on recurrence as with onset. However, in contrast to their role in civil war onset, ethnic fractionalization and its square both appear to represent statistically significant risk factors for civil war recurrence, as does religious fractionalization. This difference suggests that these two identity issues are conceived, refracted, or manipulated (perhaps in conjunction with fears, interests, or desires) so as to enhance the chances of recurrence once a civil war has been dormant for a short time (one or two years). It is also important for this book’s claims about grievance as the most salient causal factor for civil war recurrence, rather than economic factors like poverty, that GDP per capita is not statistically significant as a risk factor in the application of linear regression analysis to the Fearon and Laitin data set. However, once ethnic fractionalization is squared, GDP per capita reappears as a statistically significant risk factor, but only with one-fourth its earlier influence. Second, this chapter shows that scholars and policymakers alike should regard the findings of quantitative research on civil wars with a degree of caution. Even when used with care and sophistication, they suffer from numerous flaws, most of which cannot be overcome without an unrealistic investment of

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resources or time. Slight differences in which variable is selected to stand for a concept, or in how such a variable is measured, can produce startlingly divergent findings. This variation is true precisely for ethnic and religious fractionalization or diversity. This disparate relationship also holds for the impact of per capita GDP on the recurrence of civil wars, which points toward other variables to explain this phenomenon. Although there is a greater consensus among researchers about risk factors such as poverty, oil export reliance, and geography, the utility and implications of these findings are multiple and contested. The implications for policy prescriptions of these more widely agreed causal relationships are not clear. Adopting what may seem the logical response to a given risk factor may produce the opposite reaction in postwar societies. These methods certainly offer generalizations that qualitative research cannot provide. However, their meaning in the complex world of social phenomena requires both humility and a greater pairing with other methods that may verify or alter the purported causal relations that have been identified. I now turn to such qualitative methods, beginning with a case study of Liberia’s civil war recurrence. Notes 1. Their complete list is given by Fearon and Laitin (2003, n3). 2. Fearon and Laitin (2003, 5); for additional coding notes, see Fearon and Laitin (2003, n4). 3. The findings differed only by a thousandth of a point and are available on request. The table replicated is labeled table 1 in Fearon and Laitin (2003, 84). 4. In replicating the work of Fearon and Laitin, we too use the log of lagged population, the log of portion of mountainous terrain, and lagged per capita GDP. 5. They measure ethnic fractionalization (and separately and analogously, religious fractionalization) using a composite of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (based on the 1964 Soviet Atlas’s measurement of the probability that any two people in a country are from different ethnolinguistic groups), the share of the largest ethnic group, and the number of distinct languages spoken by groups exceeding 1 percent of the population. See Fearon and Laitin (2003, 78). 6. In this Call and Schmitt (2009) diverge slightly from Fearon and Laitin. Our definition of recurrence codes every year of the recurred civil war as a recurrence; Fearon and Laitin, by contrast, focus on onset and code only the first year of a new civil war as “one.” We find their coding strange, because it codes identically both every country in its second (or third) consecutive year of civil war (e.g., Guatemala in 1983) and every country at peace (e.g., Sweden 1997). We believe that countries at war should be coded as experiencing recurrence rather than no warfare. However, we also ran a regression for onset (available from the authors), coding all country-years that civil war occurred as “one.” We found that neither was statistically significant at the 5 percent level or

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better, though RLF was statistically significant in some cases at the 10 percent level, reinforcing our earlier findings on the differences between onset and recurrence. 7. This tally diverges from the 73 countries and 127 civil wars cited by Fearon and Laitin (2003, 75), who counted multiple wars. Because our unit of analysis is country (not the war, as Sambanis), we did not distinguish among wars in a given country. 8. Marginal effects show what percentage change is associated with a 1 unit change in continuous variables, and with a change from 0 / 1 in dichotomous variables. 9. Oil exporters and large countries are slightly more likely (by 20 percent and 14 percent, respectively) to experience recurrence than onset. Terrain and instability are slightly (by 4–8 percent) less important for recurrence than onset. 10. “New states” drops from the regression because it perfectly predicts war recurrence. Following Fearon and Laitin, the regression also includes a lagged dependent variable. 11. Of course the level of GDP per capita says nothing about the national income distribution. 12. For a more extensive treatment of some of these issues, see Human Security Report Project, Human Security Report 2009 / 2010, chapter 2, “Peace, War and Numbers” (Human Security Report Project 2009), which appeared after Call and Schmitt (2009). 13. As mentioned above, Fearon and Laitin state their data show 127 civil war onsets, including recurrent ones. Our examination of their data yields 97. 14. See, in the order corresponding to the figures cited, Collier and Hoeffler (2002); Collier et al. (2003); and Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom (2006a, 2006b). Also see Suhrke and Samset (2007, 198). 15. See most recently, Collier (2007, 104–7) and Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom (2006b). 16. Again, we did not use Sambanis’s data set because it captures only civil wars, excluding data on countries that did not experience civil war, which substantially reduces the number of observations. 17. Doyle and Sambanis (2006, 102n78).

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Part II Examining the Cases

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3 Liberia Exclusion and Civil War Recurrence

IN AUGUST 1997, after winning by a landslide 75 percent in a relatively free and fair election, Charles Taylor was inaugurated as Liberia’s president. His election marked the culmination of a peace process ending a seven-year war that had killed roughly 150,000, displaced 40 percent of the population, and sparked a deadly war in Sierra Leone and instability in Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea.1 The peace process, in keeping with the 1995 Abuja Accord, involved agreement among the six factions and the government to disarm and demobilize the rebels, to form a transitional government that included the main warlords, to accept verification by peacekeeping forces of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United Nations, and to hold internationally supervised national elections. Three months after Taylor’s election, the UN mission declared its mandate fulfilled and departed. ECOWAS troops returned home a year later (Adebajo 2002b). In his final report on the mission to Liberia, the UN secretary-general celebrated “the successful peace process” and the ability of “the international community to assist in bringing peace to Liberia” (United Nations Secretary-General 1997a). Yet in April 1999, rebels based in Guinea launched attacks on the border town of Voinjama in northwest Liberia’s Lofa County (Ali-Dinar 1999).2 Further attacks occurred later that year, marking the onset of what would become Liberia’s second civil war (Pham 2004, 180). The main rebel groups in this war would be Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), consisting mainly of former members of the rebel group ULIMO-K, and subsequently the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL).3 After accelerating, the war would eventually cost some 2,500 lives and displace tens of thousands.4 In 2003 international pressure on then–president Taylor forced his flight to Nigeria, and a negotiated settlement between the rebel groups and the state ended the war. As of this writing, the 2003 peace process has held without renewed warfare. What explains this clear failure of a celebrated peace? The case of Liberia offers a test for prevalent theories about civil war recurrence and the factors in

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successful postwar peacebuilding. The case seems to fit a number of competing hypotheses: poverty, inequality, natural resource dependency, bad governance, bad neighborhoods, international malfeasance, and weak state institutions. It is an especially likely case for theories associated with Paul Collier and his colleagues that emphasizes the role of economic opportunities and natural resources in explaining the onset, duration, and recurrence of civil wars (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). In this chapter I argue instead that Liberia’s war recurrence shows the relevance of grievance-based arguments (Englebert 2000; Herbst 2000; Reno 1999). The Liberian case illustrates not so much the failure or success of an institutional arrangement like powersharing as the consequences of deliberate defiance of sharing power once a government has been elected. Specifically, I argue that exclusionary behavior by Taylor’s regime was the single most salient factor in the failure of peace in 2000. Taylor’s actions abrogated expectations about political participation and inclusion that prevailed in 1996–97 at the close of the prior civil war. Although economic opportunities for private gain played a role in Taylor’s governance, his exclusionary conduct, of which access to state rents formed a part, led former allies to instigate a bloody reprise of the first civil war (1990–96). In this sense Liberia represents a most difficult case study, because it exhibits favorable characteristics for economic-based explanations. The case study explores competing hypotheses about the role of economic motivations, natural resource dependency, religious and ethnic fractionalization, weak institutions, and poverty. In acknowledging the difficulty of distinguishing economic opportunities from political motives, the chapter also analyzes factors that facilitated or impeded political exclusion by the Liberian government in the interwar period from 1997 to 2000. In addition, I explore the period of apparent postwar stability that Liberia has enjoyed from 2003 to this writing. Thus the chapter’s final section examines whether the factors that shaped the 1999 war recurrence seem to also account for the more recent prolonged postwar peace. This chapter combines a heuristic effort at generating hypotheses with a plausibility probe (Eckstein 1975) of these existing claims in the literature. It seems to reinforce, rather than contradict, the findings concerning the interwar period. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of a case study approach to explaining the failure of postwar peace and war recurrence.

The First Civil War Liberia, Africa’s oldest independent country, is a small nation that had a population of about 3 million in 1989. After its founding in 1847 by American exslaves, Liberia was ruled by Americo-Liberians, who made up only 5 percent

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of the population. These elites repressed the roughly sixteen main ethnic “upcountry” groups, most of which had been divided by borders from their clansmen in neighboring Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. Indigenous tribes, for instance, only received the right to vote in 1964. In 1980 a coup led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and other low-ranking officers, all from native tribes and lacking a high school education, toppled American-Liberians from power for the first time. Doe’s regime continued the patronage-based, murderous predatory state of his predecessors. His own ethnic group, the Krahns (who made up only 5 percent of the populace), were overrepresented in the cabinet, and the Gios and Manos (who constituted 15 percent of the population) suffered discrimination. In the wake of a failed coup attempt in 1985, Doe’s Krahn-dominated army killed a reported 3,000 Gios and Manos (Adebajo 2002a).5 As Adebajo (2002a, 46) notes, “This single episode, more than any other, set the stage for the exploitation of ethnic rivalries that would eventually culminate in Liberia’s civil war.” On Christmas Eve 1989, Charles Taylor and some 167 other rebels invaded from Côte d’Ivoire, launching a civil war that would persist through at least eleven peace agreements and twenty cease-fires. Ethnic grievance played a role in the conflict. Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), which was composed mainly of Gios and Manos, gathered more of these ethnic nationals as it swept across the country (Adebajo 2002a).6 NPFL rebels killed Krahns and Mandingos, and Doe’s Armed Forces of Liberia also killed Gios and Mandingos (Ellis 2001). Six other rebel groups would emerge to play salient roles in the first civil war.7 Two splinter groups broke away from Taylor’s NPFL. Prince Johnson’s Independent NPFL broke away in July 1990, and would later that year capture President Samuel Doe and videotape his grisly killing. Three senior NPFL officials broke with Taylor in 1994 and formed the Central Revolutionary Council. In contrast to these groups, other groups emerged that were composed mainly of Krahns and Mandingos. Refugees from Sierra Leone formed the basis of United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) in May 1991. Three years later it split into two groups: ULIMO-J, led by Roosevelt Johnson, a Krahn, with 3,800 members; and ULIMO-K, led by Alhaji G. V. Kromah, a Mandingo, with 6,800 rebels (Adebajo 2002a). The 2,500-strong Liberia Peace Council emerged in 1993 under the Krahn politician George Boley, who had served as a minister under presidents William Tolbert and Doe. And the 400-member Lofa Defense Force emerged in 1993. At the same time, Liberia’s first civil war seems a good candidate for the economic causes of armed conflict. The country is rich in natural resources, including diamonds, timber, gold, rubber, and other minerals. In accord with some research, its rebel commanders could enrich themselves and find the independent

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means to sustain their fight. Taylor reportedly collected $75 million per year from his territorial control of key resources, including $10 million per month from a consortium of American, European, and Japanese mining interests. ULIMO-J garnered income from diamond mining in the West, and the Liberia Peace Council exported rubber. ULIMO-K sought to restore the wartime interruption of Mandingos’ income from diamond exports. One study estimated that in 1995 alone, Liberia’s warlords exported more than $300 million worth of diamonds, $53 million in timber, and $27 million worth of rubber (Atkinson 1997). Fearon and Laitin (2003) argue that weak state structures typical of high resource dependency provide the opportunity for armed rebellions to emerge. Certainly the Liberian state was weak, and these huge incomes represented a serious motive for rebel groups to continue their fight in a country whose gross domestic product was only $135 million in 1995. Taylor’s use of the state to plunder the country’s resources after his 1997 inauguration supports this argument. However, it is not clear that these resources constituted the main motives for the start of the war. Whether one sees ethnic or economic underpinnings of Liberia’s initial war, ideology was not a driving factor. None of the insurgent groups articulated ideological motives for taking up arms. Although the anti-NPFL groups claimed to fight for democracy, Adebajo (2002a, 47) states that these “were essentially ad hoc ethnic armies led by individuals with dubious democratic credentials.” Command and control were extremely minimal in these organizations, with their heavy reliance on spiritual and drug-induced states among a huge number of child rebels. Horrible atrocities characterized the war.

The Onset of Peace The peace process of the first civil war was long and tortuous—involving at least eleven peace agreements between 1990 and 1996. Peace talks began in the early months of the war. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) provided the backdrop for negotiation efforts. Under Nigeria’s strong influence, the regional body deployed 3,000 troops under the moniker ECOMOG (for “the ECOWAS Cease-Fire Monitoring Group”). Their deployment reflected ambivalence among the great powers and the United Nations, and greater African interest in addressing its own problems. ECOMOG quickly became a party to the conflict, fighting in support of the Armed Forces, ULIMO, and the Liberia Peace Council, reflecting Nigeria’s antipathy toward Taylor’s NPFL. The regional force grew to 12,500 (Howe 1996), even as the francophone states Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso initially refused to contribute troops, instead providing support to Taylor (Adebajo 2002b; Ellis 2001). Liberians also grew to resent ECOMOG for its joining in the plunder of Liberian resources, calling it “Every Car or Movable Object Gone” (Shillington 2005, 102).

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By late 1990 Taylor’s NPFL had control of 80 percent of Liberia’s territory, all outside Monrovia. The next five years were characterized by efforts by the antiNPFL forces to push back the NPFL’s quick territorial gains, and Taylor’s (unsuccessful) efforts to take the capital (Alao, MacKinlay, and Olonisakin 2000). ECOMOG, whose prompt initial intervention in 1990 had secured Monrovia, would eventually also come under attack from anti-NPFL forces (Adebajo 2002b). As bloody battles affected tens of thousands of civilians, faction leaders shuttled to West African capitals in a constant circuit of peace agreements, failure to fulfill pledges, and renegotiations (Alao, MacKinlay, and Olonisakin 2000). By 1995, in a crucial strategic shift, the Nigerian government had come to accept the Ghanaian position of the need to accommodate Taylor and his forces as part of a settlement of the war. The incorporation of troops from francophone states into ECOMOG accompanied this shift, opening the way to a regional consensus on a negotiated settlement that had the support of not only the antiNPFL forces but also Taylor’s NPFL. This newfound modus vivendi between Taylor and Nigeria led to an agreement in the Nigerian capital of Abuja in August 1995. Although that accord foundered amid heavy violence in Monrovia by the spring, in August 1996 exasperated West African heads of state foisted on the parties a new, strengthened timetable for Abuja’s implementation, in what came to be known as the “Abuja II” accord. Abuja II would govern the end of the first civil war. It revised deadlines for a cease-fire and concentration of forces; for verification of the same by ECOMOG, the UN, and a transitional government composed of the factions (“Council of State”); for disarming and demobilizing the factions; and for national elections. It also empowered monitors to recommend travel restrictions and the seizure of assets of recalcitrant warlords, and it authorized ECOWAS to remove any noncompliant warlords from the Council of State and even from electoral candidacies (Pham 2004, 130). Virtually all experts regard the civil war as concluded by 1996. The peace agreement that ended the war was signed after Taylor reached a rapprochement with the regional power, Nigeria, in June 1995, after which the August Abuja accord was quickly signed (Adebajo 2002b). A cease-fire went into effect that fall, and fewer than 2 percent of the war’s battle deaths occurred between that time and early 1997, mainly during the 1996 battle over Monrovia.8 After some delays, elections were held in August 1997. Taylor left little doubt that his loss would lead to a return to the horrific warfare of the prior years. Partly due to the pall of fear and intimidation, Taylor won a large majority. As Lyons (1998, 183) notes, however, “Postelection powersharing or the need to negotiate the composition of the new Armed Forces of Liberia, for example, received little attention. Political leaders preferred to allow the election to settle such contentious issues.” What followed underscored the perils of using elections and democratization as a conflict resolution mechanism.

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The Second Civil War: A Brief Summary About two years after Charles Taylor’s inauguration, small-scale attacks began in Voinjama, along the Guinean border in Lofa County, a stronghold of the former ULIMO-K’s Alhaji Kromah. According to a statement issued (in the United States) by the Liberia Coalition for Reconciliation and Democracy, referring to itself simply as Resistance, the group was composed of former fighters from Taylor’s NPFL, the disbanded Liberia Peace Council of George Boley, the breakaway ULIMOs of Roosevelt Johnson and Alhaji Kromah, the Armed Forces of Liberia, and the Lofa Defense Force of Taylor’s incumbent youth and sports minister, François Massaquoi.9 The group, which would eventually dub itself “Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy”—again, LURD—would follow a trajectory similar to the NPFL, and thus it controlled most of the countryside by 2003 but was unable to ever take Monrovia. Although the rebel organization contained former rebels from numerous factions, LURD was seen as a reformulation of the Mandingo-dominated ULIMO-K (IRIN 2004).10 The stated motive of the attacks that began in 1999 was to topple the government of Charles Taylor: “The formation of LURD was motivated by its members’ mutual opposition to what they viewed as a persistent pattern of ethnic bias, political exclusion, human rights abuses, and corruption under Taylor. LURD’s ethnically diverse makeup reflected the commonality of such views across ethnic lines” (Cook 2004, 5). In other words, the renewed warfare did not simply reflect ethnic aspirations of a single community or faction. Instead, the exclusionary behavior was so egregious that it motivated a diverse collection of interests to take up arms against the Taylor government. Most of 1999 and 2000 saw sporadic attacks in the border area with Guinea, including attacks inside Guinea by its own Taylor-backed dissidents. LURD would escalate its attacks in 2000, forcing thousands to flee internally or across the Guinean border. By the spring of 2001, LURD posed a serious threat to the government’s survival. Its effort was boosted by the backlash from Taylor’s cross-border meddling in both Guinea and Sierra Leone. At the same time Taylor was campaigning for president in May 1997, a coup in Sierra Leone brought to power a government allied with a Sierra Leonean rebel group that Taylor had practically created, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). As ECOMOG rushed to restore the ousted elected president of that country, Ahmed Kabbah, 25,000 refugees fled into Liberia. Eight months later, in February 1998, ECOMOG succeeded in restoring the Kabbah government in Freetown. Rebels took to the countryside, where they received increased support from Taylor’s government. As a result of these regional dynamics, the governments of both Guinea and Sierra Leone provided important support to the armed challengers to Taylor’s government in Liberia during the second civil war. LURD’s military commander,

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Sekou Conneh (an ethnic Mandingo), was the son-in-law of Guinea’s president. The ebb and flow of the regional conflagration saw LURD pushed back into Guinea in September 2000 but then boosted, ironically, by Sierra Leone’s peace process in 2001. Idle combatants from both sides crossed the border to fight in Liberia. Some five hundred former army soldiers joined LURD, whereas two thousand former RUF rebels fought alongside Taylor’s government forces (Pham 2004, 182). Civilians continued to suffer the brunt of indiscriminate attacks, as first one side and then the other would simply invade a town to loot it and withdraw, and rarely come into direct combat with the opposing forces. In 2002, LURD advanced to take important towns of Gbargna (home to Taylor’s NPFL-controlled territory in the first war) and Tubmanburg, only to be pushed back by Liberia’s security forces by October. Taylor’s forces benefited from internal divisions within LURD, which had no clear political program beyond the ouster of Taylor (Human Rights Watch 2002a). Those divisions fell along the divide between political leaders and military commanders, along with tensions between Krahns and Mandingos. In early 2003 Liberian Krahns in Côte d’Ivoire broke from LURD and formed (with Ivorian support) MODEL (Pham 2004, 185). LURD and MODEL constituted the two main rebel groups of the second civil war. Conversely, LURD benefited from growing international reprobation of Taylor due to his continued support for the horrific fighting in Sierra Leone. In 1991, RUF, led by Taylor’s friend Foday Sankoh, launched its insurgency against Sierra Leone’s government from Liberian soil. Taylor’s NPFL played a key role in supplying arms. As president, Taylor continued his support of RUF and of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Olonisakin 2007). That destabilization of the region undermined support for Taylor during the second war, both from the big powers and from neighbors in the region. In June 2003 sitting President Taylor was indicted for war crimes by Sierra Leone’s Special Court, whose creation had been blessed by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly. This indictment, together with deteriorating security and President George W. Bush’s ordering US warships to Liberia in late July, contributed to Taylor’s resignation and flight to Nigeria. Two weeks later, on August 18, 2003, a peace accord was signed between the two rebel factions and Taylor’s successor that led to a transitional government and ended the second civil war. Despite widespread corruption among former warlords in that interim government, a peace process enjoyed success seven years later. The warring factions were demobilized relatively quickly, security sector reforms proceeded, donors funded extensive reconstruction projects, and the election of President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf and a multiparty legislature in 2005 left no renewed warfare on the horizon in 2010—despite persistent problems of corruption, a lack of

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accountability, weak institutions, and poverty. What explains this second civil war’s onset, given that end of the prior war and a serious international peacebuilding effort? The following sections consider different explanatory factors.

Charles Taylor’s Exclusionary Behavior Although the Abuja peace accord did not specify political powersharing, the opposition’s expectations certainly included both political and security participation in the new government. In his 1997 inaugural speech, Taylor emphasized reconciliation, human rights, and national unity. He promised that there would be no witch hunts in his effort to rebuild the country from the ashes of war (Adebajo 2002b). And he took several steps that appeared inclusive. He named ULIMO-J’s leader, Roosevelt Johnson, to his cabinet, and ULIMO-K’s Alhaji Kromah to head a National Reconciliation Commission (Cook 2003, 15). These steps seem like inclusive measures. Political Repression By the end of 1998, however, these steps had proven themselves a chimera. The most significant exclusionary behavior was Taylor’s repression of political opponents. By late 1998 Taylor had forced into exile his main political rivals, largely through his partisan use of loyal security forces engaging in unaccountable harassment and repression. Sam Dokie, for instance, had become a prominent critic of Taylor after having once been his ally. On November 28, 1997, Liberian police detained Dokie and three family members. The next day members of Taylor’s Special Security Service (SSS) forcibly took the Dokies away, and three days afterward their mutilated bodies were found (US Department of State 1999, 1). The SSS members were arrested and released a few months later, and the perpetrators were never held accountable. The US State Department also reported that, on several occasions in 1998, “security forces publicly disrobed, flogged, and humiliated perceived opponents of the administration” (US Department of State 1999, section 1c). The most salient act of repression of political opponents targeted former ULIMO-J leader Johnson and those ex-combatants close to him. On September  18, 1998, hundreds of Liberian security forces and irregulars launched a planned operation called “Operation Camp Johnson Road” against the followers of Johnson, allegedly in response to an assassination plot (US Department of State 1999, 1). Johnson survived the initial attack, and he sought refuge in the US Embassy, at whose gates the government attacks continued, killing several, including top deputy Madison Wion (Adebajo 2002a; IRBC 2001; US Department of State 1999).11 After seventeen hours and several witnessed extrajudicial

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executions, the US State Department reported more than 300 dead, mostly ethnic Krahns (IRBC 2001). Some observers saw the attack as an attempt to kill Johnson, who was subsequently evacuated from the embassy. His departure ended powersharing in the Taylor government. Following these seventeen days of unrest in the capital, some 9,000 persons, mostly ethnic Krahns, fled Liberia (US Department of State 1999, 1). Two months later, Taylor accused thirty-two people—including Johnson and his other main rivals, such as Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Alhaji Kromah, and George Boley—of involvement in the plot (Adebajo 2002b). Several were subsequently convicted in absentia or jailed, which seriously undermined the possibility of unarmed political opposition. Media Suppression Taylor also used his presidential power to stifle media critics. Six months into his term, his Ministry of Information ordered the country’s only private printing press closed because of “inflammatory” editorials, although it reopened after an apology. Police flogged the publisher of another twice-weekly newspaper in January 1998, and Taylor’s security services periodically threatened journalists and editors, leading to a degree of self-censorship among the most critical media (US Department of State 1999, 3). Harassment of the media continued through 1999 and until the war ended (Williams 2006). Two radio stations were closed in March 2000 (Adebajo 2002a). Exclusion in the Security Forces One of the most important manifestations of exclusionary behavior in Liberia was in the composition and operations of the military, the police, and other security forces. Reform of the military and other security forces constituted a crucial security guarantee for the former insurgent groups in Liberia. Although international actors sought to institute human rights changes and to purge some of the most abusive elements, the expectations of Taylor’s former enemies in this sector centered on incorporation of both senior officers and the rank-and-file into the Armed Forces of Liberia and (to a lesser extent) the police and other security forces. Practically the first grievance articulated in LURD’s (2002) “Blue Print for Stability in Liberia” is the Taylor regime’s malfeasance in the security sector. In its fourth paragraph, this document states: The [1997] elections however, were intended to have produced a government that would guarantee the safety and security of the parties in particular and

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the Liberian people in general. . . . This was in effect, a political settlement that was intended to put an end to seven years of a bloody civil war. It was believed then, that confidence, a necessary element of national reconciliation and lasting peace, would have to be nurtured, beginning with the intents of the parties in good faith to make peace. Evidence in this case may be found in the fact that the first post-war government which is now headed by Mr. Taylor, was mandated to restructure the Army, Police and the various security agencies with a view to reflect neutrality. That is, none of the parties to the agreement was to maintain dominance over the army or any of the security agencies. (LURD 2002) The LURD blueprint goes on to quote the Akosombo Agreement, ratified in Abuja I (1995) and Abuja II (1996), that “ECOWAS, the United Nations and friendly governments will assist in planning the restructuring and training of the [Armed Forces of Liberia].” LURD’s position was that four provisions of the Abuja accord would be implemented, beginning with “1. The restructuring of the military and security institutions of Liberia to reflect ethnic and geographical balance.” Instead, the opposition perceived that the Taylor government violated these expectations. After saying the above commitments were “dumped into the garbage bin of history,” the LURD document states that “Mr. Taylor out turned [sic] his NPFL into the national army and other security agencies. This worsened the security situation in the country and broke down every little remaining trust the citizens and residents had in national the security network” (LURD 2002). Even if LURD is exaggerating the situation, analysts agreed that Taylor used the security forces in a partisan manner, refusing to engage in the sort of security reforms envisioned by either the opposition or the international community, and ultimately resisting checks on the repressive behavior of the army and security forces. First, Taylor took the position that the Abuja accords’ provisions about restructuring the armed forces under ECOWAS and international guidance no longer applied once his elected government took office (Malan 2008, 8).12 Instead, restructuring the army and police was his sole responsibility. Second, Taylor’s notion of reforming the armed forces was to weaken them because he distrusted an institution still dominated by Samuel Doe’s ethnic Krahn kinsmen. For instance, he demobilized more than 2,600 soldiers from the armed forces, including most of the remaining Krahn officers, replacing some with his former NPFL fighters (Adebajo 2002b; Pham 2004, 177). Instead Taylor sought to strengthen other security forces like the National Police, the SSS, and the AntiTerrorism Unit (ATU). These units, used in operations against political opponents, became influential and feared. According to the US State Department, as of the end of 1998, “The many, newly created security services absorbed Taylor’s most experienced civil war fighters. Armed units within these services consisted

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almost exclusively of undisciplined Taylor loyalists” (US Department of State 1999, 1).13 Moreover, Taylor appointed relatives and other trusted aides to run these security agencies based on partisanship and loyalty rather than professional merit. Thus Taylor’s son “Chucky” was appointed to lead the ATU, and Taylor’s cousin Joe Tate headed the Liberian National Police (Malan 2008). Tate “was accused of having led gangs of looters and a political death squad during the civil war” (Itano 2003, 3). According to Itano, “Other [units], more informally organised, had names like ‘Jungle Fire’ or no name at all, and were simply informally organised units of boys led by a slightly older boy who had been with Taylor during his days in the bush” (Itano 2003, 3). Units like the SSS, the ATU, and Jungle Fire roamed the streets with impunity, generating widespread fear. These developments led analysts to conclude that Taylor’s policies constituted the primary factor in the resurgence of civil war. As Adebajo explains, “As the Liberian president continues to use state power to silence his critics and aims to remove all opposition to his rule prior to the next elections scheduled for 2003, he has created a situation similar to that produced by Doe’s fraudulent election of 1985, where opponents were left with no legitimate way of challenging Doe except through violence” (Adebajo 2002a, 70). Itano says that, after discussing Taylor’s persistent complaints that the international arms embargo thwarted his defense of the country, “A weightier factor in his government’s decline was Taylor’s own style of rule, which caused him to centralise power in himself and keep the Liberian military fractured and divided” (Itano 2003, 3).

Alternative Explanations Having set forth the case for a precipitating role by Charles Taylor’s exclusionary behavior, what can one make of the several widely perceived causal factors in Liberia’s war recurrence in 1999 and 2000? This section explores the main alternative explanations for the renewed armed hostilities. Regional Factors? What role did regional factors play in Liberia’s civil war recurrence? Certainly regional factors played a salient role in the onset, duration, character, and recurrence of internal armed conflicts throughout West Africa. In some ways Liberia’s wars, along with those of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, are best analyzed as manifestations of a single regional dynamic from 1989 to 2007. Rebel armies were formed with the diplomatic support and funding of neighboring states; crossborder rearguards played important roles in all cases; smuggling networks cut across borders; refugees became strategic resources in mobilizing combatants;

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personal relationships with neighboring heads of states shaped warfare; and the subregional and regional organizations (ECOWAS and the African Union) played salient roles in making war and peace. A regional level of analysis, eschewing the national level altogether, would shed light on the dynamics of conflict both within and across each country. Such regional dynamics certainly shaped Liberia’s second civil war. The peace processes, held under the auspices of ECOWAS, came to fruition only after the positions, and in some cases individual leaders, of neighboring states shifted. Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and Sierra Leone all became staging grounds for the attacks that heralded the second civil war. Most important, Taylor’s continued support for RUF and other rebels fighting against Sierra Leone’s President Kabbah became the single most important strategic factor in big powers’ policies toward postwar Liberia. And during the second war, RUF forces became a crucial ally for the Liberian state, as perhaps five thousand RUF rebels “simply moved to a different conflict, taking service with the RUF’s longtime ally, Liberian President Charles Taylor, in his own ongoing civil conflict” (Itano 2003, 3). Nevertheless, national-level factors are important in determining the specific configuration and historical trajectory of armed conflict in each society. One cannot understand or explain the causes, timing, and character of Liberia’s first civil war, its peace, nor its resurgence solely with regard to the regional dynamics. Nothing at the regional level made internal armed conflict in Liberia inevitable, and understanding the processes and triggers of the second civil war requires first understanding the actions taken by Taylor’s government vis-à-vis other social sectors and, especially, his handling of the security sector and his treatment of political opponents and the ethnic groups associated with them. International Factors? What role might international factors more broadly have played in civil war recurrence? Some analysts, after all, believe that, with the end of the Cold War, the United States’ neglect and the subsequent aid cutoff were the decisive factors in the onset of war in Liberia a month after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 (Pham 2004, 89–91). Did the West topple Taylor? Was the UN mission or its missteps responsible for the recurrence of armed conflict? International factors played a role in Liberia’s war recurrence, but they constituted neither the main cause of war recurrence nor a major factor in Taylor’s violation of expectations surrounding the peace process. Some initial steps showed support for the peace process. International actors facilitated the end of a wartime shipping embargo and the reopening of seaports and airports. Yet Western governments approached Taylor’s presidency with hesitation. Although they viewed Taylor as a necessary part of the peace process in the

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mid-1990s, Western diplomats were well aware of his reputation for avarice and corruption, of his ethnicity-based alliances, and of horrific rights abuses. At the first donor conference under Taylor’s presidency, donor pledges of $230 million reached only half the $438 million requested by the government (Eziakonwa 1998, 26).14 In addition, diplomatic sources in Liberia insisted publicly in mid1998 “that the government must implement more macroeconomic adjustment, control its security forces, and attend to human rights as the preconditions for providing new foreign aid to Liberia.”15 These concerns with democracy, corruption, and human rights rendered disbursements very slow. The most significant international actions toward the Taylor administration stemmed from his role in fostering warfare in the region, especially Sierra Leone. As Liberia’s peace process came to fruition, Taylor-backed RUF forces and disgruntled former soldiers (the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, AFRC) took the capital for the first time in May 1997. They ousted that country’s president, Ahmed Kabbah, who enjoyed the backing of the West and ECOWAS. ECOMOG deployed in force to Freetown, becoming the main force confronting the RUF–AFRC alliance (International Crisis Group 2002, 2). The regional force ousted the rebel regime from the capital in February 1998. ECOWAS represented the single most important external relationship for the Taylor administration, and tensions over Sierra Leone intensified. Although ECOWAS leaders had decided to accommodate rather than continue fighting Taylor in the Abuja agreements of 1995 and 1996, that decision was rooted in the hope that peace in Liberia would curb Taylor’s support for RUF in Sierra Leone (International Crisis Group 2002, 2). Yet as Liberia’s peace process progressed, Taylor-supported RUF forces surged rather than ebbed, undermining the rapprochement with Taylor. RUF rebels had killed dozens of Nigerian ECOMOG troops in May 1997, and as president, Taylor refused ECOMOG jets access to Liberian airfields for their Sierra Leonean operations. Upon his election, Taylor also successfully pressured Nigerian president Sani Abacha to replace ECOMOG force commander Victor Malu, who had insisted on ECOMOG’s independence from Taylor’s government and on ECOMOG’s role in restructuring Liberia’s armed forces (Adebajo 2002b). Boosted by the legitimacy of his election and by international ambivalence about paying for peacekeepers and reconstruction activities in a corrupt environment, Taylor weakened ECOMOG’s influence, especially its ability to restructure the armed forces. Its troops departed Liberia in late 1998. Largely because of Taylor’s support for the insurgency in Sierra Leone, donors failed to provide him with resources or diplomatic support. Rather than attempting to use diplomatic leverage to shape his behavior, they withdrew their support. In March 2001, the United States sponsored unilateral sanctions, and the United States and United Kingdom backed UN Security Council resolutions

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sanctioning trade in “conflict diamonds” (Cook 2003, i). These understandable measures may have hastened war recurrence. They reinforced Taylor’s autonomy to repress his opponents, removed the check provided by international troops, and undermined the process of economic recovery. Aside from Security Council resolutions passed in New York, the United Nations had little military impact in Liberia. The UN Security Council, seeking to shift the burden of peacekeeping to regional organizations in Africa, deferred to ECOWAS, authorizing only 300 unarmed observers in Liberia. During the war, the UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) was largely dependent for security on ECOMOG. As the peace process progressed in 1996, fewer than 100 UN military observers remained (United Nations Department of Public Information, n.d.). At the urging of Taylor, those UN observers were withdrawn less than two months after he took office. A smaller UN Peacebuilding Support Office was erected with a handful of civilian staff. That office, which had few resources of its own, sought to mobilize resources for the newly elected government from 1997 to 2000. Consequently, Liberian civil society and outside observers criticized it for excessive cozying up to the Taylor regime (Adebajo 2002b).16 In 2002, the US nongovernmental group Human Rights Watch (2002b, 65–69) would conclude that this UN office had “played little or no active role in addressing the growing repression and abuses in Liberia.” Ultimately, neither the United Nations nor the major powers can be seen to have brought about Liberia’s second civil war. Isolation by intergovernmental actors of Taylor due to his regional warmongering weakened his government and probably exacerbated his perverse, rent-seeking, abusive, and exclusionary behavior. But that behavior was not solely or even mainly a response to international attitudes or actions. Instead Taylor used his office to extend his longstanding exclusionary behavior. He also expanded his regional support for warfare, even while he sought to reassure the international donors and financial institutions that he was satisfying their expectations. All the while he reneged on the expectations and agreements found in the Abuja accords. A Flawed Demobilization and Reintegration Process? A number of theorists and policy analysts emphasize the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants as a determinant of success in peace processes. To what extent was the process of DDR flawed in ways that led to war recurrence in Liberia? The implementation of disarmament and demobilization under Abuja II offers divergent implications. First, the process of demobilization was praised by many observers. Once the factions became committed to elections, demobilization proceeded relatively

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smoothly. As the UN mission closed in September 1997, Secretary-General Kofi Annan celebrated the impact of the DDR process: “The successful completion of the disarmament and demobilization exercise, which began in November 1996 and ended in February 1997, with the surrender to ECOMOG under UNOMIL observation of about 10,000 weapons and 1.24 million pieces of ammunition, marked a significant turn of events in Liberia” (United Nations Secretary-General 1997a). Indeed, the need to overcome delays in demobilization is one of the main justifications for postponing those elections twice. The two faction leaders committed to elections—Taylor and Kromah (ULIMO-K)—controlled an estimated 60 percent of fighters, and made up 84 percent of all demobilized combatants (Alao, MacKinlay, and Olonisakin 2000, 100). The UN Secretariat’s final report also indicated that reintegration programs had helped generate quick employment for thousands of ex-soldiers: “The initial reintegration programmes established following the end of the disarmament exercise were crucial in providing useful employment to thousands of former fighters and war-affected populations as a means both of restoring social stability and of rehabilitating some of the country’s basic infrastructure” (United Nations Secretary-General 1997a). However, the process was certainly flawed. Of an estimated 33,000 combatants to be demobilized, no more than 21,315 had demobilized by the time of the July 1997 elections (United Nations Secretary-General 1997b, para. 14; Deng Deng 2001). The factions retained sufficient arms to easily reinitiate warfare if the peace process or elections did not go as planned. Following the path of Angola’s Savimbi in 1991, Taylor’s NPFL depicted total demobilization before the election as “unrealistic” (Deng Deng 2001, 98), which preserved its ability to either dominate the security sector after electoral victory or become spoilers after electoral loss. And yet it would be misleading to attribute the recurrence of armed conflict to decisions surrounding DDR. Even a full demobilization of Taylor’s NPFL would not have stopped him, once elected, from remobilizing his forces and using the army as much as feasible to advance his own agenda in the region and internally. Moreover, the informal nature of the recruitment, organization, and command structure of Taylor’s forces made it easy for him to reconstitute those same informal forces in the 1997–2002 period, before and during the second civil war. Further demobilization of the armed forces would, ironically, have weakened a force that could act as a counterweight to the newly elected President Taylor and his loyal forces. Barbara Walter (2004) also emphasizes the individual-level decisions by potential combatants, especially young unemployed men, to join rebel movements. Looking more broadly at factors beyond the DDR process, Utas (2005) sees “the

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failure of impoverished youth to find a place in Liberian society” as a key factor both in the second civil war and in the chances for recurrence (Utas 2005, 151). He persuasively shows a postwar social malaise and marginalization felt by youth whose age progresses but whose social status, reflecting their jobs and income, remains low and frustrating. In counterpoint to this hypothetical relationship, the postwar period saw little change in this structural situation (Utas 2005, 137–53). Utas also documents a process of reintegration of ex-combatants in the 1996–98 period in rural areas, but no such process in urban areas (Utas 2005, 150). Moreover, he depicts marginalized urban youth as less central to the recruitment effort of LURD than exiles and rural populations far from the capital. Despite the continued difficulties facing former combatants and youth, he acknowledges that these were not the crucial factors in the onset or progress of the second war. “Greed” and Natural Resources? The current thinking about economic motivations in civil wars is perhaps the most persuasive alternative account of civil war onset and its recurrence in Liberia. The country is heavily dependent on natural resources, which played a role in the financing and recruitment of armed groups. Although Liberia was a major supplier of iron ore to the world before the war, timber and rubber were the main exports in the late 1990s. According to one source, by 2000 Liberia’s timber exports had risen to $221 million in value, 230 percent of their 1987 levels, constituting 22 percent of gross domestic product (Outram 2004). The largest timber operation in Liberia, called the Liberian Forest Development Company, secured a remarkable concession from President Taylor in 1999–2000 for 1.6 million hectares across four counties that made up 42 percent of the country’s productive forests.17 Two panels of experts appointed by the UN Security Council reported in 2000–2001 that this timber company, which Taylor called “his pepperbush (private matter),” was trafficking arms through Liberia for Sierra Leone’s war (Outram 2004, 613–14).18 Rebel groups exploited natural resources during and after the initial civil war. One expert noted that “the resulting logique de guerre crippled the Liberian state as an organ of administration and created a new set of economic opportunities based on plunder.”19 During the very first year of the war, Taylor’s NPFL successfully sought to negotiate with various international markets to supply iron ore. Within months he was receiving $10 million per month by transporting iron down NPFL rails to then NPFL-controlled port of Buchanan, and then on mainly to France (Pham 2004, 122). When ULIMO split, Kromah’s ULIMO-K assumed control of the Bomi mining operations, just as the Liberia Peace Council assumed control of timber exports along the Ivorian coast (Pham 2004, 121).

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Will Reno observed that “the war has been as much a battle over commerce inside and beyond Liberia’s borders as it has been a war for territory or control of the government.”20 Once the first war ended, disarmament and demobilization occurred to a lesser degree in areas of natural resource concentration. This pattern suggests that control of those resources underlay that process (Alao, MacKinlay, and Olonisakin 2000, 100). Economic motivations must be included in Taylor’s motives for waging a regional war even once it was apparent he would become president in Liberia. His own survival and his political power were apparent motives for his regional aggressiveness. He remained, for example, extremely frightened for his own personal security. Similarly, ethnic alliances and the training he and ally Foday Sankoh received in Libya fostered political affinities. Yet no analysts allege any strong ideological character to Taylor’s platform or his behavior. Taylor’s involvement in smuggling diamonds, timber, and other natural resources was an important component of the regional dynamic. His involvement in supporting RUF, despite his protestations, was documented by a panel of experts formed by the UN Security Council in 2000. Although he tried to forestall sanctions by grounding his aircraft and inviting international monitoring against diamond smuggling, the international community was unconvinced (Adebajo 2002b). In March 2001 the UN Security Council, at the behest of the United States and the United Kingdom, approved a ban on the sale of Liberian diamonds, an arms embargo, and a travel ban targeting Liberia’s political leaders and their families (Pham 2004, 182). Of course the state is a powerful source of legitimate access to money, as demonstrated by the rapid increase in tax revenues once postwar elections were held. According to the Taylor government, it increased state revenues from a little more than $1 million in the first seven months of 1997, just before Taylor assumed office, to $125 million in the subsequent five months (Eziakonwa 1998, 26). This view is supported also by Taylor’s efforts to expand presidential authority over strategic natural resource contracts. In 2000 Taylor also got the Assembly to pass a law granting him the sole power to conclude commercial contracts for strategic commodities, and thus channel their revenues directly to his control (Thomson Reuters Foundation 2001). One report asserts that the Taylor / Sankoh split that led to the capture and holding of more than 500 ECOMOG soldiers in 2000 by RUF was sparked by a dispute over access to Sierra Leone’s diamond fields (International Crisis Group 2002, 3). These empirics suggest that natural resources and private gain were crucial in accounting for the first war and its persistence. Because combatant factions do not generally acknowledge their economic motives as ends rather than means, it is impossible to conclude with certainty the role such factors play in warfare.21 Taylor’s exploitation of the state for personal gain is undeniable, and it is difficult

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to determine whether his former allies and enemies took up arms because of their political, social, or economic exclusion from the spoils of the state, and whether their individual exclusion or that of their ethnic group was causal. However, the role of natural resources and private gain seems less persuasive in understanding why war resumed in 1999 and 2000. Taylor’s exclusionary behavior is the indispensable factor in explaining civil war’s recurrence in Liberia. The factions opposed to Taylor did not immediately challenge his government, indicating that their treatment by Taylor was relevant in the decision to defect. At a minimum, their desire for access to the spoils of power was mediated by the marginalization perceived to stem from Taylor’s repression and exclusion. Although LURD’s financing proved murky, it was not involved in commercial logging until very late in the war after it took control of most of the country (Brabazon 2003, 5). Indeed, some LURD commanders feared that exploiting diamond mines would lose them the moral high ground against Taylor, even when they took control of important mining areas in early 2002 (Brabazon 2003, 6): “During LURD’s initial occupation of this area, individual commanders and fighters reportedly sold stones on a personal basis, a practice which led to one colonel being ambushed by his own troops. Indeed, it is this fear that diamond wealth will split the organization with financial jealousy that has so far prevented any concerted effort to exploit mineral resources.” The empirics suggest that both “greed” and “grievance” played a role in civil war recurrence but that the latter was the clearest and most important precipitating factor in a complex interaction process. Natural resources were important when Taylor excluded even his allies from the spoils of office, and they again became a factor once LURD had launched the renewed war in funding operations and attracting combatants. Yet exclusionary behavior seemed to underlie the motives as seen through both rebel actions and rhetoric during the second civil war. Moreover, Taylor’s conduct also shows how weak institutions that are created by exclusionary conduct not only reflected weak institutions but also helped to reinforce, and even reconstitute anew, the country’s personalized and weak state institutions (Sawyer 1990, 148–73).

Insights from Liberia’s Second Postwar Peace Process, 2003–Present Although it is too early to assess the durability of Liberia’s second postwar peace, it is instructive to explore what factors have facilitated a different outcome: stability for seven years. The existence of two peace processes in the same country within a few years permits an initial analysis of the pertinent choices and strategic factors, given that static variables changed little in the period. This section probes

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the plausibility of the different hypotheses suggested by Liberia’s failure to consolidate peace in the 1990s. After Taylor’s departure and the Accra Peace Agreement of 2003, a transitional national government exercised control of all three branches of government until elections were held in November 2005. More than 100,000 combatants were demobilized with the support of a new peacekeeping operation, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). The reintegration process was better conceived in its extension to communities where ex-combatants would return, but slow and imperfect in execution and in generating employment (United Nations Secretary-General 2007, para. 32).22 Despite occasional political unrest, peace has held from 2003 up to this writing. The differing outcome of this second peace process vis-à-vis the first cannot be due to largely static factors such as poverty rates, state weakness, high dependence on natural resource exports, demographics, and geography. With minor variations, these variables changed little between 1996 and 2003. Instead, the stability that issued from the 2003 peace process lends support to a number of theoretical claims about strategic action by national or international actors. Two of these stand out against the backdrop of the failed peace process from 1996 to 2000: (1) the more seriously backed and better-resourced international peacekeeping presence; and (2) the more inclusive approach to governance by Liberian elites, both in the more encompassing powersharing arrangement during the 2003–5 transitional government and in the nonexclusionary conduct of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf ’s administration. Here I briefly explore these two factors in the persistence of postwar peace. First, international peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts involved more serious diplomatic commitment and larger and more fully resourced military deployments. Although the international community was pleased to see the first civil war end, virtually all the major Western donors had long expressed their opposition to Charles Taylor and were reluctant to commit many resources to his government once elected. The UN Security Council’s decision to wrap up its peacekeeping operation there and instead create a troopless, and thus toothless, political mission known as the UN Peacebuilding Support Office in Liberia emblemized this lack of diplomatic support. West Africa remained divided over Taylor’s rule and preoccupied by his increasing destabilizing actions in neighboring countries, especially Sierra Leone. The enhanced international commitment was visible in many ways. UNOMIL cost $81 million over the almost four years from its inception to June 30, 1997, and, on the eve of Taylor’s assuming the presidency, the UN authorized only $20.4 million for the peace operation during the year immediately following (United Nations Department of Public Information, n.d.).23 Conversely, UNMIL

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had a budget of more than $781 million for the second year after a new president was elected following the second civil war, from July 2007 to June 2008 (Dupuy and Detzel 2007, 17). The decision of the UN Security Council to itself authorize 15,000 troops in 2003, rather than rely upon ECOWAS to provide peacekeepers, also reflected greater external commitment. Although US troops never landed on Liberia’s shores, President George W. Bush’s decision to station marines just offshore in August 2003 signaled their potential to intervene and a greater priority than during the 1990s. More significant was the decision to maintain peacekeepers for a period of years after the 2005 elections. This decision contrasted starkly with the withdrawal of UN troops within two months of Taylor’s swearing-in in 1997. Dupuy and Detzel (2007, 23) conclude that “the success of the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] is likely due to the deployment of UNMIL, which has provided public security and maintained stability in the country.” The difference between the swift departure of foreign troops after the 1997 election and the sustained peacekeeping presence since 2003 lends support to the findings of Fortna and of Doyle and Sambanis that peacekeeping troops’ prolonged presence, especially when part of a multidimensional peace operation, reduces the chance of war recurrence (Fortna 2008; Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Sambanis 2008). Another measure of the seriousness of the international commitment were the sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council on the importing of any Liberian-produced diamonds, on the exporting of arms into Liberia, and later on the importing of Liberian timber.24 No such leverage was exercised during or after the prior war. Crucially for international leverage, the UN considered and rejected a 2004 Liberian request to list the restrictions, providing continued leverage over the Liberian government until the revocation of all such targeted sanctions in 2008. Linked to this effort was the broader, more comprehensive approach to postwar peacebuilding by external actors. Although the approach was similar, the breadth of civilian commitment was greater after the second war ended in 2003, with longer-term and better funded reform projects for the security and justice sectors, the financial sector, and the civil service. Second, in terms of internal economic or political strategic choices, the most salient factor in the preservation of peace since the 2003 cease-fire ended Liberia’s second civil war has been the inclusionary character of governance, economic, and security arrangements. The August 2003 Accra Peace Agreement brought an end to the war, and it enshrined an interim powersharing arrangement. Like the peace accords signed during the first war (including Abuja), this agreement has continued to reward faction leaders by granting them personal positions in the Cabinet, and thus permitting them to plunder state resources for personal gain in keeping with political economy theories.

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However, the postwar political arrangements in the Accra agreement differed in important ways from those that followed the first civil war. This accord bolstered the role of civil society and sought to prevent a new strongman from emerging. It stipulated that the chairman and vice chairmen come from civil society. The accord also prevented the interim leaders—including the transitional chairman, vice chairman, key cabinet members, all top transitional Supreme Court magistrates, and the Assembly speaker and deputy speaker—from running for any elective office in the 2005 elections (Articles 24, 25, 27). And it established a Governance Reform Commission, whose members are appointed from a list provided by civil society organizations and include their representatives, as well as a Contract and Monopolies Commission comprising civil society representatives “independent of the commercial sector” (Articles 16 and 17). The role of civil society and political parties was also strengthened in a novel arrangement regarding powersharing in a transitional legislative assembly. Of seventy-six members, twelve came from Taylor’s government and each of the two armed movements, with fifteen representing each of the country’s counties, plus eighteen from political parties and seven from civil society organizations (Article 24). Furthermore, the army was restructured to include rebel forces (Article 7). The breaking of Taylor’s power was necessary to create the powersharing arrangement contained in the 2003 accord, and the pressure of the war crimes indictments from Sierra Leone, as well as diplomacy by the UN, regional organizations, and the United States proved crucial for his departure. These findings suggest that the sustained presence of international peacekeeping troops, a more committed approach to resourcing and supporting peacebuilding efforts, and the inclusionary behavior of elites have been crucial to the stability enjoyed by Liberia since 2003. These tentative findings based on the postwar peace reinforce the conclusions drawn here based on Liberia’s recurrence of civil war in the late 1990s. Even if one acknowledges the role that access to the wealth of natural resources and their export have for the likelihood of war recurrence, this recent experience points to the importance of how national actors govern with regard to political access and economic resources.

Conclusion What explanations of Liberia’s second civil war are most persuasive? How well do the circumstances and factors surrounding Liberia’s renewed warfare conform to various theories? Liberia’s experience from 1996 through 2000 provides support for several theories of civil war and its recurrence. Liberia is a poor society with weak state institutions, lying among war-torn neighbors, and highly dependent on natural

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resources, where young men constitute a large proportion of the population and where ethnic divisions are significant. Neighboring states and the international response to Charles Taylor’s warmongering in Sierra Leone contributed a rearguard, resources, and even combatants to LURD and MODEL. However, these new insurgent groups were not created by external actors nor principally by the lure of economic rents but by Liberians reacting to Taylor’s policies. As shown above, natural resources like timber, rubber, and minerals played an important role as incentives to and resources for civil war. This political economy explanation represents the most plausible alternative to the role of exclusionary behavior during the interwar period. Yet Taylor’s exclusion of all his main opponents from the political stage, not to mention his violence and discrimination against them, was the primary driver of Liberia’s war recurrence. Unprovoked by any coherent armed opposition, Taylor began to repress his political opponents and regional rivals soon upon acceding to the presidency. He then reneged on the international and national expectation surrounding the downsizing, reform, and curricular revision of the armed forces and stalled on these stipulated changes. Despite the absence of detailed provisions for inclusion in the peace process of 1996–97, he violated expectations by dismissing his former enemies from the government after promising them a share of power, he increasingly pushed out his former enemies from the army and security services, and he used violence and threats of arrest against some of these dismissed officials. Taylor’s exclusionary behavior, especially in the security services, involved patron–client networks that marginalized ethnic Krahns and Mandingos. His policies led former ULIMO combatants to reorganize and challenge the state. The competing informal networks characteristic of a weak state fell along the lines of ethnic difference and grievance, fueled by a lack of resources. Yet neither weak institutions nor ethnic diversity per se is a sufficient explanation. Taylor’s transparent ethnic manipulation made the difference. His exclusion was so egregious that many of his senior followers through the end of the first civil war helped form LURD. In the end, grievance accounts for this “tough” case of civil war recurrence at least as much as the economic factors prevalent in the contemporary literature. Beyond the substance suggested by this case study, it offers a chance to reflect on case studies as a method of researching civil wars and their recurrence. This case study, though based principally on secondary sources, offers some clear advantages over the quantitative methods examined in chapter 1. Quantitative methods can identify and confirm the likely causal impact of variables that can be measured comparably across many cases, including institutional arrangements like powersharing and risk factors like poverty or dependence on oil exports. Unless they find a 100 percent correlation, such methods are obviously unable to specify whether such variables are operative in any given case. Moreover, quan-

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titative methods cannot capture the strategic choices made by elites, even when these are conditioned by risk factors or institutional arrangements. This Liberia case study shows the value of qualitative methods for understanding the role of elite choices in postwar societies. Taylor’s decision to renege on the arrangements agreed upon is crucial for explaining Liberia’s war recurrence. Despite the deliberate self-interested misrepresentation of motives, how rebels frame their motives is relevant for understanding causes of civil wars and the lines along which mobilization does or does not occur. Case studies also hold heuristic value. Even a relatively structured and focused case study such as this one reveals empirics that suggest new lines of inquiry and potential causal factors that may require greater attention. This case study has revealed the salience of regional and international levels of analysis. Quantitative analysis has addressed these factors by retaining country-level units of analysis but also including variables for “regional” impact or neighbors at war; however, these efforts do not entirely capture the insights provided by shifting levels of analysis. This shift, though not executed in this study (e.g., I did not examine West Africa’s conflict cluster, the Great Lakes conflict cluster, or the Central American conflict cluster), can nevertheless be identified and explored in a case study. The case would be strengthened by more detailed process tracing of the various factors that shaped Taylor’s decision making, including access to advice he received and the pressures of various domestic constituencies, as well as the application of psychological methods. Qualitative methods, and this case study specifically, also carry liabilities. Aside from its execution, a case study of Liberia cannot wholly sift through the economic versus the power-based political motives of Charles Taylor or his associates once in office. That difficulty undermines the effectiveness of the method and the persuasiveness of the argument. Even more empirical detail would probably not produce a definitive finding. Moreover, the robustness of a particular variable is not verifiable based on a single case study. Those who execute case studies perceive their findings to apply more broadly, at least to similarly situated cases. However, a variable that seems consequential may be irrelevant in all other cases. Only through an examination of other cases (whether similar or not) can one determine whether a particular factor is relevant for the entire pool of cases. It is to such a method that I subsequently turn by conducting briefer, more structured, and more focused “mini” or abbreviated case studies.

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Notes 1. Several sources cite the 150,000 estimate of total deaths; e.g., see Stedman (1996, 252 n36). 2. Although the government did not verify the identity of the rebels as Liberian, Reuters reported that locals alleged them to be members of ULIMO-K and ULIMO-J. 3. LURD was formed in February 2000 by former Taylor allies, consisted mainly of former ULIMO-K members, but included also former members of prior rebel groups ULIMO-J, the Liberia Peace Council, and former government soldiers. 4. Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Conflict Summaries, 2003a. Available from the author. 5. The coup attempt was led by General Thomas Quiwonkpa, the founder of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, which Taylor would eventually command. 6. The NPFL also included Burkinabe, Gambian, and Sierra Leonean mercenaries. 7. This paragraph draws on Adebajo (2002a, 46–47). 8. PRIO Conflict Summaries for Africa, 2003a. 9. Statement released April 25, 1999, from the Global Security Organization website on military factions, www.globalsecurity.org / military / world / para / lurd.htm. 10. Peter Dennis, “A Brief History of Liberia,” paper for the International Center for Transitional Justice, May 2006, author’s files, 14. 11. Wion had allegedly confessed to involvement in the assassination plot (IRBC 2001). 12. Taylor cited the wording of the Akosombo Agreement, which stipulated that planning for the restructuring and training of the military would be the responsibility of the Liberian Transitional National Government, with support from international actors. See Akosombo Agreement, September 12, 1994, Section H, Article 9, Count 4. 13. Nicole Itano emphasizes the tactical consequences of this divisive style, as a weakened military proved unable to defend Monrovia against the rebels’ advance. See Itano (2003, 3). 14. The donor conference was held in Paris in April 1998. 15. “Liberian Daily News Bulletin,” Star Radio, July 24, 1998, as quoted by GeepuNah Tiepoh, “The Hubbub over Foreign Aid: Facing the Sobering Reality,” www .theperspective.org / hubbub.html. 16. Author’s personal interviews, Monrovia and Dakar, August 2004. 17. The company was earlier the Oriental Timber Company, and later the LiberianMalaysian Timber Company. 18. One was the December 2000 report of the Sierra Leone Expert Panel, and another was the October 2001 report of the UN Panel of Experts on Liberia. 19. Stephen Ellis, quoted by Pham (2004, 121). 20. William Reno, quoted by Pham (2004, 121n1).

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21. As Collier et al. argue in Breaking the Conflict Trap (2003), rebel leaders have many incentives to hide their true selfish motives behind rhetoric that instead emphasizes legitimate collective grievances. 22. Also from the author’s interviews with officials of UNMIL and Western embassies, Monrovia, August 2004. 23. See UN General Assembly Resolution 51 / 3 C, June 13, 1997. Of course, ECOWAS played a more prominent and expensive role than the UN in the war as well as afterward. One scholar estimates that Nigeria spent more than $4 billion on ECOMOG alone in the 1990s (Coleman 2007, 85); however, Western states’ deference to the African Union (rather than the UN) itself reflects the low priority given Liberia’s peace process by those states. 24. See UN Security Council Resolution 1343, March 7, 2001, and UN Security Council Resolution 1521, December 22, 2003. UNSC Resolution 1343 was revoked on November 20, 2008, by UN Sanctions Regulations Amendment SR 2008 / 394.

4 Separatist Recurrences of Civil War THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER USED a full-fledged case study to examine Liberia’s recurrence of civil war after an apparently successful UN peace operation. These types of cases share other characteristics that do not necessarily hold for other postconflict societies. Not only did they experience renewed UN peacekeeping operations after apparent peacebuilding success but they also all experienced sustained international military interventions and extensive civilian state-building efforts after both their episodes of armed conflicts. They are all poor, weakly institutionalized societies where local and / or tribal authorities wield important power outside the reach or presence of the state. Despite the particularities of these three cases, is it possible that the common elements of their shared experiences of reversion to armed conflict might shed light on the broader phenomenon of the failure of peace? What do these cases suggest about the factors that lead wars to reignite? And how well do these hypothesized factors hold up to empirical scrutiny? This chapter moves to the third research method utilized in this book: brief, tightly focused, structured case studies. In chapter 1 the strengths, weaknesses, and findings of quantitative methods are first examined. That chapter shows the need for a more contextualized analysis of variables that are inaccessible to quantitative analysis, at least given constraints on the time and resources needed to develop relevant data. Chapter 2 sets forth crucial concepts for theorizing the recurrence of war. And in chapter 3 I analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and findings of a focused and somewhat in-depth case study of Liberia’s second civil war. That method offers richer understandings of both the process by which certain variables act causally and the interaction of these variables. However, a case study or two, even including within-country comparisons with more recent postwar experiences, such as that in Liberia after 2003, do not permit robust or reliable findings. The next three chapters, therefore, extend the cases examined beyond Liberia to the other fourteen cases among the entire pool of fifteen civil war recurrences

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defined in the introductory chapter. It does so by focusing on the hypothesized factors generated by the existing literature and illustrated through the case study of Liberia. Chief among these is the exclusionary behavior exhibited by postwar elected civilian governments, in its various manifestations. In addition the case studies examine regional-level factors, external operations, and their impact, along with weak state institutions. What is the role of neighboring states and territories, as either havens for insurgents or supporters of their suppression? Did external actors play a decisive role in recurrence? Are institutions weak, and do weak institutions seem to play a role? These “mini–case studies” also explicitly take up variables identified in the quantitative literature and segment of this book: ethnic and religious fractionalization, the presence and departure of external peacekeeping troops, and natural resources and the economic opportunities they provide. The method applied to these minicases therefore constitutes what Harry Eckstein (1975) called a “plausibility probe,” designed to explore the extent to which hypothesized variables usually drawn from one set of cases hold causal weight in another set of cases. In addition these minicases serve a second, heuristic function, because the studies will highlight factors that seem to have been important to case specialists in their analysis of particular recurrences of internal armed conflict. The cases explored in this chapter are drawn from the list of core recurrences given in table 4.1. These cases’ selection criteria are explained in the introduction, but their eclectic character bears recapping. They represent an amalgam of countries with disparate types of armed conflicts, but they reflect reliance on others’ categorizations in an effort not to skew the findings. Thus countries with less lethal recurrences of internal armed conflict (e.g., Haiti, East Timor, the Central African Republic, and Peru) are included alongside countries with very deadly repeat civil wars (e.g., Chechnya, Tibet, Liberia, Lebanon, and Sudan). Fearon and Laitin’s list also includes countries with recurrent internal armed conflicts where one-sided violence or genocide constituted the main portion of the initial war (viz., Haiti, Burundi, and Rwanda). My own judgments have entered through the exclusion of certain cases (e.g., Sri Lanka, Somalia, and Senegal) because of the absence of a broad perception within those societies, and among analysts, that war ever ended.1 Beyond reliance on secondary sources (especially Fearon and Laitin 2003; Sambanis 2006) for identifying the parties for each conflict, I have also included civil wars in three countries where separate conflicts existed—China in Tibet, South Ossetia in Georgia, and the North / South conflicts within the Sudan. I excluded other countries like Indonesia, Pakistan, and Iraq, where multiple internal wars rendered it impossible to specify that there was a civil war recurrence, because internal wars overlapped either temporally or spatially (i.e., through overlapping territories or interlinked conflict recurrences) or involved different actors.

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Table 4.1 Fifteen Core Cases of Civil War Recurrence Burundi, 1972, 1988, 1993–2006 Central African Republic, 1996–97, 2001–2 China, 1950–51, 1956–59 East Timor (Indonesia), 1975–99, 2006 Georgia / South Ossetia, 1992–94, 2004 Haiti, 1991–95, 2004 Lebanon, 1958, 1975–90 Liberia, 1989–96, 1999–2003 Mali, 1989–94, 2007 Nicaragua, 1978–79, 1981–90 Peru, 1981–1995, 2007 Russia, 1994–96, 1999–present Rwanda, 1962–65, 1990–2002 Sudan, 1955–72, 1985–2002 Zimbabwe, 1972–79, 1983–87

Before embarking on this and the next two chapters on the recurrent cases of armed conflict, I summarize the six main findings presented in these three chapters, as drawn from the fifteen total cases. First, precipitating exclusionary behavior is the most evident and cited proximate cause for recurrence in most cases—in nine of fifteen cases, or 60 percent. Recall that precipitating exclusionary behavior goes beyond a static condition of exclusion. In these nine cases postwar states adopted a policy that violated the expectations of the former rebels or their followers and supporters, and this exclusionary conduct served as the principal precipitating factor for the recurrence of civil war or internal armed conflict. These nine cases are the Central African Republic, China / Tibet, East Timor, Georgia, Haiti, Liberia, Russia / Chechnya, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Four of these cases—those based on secessionist struggles—are the subject of this chapter. In an additional four cases—Haiti, the Central African Republic, East Timor, and Zimbabwe—political exclusion was a driving factor in the recurrence of armed conflict. These cases, whose recurrences were not rooted in secessionist aspirations (even where the original war may have been thus rooted, as in East Timor), are addressed in chapter 5. Liberia also fits this pattern of exclusion and thus serves as a key trigger for the recurrence of internal armed conflict. Second, exclusion by the state against its former wartime allies constitutes a separate subset of war recurrences. In some cases where a coalition of insurgent armies emerges victorious, exclusionary behavior by one victorious actor against a wartime ally constitutes the principal precipitating factor in a relapse into armed conflict. East Timor and Zimbabwe present cases of triumphant liberation movements whose leaders, once in power, acted in an exclusionary manner toward their former allies, which sparked renewed armed conflict.

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Third, a violation of powersharing arrangements was the trigger for war recurrence in 40 percent of the core cases of recurrence. Precipitating exclusionary conduct may rest on formal agreements or on unwritten, informal arrangements that create certain expectations (as in Haiti, Burundi, and East Timor). In six of the fifteen cases of recurrence—Sudan, Russia (in Chechnya), Georgia (in South Ossetia), Liberia, the Central African Republic, and Zimbabwe—the state reneged on an explicit, signed powersharing agreement, either to cede central power over a territory or to share institutional power in political offices or military / police posts. In Chechnya the role of reneging on a powersharing arrangement was an important factor, but not the sole trigger. Fourth, severe, chronic exclusionary conduct, though insufficient to postulate as a correlated or causal variable, played a role in two war recurrences. In these two additional cases of Burundi and Rwanda, exclusionary behavior was not the precipitating factor but is cited by virtually all analysts as a crucial causal factor. In these interactive recurrences in adjacent, demographically similar states, severe exclusionary behavior served as the constant backdrop to the eruption of resistance and its harsh repression, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. These state policies, following earlier mass violence that had been deemed (perhaps incorrectly) a civil war, reflect the most severe exclusionary behavior for the cases observed. I refer to this as severe, “chronic exclusion,” a term that identifies a risk factor for conflict recurrence but inadequately specifies whether (or when or how) armed conflict will recur in a given society. The concept of chronic, severe exclusion is thus useful to understand a subset of recurrent internal armed conflicts but not as a trigger of war recurrence. The cases of severe, chronic exclusion in Burundi and Rwanda are examined in chapter 5. Fifth, exclusionary conduct is not the only salient factor in these recurrences; however, it is the most consistently important one. Natural resources and economic factors were not a primary causal factor in any of the fifteen core cases except Peru (which is analyzed in chapter 6, along with other nonconforming cases), where the reemergence of the Shining Path insurgency coincided with its new role not just in taxing cultivators of coca but also in its trafficking. However, natural resources acted as an interrelated, secondary factor in four other cases of recurrence. Thus recurrence was influenced by the interaction of exclusion with oil production or transportation in the Sudan and Chechnya; and with minerals in Liberia and the Central African Republic. Except for four states—Russia, Peru, Lebanon, and Georgia—the core cases were predominantly poor. These cases also score high on the various indicators of state institutional weakness. Haiti, East Timor, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Mali rank among the world’s least institutionalized states. The qualitative research here indicates that these two factors identified by the economy-centered literature on civil wars are relevant risk factors. Poverty and

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state weakness enhance the risk of recurrence, but recurrence is most often triggered by state exclusionary behavior. Sixth, and most important, the points noted above indicate that exclusionary behavior was the most important causal factor in eleven of the fifteen cases, or 73 percent, of recurrence of armed conflicts. Postwar states engaged in exclusionary conduct in thirteen of the fifteen cases, or 87 percent, although it was not the main cause in two of these. Again, these six central findings are presented in this and the next two chapters. I now turn to the first subset of cases whose recurrences reflected separatist aspirations. As in Liberia, exclusion by postwar governments served as a trigger for renewed conflict in eight other core cases. Exclusion took various forms. I begin by analyzing the cases of powersharing over separatist territories. Rather than offer key analytic points prematurely, here I present four mini–case studies: Sudan’s recurrent civil war (1955–72 and 1983–2005), Russia’s two civil wars in Chechnya (1994–96 and 1999–), South Ossetia’s recurrent armed conflict against Georgia (1992–94 and 2004; the 2008 war and the Russian invasion were too recent for this study), and China’s two wars in and over Tibet’s autonomy (1950–51 and 1956–60). Subsequently, I analyze the findings from all four cases.

Sudan in 1955–72 and 1983–2005: The Marginalization of the South Despite multiple conflicts within the territory, Sudan’s two North / South wars are included here because commonly accepted analysis permits separate analysis of the recurrent conflicts, despite the related but distinct conflicts elsewhere (e.g., Darfur). In contrast to the civil wars in Uganda, Somalia, and Indonesia, Sudan’s conflict from the 1980s onward is often referred to as the “second” civil war. Major data sets score two distinct wars with a period of interwar peace from 1972 to 1983.2 Some data sets score the origins of the first war in 1963 because the formation of coherent guerrilla forces occurred in that year. However, several book-length treatments of Sudan’s wars (Poggo 2009; O’Ballance 2000; Assefa 1987) score the first war as commencing in 1955 or 1956. Although the starting date of the initial war is contested, the ending date (1972) and the starting and ending dates of the second civil war (1983–2005) reflect a relatively broad consensus. Analysts are virtually unanimous in emphasizing the exclusionary behavior of the government in explaining why civil war recurred in the Sudan. The discovery of oil was one factor in the recurrence, but not as important as exclusion vis-à-vis land, Sharia law, and political representation in the early 1980s. The first war also involved a falling out among the national factions that struggled for independence from Britain, and it thus resembled (imperfectly) the dynamics of the postwar recurrences in East Timor and Zimbabwe.

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Sudan is the largest country in Africa, and its northern part is occupied by the Sahara Desert. A British census in the aftermath of independence in January 1956 showed that 55 percent of the population claimed African descent, and 39 percent claimed Arab ancestry. Most of those African Sudanese lived in the southern region, but almost half (45 percent) of those African Sudanese lived with their Arab compatriots in the eastern and other non-southern regions (Poggo 2009, 15). Because Sudanese “Arabs” are generally descended from a mixture of Arab, Nubian, and black African races, the term is more cultural than racial (Suliman 1997, 100). In the nineteenth century, the slavery of some 2 million black southerners mainly at the hands of Arabs and Western colonists led to the assimilation of darker-skinned peoples into Arab ways, Islam, and intermarriage (Anderson 1999, 65). Thus the rebel leader John Garang was fond of saying that more Africans lived in the supposedly Arab-dominated North of Sudan than in the South (Poggo 2009, 19). Ethnic distinctions also characterized the South, where the most numerous black African tribes were the Dinka and the Nuer (Poggo 2009, 13). The First Civil War, 1955–72 Sudanese history is replete with tensions between northern peoples more connected to world trade through the Red Sea and Egypt and the less developed, more isolated South. The British and Egyptians invaded and exercised control over Sudan after 1898, and in 1902 they adopted a policy to treat the North and South separately (Assefa 1987, 45). This meant banning Muslim traders and others from entering the South, encouraging the adoption of the English language rather than the Arabic language, revitalizing tribal law and customs in the South while discouraging Arab names and customs, and even banning the sale of Arab clothing (Assefa 1987, 45). To illustrate the differential approach to state institutions, only thirty officials from Britain served in the entire South during its first fifty years of occupation, and they made no effort to include southerners in training as administrators or into the police or military colleges (Poggo 2009, 23–24). After World War II, the British reversed this policy of separation, began to defer more to the North in governance questions about the South, and entertained the notion of a unified Sudan that would receive independence (Assefa 1987, 45–48). As independence approached in the 1950s, Egypt in 1951 abrogated the Condominium Agreement governing its and the British role in the South, but it failed in its bid to establish sovereignty over the Sudan. In the process, however, the South became organized and created the Southern Party in 1951. It is an ahistoric oversimplification to reduce the identity lines of Sudan’s conflict to Arab / nonblack / Muslim versus African / black / Christian. Nevertheless, the mobilization of both civil wars has tended to occur mainly along these lines.

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The roots of the first civil war center on the aspirations for self-government of the South and perceived northern resistance to this end. This resistance predated and anticipated Sudan’s independence on January 1, 1956. Northern political parties, in an effort to preemptively occupy the state posts and political space that independence would afford, became expansive and more absolute in their expressions of Sudanese unity (Poggo 2009, 35). Because they were wrapped up in their negotiations with the colonial occupiers of Egypt and Britain, the northern parties neglected southern actors. The southerners increasingly saw that their marginal role in decision making during this interim period foreshadowed their continued exclusion (Poggo 2009, 34). They increasingly expressed their frustration and eventually withdrew from the transitional arrangements. Thus the dynamics in the years 1954–56 in Sudan reflect a falling out among the main domestic protagonists in a process of the emergence of a new country. On August 18, 1955, soldiers in the town of Torit in Sudan’s southernmost province of Equatoria received long-rumored orders to report for transportation to northern postings, which allegedly were aimed at weakening and dividing southern soldiers within the national army. They attacked their northern officers and stole arms and ammunition, and the soldiers in other southern towns soon followed suit, which led to roughly four hundred deaths, mostly of northerners (Poggo 2009, 42). The mutiny marks the onset of the civil war, which continued in the following months and accelerated partly in response to severe repression carried out by the North (Poggo 2009, 52–53). After the 1955 mutiny, a Commission of Inquiry found that “the Southern Army revolt was the final outburst after the Southern political claims had been frustrated” (quoted by Poggo 2009, 56). In a recent detailed study of the origins of the first war, Poggo (2009) concludes that the 1955 mutiny of the Equatoria Corps “was the culmination of frustration after many years of discrimination” against southerners, grievances “compounded by the Sudanese government’s refusal to grant federal status to the South” (p. 49). She adds that southern demands for a federated system (not even independence) were “totally ignored” by the northern political leadership (p. 50). Northerners’ exclusion of southerners continued in the late 1950s: in discrimination in state posts, including their total exclusion from the Foreign Ministry; in the 1956 formation of a forty-six-person constitutional drafting commission that contained only three southerners; and in the composition of the legislature, where southerners chafed at their degree of underrepresentation (pp. 52–58). Moreover, the repression of any seeming dissent further deepened southerners’ marginalization and the civil war. The rebel bands remained inchoate and small between 1955 and 1963, which partly accounts for the starting dates of the war in the 1960s. The Sudan African National Union (SANU) was formed in 1962 in Kinshasa, but it was viewed by

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the rebels as a futile diplomatic forum (O’Ballance 2000, 17–19). But in 1963 the rebels organized, adopted the name the Anya-Nya, and launched more attacks in the mid-1960s while using the Republic of the Congo and Uganda as refuges (O’Ballance 2000, 21–23). By the mid-1960s, SANU had split to form new political groups, some tied to the Anya-Nya, that by now demanded independence rather than federation. In contrast to other cases, Sudan’s religious and ethnic dimensions seem more intertwined, because marginalization and mobilization have occurred along both lines, and it is impossible to dismiss one or the other. Furthermore, rather than an entirely Christian composition, the rebels of the South included numerous Muslims (Iyob and Khadiagala 2006, 32). The parties to conflict utilized these terms—“Arab,” “African”—explicitly to mobilize greater adherents. Anticolonial nationalists reappropriated the term “Arab” in the 1920s in resistance to British colonial discourse. Only later did some adopt “African” as a gesture against their disenfranchisement under the “hegemonic rule of their Arabized compatriots” (Iyob and Khadiagala 2006, 31). External actors also played an important role in this first war, beyond the preindependence policies of Egypt and Britain. Between 1960 and 1972, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, various Arab countries, East Germany, Yugoslavia, and China all supplied the Sudanese government with sophisticated arms and aircraft (Poggo 2009, 1). The southern rebels were greatly strengthened in resources and arms by the Israeli government, which passed on arms captured in the SixDay War and sought to undermine the Arab-dominated Sudanese government (Poggo 2009, 2). The Peace Colonel Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiri had come to power initially as a socialist and secularist, but after a Communist coup was turned back in 1971, he moved toward the West and away from radical change. The United States responded warmly to this shift and gave $18 million for refugee resettlement in support of the peace accord (Anderson 1999, 17). Partly out of a desire to bolster his support in the South, Nimeiri also sought to negotiate an end to the seventeen-year civil war. In 1972, the Addis Ababa agreement was signed between the Nimeiri government and the now more unified political-military insurgency, the South Sudan Liberation Movement. A cease-fire went into effect with general success that year. The negotiations were facilitated by the agreement of the Ethiopians to cease supporting the rebels in exchange for Nimeiri’s commitment to cease support for the Eritrean rebels. The negotiations process was formally chaired by the emperor of Ethiopia and was mediated by Liberian canon Burgess Carr of the All-African Council of Churches (Mitchell 1989, 8; Assefa 1987, 131–43).

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The peace agreement provided for considerable autonomy for the South under a regional government with its own high executive council and a regional assembly—all enacted into law. The regional entity would have legislative authority over education, health, public security, and natural resources (e.g., oil), but not defense, currency, or foreign affairs (Daly 1993, 19). Mechanisms were also created to help prevent and resolve tensions between the central government (where southerners continued to have representation) and the new regional bodies. Arabic continued as the official language of the whole country, but English became the “common language” of the South and was taught in schools (Mitchell 1989, 8). After the most difficult negotiations (Assefa 1987, 131–34), the parties agreed on the incorporation of an estimated 12,000 rebels into the state’s armed forces and police. Mitchell (1989, 8) reports: “This force would, for a transitional term, be under the command of a commission of northerners and southerners, until the south had set up its own machinery for maintaining law and order, which was to consist of an armed police force and between 2,000 and 3,000 frontier guards.” The agreement retained the unity of the country while offering the promise of substantial autonomy and security guarantees. It is generally considered a successful peace negotiation, and a crucial factor in both the eleven-year interwar peace and the recovery of some stability for the Nimeiri regime (Mitchell 1989, 9). The Second Civil War, 1983–2005 Unfortunately, the agreement was only partially implemented, because Nimeiri increasingly flouted the accord and marginalized southerners. Sudan’s second civil war occurred principally because of a perceived reneging on the promise of autonomy enjoyed as the status quo during the mid-1970s, which was embodied mainly but not exclusively in the 1972 peace accord. Central to the dynamics of politics within the North of the Sudan were tensions between secularists and Islamists. In 1976 an Islamist movement led by Sadiq al-Mahdi failed in a coup attempt. In contrast to the reaction away from the left provoked by the 1971 failed coup, this experience demonstrated to Nimeiri the power of the Islamists (Daly 1993, 20). He moved to accommodate them as part of a six-year process begun in 1977 known as “National Reconciliation.” In that year he created a commission to reform the Constitution to bring it and law into line with Islam, and in 1983 he declared Sharia to be the law throughout the country (Daly 1993, 20). As Daly (1993, 21) states, “While the degree of regional autonomy achieved did not approximate the federalism many had long favored, the powers devolved at Addis Ababa allowed protection of the South’s special character—or would have if the agreement had been honored by Nimayri and

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the Southern politicians themselves.” Related to these actions to roll back the autonomy that southerners expected in their public security and legal systems, not to mention religious and cultural life, Nimeiri reneged on other elements of the accord and thus redrew the South’s internal divisions. The Anya-Nya II, led by some of the same commanders, joined with other mutineers in 1983 to form the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which was connected to its political arm, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement ( Johnson and Prunier 1993, 125). Colonel John Garang, who had fought with the rebels in the first civil war, was sent as an army officer to negotiate with rebels in 1983 when he defected to join them ( Johnson and Prunier 1993, 124). Overall, academic treatments of the Sudanese recurrence of civil war emphasize the exclusionary behavior of the Sudanese government. Mitchell (1989, 2), for instance, says that the Addis Ababa agreement provided the basis for peace between North and South “until the terms and the spirit of the Agreement were unilaterally undermined by Nimeiry, one of its main architects, and war broke out again.” Johnson and Prunier (1993, 124) say that “Nimayri prepared for the abolition of the Southern region by arresting pro-unionist Southern politicians and transferring Southern troops to the North.” And Wakoson (1993, 29) says that “the Northern ruling elite have consistently ignored Southerners’ demand for federalism. The result of this intransigence has been the continual constitutional crisis and civil wars dominating Sudanese national politics since 1955.” Although many analysts of the war recurrence stress the North’s efforts to garner resources from the South, none place economic factors or natural resources at the center of their explanation. However, natural resources, especially the discovery of larger oil reserves in the 1980s and 1990s mainly in the South, are a relevant factor in renewed warfare. Suliman’s (1997) neo-Marxist analysis explicitly argues that the ethnoreligious divisions that are emphasized by virtually all analysts of the second civil war are overstated and that economic factors play an important role, especially as the war wore on. He notes that Chevron announced the discovery of new oil reserves in the southwest in 1981, amounting to 12 percent of the estimated national reserves of 2 billion barrels at the time. Nimeiri angered southern elites in 1982 when he announced that the country’s first refinery would be constructed south of Port Sudan rather than closer to the South (Suliman 1997, 115). Among the earliest attacks of the second war in 1984 were on oil fields in the South, which disrupted production there for several years. Even so, Suliman (1997, 110–15) and Daly (1993, 21–23) emphasize the effects of economic crisis and export-led economic and agricultural policies rather than oil, which receives only a tertiary mention. Indeed, the case lends support to the thesis, contrary to Collier and his colleagues, that negative World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies proved more important than any particular natural resource in facilitating the second war. Those policies undercut

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state subsidies, aggravated drought-related economic crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, and caused migration and resentment (Suliman 1997, 111–13; Daly 1993, 21–22). Thus oil receives scant mention from O’Ballance (whose 2000 book mentions oil on only two pages), Daly (whose 1993 chapter on the political and economic roots of the renewed war mentions oil as only a rising cost factor in the economic crisis); and Alex de Waal (who does not mention it in his 1993 chapter on the rise of militias in the 1980s). Sudan seems to confirm some of the more nuanced and recent versions of the economic opportunities literature, as access to economic livelihoods (broader than simply natural resources like oil) interacts with identity claims to account for the mobilization of the second war in 1983. As Iyob and Khadiagala (2006, 29) say: “It is the conflicts over resources—agricultural land, water, pasturage, and, recently, oil—that underpin the attenuated rivalries that followed, leaving behind new hostilities that were . . . woven together to become the poles of identity / ethnicity around which the contesting groups rallied.” International factors were important, but again secondary. Ethiopia and Sudan’s other neighbors were used as refuges for the insurgents, and both sides received arms from outside sources. Nevertheless, international actors played a less prominent role in the 1983 recurrence than they played in the earlier civil war and its termination.

Chechyna in 1994–96 and 1999–Present: Reneging and Resistance The separatist war that emerged in Chechnya in 1994 is similar to the other more successful separatist struggles that emerged in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union. These conflicts all exhibited long-simmering resentment of Russian-dominated rule from Moscow; resistance to decades of ethnic marginalization, including the incursion of ethnic Russians who enjoyed more privileges; and a desire for greater control over economic policy and natural resources. Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, and Chechnya (and neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan) all lie in the mountains of the Caucasus, affirming one of the risk factors for the onset of civil war. In an earlier act of Soviet repression that instilled resentment, Chechens had been forcibly deported to Siberia amid an earlier uprising during World War II. At the time of the first Chechen war, 73 percent of Chechnya’s residents were ethnic Chechens, whereas about 26 percent were ethnic Russians (Hill 1995). The First Chechen War In late 1994 Russian troops invaded Chechnya to put down the separatist movement. Baev, Koehler, and Zurcher (2005) cite three reasons for Russia’s invasion

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at this time: Russian political elites hoped that a military victory would give them political capital, they were concerned about organized crime, and they were worried about the precedent that Chechen secession might set.3 A Russian missile attack killed Chechen president Dudayev in April 1996, bringing together the separatist forces. They recaptured the capital on August 6, 1996. That same month, Russia’s popular general Alexsandr Lebed and then–general Aslan Maskhadov signed the Khasavyurt Accords, providing for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops. A tenuous period of peace ensued. Chechnya’s war recurrence in 1999 may seem like it does not meet the standard of reneging on the part of the state. Kremlinologists, however, viewed the war in Chechnya as not just potentially destabilizing in Russia but also one that had a major political impact, sealing the fate of one president and opening the way for another. In the words of Lieven (1998, 102), “The first week of the Chechen War marked one of the most critical moments in the history of the Yeltsin administration and indeed of modern Russia. . . . This is because, for a few days, there seemed to be a real possibility that the unity of the Russian army would crack, and with it the obedience of the junior commanders to the Defence Ministry and the military hierarchy.” The first war “very nearly led to Boris Yeltsin’s impeachment” (Lieven 1998, 102). The second civil war was also intimately tied to regime stability in Moscow. Once Vladimir Putin became president upon Yeltsin’s resignation three months before the March 2000 elections, “renewal of the war against Chechnya . . . secured Putin’s victory” (Evangelista 2002, 6). Putin’s career rose with the specter of renewed warfare in Chechnya. The Khasavyurt Accord, 1996 The expectations surrounding the end of the first Chechen war were set principally in the Khasavyurt Accords, which were reaffirmed in a treaty-signing ceremony by Boris Yeltsin and newly elected Chechen president Maskhadov in May 1997. The agreement deferred a decision on the separatist republic’s status until 2001, but it explicitly eschewed both the use and the threatened use of armed forces in resolving the issues (Khasavyurt Accord, August 30, 1996). The two parties created a joint commission to monitor Russia’s troop withdrawal, to draw up proposals for financial and budgetary relations, to confront crime inside Chechnya, and to make economic reconstruction plans. These plans implied an acceptance of Chechnya’s autonomy in its budget, finances, and internal security. Similar to the 1991–94 period, the republic retained de facto independence. The Russian troops’ withdrawal was interpreted by Chechens as a “sign of capitulation and endorsement of the republic’s de facto independence” (German 2003, 147–48).

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A number of signs point to the Russian acceptance of Chechnya’s independence. First, international law professor Francis Boyle sees the treaty itself as recognizing the republic’s sovereignty. The title of the Khasavyurt agreement itself is “Treaty on Peace and the Principles of Interrelations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria” (Cornell 2001, 244). In addition, the parties adopted the term “treaty,” a term usually reserved for sovereign states, rather than “accord,” “agreement,” “compact,” or another term that would be more common for settlements of civil wars. During the signing of the peace treaty, President Yeltsin even used the name “Ichkeria,” which had been embraced as the homeland moniker by Chechens but previously rejected by the Russian government (Cornell 2001, 243). Conversely, the resolution of Chechnya’s formal status was clearly postponed. And given that no foreign country was likely to recognize Chechen independence without Moscow’s assent, the Russian government knew that Chechnya’s ultimate status lay in its hands. The Second Chechen War, 1999 In contrast to an argument emphasizing Russian exclusionary behavior, Chechens took steps that also undermined the peace. Maskhadov’s government was unable to extend his authority over the territory in the face of the power of key warlords. In April 1998 the insurgent leader Shamil Basaev and Arab-born Ibn Al-Khattab declared their aim of unifying the Russian republics of Chechnya and adjacent Dagestan into an Islamist state. In August 1999 they led several attacks into Dagestan that provoked an immediate military response from Russian forces. After several bombings of civilian targets left about three hundred people dead in Moscow in September, Russian air power began a bombing campaign that was shortly followed by a land invasion that eventually took the Chechen capital of Grozny. Many observers saw these events as a response to Chechen initiatives, and Chechen actors certainly exercised agency for the recurrence of war. In particular Maskhadov was unable to exercise control over the state and territory. Radical rivals began a new wave of kidnappings for ransom (German 2003, 148). The Russian general appointed to represent the Interior Ministry in Chechnya was kidnapped in Grozny in March 1999 after Maskhadov had given guarantees for his security. Competing warlords who emerged with resources, arms, followers, and legitimacy from the first war persisted in their drive to advance autonomy and, as seen above, Islamicism. Domestic pressure from Islamists forced Maskhadov to adopt Sharia law, even to dissolve Parliament on the grounds that its presence violated Islamic law (Evangelista 2002, 56). However, most analysts see Russian policies and choices as underlying, or at least facilitating, the weakness of Maskhadov’s rule and even the threat posed by

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spoiler commanders (Lieven 1998, 140–46; Cornell 2001, 240–50). Moscow reneged on its commitments to provide reconstruction support after the 1996 peace accord (German 2003, 148; Evengelista 2002, 56). In late 1998 Yeltsin annulled a 1997 directive to negotiate a treaty with Chechnya on the mutual delegation of powers. As German (2003, 148) put it, Moscow engaged in “prevarication on Chechnya’s status,” which undermined Maskhadov’s ability to maintain control of the territory in the face of rivals. In the face of rising terrorist attacks in and from Chechnya in early 1999, Yeltsin failed to respond to warnings from General Lebed about the worsening situation. More pointedly, the Russian government developed and was advancing plans to invade Chechnya in early 1999, long before the attacks of August and September. Six months into the second war, Sergei Stepashin, who was Russia’s interior minister and then prime minister by July 1999, said, “We were planning to reach the Terek River [dividing flat northern portion of Chechnya from the mountainous south] in August or September. So this was going to happen, even if there had been no explosions in Moscow. I was working actively on tightening borders with Chechnya, preparing for an active offensive” (quoted by Hoffman 2000). Putin, who had formerly been head of internal intelligence and was appointed prime minister in August 1999, weeks before the Dagestan attacks and the recurrence of war, only accelerated plans to invade (Hoffman 2000). Baev (2005) emphasizes the desire to redeem the Russian military after its defeat in 1996 and to reinvigorate its role in society. Although Chechen division and dysfunction had a hand, the Russian role is evident in Evangelista’s (2002, 2) question: “How could Russia’s leaders have steered their country into such destructive and seemingly self-defeating wars, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives, mainly Russian?” Alternative Explanations Other factors played at most a secondary role. Although state weakness as a factor is generally assessed with regard to the central state (in which an internal conflict occurs), the weakness of Chechen pseudo–state institutions by 1999 played a role in conflict recurrence. Putin and Stepashin (Hoffman 2000) explicitly cited the inability of Maskhadov’s government, which enjoyed de facto autonomy, to control dissident factions of the prior insurgent movement by 1999. Although oil has played a role in the duration of the second conflict and in the intensification of warlord violence and profiteering, Chechnya’s oil only makes up about 1 percent of the oil in Russia (Baev, Koehler, and Zurcher 2005; Shermatova 2003). Therefore, it does not seem likely that oil alone has been enough of an incentive for Russia to continue the conflict and oppose Chechen independence. International factors played a less prominent role here than in other cases. One unusual precedent is cited as contributing to Russia’s proclivity to invade

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Chechnya after the Dagestan raids and the Moscow bombings (allegedly by Chechen separatists, though the authorship remains murky): NATO’s bombing campaign in Kosovo from March to June 1999. That bombing occurred despite Russian objections and without UN Security Council consent. Moreover, it showed the value of low-risk, high-altitude aerial bombardment, which inflicted high enemy military and bystander casualties while subjecting airmen and ground soldiers to virtually no risk. Consequently the NATO campaign emboldened the Russians to invade on political grounds and on tactical grounds, which increased civilian casualties while reducing Russian troop exposure until after the aerial bombardment had weakened Grozny tremendously.

Georgia and South Ossetia in 1991–92 and 2004: Integration Backfires Georgia is one of three Soviet socialist republics that successfully sought independence upon the breakup of the USSR, only to experience “secondary” internal secessionist armed movements. The other cases are Moldova (i.e., the Transnistria secessionist struggle) and Azerbaijan (Nogorno-Karabakh). Secessionist armed conflicts in Chechnya, North Ossetia, Dagestan, and Ingushetia remain internal to Russia. Aside from their particular features, the original onset of these secondary conflicts related to the uncertainty created by the independence process and the breakup of the Soviet Union.4 The case of Georgia is complex. It involved three armed conflicts in the early 1990s. The first, a struggle for power in 1991 between the then–prime minister and political opponents, resulted in a coup that installed Eduard Schevardnadze as president and was not secessionist in nature. The other two armed conflicts were secessionist struggles in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Fearon and Laitin code a single civil war, from 1992 to 1994. For clarity in this analysis, I use Sambanis’s (2004) coding of the South Ossetia conflict of 1991–92. The Abkhaz conflict took an estimated 2,000 lives and drew more international attention to the initial war in South Ossetia, which cost an estimated 1,100 lives and displaced 100,000 to 150,000 people. The Abkhaz war is not analyzed here because its periods of peace were not sufficiently long to score a full year of peace. The Georgia– Russia war of 2008, which involved internal combat forces of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, falls outside the time line of analysis here, and in any case it would be classified as primarily an interstate war. South Ossetia’s recurrence occurred in the summer of 2004, and it appears here because the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) codes it as an internal armed conflict despite the fact that it resulted in only twenty-seven deaths.5 The recurrence barely counts as an internal armed conflict, and there may have been comparable recurrences in Moldova, Azerbaijan, or the Central African Republic

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that were not recorded as reaching twenty-five deaths in a single year. As with China’s renewed warfare in Tibet, the Georgian case could have been counted as a case of multiple and simultaneous internal armed conflicts and thus would have been omitted from the analysis. Again, however, it is included here out of a commitment to seek to include those cases from Fearon and Laitin where possible, and due to the ability to analyze these two wars in South Ossetia in relative geographic isolation from Abkhazia. The First South Ossetia War, 1991–93 In the midst of glasnost, the South Ossetian nationalists created the South Ossetian Popular Front in 1988 to seek to withdraw from Georgian control. In September 1990, after the Georgian Supreme Soviet adopted an election law barring regional parties, the South Ossetian Supreme Soviet responded by declaring its sovereignty, still within the USSR. The move was rejected by Georgia. After South Ossetia elected its own Parliament in December 1990, Georgia withdrew the region’s “autonomous” status, and hostilities erupted in January 1991. König (2005, 241) and the International Crisis Group (2004) estimate that a thousand died in this first South Ossetian conflict, although Tishkov (1999) estimated 1,100 dead with 150,000 displaced. Georgian troops blockaded the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, a month later, and Soviet troops deployed in the region were openly on the side of the South Ossetians. After Georgia declared its independence in April 1991 and the USSR was formally dissolved in December, Soviet troops withdrew in the spring of 1992. The 1992 Sochi Agreement In June 1992 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) assisted in negotiating a cease-fire with South Ossetian forces, called the Sochi Agreement. After Georgia’s first elected government fell in 1992, new president Shevardnadze met with new Russian president Boris Yeltsin and paved the way for the Sochi Agreement, which ended major hostilities, defined a security corridor along the border of South Ossetian territories, and enhanced the security of the patchwork of Georgian villages interspersed with ethnic Ossetian villages. It established a Joint Peacekeeping Force composed of Georgian, Russian, and South Ossetian troops, under Russian command. Russia contributed 700 troops to this force (Baev, Koehler, and Zurcher 2005). The Joint Peacekeeping Force would perform the duties of a conventional peacekeeping force but was made up of troops from the three main armed actors, rather than a third party that was trusted by both sides.

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Within six months the OSCE had deployed a civilian mission whose mandate included promoting negotiations between the parties. The OSCE mission launched programs of disarmament and weapons collection, as well as confidence building and dialogue programs that brought together representatives of civil society from both sides (König 2005, 242–45). But these programs proved futile in the face of the shift in Georgian policy that triggered the 2004 armed conflict. The United Nations also deployed an integrated mission in Tbilisi in 1993, but its mandate was limited to the conflict over Abkhazia. The middle to late 1990s were marked by increased attempts at cooperation between the South Ossetian authorities and the Georgian government, including law enforcement cooperation, road reconstruction, and improved electrical supply (Cvetkovski 2001). Mobilization in both South Ossetian conflicts occurred along ethnic rather than religious lines. In 1989 Georgia’s ethnic makeup was 70.1 percent Georgian, 1.8 percent Abkhaz, 3.0 percent Ossetian, and 6.3 percent Russian (US Department of State 1998). The population of South Ossetia in 1989 was 66.0 percent Ossetian, 29.3 percent Georgian, and 1.9 percent Russian (Baev, Koehler, and Zurcher 2005, 265).6 At least an equal number of Ossetians lived within Georgia outside South Ossetia, where they lived relatively peaceably with Georgians and others (Dawisha and Parrott 1997). Mobilization for the armed conflict and its recurrence occurred largely along ethnic lines, with many Georgians displaced from South Ossetia in the first war. Religious difference was not a salient point of mobilization in the conflict recurrence in South Ossetia. In 1993, the religious makeup of Georgia was 65 percent Georgian Orthodox, 11 percent Muslim, 10 percent Russian Orthodox, and 8 percent Armenian Apostolic (Curtis 1995). Both ethnic Ossetians and other residents of South Ossetia are mostly Orthodox Christian, with a minority of Sunni Muslims among ethnic Ossetians. Both the Abkhaz and South Ossetia conflicts manifested ethnic more than religious identities in discourse and mobilization, particularly in South Ossetia, where the majority share the Orthodox Christian religion. South Ossetia is extremely mountainous, and thus the only northern passage to Russia is through a single tunnel. The 2004 Recurrence of Armed Conflict In this case, again, exclusionary behavior plays an important role, because Georgia’s newly elected president deliberately embarked on its top priority to bring South Ossetia and the other two irredentist regions more firmly into the state’s grasp (König 2005, 238). Unfortunately, integration backfired in South Ossetia. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili tightened controls on movement of goods and persons in and out of the region, a step viewed as cutting off the region. As Welt (2010, 64) says, “The trigger to the 2004 conflict is not in dispute:

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it was new restrictions on trade and movement that Georgia imposed in and around South Ossetia.” However, in contrast to Charles Taylor’s plunder of the Liberian state for the gain of his in-group, Saakashvili was willing to take some inclusionary measures that his government viewed as significant concessions. Indeed, the 2004 armed conflict was not inevitable: Saakashvili made overtures to what he considered the “easiest” of the three regions, Ajaria, and thus successfully secured its greater integration into Georgia in ways that “unfroze” that particular conflict (König 2005, 237–38; Welt 2010). Ajarians, unlike Ossetians and Abkhazians, are ethnic Georgians. South Ossetia presented more difficulty than expected. Saakashvili entered office in January 2004 in the culmination of the “Rose Revolution.”7 Upon taking office, he had already signaled that the “fragmentation” of Georgia would not be tolerated (König 2005, 238). Tbilisi—recognizing that de facto South Ossetian president Eduard Kokoity had very little popular support or legitimacy—thought that it might shift South Ossetian loyalties to the Georgian state. It launched a crackdown on smuggling and black markets, hoping to expose and undercut the corruption of Kokoity’s government before his people. It also offered social assistance to the population. The Georgian “carrots” included establishing a free medical service, paying pensions, accepting the term “South Ossetia,” and reopening the main railway link from Georgia to South Ossetia (König 2005, 238). Georgia’s plan, which presumed that Ossetian authorities would lose support as they were less able to deliver services, backfired (International Crisis Group 2004, 1). Ossetians who earned their living from the black market were angry, and others saw assistance as an attempt to co-opt the population (PRIO 2003b). The deployment of around-the-clock police and political volunteers to stop contraband was akin to a widening of “occupation” of civilians, which raised the specter of more widespread incursion and loss of autonomy (Welt 2010, 65). Georgia also deployed several hundred special forces in the “conflict zone” as part of the Joint Peacekeeping Force, but in a perceived violation of the Sochi Agreement. Welt argues that, in a classic security dilemma dynamic, this move was seen as offensive by South Ossetians, whose counterdeployments with the Russians were in turn viewed as offensive rather than defensive by the Georgian government (Welt 2010, 65). In the summer of 2004 Georgia accused Russia of providing arms to the South Ossetians and seized two trucks full of missiles. South Ossetia responded by briefly detaining 50 Georgian police officers, and exchanges of gunfire between forces commenced for the first time since 1992. Both sides marshaled forces, and for the first time since 1992 the defined conflict zone was remilitarized by up to 3,000 additional Georgian troops, 2,000 South Ossetian troops, and an influx of some 1,000 Russia mercenaries (International Crisis Group 2004, 14).

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The mediation and confidence-building bodies played a troubled but important role. Negotiations between the Joint Control Commission and the Joint Peacekeeping Force were initially hampered by the refusal of one or the other parties to participate in meetings. One OSCE official said that “the [ Joint Peacekeeping Force] was totally not functioning. . . . We had cases of one battalion firing at another” (quoted by International Crisis Group 2004, 15). An important weakness of having a peacekeeping force and consultative mechanism made up solely of the parties themselves is that these mechanisms can also be disabled upon a breakdown of stability. Eventually, however, the Joint Control Commission facilitated a cease-fire and prevented the armed conflict from spiraling into a more deadly war. Georgia was motivated partly by its recognition that it could not prosecute a full-scale offensive that could reassert control over the territory without confronting lengthy armed resistance (International Crisis Group 2004, 14). Economic factors entered into the recurrence through the tensions over borders and their recognition. Natural resources played no prominent role in these conflicts. After the first war South Ossetians perceived an embargo by the Georgians. Their affinity with the Russian Federation was enhanced, because the latter became a more prominent market for goods, provided humanitarian aid for Ossetian refugees in North Ossetia, and covered the cost of road construction, pensions, and health services (International Crisis Group 2004, 8–10). South Ossetians complained that after the (first) war, they had received nothing from Georgia. Georgia resented increased smuggling because the Ossetians refused to permit their customs agents inside the territory along the northern border, and Georgia resisted posting agents at the southern border of South Ossetia (with Georgia) for fear of reinforcing the perception of South Ossetian sovereignty (International Crisis Group 2004, 8–9). In summary, the recurrences of internal armed conflict in Chechnya, South Ossetia, and Tibet all reflect perceptions among separatist movements of betrayal by the sovereign state of the arrangement that emerged from the first war. In these three cases separatist movements that did not succeed nevertheless ended the prior war with some degree of de facto autonomy that was contained in a written agreement signed by the central state authorities, but without a clear resolution of permanent status. Greed per se did not enter into these war recurrences in any serious way. Although all the regions were poor, indeed poorer than the core areas of the state to which they nominally belonged, that difference was not as prominent as in other cases of deliberate ethnically aligned economic disparity as in Burundi and Rwanda. In all three cases, the mountainous topography played a historic role in defining the borders of nations, in inhibiting travel into and out of these secessionist regions, and in complicating war fighting and facilitating the carrying out of rebellion and its duration.

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China and Tibet in 1950–51 and 1956–60: Compelled from Autonomy Since the Chinese Communist Party’s 1949 victory, China has experienced numerous internal armed conflicts, some ethnic separatist in nature. Although other countries are excluded from this book’s analysis because they experienced multiple internal wars, China’s civil wars with Tibet (1950–51 and 1956–60) are included here because war termination and the second civil war can be analyzed in relative temporal and geographical isolation from the remainder of the country’s wars. China’s war recurrence in Tibet grew out of a number of factors, including opting for exclusionary policies rather than inclusionary policies by the People’s Republic of China. At its core, the initial war and its recurrence represent resistance to an imposition of a social, political, and economic transformation as part of a military occupation. Upon coming to power, the Chinese Communist government set about consolidating control over Tibet, a region that had long exercised de facto internal autonomy but was also under Chinese sovereignty. It was immediately apparent that the new regime would seek to reassert control over Tibet and other peripheral regions, and the Tibetan government undertook to remove all elements of Chinese authority in Tibet and those associated with it (Shakya 2000, 5). After a year of unsuccessful pressure on Tibetan officials to accept Chinese authority, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded Tibet in October 1950.8 Several factors lay behind this invasion. Zhou Enlai stated that the advance of the PLA was determined to “liberate the Tibetan people and defend the frontiers of China” (quoted by Shakya 2000, 45). Concerns with outside countries using Tibet as an ally and foothold onto China remained high. Goldstein (2007, 20–21) argues that national “honor” in the face of British imperial dominance was a major factor in the determination to reassert control over Tibet.9 Compounding these Chinese concerns were ongoing Tibetan relationships and even entreaties abroad. At the same time, Tibetan reactions and policies were developed in iterated interaction with American, Indian, and other outside actors and their (un)willingness to confront China over Tibet. Although the Tibetan autonomous areas (as designated by the Chinese government) constitute one-fourth of the Chinese territory (Davis 2008, 230), in 1953 the Tibetan population of only 1.3 million represented less than 0.5 percent of China’s population (Orleans 1966, 120). The new regime sought a security buffer to its southwest and access to valuable minerals, although these resources did not play a major role (Bowers 1994, 409). In addition, half of today’s national territory lies in five ethnic-minority regions (Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Guanxi, and Inner Mongolia) that produce 80 percent of the country’s meat and milk (Bowers 1994, 427). The precedent that Tibetan independence would

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have set in the 1950s carried broad ramifications for both China’s economy and its stability. During the invasion of 1950–51, Chinese sources report an estimated 5,000 persons died, and thousands of Tibetans fled to India. The advance of the Chinese army was also met with the surrender of many Tibetan soldiers. The PLA forces halted about 200 kilometers from the capital, Lhasa, and sought to negotiate the exercise of its control with the Tibetan authorities and the Dalai Lama, who was urgently formally installed at the age of sixteen years in light of the invasion. Eventually a negotiations team of Tibetan officials in Beijing signed what became known as the Seventeen-Point Agreement in May 1951.10 The authority of the team, and the conditions of freedom or coercion under which they signed the document, remain in dispute (Shakya 2000, 45–91). To the Dalai Lama’s surprise (Goldstein 2007, 20), the Seventeen-Point Agreement stated that Tibet was part of China, pledged Tibetan assistance for the presence of Chinese military troops, and provided for locating military and civilian authorities in the region. However, the accord otherwise reaffirmed the political and religious status quo of Tibet. Points 4 and 5, for instance, stated that the “Central Authorities will not alter the existing political system in Tibet,” and affirmed the “status, functions and powers” of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Point 11 said, “In matters related to various reforms in Tibet, there will be no compulsion on the part of the Central Authorities.” What led to the renewed fighting in 1955 that culminated in 1959 uprisings in Lhasa that were suppressed? Tibet’s renewed warfare can best be seen as a reaction against a gradually more invasive and transformative occupation. The Chinese Communists openly described their agenda of “liberating” Tibet from imperialist influences. At Mao Zedong’s insistence, they quietly and patiently began a long-term process of social transformation of the religious, economic, and political structures of society (Goldstein 2007, 542). Thus diverse Tibetan Buddhist sects were brought into the polity for the first time (Shakya 2000, 132). Some lamas received salaries and honorific posts in the Preparatory Committee appointed to oversee a transition of Tibet into an autonomous region, akin to the other ethnic minorities in which autonomy was more reduced than in Tibet (Shakya 2000, 132–33). The bureaucratic advance of the social policies and tasks of ever more intrusive territorial administration provoked rebellion among Tibetans, initially in the eastern provinces. In 1955 the Chinese government initiated its Major Socialist Campaign aimed at accelerating the collectivization of the nation’s agriculture, including the ethnic minority regions so that these would not “fall behind” (Goldstein 2007, 549). Although Tibet was exempt from this policy, ethnic Tibetans who lived in the adjacent jurisdictions of Kham and Amdo were

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not. In contrast to central Tibet, where a feudal system of aristocrats and serfs and slaves prevailed, many Tibetans in these provinces were nomads or small landowners. Here the campaign proceeded apace and gave rise to a bloody uprising that began in Kham by ethnic Tibetans (called “Khampas”) (Goldstein 2007, 549). Within months, the rebel activities had spread to western Kham and to central Tibet. Between 1956 and 1959 thousands, possibly tens of thousands, died.11 The PLA made significant headway against the rebellion in 1957, leading thousands to flee to central Tibet. The fighting culminated in uprisings in Lhasa, but the PLA crushed these and wrought devastation on religious sites (destroying many Buddhist monasteries and religious sites). In 1959 the gradualist approach to Tibet ended, and Tibetan autonomy was curtailed. The Dalai Lama fled and established a government in exile across the border in India. Tibetans launched their renewed civil war in response not only to forced collectivization but also to the broader influx of and exercise of control by Chinese administrative officials, soldiers, and Han Chinese migrants (Grunfeld 1996, 131–35). Mao planned to stimulate massive Han migration to Tibet with the goal of Hans outnumbering Tibetans five to one (Minahan 1996). That migration increased in the mid-1950s. Another example of the bureaucratic ramping up of authority is the effort to disarm the Tibetan population in accord with national policies. The Chinese pressed forward their plans, even though Tibetans objected that weapons were a part of their culture, including inside Buddhist monasteries, where they formed part of sacred ornamentation. Their initial hesitation in stepping up intrusion in social and political life derived partly from the sense of dependence and isolation, because the thousands of occupying PLA soldiers relied on Tibetans for food and the country was only accessible over land from India. In addition the Chinese government not only paid their tens of thousands of soldiers but also paid additional civilian administrators and offered interest-free loans to Tibetan businessmen and purchased Tibetan wool and other goods at inflated prices. As a result of the economic costs of these policies (and the Korean War at the other end of China), the Chinese government “began to take greater control of the Tibetan economy” (Shakya 2000, 135). Thus the very presence of ethnic Han Chinese laid the groundwork for the perceived marginalization and disempowerment of Tibetans under Chinese occupation. “By the middle of 1955, every Tibetan began to feel the presence of the Chinese” (Shakya 2000, 133). The exclusion perceived by the Tibetans in the mid-1950s may also derive from the end of the period required for the Chinese government to complete the logistical and communications conditions necessary to militarily support full exercise of its authority over Tibet. No year-round passable roads existed between Tibet and China until construction projects, deemed a priority in 1951, completed two roads in 1955. Telecommunications were also difficult, and telegraph

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towers were also constructed in this time frame. As Thomas (1959, 129) says, “The roads now tied Tibet to China. Immediately the Chinese increased their pressure on the Dalai Lama and high officials; they wanted no more delay about the establishment of the administrative committee that would give them formal control of the country.” Did the Chinese policies constitute exclusionary behavior? Some argue that the Chinese never violated the provisions of the Seventeen-Point Agreement. The Chinese authorities permitted extensive self-rule, and their transformative social reforms occurred through carrots much more than sticks. However, the incursion and the prolonged presence of troops, civilian administrators, and Han migrants led to small changes in governance. Thus the Chinese prohibited the cross-border trading of the Tibetan silver ingots used as currency because it was undermining the Chinese currency. Wages were cut after being raised. Small steps like changing the uniforms of the Tibetan armed forces also signaled that the Chinese government would, in fact, slowly transform the status quo, even with the complicity of some Tibetan elites along the way. Finally, international and regional actors influenced the war recurrence in Tibet. In the first war, calculations about how much leverage Tibetans had in negotiating hinged partly on whether the Americans or others would provide overt aid and recognize them (Shakya 2000). Extensive diplomacy between the Americans, the British, other powers, and the Tibetan government in exile persisted (Grunfeld 1996, 151–65). After the Dalai Lama’s trip to Beijing and embrace of initiating some elements of socialist transformation, his brother and two other Tibetan government officials sought the support of India and the United States for a secret resistance group. By early 1956 the US Central Intelligence Agency was recruiting guerrillas, training them in camps in Nepal, and air-dropping them into Kham and Tibet (Shakya 2000). Many of these (most are presumed to have been captured and killed) were drawn from the aristocrats of Tibet’s extremely archaic feudal system. Even if one accepts that the letter of the Seventeen-Point Agreement was never violated, the issues of ethnicity and exclusion lie at the core of Tibet’s war recurrence. Natural resources are absent from the main historical works on Tibet (Goldstein 2007; Shakya 2000; Richardson 1962; Patterson 1960). Although outside forces propelled the conflict once it was under way, they did not instigate it.

Analyzing Cases of Reneging on Territorial Autonomy All four of these cases offer evidence of the importance of state exclusionary behavior as the most significant trigger for civil war recurrence. New wars reflected objective policy changes in each case, but these changes represented significant

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departures from the expectations held by separatist populations and their leaders, which undermined hopes for continued or expanded autonomy. The case of Sudan’s North / South civil war recurrence offers perhaps the starkest case. The decision by the North to impose Sharia law on the South, to transfer southern soldiers to the North, to arrest southern politicians and to ignore agreed-upon federalism all triggered renewed warfare. Analysts are unambiguous about the privileged role of these actions, seeing the resurgence of organized attacks in the South as a reaction to, rather than precipitator of, the 1983 war. The cases of Chechnya and South Ossetia are similar insofar as separatists in an earlier contest had fought strongly enough to force a cease-fire agreement involving de facto autonomy. But after some years, and for different political reasons, central state leaders opted to change the arrangement, which prompted renewed warfare. National heads of government in all four cases took action that reflected political aspirations and / or perceived political constraints. Russian prime minister Putin and the Russian military saw potential gains in relaunching a second Chechen war, for political and security reasons. Of all these separatist cases, only Chechnya’s rebel forces provide serious evidence of proactive defection from the Khasavyurt Agreement in 1999. However, even Russian officials see the attacks of dissident separatist Chechen groups as serving mainly to accelerate and complicate Russia’s planned defection from the accord. Georgia’s newly elected president Saakashvili thought he might consolidate his power and that of Georgia through new provocative policies against illicit trade in South Ossetia, as he had done swiftly in Ajaria. In contrast to these two new leaders acting out of perceived and anticipated strength, Sudan’s president Nimeiri acted out of potential weakness. He was motivated partly by fear that Islamists were becoming stronger and needed to be appeased, which he obliged by toppling the South’s autonomy. Because China’s strategic superiority over Tibetan forces was evident in the early 1950s, the Tibet case shows some differences. Even so, Mao Zedong’s government showed some restraint until impatient advocates of speedier reform prevailed and implemented land reforms that prompted renewed fighting there. The politics of handling separatist territorial movements can have its origins in questions of statehood or regime change in each of these four cases. In three cases initial wars occurred in tandem with the arrival of statehood and a new government after external occupation. In the fourth case, Tibet, the initial war took place directly on the heels of the regime change wrought by revolution in 1949. What of alternative arguments? Only in the case of Sudan did natural resources play a salient role in war recurrence of these cases, and even so that role was in tandem with exclusionary dynamics that received more analysis and attention. It was also only one of a handful of other economic issues considered

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important at the time for the South. Conventional measures of state strength for Georgia and Russia—given the well-developed role of the state in society, the economy, and security—place them on a considerably higher level of institutionalization than countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, the Central African Republic, and Haiti. Except for the presence of a joint Russian-Ossetian-Georgian peace force in South Ossetia, none of the other cases experienced the presence of international troops. And in South Ossetia, the Russian presence was not seen as “neutral.” This factor is revisited subsequently in later chapters, where we can consider cases of both recurrence and nonrecurrence. In both Tibet and South Ossetia, one sees examples of secessionist struggles in the context of military occupations in regions that had enjoyed significant autonomy in prior decades. The dynamics of these struggles contrast sharply with that of Liberia’s civil war and its recurrence, and with the experiences described in Haiti, the Central African Republic, and other countries with nonseparatist recurrences. Although East Timor represented a secessionist struggle, it too differs from the pattern of Tibet and South Ossetia given the falling out among victors after a successful armed struggle. I have argued here that Tibet and South Ossetia represent secessionists who revert to war in the face of initiatives by a perceived occupier to transform the status quo in ways that would render permanent or more extensive the exclusionary rule, and thus undermine the possibilities of self-government. This research does not analyze the factors that lead national states to initiate such transformational policies, nor does it consider why in some cases separatist territories do not choose to respond with renewed armed conflict. Such questions are important for a fuller understanding of separatist wars and their recurrence. I now turn to nonseparatist struggles and their recurrence.

Notes 1. In the case of Azerbaijan, the recurrence in Nagorno-Karabakh was excluded because I could find no analysts except PRIO, which considered the two dozen deaths from border skirmishes to constitute an internal armed conflict, especially given that similar such skirmishes with fewer than twenty-five deaths had taken place in several years between 1994 and 2005. 2. Sambanis (2006), covering 1945–2002, Fearon and Laitin (2003), covering 1945–99, and the Political Instability Task Force (2008), covering 1955–2007, all score the first civil war from 1963–72, and the onset of the second in 1983, with varying end dates (especially because the war continued past the dates of publication for Sambanis and Fearon and Laitin). 3. For more on the origins of the Chechen wars, see Dunlop (1998), Lieven (1998), Sakwa (2005), Evangelista (2002), Cornell (2001), Gall and de Waal (1998), Russell (2005), Jean (2000), and Ashour (2004).

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4. See James Fearon’s (1998) emphasis on the lack of credible commitments created by the disappearance of central authority upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslavian Federation. 5. In 1944–2002 data set, Sambanis codes two civil wars, in 1991–92 and 1992–94. Walter’s 1946–96 data set does not code any wars in Georgia in the early 1990s, and the Political Instability Task Force codes two wars, one in 1991–93 and one in 1992–93. 6. The most recent Georgian census in 2002 did not include the autonomous territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 7. Saakashvili’s populist, nationalist government replaced that of the more traditional Communist (and former Soviet foreign minister) Eduard Shevardnadze, who was forced to resign in the face of mass demonstrations against electoral fraud. 8. The war could, therefore, also be considered interstate. 9. Tibetan army officers, for instance, continued to sport British uniforms (Goldstein 2007, 215). 10. This was officially the “Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet,” May 23, 1951. 11. Some scholars estimate that 45,000 Han died and 65,000 Tibetans, but these are considered high (Grunfeld 1996, 133).

5 Nonseparatist Recurrences of Civil War THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER ADDRESSED armed conflicts of a separatist nature. Such armed conflicts share certain characteristics and are generally considered more difficult to resolve via negotiated settlement and in a sustainable fashion (Wood 2003). Separatist conflicts mobilize support around identity and its relation to territory. Consequently, territorial powersharing, including substantial autonomy in governance and security and economic matters, is among the most common demands and features of a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, territorial powersharing tends not to prepare a population for more integrated social and political practices but instead tends to deepen the expectation of autonomy among separatist populations and those who fought for it. Territorial powersharing is thus difficult to reverse without violence emerging. I now turn to nonseparatist internal armed conflicts, which exhibit more diversity in the aims articulated by insurgent forces. These cases of recurrence also exhibit a range of levels of violence, from the deadly recurrences of ethnic conflict and violence in the Great Lakes cases of Rwanda and Burundi in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to the relative skirmishes of East Timor and Haiti in the 2000s. The distinction used here between separatist and nonseparatist conflicts is increasingly seen as worth exploring in the literature (Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Cederman and Gleditsch 2009). Nevertheless, it is not the sole relevant, or even the most pertinent, distinguishing feature among armed conflicts or their recurrence. In this chapter I distinguish among three distinct patterns of postwar violence that reflect very different manifestations of exclusionary behavior. Those patterns are inductively derived from my research, although the bases for them can be found in existing scholarship. The first distinction is between the “precipitating” exclusionary behavior examined above that also applies to some nonsecessionist cases like Haiti and East Timor, and what I call “chronic” exclusionary behavior. The latter form of exclusion refers to a condition of severe exclusion of a social or ethnic group from access to positions of political power

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for a period of several years. Usually such exclusion extends beyond access to state power to also include access to economic power and social opportunities. Recall that precipitating exclusion can take the form of either formal exclusion based on laws or written policies (e.g., apartheid) or informal treatment or behavior that systematically excludes a group from such positions. In addition, I argue here that the important aspect of exclusion rests on the dashed expectations of the aggrieved ethnic or political group rather than an objective or standard schema. This chapter argues that exclusionary behavior played a precipitating role in recurrences not only in Liberia and the four separatist recurrences analyzed above but also in five additional cases: Haiti, East Timor, Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Rwanda. In the first three of these additional cases, this behavior was “precipitating” insofar as it was a trigger causally linked to the recurrence of armed conflict. In the latter two cases, Burundi and Rwanda, I argue that the exclusion was “chronic” and was generally considered the most important factor underlying the repeated violent conflict in those two interrelated cases. These nonseparatist cases also suggest the importance of a second pattern of precipitating exclusion: the exclusion of former allies or coalition partners after a successful rebellion. In most cases where newly elected or empowered postwar governments engage in exclusionary behavior, it is against former enemies or the social groups associated with them. However, in a small set of cases drawn from successful insurrections, exclusion may precipitate renewed armed conflict when postwar governments move to marginalize, exclude, or even persecute their former rebel partners. The two central cases analyzed here are East Timor and Zimbabwe, although such behavior contributed to Nicaragua’s postrevolutionary recurrence as well, and has been identified by Atlas and Licklider (1999) in Sudan and Chad. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the state’s reneging on an explicit powersharing deal in the territorial, political, or security realm constituted the principal trigger of recurrence in six of fifteen core cases. Of these, Liberia, the Central African Republic, and Zimbabwe represented nonseparatist recurrences. In the other nonseparatist cases of Haiti and East Timor, recurrence was tied to a failure to meet informal expectations for participation in postwar governance.

Precipitating Exclusionary Behavior The dynamic of exclusion in the wake of an autonomy arrangement differs in important ways from exclusion from struggles that seek integration. Inclusion in various state offices can serve as both security guarantees for former rebels and as guarantees that political, economic, and social priorities will be taken into account in state policies. The case of Liberia examined above reveals how armed

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groups emerged after an elected government, which enjoyed a degree of popular support and had come to power through multidimensional UN peacekeeping operations, marginalized former enemies and motivated renewed armed conflict. As shown, societies can engage in inclusionary or exclusionary behavior in multiple ways, beyond inclusion in the security forces or in political posts. Subsequently, in chapter 7 I examine in more detail powersharing arrangements and their relative success in consolidating stability in postwar societies. This chapter, however, examines nonseparatist failures of peace. It begins with cases of war recurrence that conform to the pattern of the case studies examined above: renewed rebellion after exclusion. Each case reveals the crucial importance of discriminatory treatment within the armed forces and police forces, including the first case, the Central African Republic.

The Central African Republic in 1996–97 and 2001–2: Exclusion and State Weakness The Central African Republic is a country that conforms closely, perhaps most closely of the recurrent cases, to arguments about state weakness and Collier and his colleagues’ thesis of a “conflict trap.” The country experienced several periods of unrest after the adoption of a multiparty system in 1993 under President Ange-Félix Patassé, until he was deposed in a coup in 2003. And it has since experienced low levels of armed conflict. In this sense, it resembles the experience of Haiti, although with better-organized armed actors who are mobilized around ethnic identity and grievance. The country’s recurrence of conflict in 2001–2 certainly reflects exclusionary politics and also underscores the importance of the presence of third-party troops in weak states, but simultaneously supports the role of poverty and natural resources, given that 80 percent of its export earnings at the onset of recurrence derived from diamonds and timber. The country ranked 166th out of 174 in the UN’s 2000 Human Development Index (United Nations Development Program 2000, 157). Moreover, of all the cases of war recurrence, this case most closely supports a causal role for the weak state, where personalism and a lack of institutionalization prevailed. The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Conflict Data Set, for instance, includes an armed conflict in 2006. Nevertheless, the only recurrent armed conflict to qualify as involving the same actors with recognized interwar peace was in 2001–2, and exclusionary behavior played a salient role. The disagreement among sources on the dates of the country’s civil war emblemizes the gray line between political instability, coups, and warfare that characterizes weakly institutionalized polities. Some cite 2002–3, but others point to several years of civil war ending in 2007 with a peace agreement. Fearon and Laitin score a civil war from 1996–97, and PRIO marks periods of civil conflict

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in 2001–2 and again in 2006. The first two conflicts, in the periods 1996–97 and 2001–2, had similar motivations and actors. The Central African Republic has no ethnic majority but instead conforms to a plurality of groups. The country’s ethnic breakdown as of March 2009 was Baya, 33 percent; Banda, 27 percent; Mandjia, 13 percent; Sara, 10 percent; Mboum, 7 percent; M’Baka, 4 percent; Yakoma, 4 percent; and other, 2 percent. The religious breakdown was 35 percent indigenous beliefs, 25 percent Protestant, 25 percent Roman Catholic, and 15 percent Muslim, although the Christian majority is strongly influenced by animist beliefs and practices. Like many of the conflict recurrences after 1988, these repeat armed conflicts reflected not religious division so much as mobilization along ethnic lines. The Initial Conflict, 1996–97 The 1996–97 conflict was actually a series of three mutinies led by soldiers unhappy with the government of President Patassé. Patassé was a member of the Kaba, a subgroup of the Sara ethnic group in the northern part of the country. However, the armed forces were dominated by the Yakoma, mainly found in the south, an ethnicity shared by former president André Kolingba. In the April 1996 mutiny, in which few persons died, complaints about the failure of the government to pay salaries for several months lay at the center of grievances. However, in May and again in November 1996, the second mutiny cost several hundred lives—more than a thousand by some accounts (AlertNet, as quoted by Sambanis 2007). According to the United Nations, “The mutinies and subsequent looting sprees brought about the destruction of commerce and industry, devastating the formal and informal sectors and triggering high unemployment.”1 Exclusion played a central role in the grievances of the soldiers in the latter mutinies, primarily because Yakoma soldiers accused Patassé’s government of ethnic favoritism in the treatment of officers and complained of salary arrears. The Bangui Agreements Roughly 2,000 French troops were vital in preserving Patassé in power, and the conflict ended with the January 1997 Bangui Agreements, which were intended to settle social and economic grievances. The agreements provided for a return to the powersharing “Government of National Unity” agreed to in 1996 and then abandoned. It also provided for a restructuring of the armed forces to include diverse ethnic groups, a task relegated to General Didace N’dayen, the minister delegate of defense for ex-combatants, war victims, and restructuring of the army. N’dayen was named to his newly created post on behalf of the mutineers on February 18, 1997, as part of a cabinet that included several leaders appointed

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from the “Group of Eleven” opposition coalition. By September of that same year, the opposition members of the powersharing cabinet had resigned. In addition, the Bangui Accords provided for a new ad hoc African peacekeeping force to deploy with French logistical support, the Inter-African Mission to Monitor the Bangui Agreements, which was made up of 820 soldiers from six West African countries and was initially deployed on February 8, 1997, to engage in combat on occasion with mutinous troops. It served until April 1998, when it was replaced by the UN Mission in the Central African Republic. The UN Security Council terminated this mission’s mandate in February 2000, and virtually all French troops withdrew by July 2000 (Havermans 2000). Powersharing and external troops combined to provide minimal stability for this interim fouryear period. Recurrence in 2001 The presence of UN peacekeeping troops corresponded to a period of relative stability, because there was little violence between the Bangui Agreements and the end of the peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic in April 2000. Violence emerged a year later, again in the form of a coup attempt involving dissatisfied elites who rallied troops rather than a mass-based civil war. In May 2001 members of the country’s armed forces, led by former president André Kolingba (from the Yakoma ethnic group), led a coup attempt against President Patassé. They alleged that the military’s old grievances from the prior conflict against Patassé had not been addressed. The rebellion of mid-2001 was suppressed with the help of Libyan troops and a neighboring rebel group, the Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (MLC). Because the MLC was intent on toppling the Kabila government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it provided troops that supported the Patassé government, largely because the Central African Republic had allowed the MLC to operate within its southern territory. The UN denounced the coup attempt, but it stated that the government should not purposefully target the Yakoma tribe with violence. Former Malian president Amadou Toumani Touré was sent as a UN peace envoy to speak with the government, opposition, and civil society. Patassé accused his army chief of staff, General François Bozizé, of helping to orchestrate the coup attempt and had him fired. The casualties had been relatively few up to this point in 2001. However, additional rebellion against the government occurred within a few months in 2001. The ousted General Bozizé gathered troops to resist his firing, dividing the armed forces between Patassé and Bozizé loyalists. In November 2001, as the conflict resurged, the UN stepped up its mediation efforts, sending Lamine Cisse, a retired Senegalese army general, to lead the mediation effort.

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The Chadian ambassador played a role, and an Organization of African Unity team participated in talks as well. From late 2001 the Libyan troops in the Central African Republic were joined by troops from Sudan and Djibouti to make up a peacekeeping force of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States. The BBC (2010) claims that 59 persons died in 2001, and PRIO estimates between 50 and 300 battle-related deaths that year. After November 2001, Bozizé and some of his men fled into Chad, which exacerbated tensions between the Central African Republic and Chad. During 2002, many clashes occurred along the border between the two countries, and an emergency summit of the Economic Community of Central African States (CEMAC) summit was held in August 2002. A CEMAC observer mission was initially dispatched to examine the security situation along the border. After another coup attempt by Bozizé in October 2002, Bozizé was granted asylum in France, and a CEMAC mission was sent to protect the president in Bangui. As these events indicate, the Central African Republic’s armed conflict reflected a persistent recourse to coup attempts in ways that make evident the state’s weak institutions. According to PRIO, the total battle-related deaths from the armed conflict in 2001–2 ranged between 200 and 700. The Central African Republic’s conflict recurrence of 2001–2 supports the argument that security by third-party troops is especially important in weak states, where informal institutions are the more prevalent norm (Walter 2002). Powersharing seemed helpful, but it failed within a few months to take hold in late 1997. However, three years passed before the conflict reignited. It was only in 2001, several months after external peacekeeping troops withdrew, that the renewed attempts to topple the government led the Central African Republic into a second internal armed conflict. The timing suggests that, in this case, the external forces provided a necessary condition for sustained stability. In conformity with Collier and others’ (2003) arguments about the “conflict trap,” the country is also dependent on natural resources in its exports. In 2002, diamonds made up 50 percent of exports, and timber made up 30 percent (US Department of State 2010a). The country has uranium deposits, but these, along with gold, oil, and other potential mineral deposits, have not been mined. The history of political instability makes such rents a less than sure source of income (Ruane 2003, 29). The Chad–Cameroon oil pipeline only brushes up against the Central African Republic. However, control over these minerals did not figure prominently in the discourse of rebels, even though discourse may be misleading (Collier et al. 2003). Regional dimensions also help account for the conflict. Armed conflicts in Sudan, Chad, and Uganda have helped fuel the conflicts in the Central African Republic, particularly in the north. Rebel and military forces from the neighboring countries have used the northern Central African Republic for operations,

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leading to small arms proliferation. In 2007, rebels from Sudan fled into the Central African Republic, as did units of the Lord’s Resistance Army from Uganda in 2008 (BBC 2010). Subsequent Armed Conflict and Coup Attempts, 2002–Present On March 15, 2003, Bozizé led a coup that successfully ousted sitting President Patassé, and the CEMAC peacekeeping force did not resist. In 2002, France had withdrawn its support for Patassé and its troops from the country (Ruane 2003, 29). Because only thirteen people died in the coup, 2003 is not coded as an active conflict. After the coup, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo sent delegates to lead peace talks. The CEMAC force was dedicated to improving the security situation around the capital, and some later moved to provide security in the north, where violence had continued since 2002. The CEMAC force, called FOMUC, also helped in the disarmament process. Between September 15 and October 15, 2003, the country engaged in a national dialogue at which delegates discussed a range of issues aimed at reconciling the country and preventing further violence. Attacks continued at lower levels in subsequent years. In 2003, some of the forces that had helped bring Bozizé to power began attacking government troops in the capital. They called themselves Ex-Liberators and expressed discontent over the amount Bozizé paid for their services. In November 2004, forces allegedly associated with a group calling themselves Patriots for Renewal / Ex-Liberators attacked government troops in the northwest of the country. Again, casualties did not rise to the level of armed conflict, but they also dictate that the period between the coded conflicts of 2001–2 and 2006 not be viewed as a period of widely perceived “peace.” There was no widespread perception that the armed conflict of 2002 ended and was followed by a period of peace. Instead, the level of casualties fell below a certain threshold as dissident groups continued to mobilize and carry out sporadic attacks in 2003–4 and surrounding the elections of March 2005. Hence I do not include the 2006 recurrence as a separate armed conflict for the purposes of this study. If the 2006 recurrence were included, however, it would reflect the factors identified above, namely, weak state institutions and ethnic exclusion in appointments to state offices, including within the armed forces. After the May 2005 elections, in which Bozizé was reelected in a runoff, rebel groups took shape in the country’s far northwestern and northeastern regions, where the central government has done little to address local grievances. The Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) took military control of parts of the northeast in late 2006, and France assisted the Central African Republic government in taking back the area. The UFDR was made up principally of members of the Gula eth-

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nic group, and the northeastern rebellion prompted anti-Gula sentiment and retaliation, leading many Gula to flee their homes. Some of the Ex-Liberators (who helped Bozizé to power) were also active in the rebellion. The Armée Populaire pour la Restauration de la République et la Démocratie (APRD) was made up mainly of former presidential guards of Patassé, who was from the same region. The APRD claimed that its goal was to engage in dialogue with the government to address the exclusion of Patassé supporters from elections, as well as the security situation in the northwest, where armed bandits attack villagers.

Haiti in 1990–95 and 2004: Political Exclusion and Recurrence Haiti’s war recurrence demonstrates a number of important questions and claims. First, it is a clear failure of peacebuilding, even after peacekeeping had been declared successful and stability had been established. Second, it illustrates the conceptual difficulties of measuring and comparing mass violence, because neither of its episodes neatly meets prevailing definitions of civil war or interstate war. The case also demonstrates how armed recurrence stemmed from perceived marginalization of opposition parties and factions in the wake of a successful postwar election. That 2003–4 armed uprising occurred only once international troops had departed and donor engagement had declined, along with important international influence. Haiti’s patterns of internal armed conflicts also reflect the weak state and social institutions in one of the world’s poorest countries. Haiti is celebrated as having mounted the first successful slave revolt of the world, but the independent country that emerged in 1804 replicated many elements of the colonial state. New elites reproduced the plantation economy, substituting feudal, low-wage peasant relations for slavery and maintaining a “predatory” state that extracted resources from the majority of the population and provided negligible goods and services in return.2 Haiti’s politics reflect a long history of small-scale political violence, feared rule by brutal authoritarians, poverty and deep inequality, and susceptibility to external forces, especially US policy. As of the 1990s, the country’s light-skinned elites, who made up only 5 percent of its population (CIA 2010), had dominated the dark-skinned masses in society, the economy, and the state for decades (Trouillot 1989, 1994).3 Religious difference plays little part in political divides. Despite a small and growing Pentecostal presence, most Haitians regard themselves as Catholic, even though the great majority of Haitians also believe in elements of Voodoo, including its spirits (which draw on Catholic saints) and spells (Desmangles 1992). Political differences do not fall along these lines, nor are followers mobilized via religion. Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s political beliefs and activism, rather than his religion, inspired his followers and alarmed his critics.

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The First Armed Conflict, 1990–95 The first armed conflict unfolded in the aftermath of the 1986 departure of JeanClaude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, an ironfisted dictator whose rule extended that of his father’s (1957–71). A series of elected and often military leaders ensued, emblemizing Haiti’s condition of weak state and social institutions and personalistic rule with few institutionalized political parties or civil society organizations. Although coded as a civil war recurrence, one must stretch the concept for either of Haiti’s episodes of organized armed violence to qualify. The initial armed conflict commenced with election-related armed attacks between leftist supporters of the populist priest Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who spoke against the military’s continued rule and rallied the poor, and the United States–backed government and thuggish security forces known as the Tonton Macoutes (Farmer 2004). A 1991 coup d’état ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, the leftist priest Father Aristide, and led to one-sided state repression that cost more than 3,000 lives and sent 20,000 fleeing the country.4 This initial episode concluded with a near-war, where a UNauthorized, United States–led invasion was launched from American air bases on a September night in 1994 but was called off once Haiti’s de facto military leaders learned of the attack and surrendered before the warplanes reached Haitian airspace (Shacochis 1999, 67–77). This example of US “coercive diplomacy” converted what would have been a hostile military invasion into an armed “support” or “assistance” mission at the invitation of Haiti’s rulers. The same US forces that aborted their invasion arrived days later as a multinational force that treated Haitian state forces as allies, even as the coup’s leaders were forced into exile and supplanted on October 15, 1994, by a reinstated President Aristide. Although the organized violence reached sufficient levels, without arms the Haitian leftist opposition did not cohere as an insurgent army and relatively few state agents were killed. Scholars differ about the causes of this armed conflict. As mentioned above, religious difference was not a factor. Racial tensions between light-skinned and darker-skinned Haitians underlay political tensions and exclusion but have not been used as mobilizing elements since the Duvalier period. Economic tensions certainly underlay the political instability in Haiti, and thus poverty as a risk factor seems relevant. However, it is hard to point to any given economic trend, decision, or event as a salient trigger in the violence and coup that began in 1990–91. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) fell in 1987 but climbed steadily afterward, defying Collier and colleagues’ causal model.5 It was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that the country underwent its first significant neoliberal reforms of trade and macroeconomic policies (World Bank 2002, 15–16). This correlation with the onset of armed conflict confirms Hartzell and Hoddie’s

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(2010) work on the negative impact for civil wars of the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment packages, but it flies in the face of Collier’s recommendations to adopt such policies for stabilization. Two pertinent factors seem to be the resurgence of repression by the 1988–90 coup government led by General Prosper Avril that preceded Aristide’s election, and the diffusion of democratization in the region that raised uncertainty amid more competitive electoral events. Avril engaged in brutal repression, especially targeting leftist critics and followers of Aristide, who was then a parish priest and vocal critic of the government. Violence against the Haitian police and military also increased. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the spread of electoral regimes in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, which also extended to much of Africa in the early 1990s, increased pressure on Avril’s regime to permit elections. Much of the violence in Port-au-Prince centered on the period preceding the country’s first truly open and competitive elections in December 1990. To the extent that recurrent political violence among elites, especially coup attempts and political assassinations, signifies a weak state, then state weakness is perhaps the single most apparent factor. Yet the mechanisms for how state weakness is triggered and when and why specific armed conflicts emerge, even if violence is neither widespread nor in the form of armed combat between formed armies, remain an open question. In the case of the initial armed conflict—especially the coup d’état of September 1991—some acts of exclusion by Aristide are apparent; however, these factors were eclipsed by the broader anti-Aristide (and anti–popular democracy) sentiments that underlay the support for the coup. Even before president-elect Aristide was sworn into office the first time on February 7, 1991, he faced a coup attempt by Duvalier’s former interior minister (and director of the infamous Macoutes), Roger Lafontant. The failed coup attempt was followed by the lynching of some seventy former Duvalierists by pro-Aristide mobs (Serrill 1991). Ongoing organizing against and demonizing of Aristide persisted, even though the reforms he launched at this point were of a “moderate social democratic” nature, neither barring the elite from access to state offices nor jeopardizing the country’s free market system (Dupuy 2007, 112). Aristide did, however, seem to condone or encourage deadly mob violence against those wealthy elites who tried to thwart the will of the people in seeking to transform the exploitative and unequal society and economy (Dupuy 2007, 122; 2009, 166–68). As one scholar puts it (Dupuy 2007, 168–69), “The military, backed by the dominant classes, would have overthrown Aristide in any case for what he (then) stood for. But he gave the justifications for their actions that they would not have had otherwise.” The strength of the popular movement that helped bring Aristide to power also ensured that the coup would lead to broader violence, both by the poor supporters of Aristide and, most especially, against his supporters by the coup-spawned

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government led by General Raoul Cedras. Similar to what I show below in the cases of Rwanda and Burundi, political exclusion, backed by deadly violence, underlay the rise in organized violent conflict in the early 1990s in Haiti, but it was not a precipitating factor in the same way that it would prove to be in the 2003–4 recurrence. The Onset of Peace in Haiti Upon taking office, the Cedras government immediately targeted hundreds of Aristide supporters with political violence. The violence—which was carried out by the army, the police, local sheriffs, and a paramilitary group called the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti that was supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency—also targeted many human rights groups and civil society organizations (Human Rights Watch 1993). The coup and its attendant political violence prompted international denunciation and an immediate and ineffective economic embargo by the Organization of American States (OAS) (Bromley 2007, 3). The OAS and the United Nations created a joint human rights mission called the Civilian Mission in Haiti. Eventually, UN Security Council Resolution 841 demanded Aristide’s return and imposed economic sanctions and an arms embargo (Bromley 2007, 2). Despite a negotiated agreement on the return of the elected president that was brokered in July 1993, the military reneged and initiated a new round of political assassinations, leading to expanded UN sanctions and UN Security Council Resolution 941, which mandated the use of force to restore President Aristide. The administration of US president Bill Clinton mustered a multinational coalition and declared its intention to intervene militarily before a delegation led by former president Jimmy Carter secured the capitulation of September 1994. The role of international actors proved significant. The economic sanctions proved sufficient to bring the Cedras regime to the negotiating table, but they were insufficient to force its ouster (Bromley 2007; Malone 1998). Only with the direct threat of UN-authorized military intervention did the regime cede power. The departure of Cedras and the restoration of President Aristide led to a brief US-led peacekeeping mission of 21,000 troops. This was followed by a new UN peacekeeping force, which was replaced by a UN support mission, whose presence was extended, in a modified and reduced form, until 2001, when the last UN peace mission departed. Haiti’s Recurrence of Armed Conflict Following the 1994 restoration of Aristide, he was persuaded to accede to the prior constitutional electoral schedule and permit new elections for president

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in 1995. His prime minister, René Preval, was elected president for the first time in a flawed process whose result was widely accepted internally and externally. Under Preval, relative stability prevailed, facilitated by a large international UN and OAS presence and UN troops. However, Parliament was not functioning for much of his tenure, and by 1997 the government had gained a reputation for corruption (Dailey 2003). In 1996, the Lavalas political movement split as Aristide formed his Famille Lavalas (Lavalas Family) political party with mass support. But he left behind many disenchanted members of the intelligentsia and artists who resisted his personalistic style of leadership. Political violence began rising in anticipation of the May 2000 parliamentary and municipal elections and the November 2000 presidential ballot. A number of factors rendered the elections questionable and fueled instability that year: postponed balloting, violence against some candidates and campaigns, manipulation of the Senate results, politicization of the Provisional Electoral Commission, and polarization over the imminent return of Aristide to a second term (OAS 2000). Referring to the elections of 2000, one journalist (Dailey 2003) concluded, “Gross electoral fraud by the ruling party has deprived the entire political apparatus of legitimacy.” Although the breakdown in government under Preval had prompted the World Bank and others to suspend aid, the inauguration of Aristide’s second administration led to the suspension of all official international assistance except humanitarian aid (Dailey 2003). In 2003, tensions between the Aristide government and leftist and rightist opponents grew. A former pro-Aristide gang leader, Amiot Metayer, formed what he called the Cannibal Army to oppose the government. Metayer’s struggle gained prominence until he was killed, presumably by government forces, in September (Beidas, Granderson, and Neild 2007). In January 2004, as the country celebrated two hundred years of independence, thousands of people marched against the government. On February 5, the former Cannibal Army (now renamed the Artibonite Resistance Front for the Overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide), stormed the police headquarters in Gonaives and released dozens of prisoners. The group was led partly by the slain Metayer’s brother, but also by many former soldiers from the Duvalier period who had fled the country to the Dominican Republic. In the next few days the uprising spread to a dozen other cities, often facing little government resistance. On February 22, after the group took control of the country’s second-largest city, insurgent leader and ex-soldier Guy Philippe announced that he would take the capital within two weeks unless Aristide stepped down. Aristide and the rebel forces both rejected any powersharing arrangement. The president also rejected the French government’s suggestion that he abandon power. As forces advanced on the capital, Aristide resigned his post on Leap Day, and was escorted from his home to the airport and flew into exile (Robinson

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2007; Farmer 2004). Evidence of US tacit, and perhaps financial, support for the uprising exists, and many analysts have debated whether US officials coerced Aristide into his resignation and flight. In any case, a new interim government led by Gerard Latortue was installed with the United States’ blessing. That government engaged in continued repression and killings of Aristide’s supporters for several months. Immediately upon Aristide’s departure, the UN Security Council authorized a new UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, deploying 3,500 troops initially. In 2006, a new election was held in which former President René Preval was elected to a second full term. Sorting through the Explanatory Factors in Haiti Dupuy (2009, 169) views Aristide’s predatory behavior in his approach to the state, which excluded both former enemies and friends from access to it in a manner reminiscent of Charles Taylor, as the main factor in the decision to oust him in the uprising of 2003: “That Aristide and the FL [Famille Lavalas, his party] would contemplate prolonging their hold on power indefinitely was in keeping with the historical tradition of using the state as a means of social promotion and personal enrichment. . . . These facts more than anything else Aristide did during his second term were the principal reasons the middle- and dominant-class opposition coalitions backed by the imperial troika [the United States, France, and Canada] wanted Aristide out of power.” These descriptions make it very difficult to distinguish Haiti’s weak state institutions from the exclusionary behavior of Aristide. State weakness is unquestionably a significant factor in the unrest emblemized by both the violence of 1990–94 and the political violence of 2003–4. However, weak state institutions do not require that rulers consistently engage in exclusionary behavior. Indeed, many intellectuals and leaders within Aristide’s own political movement sought to institutionalize the party and move away from the personalistic leadership characteristic of weak states. Aristide deliberately rejected and broke with this faction when he formed a new political party, the Lavalas Family, in 1996. Here weak state institutions constituted a risk factor, as elsewhere, but they did not predetermine Aristide’s or other leaders’ decisions to exclude former enemies and friends from access to state power. President Aristide increasingly ruled in a manner that directed state resources to fewer of his political supporters, which permitted known business friends to profit. According to Dupuy (2009, 170), his government became a “mafia-like organization” that engaged in “rampant corruption, drug trafficking,” and reliance upon gangs to engage in violence and the threat of violence against regime opponents. In a nepotistic fashion, Aristide abandoned these allies once he was again in office, and he relied instead on those with long-standing personal loy-

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alty to him and his wife. Political killings escalated, and the police were seen as a political tool and pervaded by corruption linked to an expanding drug trade. In June 2003, the head of the Haitian National Police fled the country, fearing for his life because he had resisted attempts by the president and members of Parliament from his party to force favoritism in promotions and the hiring of unqualified members for the force (Lynch 2003). In August 2003, the United States– based Committee to Protect Journalists announced that Haiti had rejoined Cuba as one of the two most dangerous countries in the Americas for journalists, citing alleged state complicity in the murder of two journalists and the exile of thirty others (Regan 2003). Middle-class Haitians, as well as many from the poorer classes, became disillusioned by the predatory approach to the state and the more overt antidemocratic practices carried out with the electoral machinery and the legislature. As the journalist Peter Dailey wrote (2004), “Aristide’s growing authoritarianism has been denounced by virtually every element of the coalition that supported his rise to the presidency in 1990: the priests and laypersons of the liberation theology wing of the Haitian church, the network of grassroots organisations, peasant co-operatives and labour unions, and every single Haitian intellectual or artist of note. Aristide tried to compensate for the defection of his former supporters by recruiting criminal gangs.” Ironically, elections became the means by which a popular, populist politician built a semiauthoritarian regime, over the dissidence of those who represented peasant organizations, artists, labor unions, and other civil society organizations (Fatton 2002). In this sense, Aristide’s behavior was exclusionary not only toward his former enemies but also toward his former allies, a pattern that is more decisive in the recurrences of armed conflict in Zimbabwe and East Timor. Supporting Collier’s claims, the four years preceding the armed conflict of 2003–4 showed an unusual economic decline. Although GDP per capita rose from 1996 to 2000, it fell in 2001, 2002, and 2004, before rebounding in 2005 and climbing until 2009 (Fasano 2009, 5). That decline in the early 2000s, like much in Haiti, was highly conditioned by external factors, primarily the reduction in international aid and loans from the United States, the international financial institutions, and eventually Canada and European bilateral donors. Because of the proximity of Haiti to the United States, it is difficult to distinguish the role of the international factors, especially as they reflect great power interests, from regional factors in Haiti. Although the United States deployed force to restore Aristide to power, neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration was ever comfortable with his leftist political platform, especially his resistance to neoliberal economic prescriptions. The Clinton administration initially conditioned aid and loans, eventually suspending aid to the very police force that it had created and underwritten (Beidas, Granderson, and Neild 2007). The

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cutoff of all international assistance except emergency humanitarian relief once Aristide was elected anew in 2000 constituted a key factor in the reduction of private capital flows to the country and its economic decline. The presence of UN-authorized international peace missions also corresponds to periods of relative stability. The recurrence of armed conflict in late 2003 and early 2004 occurred within three years of the withdrawal of the last UN peace presence, and five years after the last UN troops departed. In response to political instability in 2001 and the departure of the UN mission, the OAS created a special mission in the country in 2002. However, that mission, which included twenty-five police advisers, proved unable to prevent instability and eventual armed conflict. In sum, a number of regional and international factors, which are hard to differentiate, played an important role in recurrence in Haiti.

East Timor in 1975–99 and 2006: Liberation, Statehood, and Exclusion East Timor, at only 15,000 square kilometers about half the size of Belgium, lies on the eastern half of the island of Timor. The country is a highly rural agrarian society and ranks among the dozen poorest countries in the world.6 Tribal identities are important for most Timorese, and the state’s formal institutions are extremely weak, with low levels of human resources for education, training, and professional preparation. The country attained independence in 2002 after three years of UN administration following bloody violence that marked the final spasms of an armed struggle for independence that commenced in 1975. At first glance, East Timor appears to be a highly homogenous society. The vast majority of its population are proclaimed Catholics (up to 98 percent), and there are tiny Muslim and Protestant minorities (CIA 2010). Throughout both conflicts, religious difference did not serve as a mobilizing issue. Most Timorese also share certain racial or ethnic classifications (CIA 2010), but the population speaks sixteen different native languages, including the official Tetum. However, different regional, local, and kin-based relationships also produce social distinctions in East Timor. Extended families coincide with different villages historically, called “houses,” that intermarry with other houses (Hohe 2002). Groups of houses have historically formed the basis for the kingdoms that exercise significant local autonomy. Timorese themselves distinguish among peoples based on their area of origin or their native language (Kingsbury 2009, 8–14). These distinctions prove relevant for analyzing East Timor’s recurrence of armed conflict. The Timorese people also distinguish between peoples from the western portion of East Timor, kaladi, and those from the eastern end of the territory, firaku (Harrington 2007). The kaladi are considered to be more reserved and taciturn, in contrast to the

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more talkative and outgoing firaku (Harrington 2007). These categories—each of which encompasses multiple language, religious, and tribal groups—are truly geographical rather than racial or ethnic in the conventional sense. Civil War, Intervention, Occupation, and Resistance East Timor was a Portuguese colony from the sixteenth century until the 1974 revolution in Lisbon led to a process of decolonization. Three political parties emerged in Timor that engaged this process. Two—FRETILIN (the Revolutionary Front of East Timor) and UDT (the Timorese Democratic Union)— advocated independence, although the UDT favored a gradualist approach. A third—APODETI (the Popular Democratic Association of Timor)—sought integration with Indonesia, as had occurred with West Timor in 1947 (Elliott 1978, 238–39). During the years 1974–75, negotiations between the FRETILIN– UDT coalition and Indonesia occurred, even as the latter expressed disinterest in annexation. The initial war started as a coup and countercoup, followed by three months of armed conflict among Timorese political parties before the occupation and its severe repression amid armed resistance. In June 1975, the Portuguese administration set a time line of October 1978 for full independence. However, the UDT executed a coup on August 11, 1975, claiming that it was preempting a planned coup by FRETILIN (Elliott 1978, 239). Armed clashes broke out between the three factions within the territory. FRETILIN gained the advantage and drove the UDT combatants into West Timor, where the latter allied with Indonesian covert forces (Hoadley 1975, 126). FRETILIN and its armed wing, FALINTIL (Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor), claimed control over the capital, Dili, and most of the territory by late August. In response to intelligence indicating a planned Indonesian invasion ( Jardine and Pinto 1997, 15), FRETILIN claimed independence on November 28, 1975, and set up a government. However, two days later, the other parties countered with a declaration of integration into Indonesia. The initial phase of the internal armed conflict, among Timorese factions before the invasion, left about two thousand persons dead, according to FRETILIN’s leader, Jose Ramos-Horta (1987). Indonesia, which FRETILIN claimed had infiltrated the country covertly in September, overtly sent troops into East Timor on December 7 (Elliott 1978, 239). They quickly gained control of Dili, but they faced determined resistance from FRETILIN forces in the countryside. Ten days later, the UDT-APODETI coalition formed the Provisional Government of East Timor. In May 1976 this government organized a People’s Assembly that formally requested integration with Indonesia, which the Indonesian government embraced in July 1976 (Elliott 1978, 239). FRETILIN denounced the assembly and spearheaded the

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armed resistance for the next twenty-five years, despite that fact that it received virtually no assistance from abroad (Steele 2002, 77). After the annihilation of tens of thousands of civilians by Indonesian forces and their allies, it became apparent by the late 1970s that ending the occupation would require a political strategy that rested on a broad civilian resistance movement, although the insurgent military forces retained symbolic importance (Rees 2004, 2). As part of the political effort, FALINTIL’s commander, Xanana Gusmao, sought to diminish long-standing Timorese disunity that would become important in the 2006 recurrence. In 1987 he created the National Council of Maubere Resistance (Conselho Nacional de Resistência Maubere, CNRM) to create a broad, inclusive, and nonpartisan political movement. FALINTIL separated itself from the political party FRETILIN, Xanana resigned from the party, and FRETILIN ceased to claim to be the sole legitimate representative of the Timorese people (Simonsen 2006, 579). In 1998 the CNRM reconstituted itself as the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), without changing its nonpartisan, unifying aspirations. The numerous casualties of the occupation and the resistance lead many to overlook the internal character of the original armed conflict. The occupation involved the killing of between 100,000 and 200,000 persons (Niner 2001, 19). Although the violence, oppression, and social transformation of the occupation defined the last quarter of the twentieth century in East Timor, the armed conflict’s origins lie in internal divisions over independence in the context of Portugal’s decline and withdrawal as a colonial power. Indonesia was a powerful strategic actor that allied with internal factions; however, it would be an exaggeration to attribute the origins of the original armed conflict primarily to Indonesia. The End of the First War Just as the first war commenced in the wake of the democratization of one occupier, so too did democratization in the successor occupier spark the end of that occupation and war. In 1998, Indonesian president Suharto fell from power amid initial steps toward democratization. After coming to power, President B. J. Habibie initially rejected the possibility of independence for East Timor, and he instead proposed a new relationship of special autonomy within Indonesia. In the face of insistence by Portugal and the United Nations for some expression of self-determination by the Timorese, he shifted course, and in January 1999 he announced a referendum on East Timor’s status (Martin and Mayer-Reickh 2005, 126–27). The UN Security Council authorized the creation of the UN Mission in East Timor in June 1999 to administer the vote. On August 30, 1999, with 98 percent of those registered voting, 78.5 percent of East Timorese opted for outright independence rather than a special autonomous status within Indonesia.

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The war for independence ended with a horrible spike in violence in reaction to this referendum. A massive and deliberate campaign of violence, carried out almost entirely by Timorese militias opposed to independence, broke out in Dili two days after the vote and spread to the countryside. Although serious violence had occurred in 1999 before the referendum, the scale and scope of this violence had not been seen in years—it involved widespread rape, looting, and the killing of some 1,400 persons (Cohen 2006, ii). Some 250,000 refugees fled to West Timor, many more were displaced, and the great majority of schools and health facilities were destroyed (Steele 2002, 77). The militias had received training, organization, and equipment from the Indonesian armed forces, whose troops also participated in much of the killing and the destruction of many of the main buildings of the capital and elsewhere (Cohen 2006, ii). On September 12, 1999, the UN Security Council authorized a Multinational Force with Indonesian acquiescence, which deployed a week later under Australian leadership with the name International Force for East Timor (INTERFET). INTERFET was eventually able to reduce the violence, because many antiindependence militia members fled among civilians to West Timor. In October 1999, the UN Security Council authorized the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which effectively exercised full sovereignty over the territory. A special representative of the UN secretary-general was both head of the UN peacekeeping operation and the administrator over the territory, and his decrees had the force of law (Chopra 2000). Although there was no peace agreement, the 1999 postreferendum violence and the authorization of INTERFET marked the demise of Indonesian rule and the inevitability of internationally embraced independence for East Timor. Although violent attacks persisted through late 1999, the war was essentially over. The UN’s Role and Independence UNTAET exercised a greater degree of state sovereignty over East Timor than any UN entity ever had done. Although the CNRT had long favored a period of UN tutelage before full Timorese self-government (Suhrke 2001, 4), it resented what it regarded as its wholesale marginalization in the peacekeeping operation’s planning and initial deployment (Suhrke 2001, 9–12; Steele 2002, 78). Early proposals of “dual desks” in planning were shelved, and a Timorese consultative commission was only brought in after UNTAET had been criticized for its inadequate inclusion of Timorese representatives in decision making (Chopra 2000, 2002; Simonsen 2006; Suhrke 2001; Steele 2002). Before the autumn of 2000, the UN transitional administrator consulted primarily with Xanana Gusmao, but the UN mission resisted relying on the CNRT, which was widely perceived as legitimate, as its national-level counterpart.7 Shepard Forman believes that

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this shortsighted decision contributed to the CNRT’s breakup into five factions in 2000. After that time an East Timor Transitional Authority was created that oversaw some administrative capacities, although only two of thirteen districts were under Timorese leadership in March 2001 (Suhrke 2001, 13). Some believe that these tensions later undermined the UN’s standing and thus its ability to influence the factional tensions leading up to the 2006 violence. Upon independence in May 2002, UNTAET’s mandate was changed to support the new Timorese state through the renamed and downsized UN Support Mission in East Timor (UNMISET).8 Between the withdrawal of Indonesia’s forces in 1999 and independence in 2002, more than 80 percent of the 250,000 refugees had returned from West Timor (Martin and Mayer-Rieckh 2005, 135), and thousands of poor and displaced Timorese had converged on Dili. Political wrangling, including courting former prointegration political factions, prevailed, but without extensive violence leading up to the election of a Constituent Assembly in August 2001 and presidential elections in April 2002. Partly because of the UN’s eagerness to depart swiftly, insufficient time to hold elections for a Parliament left the Constituent Assembly converting itself into the Parliament (Goldstone 2004, 87–90). FRETILIN gained fifty-five of the eighty-eight seats in the Constituent Assembly in 2001, and no other party received more than seven seats. Its political dominance was cemented with the Assembly’s vote to extend the life of the initial election into a five-year Parliament without a new election. The Internal Armed Conflict of 2006 In 2006, tensions between rival factions of the security services became heated. Under UNTAET, a new army, the Defense Forces of Timor-Leste (FDTL) was formed as the country’s army, and many combatants from the independence struggle demobilized. Although FALINTIL’s commanders had been involved in the selection of the new force of 1,600 persons, many former FALINTIL members felt that the process was unfair and that their patriotic service (widely supported by the population) had gone unrecognized. Both FRETILIN and many ex-combatants were dissatisfied at the prevalence of Xanana loyalists in the new and smaller army. A disproportionate number of commanders also originated from the Firaco district (Simonsen 2006, 589–90). Shoesmith (2003, 247) states, “The core of the new defense force is identified, then, not only with the president and commander-in-chief, rather than the government, but with one ethnic collectivity rather than another.” Veterans organizations began to agitate against the new army (renamed FALINTIL-FDTL, or F-FDTL, once FRETILIN came into power) and for a return to FALINTIL (United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste 2006, 19).

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In January 2006, 159 members of the F-FDTL submitted a petition to the president seeking redress for a number of grievances, including discrimination against westerners by the eastern-dominated force.9 After receiving no response, the petitioners abandoned their barracks in February, and in March the defense minister dismissed almost 600 petitioners and absentee soldiers (of some 1,600 total members) from the F-FDTL. Because FRETILIN enjoys strength in the eastern part of the country, it was seen as complicit in the discriminatory behavior. A week after the mass dismissal, President Xanana Gusmao criticized the decision and acknowledged east / west tensions, perhaps fueling them. On April 28, 2006, violence erupted between petitioners on the fourth day of a protest outside the Government Palace, killing two civilians and injuring six others. The army and the new National Police of Timor-Leste (PNTL) were called in to restore order, as violent attacks took isolated lives and caused injuries over the subsequent days. On May 3, Major Alfredo Reinado deserted from the Military Police, taking with him other officers and troops of that force as well as civilian PNTL officers and weapons. In early May, Interior Minister Rogelio Lobato armed two groups of civilians with weapons and ammunition of the PNTL border unit. Although the F-FDTL was withdrawn by May 4, tensions and violent incidents involving youth gangs and ex-combatants continued throughout May. In late May violence resurged in several incidents, including one where active army officers, police, and civilians attacked the police headquarters, killing eight policemen and wounding twenty-five others who had surrendered and were exiting unarmed with UN accompaniment (UN S / 2006 / 628, August 8, 2006, para. 9). In addition, dozens of houses were burned, including the home of the in-laws of Lobato, where six civilians died. The mass violence ended by early June, when the government experienced the resignations of Defense Minister Lobato, Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta, and finally, on June 25, Prime Minister Alkatiri. In these three months from April to June 2006, at least thirty-four people died, dozens were injured, and 15 percent of the country’s population was displaced (United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste 2006). In this sense, the violence barely rates as sufficiently deadly to qualify as an internal armed conflict. Yet the social and political consequences were far-reaching. Most visibly, 150,000 Timorese (some 15 percent of the country’s population) fled their homes in fear of the persistent battles (Goldsmith 2009, 122). The government fell and was reconstituted with Ramos-Horta as prime minister, but confidence in the Timorese state and the political parties had been deeply shaken. Australia deployed a new peacekeeping force in 2006, and the UN authorized a newly mandated peacekeeping operation to foster security and assist further with state building. Despite unsuccessful assassination attempts on Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmao in 2008, broader violence has not resurfaced to the extent of 2006.

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Exclusionary Behavior in Independent East Timor East Timor’s recurrent violence in 2006 had more than a single cause. State weakness, the withdrawal of international troops, and missteps by the United Nations and the major powers contributed to the renewed conflict. However, exclusionary behavior also played a significant role. That marginalization centered on the divisions within the broad coalition embodied by the CNRT. Rather than exclusion of former enemies, the divisions that became violent lay with former allies in the liberation struggle who turned on one another. Problems began even before the electoral process. Opposition parties realized in 2001 that FRETILIN had been able to accumulate the power that was gradually transferred to the Timorese by the UN mission. After independence, the FRETILIN-dominated legislature governed with little regard for other parties. In the first sixteen months after independence in May 2002, the Parliament had adopted only sixteen laws, most of which had been initiated by the governing party and underwent very few changes. Almost twice as many decrees—issued by the prime minister or the president—had the force of law without any chance for revision by the opposition (Simonsen 2006, 582). The marginalization by FRETILIN of its former coalition partners within the victorious resistance movement continued after independence. The United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste (2006, 19) found that “the power imbalance between [FRETILIN] and its political opponents has been an issue since 2002 and informed the crisis of April and May 2006.” It noted that the last opposition figure remaining in the Parliament’s leadership resigned in March 2005 (p. 19). Regan’s (2003) interviews with opposition members suggested that “they were fairly bitter, an indication, in my view, of the opportunities for a more inclusive legitimizing process which were perhaps lost.” Simonsen (2006, 582) echoed these findings: “The opposition’s resentment of Fretilin’s exclusivist way of doing politics is increasingly shared by other actors, in particular the young, educated intelligentsia.” The country’s security forces—the army and the police—also reflected exclusion of a different sort. The FALINTIL army and its leadership had from its early days come predominantly from the eastern portion of the territory, given its more favorable terrain and its distance from Indonesia. By 2004 the Timorese authorities had largely remedied the regional imbalance among the rank and file, but easterners continued to dominate the senior officer corps (Bowles and Chopra 2008, 239). As Harrington (2007) notes, “The result was command structure within the F-FDTL largely dominated by those from the East, with those from the West generally feeling discriminated against without opportunity for advancement within the forces. . . . A letter of complaint singled out a highranking F-FDTL commander for his alleged public humiliation of kaladi sub-

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ordinates, referring to them [as] ‘sons of pro-Indonesia militia,’ a huge insult for those who sacrificed many years of their lives in service of independence.” The F-FDTL leadership introduced and perpetuated the east / west discrimination, ignoring complaints from those inside and outside the army about its significance. Although Xanana helped foster this distinction, FRETILIN’s own history also reflected this east / west divide, visible in its demonstrably greater support from the east in the 2001 elections. FRETILIN’s “top down, noninclusive way of doing politics” (Simonsen 2006, 584) coincided with the perception of favoritism over easterners and unwillingness to respond to evident discrimination. This exclusionary conduct constituted the single most salient trigger for the renewed conflict in 2006, but others also played a role. State Weakness in East Timor It is difficult to imagine a society with less state capacity than East Timor on the heels of the occupation and the 1999 referendum. During the occupation, Indonesians came into East Timor and occupied virtually all meaningful administrative positions. The Indonesian army and its police force constituted the sole recognized armed forces of the territory. In the aftermath of the violence surrounding the 1999 referendum, most Indonesian bureaucrats fled the country, leaving hardly anyone with experience to fill the administrative slots at local or provincial or even national levels in the state ministries (Hood 2006, 62; Strohmeyer 2001). Postoccupation East Timor thus came to emblemize a territory with extremely low human resources and state capacity. The Defense Ministry also showed low capacity, with many posts unfilled and personal trust governing relations among its leaders (Rees 2004, 11–12). Several analysts blame the UN mission for ceding the management of the army to the leaders of the resistance movement and for not doing more to institutionalize civilian control and also procedures and policies (Hood 2006; Rees 2004; United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste 2006). While acknowledging the role of exclusion, the United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste (2006, 2) emphasized weak state institutions in its explanation of the renewed conflict: “It is the view of the Commission that the crisis which occurred in Timor-Leste can be explained largely by the frailty of State institutions and the weakness of the rule of law. Governance structures and existing chains of command broke down or were bypassed; roles and responsibilities became blurred; solutions were sought outside the existing legal framework.” International organizations have a tendency to overly attribute problems to insufficient capacity and insufficient coordination, as this analysis leads to technical solutions (favoring their programs) rather than more difficult diplomatic or structural measures. Few other analysts emphasized capacity as the main causal

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factors of the 2006 violence. However, the low level of state capacity correlates highly with the problems in East Timor, and this is difficult to discount. The low level of institutionalization of the army, as well as of the hastily formed and highly personalized and political police force, made it difficult to control the conduct of these forces and constituted an absence of channels for dissent (Rees 2004). International Troops and Stability in East Timor East Timor’s 2006 recurrence also offers support for the importance of international troops in dissuading renewed political violence in postconflict societies. In 1999 Australia’s INTERFET troops and then UNTAET’s forces showed that deploying armed peacekeepers contributed decisively to a reduction in violence. UNTAET’s force levels reached more than 7,000, falling to 6,200 in 2002, and then the troop level under UNMISET dropped from 4,776 to fewer than 500.10 Upon UNMISET’s disbanding three years after independence—and exactly one year before the renewed hostilities of April 2006—it withdrew 469 military troops, authorizing a new political mission nicknamed UNOTIL with only 15 unarmed military advisers and fewer than 100 civilians and international police advisers (UN S / Res / 1599, April 28, 2005). Thus by early 2006, the presence of international peacekeeping troops had fallen from 5,000 in 2002 to these three dozen unarmed advisers. Despite the recommendation of UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to extend the presence of over-the-horizon infantry in early 2005, the UN Security Council never approved that extended capability (Gorjao 2008). The deployments of foreign troops during the 2006 armed conflict support the importance of their role in dissuading violence—at least in small, weak states. In response to a request from Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta, Australia and other countries deployed about 1,300 troops in late May and early June 2006, as well as more than 200 police (Goldsmith 2009, 121). Those troops helped quell the violence. In August 2006, the Security Council authorized a new UN Integrated Mission in East Timor, with significantly more international police advisers (1,608) and 34 unarmed military liaison officers (UN S / Res / 1704). The UN, Australia, and other states agreed that the international forces— numbering 475 Australian and New Zealand troops as of 2010—would remain outside UN command.11 Economic Factors in East Timor East Timor is extremely poor. In per capita income it ranks 164th out of the world’s 183 countries (International Monetary Fund 2010), and about 20 percent of the country lives on $1 or less per day.12 Despite Indonesian investment in Timorese road systems and increased economic growth during the 1980s

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and 1990s, the territory remained the poorest in Indonesia in 1996 (Moxham 2008, 9). However, this level of poverty is not considered by Timorese observers or by international analysts to have been crucial in the outbreak of armed conflict of 2006. Harrington (2007) emphasizes economic factors more than others, but he attributes that recurrence to the cultural distinctions between firaku and kaladi, exacerbated by multiple horizontal inequalities, including greater access by easterners to land, property, and housing after the 1999 referendum. Outbreaks of violence among youth gangs that mobilized along the east / west divide began in late 1999 and were suppressed by UN troops and police (Harrington 2007). In addition, easterners were seen as dominating and as enjoying privileged access to jobs and control of the markets in Dili after independence. These horizontal inequalities underlay the exclusion perceived by the western FALINTIL petitioners in 2006. Harrington (2007) argues that UNTAET was ill equipped and unable to manage the influx of people into the Dili area after 1999 or to manage land disputes adequately, despite having some recognition of the problems and having created an office early on to address disputes. In short, economic factors were not precipitating causes, but they exacerbated the tensions over land and access to jobs, especially for the demobilized combatants and those people serving in the army and the police. International and Regional Factors in East Timor International factors in the recurrence of conflict mainly refer to the critiques of the role played by the UN missions and the UN Security Council, especially after 1999. As noted above, some analysts blame the UN missions for shortsighted policies that inflamed divisions among the Timorese elites, for pulling out troops precipitately, and for failing to do more to institutionalize a less personalistic and politicized security sector (Rees 2004; United Nations Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste 2006; Gorjao 2008; Bowles and Chopra 2008). Regional factors are limited largely to the role of Indonesia itself on the small island of Timor. Indonesia’s looming presence, and its reticence to cooperate effectively with attempts to clarify and rectify the human rights atrocities of the counterinsurgency struggle, contribute to a fear in East Timor of renewed interference and intrusion by its most resented former colonial power (UN S / 2005 / 458; West 2007; International Crisis Group 2006a). The new state adopted Portuguese and native Tetum as official languages in 2001, attempting to sideline Indonesian, which led to the firing and retraining of virtually the entire judicial sector (Bowles and Chopra 2008). Yet that looming presence had little direct influence on the violent conflict of 2006 or on the management of tensions within the Timorese political elite or the security sector. Australia has provided troops that helped quell violence in 2006 and subsequently. Despite

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the thorough internationalization of East Timor for decades, international and regional factors in its recurrence of armed conflict were remote and indirect. In sum East Timor’s recurrence derived from several hypothesized factors, the most salient of which was the perceived exclusion by former allies in the initial lengthy armed struggle for independence. The weak character of Timor’s state institutions, in a very poor and agriculture-based economy, contributed to the ease with which a handful of armed dissidents could challenge the stability of the state and the security of its top officials. The reversion to armed conflict occurred a year after the withdrawal of international peacekeepers, even amid warnings that the absence of an over-the-horizon force might embolden those seeking a violent division. Primary commodity exports and regional-level factors played little role in the recurrence. However, the shortsightedness of the UN mission also fueled the postwar political fragmentation and ability of FRETILIN to marginalize opposition parties, including former allies.

Zimbabwe in 1972–79 and 1983–87: Liberation, Statehood, and Exclusion British Rhodesia first experienced armed resistance in 1964. Two armies of national liberation carried out attacks that assumed more organization and lethality upon a December 1972 attack that elicited a severe government response, including operations against guerrilla camps located in neighboring colonies. These insurgent groups were the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party and its armed wing, ZANLA, and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and its armed wing, ZIPRA .13 The two rebel armies had their rearguard in different countries, backed by different Communist powers, and operated in different parts of Rhodesia where different ethnic groups predominated (mainly Shonaspeaking people in ZANLA areas and Ndebele-speaking people in ZIPRA areas) (Alexander and McGregor 2004). The two armies often fought one another. The Initial War for Independence, 1972–79 The initial war for independence, coded from 1972 to 1979, was an independence struggle by black Africans against white rule by Britain and its claimed white Rhodesian successor (in an unrecognized unilateral declaration of independence in 1965), led by Ian Smith. Ethnic differences converged with deep economic disparity between whites and blacks. Outside military action by South Africa fueled both the initial war and, through covert operations, the recurrence of the 1980s. Natural resources played little role in the origins of the war. The war was settled by negotiations brokered by the British government, which led to the recognition of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1979 (Stedman 1993). President

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Robert Mugabe, the leader of ZANU, was elected prime minister in 1980, and he subsequently became president and head of the government. The establishment of a new government in an internationally recognized, majority-ruled Zimbabwe saw the inclusion by Mugabe of several ZANU officials in the Cabinet in 1980 (Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe 1997, 7). ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo (the “Father of Zimbabwe”) declined the ceremonial post of president but became minister of home affairs. The latent tensions between the newly empowered ZANU government and the ZAPU opposition saw isolated attacks in 1981 and 1982, which cost up to 300 lives in 1982. In 1982, after the discovery of an arms cache, which very possibly had been orchestrated, the government arrested several high-ranking ZIPRA commanders and ousted ZAPU members from the Cabinet.14 Nkomo later fled into exile for his life.15 In early 1983, the violence intensified. It took different forms, including initially attacks by “dissidents” on buses, trains, and stores, mainly against civilians, with dozens of deaths (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 1986, 34). Those active in attacks were mainly former ZAPU guerrillas, and ZAPU leaders helped organize the rebellion; however, the degree of command and control exercised by the former guerrilla party over all dissident action is unclear (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 1986, 20–22). In a vicious spiral, state military, paratrooper, and police units stepped up operations against the dissidents alleged to be members of ZAPU and its ZIPRA armed forces (Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe 1997). In addition, in 1983 government forces (especially a North Korean–trained unit called the Fifth Brigade, which consisted only of ex-ZANLA members once ZIPRA ex-combatants were marginalized, left, or were ousted) launched widespread attacks against ZAPU civilian supporters, mainly Ndebele tribe members.16 The government announced in January 1984 that “dissidents” had in 1983 murdered 120 people, mutilated 25, and raped 47, and had committed 284 robberies.17 A significant portion of the violence experienced as part of Zimbabwe’s recurrent conflict after 1983 consisted of mass atrocities and executions, rather than combat between uniformed armies. A report by the country’s Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace found that “the presence of the Fifth Brigade in an area in 1983 meant an initial outburst of intense brutality, usually lasting a few days, followed by random incidents of beatings, burnings and murders in the ensuing weeks, months, and years” (Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe 1997, 54). One extensive study of human rights abuses alleged that about 1,500 Ndebele civilians were killed in 1983 alone (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 1986, 2). Another study based on interviews with former guerrillas stated that after the war of independence, ZIPRA guerrillas were seen as a “political danger”

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and, “along with ZANU civilians and ‘the Ndebele’ as a whole with whom they were associated, were hunted down, jailed, tortured and killed” (Alexander and McGregor 2004, 81–82). Nkomo later claimed that 20,000 Ndebeles were killed, mostly executed outside combat. Given the extensive and important role played by other countries in the independence struggle in Zimbabwe, external actors played a surprisingly reduced role in the 1983–87 war recurrence. Based on detainee accounts, South Africa’s government was implicated in providing training and weapons for the rebellious dissidents (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 1986, 22–24), which intensified the strength of the Zimbabwean government’s repressive response (Ohlson and Stedman 1994, 90). However, third countries played no role in guiding the strategies of either side. Instead, the resurgent armed conflict was dampened and then ended by a political deal struck between ZAPU’s Nkomo and Mugabe. Nkomo was eager to return from exile, and ZAPU gained little through these violent attacks, especially given the harsh response by the government forces (Ohlson and Stedman 1994, 91). Just as the conflict commenced with exclusionary conduct, it ended with inclusionary powersharing. In 1987, ZANU-PF and ZAPU concluded a powersharing agreement that reinstated posts in the cabinet and made Nkomo the country’s vice president from 1987 until his death in 1999. Crucial for the powersharing deal was the absorption of ZAPU into a renamed ZANU-PF (Patriotic Forces). Competitive democracy was sacrificed to peace, as Mugabe’s goal of a one-party state was realized with ZAPU’s incorporation into the ruling party (Ohlson and Stedman 1994, 91). Again, exclusionary conduct is central to the recurrence of armed conflict in Zimbabwe, but it stemmed from a falling out among the victorious allied forces after one faction went ahead and assumed control of a new state. The dissident violence, led by former ZIRPA members, stemmed from a perception that former combatants and Ndebele peoples were being excluded from power by the new regime. The conflict’s origins, according to Ohlson and Stedman (1994, 90–91), lay in “claims by former ZAPU members that they had been reduced to political impotence.” ZAPU had “suffered from its exclusion from power.” The violence differed from that of the East Timor insofar as the targets of the latter were mainly and initially members of the armed forces and the Timorese police. However, the dynamics of these recurrences are remarkably similar. Analyzing Nonseparatist Cases of Reneging on Political Inclusion The cases of nonseparatist recurrences further illustrate the core findings of this book. First, as in the five cases already examined, exclusionary behavior played

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a salient role in recurrence in these four additional nonseparatist cases. In the Central African Republic, the armed faction led by ex-president Kolingba placed primacy on their exclusion from the armed forces as their motive for rebellion in 2001. Like Liberia and Haiti, weak state institutions set the stage, but elected government leaders exercised agency in excluding certain groups. Even in East Timor in 2006 and Zimbabwe in 1983, elected, inaugural administrations of weak new states engaged in exclusionary behavior. These cases all demonstrate the book’s central thesis. East Timor and Zimbabwe also suggest a particular pattern of postwar exclusion: that of former allies in a liberation struggle that experience marginalization by the dominant faction of the victorious armed resistance movement. Sociologists and political scientists have long noted the violence that is engendered historically by internal revolutionary struggles (Tilly 1975; Skocpol 1979; Trimberger 1978). Krain (2000) argues that victorious revolutionary movements combine repression and accommodation to advance internal power and to avoid armed challenges, at times failing and experiencing challenges from former allies. Atlas and Licklider (1999, 37) note this particular phenomenon in post–civil war societies, as “post-settlement political tensions often arise, not from reopening fissures between former foes but from deepening divisions among former allies.” Despite the focus on harmony among former enemies in peacebuilding theory, the danger of violence among former allies is especially real after victorious revolutionary struggles, especially those of national liberation that tend to unite disparate political tendencies within a society. On the basis of the cases of Sudan, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, and Chad, Atlas and Licklider (1999, 37) find that “certain groups or factions feel that they have not received their just desserts from the settlement or that the terms of the settlement threaten their interests or security.” It is unclear what circumstances determine when civil wars end in a violent falling out among former allies in an internal armed struggle, but given the cases of Zimbabwe, with its 1983 recurrence, and East Timor, with its situation in 2006 when former comrades in arms attacked one another, this subset of war recurrence requires acknowledgment and further attention. Second, the presence of third-party peacekeeping troops in the weakest states offers important security guarantees. The case of the Central African Republic illustrates this point, as powersharing and inclusionary behavior experienced several ruptures, including within months of the end of the first civil war in 1997. Yet the presence of peacekeeping forces helped maintain stability through these difficulties. Within a year of their withdrawal in 2000, armed conflict recurred. Conversely, the deployment of Libyan, Sudanese, and other troops denominated as a peace mission—the Community of Sahel-Saharan States—did not, however, staunch the recurrence of conflict once sparked in 2001. The recurrence

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of armed conflict in East Timor, one year after the withdrawal of the peacekeeping operation in favor of a political mission with a handful of unarmed military observers, reveals the value of the international troops as a dissuasive presence. Third, regional dynamics and the initiative taken by neighbors in advancing or mitigating warfare were apparent. In Liberia both the witting and unwitting involvement of Guinean and Sierra Leonean state armed forces, along with nonstate actors, abetted the recurrence of war, although this was more pronounced in the organized violence in the territory of Liberia’s neighbors. In Haiti, the US government played a crucial diplomatic role in signaling support for those who would undermine Aristide’s government after 2000. Perhaps their support for the rebels was material as well. In the Central African Republic, the troops of France and neighboring states (especially Libya) provided a lifeline for President Patassé at crucial moments, and the downgrading of their commitment and deployments facilitated the slide into recurrent armed conflict. In East Timor, Indonesia was an important factor in the initial war, even though regional and external factors played little direct role in the 2006 recurrence. In the cases of East Timor and Zimbabwe, reneging on presumed commitments by elected postwar governments also triggered renewed armed conflict. Alongside these two cases, the cases analyzed above—the Central African Republic, Liberia, and Haiti—demonstrate the relevance of weak state institutions as a backdrop for exclusionary behavior and add weight to that alternative explanation. Other explanations, including that of reliance on natural resources, were not nearly as salient as the decisions surrounding the exclusion of groups from particular ethnicities or geographic regions.

Burundi in 1972, 1988, and 1993–2002 and Rwanda in 1962– 65 and 1990–Present: Chronic Exclusionary Behavior Two cases—Burundi and Rwanda—are here presented jointly because of their similarities and interrelated patterns of armed conflict and mass violence during the past five decades. Their joint treatment embodies the importance of the regional level of analysis for understanding and accounting for war recurrence. In addition, they suggest that “chronic exclusion” is a form of exclusionary behavior that plays an important role in the recurrence of armed conflicts. As with many cases of genocide and other forms of one-sided violence, it is especially difficult in these two cases to distinguish between one-sided violence and armed conflict as defined between two organized armed parties (Human Security Research Group 2009). However, the characteristics of armed conflict and its recurrence exist. Against the backdrop of chronic exclusion, these cases also show that other factors such as democratization, state weakness, and regional dynamics played a role in recurrence. The degree and form of “chronic exclusion” remain under-

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specified here, given that numerous cases of oppression and discrimination can coexist with the absence of armed conflict. Nevertheless, in seeking to explain these two interrelated cases, scholars repeatedly cite exclusion as a central factor. The succession of internal armed conflicts in Burundi and Rwanda since the 1960s demonstrates the importance of the regional level of analysis. Some of the most prominent theorists of mass violence in the two countries—including Lemarchand (2004), Mamdani (2001, 2002), Prunier (1995), and Uvin (1998, 1999)—concur on the important role of cross-border dynamics in understanding the origins of warfare and genocide in the “Great Lakes” area encompassing and extending beyond Rwanda and Burundi. Consequently, I present both cases here in a parallel, simultaneous fashion. While acknowledging that the processes of violence differ in the cases (Uvin 1999, 265), I examine these two case studies in a single narrative, reflecting a structured-focused analysis of each case and the interaction between them, presented in a chronological fashion that alternates between each case based on stages of conflict and relative stability. The structured, focused approach for each case is retained, but I analyze one set of hypothesized factors for each case before moving on to the next set of factors. These sets of recurrences of warfare stretch the boundaries of our concepts of civil war and stable peace. The character of violence often took the form of mass atrocities, or “selective genocide” (Lemarchand 1975), more than civil war or even internal armed conflict. In these episodes of mass violence, there have been “rebels” organized under some command. However, mass civilian violence has often unfolded alongside these internal armed actions. Moreover, it has often been difficult to document the coherence, command structure, or even individual leadership of insurrectionary forces that have attacked state targets. That is not to say that such command-and-control mechanisms did not exist, but they were ephemeral and poorly documented, and they have often been so wholly annihilated that it is impossible to exhume their specifics. This mass violence makes it difficult to differentiate genocide from warfare (something genocide perpetrators count on), and the levels of this mass violence make it difficult to exclude from data sets of civil wars. Fearon and Laitin (2003) score civil wars in Burundi in 1972, 1988, and 1993–2002; and in Rwanda in 1962–65 and since 1990. Scholars disagree about the specific timing of these conflicts. Thus Uvin (1999) and Sambanis (2006) cite mass atrocities in the 1960s in Burundi, next recurring in 1972, for instance. Sambanis scores civil wars also in 1972 and 1988, but commences the third civil war in 1991. As for Rwanda, data sets (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Political Instability Task Force 2008) concur on a civil war episode in the 1960s and another in the 1990s, but they disagree on precise starting dates (1962 or 1963) and ending dates (1964, 1965, or 1966). Because of the continuity across the 1994 genocide and throughout the 1990s, I score the 1990

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internal war as continuing throughout the 1990s, even though the majority of war-related deaths occurred outside the borders at times, and even though the dynamics shifted in the 1990s. It is relatively clear that from war’s onset in 1990, right through the July 1994 fall of Kigali to the Rwandan Patriotic Front, there was no period of widely perceived peace followed by a renewed warfare. Therefore, for our purposes, the 1990 period was the most recent, and only, episode of civil war recurrence in Rwanda. Before turning to these wars, what are the relevant demographic and other characteristics of these societies? The two countries formed a single Belgian colony from World War I until July 1962, when they split and each received independence. Belgium had fostered a Tutsi-dominated monarchy, although when Hutus rose up in mass violence in 1959, it organized elections in which it supported Hutu rule in that portion of the colony. Tutsis have historically made up only 10 to 14 percent of the population in both Burundi and Rwanda, with 85 to 90 percent Hutus and 1 percent Twa (Uvin 1999, 253). There is no systematic religious difference between these ethnic groups, and religion has not been a source of violent mobilizations. Rwanda’s 1959 Violence, and War in the Early 1960s The violence in Rwanda during 1959 illustrates what would become a pattern in both countries’ organized violence: a single or localized attack that involves perpetrators of a different ethnic group than the victim leads to expanded violence along ethnic lines, and then reprisals that are far greater in scale than the initial attacks. The mass reprisals, often led by the state, sometimes constitute “selective genocide” (Lemarchand 2008, 2), which invokes terror and mass ethnic flight to neighboring states, which in turn sows the seeds for future cross-border incursions by armies comprising refugees. Mass atrocities have often overshadowed organized instances of combat between rebels and state forces. Weinstein (1972, 23) makes this point and shows the importance of analyzing the interaction between these two countries: “The knowledge among Tutsi in Burundi about Rwanda has traumatized them and the repression after each Hutu revolt attempt has been intensified in geometric proportions.” In November 1959 a group of Tutsis assaulted a Hutu subchief, which in turn led Hutu groups to attack Tutsi officials. Reprisals carried out by Tutsis led to the deaths of several hundred, with some 160,000 Tutsis fleeing to adjacent countries by 1966 (Des Forges 1999; US Department of State 2008). Among these “fifty-niner” refugees were the future rebel commander Paul Kagame and his family. The war of the early 1960s commenced in the shadow of the 1959 violence. In 1961, refugees in Burundi began to launch cross-border attacks in Rwanda, lead-

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ing Hutus to target Tutsis still within Rwanda as accomplices. Ethnic violence would continue through independence in 1962 to 1966. Only the attack of December 1963 threatened the country’s stability, but roughly 20,000 people died in these attacks in the early 1960s (Des Forges 1999). Alison Des Forges (1999, 36) reports that “Hutu leaders used them all [the attacks] to bolster the sense of Hutu solidarity, to solidify their own control and to eradicate the last vestiges of respect for Tutsi authority.” Rwanda’s 1959 ethnic violence had transformative consequences for politics in Burundi, because it deepened Tutsi determination to hold onto power more tightly (Weinstein 1972). Thus, although a multiparty constitutional monarchy was inaugurated upon Burundi’s independence in 1962, fearful Tutsis assassinated the prodemocracy King Rwagasore (who had married a Hutu) and in 1965 carried out a coup that ushered in one of the most ethnically exclusive regimes on earth (Ndikumana 1998). Uvin (1999, 256–57) is worth quoting at length: Following the events in Rwanda, state control [in Burundi] became the sole vehicle for Tutsi to retain their privileges, while conversely it was the sole means of rapid social advancement for Hutu. . . . From 1966 to 1993 political and by extension economic power in Burundi was tightly held by three military regimes (Micombero, 1966–82; Bagaza, 1982–87; Buyoya 1987–93) that used their military might to keep their privileges. All three presidents were Tutsi-Hima [lower-caste Tutsi] from the same village in the Bururi region, born within two miles of each other. . . . Almost all positions of importance in Burundi were monopolized by the Tutsi minority. They included the higher levels of the single party, . . . the full command structure of the army, the police and security forces, and the judicial system (even in 1994, only 13 out of 241 magistrates were Hutu). Analysts virtually unanimously concur on the role of exclusion as a key driver of violence of the region. Lemarchand (2004, 62) states that “political, economic and social exclusion are seen as the principal dimensions that need to be explored if we are to grasp the dynamics of domestic and interstate violence in the Great Lakes.” The extreme and brutal treatment of ethnic majorities (along with some minorities) do not map perfectly onto the concept of exclusion that has prevailed in the case studies up to this point in the book. In cases such as Liberia, East Timor, Tibet, and South Ossetia, a shift toward a more exclusionary state policy played a role in sparking renewed armed conflict. However, in Burundi and Rwanda, there was what I call “chronic” exclusion, extreme social discrimination coupled with persistent state structures and policies that rested on excluding the “other.”

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War and Mass Atrocities in Burundi in 1972 The warfare and mass killings of 1972 in Burundi illustrate the altered pattern of violence and the role of chronic, rather than precipitant, exclusion. The violence began on April 29, when bands of 10 to 30 Hutus and Mulelists carried out simultaneous attacks in the capital and in southern provinces that cost some 2,000 lives (Lemarchand 1975). Lemarchand (2008, 2) reports that “the triggering factor behind the bloodbath was a Hutu-led rural insurrection aimed at seizing power from the ruling Tutsi minority.” Most of the radicalized intellectual refugees leading the uprising came from Tanzania. The Tutsi-dominated government denounced the uprising as an attempt to destroy Tutsis altogether and killed on the order of 150,000 to 300,000 persons (Lemarchand 2008, 2). The longtime researcher of violence in the region René Lemarchand commented (1975) that “the pattern of counterviolence initiated by the government and the army was more systematic and hence more efficient in terms of human destructiveness. . . . The repression took on the qualities of a selective genocide directed at all the educated or semi-educated strata of Hutu society.” The reprisal’s “avenging furor swept across the entire country and lasted for months after it had been brought under control” (Lemarchand 2008, 2). The consequences of the 1972 violence deepened a sense of ethnicity-based insecurity and oppression, of which political exclusion was only one component. As Uvin (1999, 258) explains, “[The 1972] rampage created sufficient fear to suppress Hutu unrest for two decades. . . . For many years to come Hutu parents would not send their children to school for fear of making them targets in future pogroms. These events constitute the defining moments in independent Burundi’s history. They crystallized Hutu and Tutsi identities and created a climate of permanent mutual fear.” In 1972, Hutus within the civil service and higher education had been especially targeted, and afterward Tutsi-led governments de facto excluded Hutu from these positions. Token representation existed for Hutus, and by 1987, “they held four government ministries out of 20; seven of the 65 seats in the National Assembly and two places of 65 on the Central Committee; one provincial governor out of 15” (Gale Group 2008, 4). This exclusion was not a policy decision that precipitated the 1988 war but a prevailing condition during the ten years or more before the war. Burundi’s 1988 Recurrence In the context of this persistent exclusion, Major Pierre Buyoya took power through a coup in 1987, signaling a commitment to greater inclusion of Hutus. He appointed more Hutus to government posts and freed political prisoners.

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Even so, the Tutsi dominance persisted. By the time of the outbreak of violence in 1988, three-quarters of the Cabinet and the legislature, thirteen of fifteen governors, and all army officers and 96 percent of the enlisted soldiers were Tutsis (Gale Group 2008, 4). Rather than this book’s argued state exclusion, state inclusionary measures presaged the 1988 recurrence. Some allege that Buyoya’s measures toward inclusion generated heightened expectations among Hutus, whose frustration fueled conflict (Gale Group 2008, 4). The Burundi case suggests that, in the context of extreme chronic exclusion, steps to greater exclusion may not provoke armed conflict. However, it would be a mistake to say that Buyoya’s previolence measures constituted powersharing, because they rested on informal, inclusionary measures. Indeed, steps toward powersharing only emerged after the violence. Buyoya then appointed the country’s first Hutu prime minister and created a commission, composed equally of Hutus and Tutsis, to investigate the violence and make recommendations for national unity (Gale Group 2008, 4). The 1988 violence began when Hutu farmers, resentful of corrupt Tutsi local rule, killed up to 3,000 Tutsi in two northern villages of Burundi (Uvin 1999). The Tutsi-dominated army responded directly and with heavy force, killing between 20,000 and 150,000 Hutu and driving out tens of thousands of refugees (Uvin 1999; US Department of State 2008). Given the mass atrocities in the government response, violence eventually diminished. Buyoya’s measures of inclusion did not amount to powersharing, but they signaled a willingness to grant Hutus a greater participation in governance that would still be clearly dominated by Tutsis. Civil War Recurrence in Rwanda in 1990 As in Burundi in 1988, the civil war that rocked Rwanda in 1990 with the invasion by the Tutsi-led, refugee-based Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) emerged not from any direct exclusionary steps but from a lessening of the oppressive and chronic exclusion, and from other international factors. The wave of democratization that quickened around the world in the late 1980s touched much of Africa, including the Great Lakes region. France put pressure on Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana to hold multiparty elections, leading to the legalization of new parties. Several of these, under Hutu leaders who decried the peace process, put pressure on Habyarimana and mobilized critics from among Hutus that he had to take into account. The peace process, in conjunction with democratization, seems to have also instilled fear and insecurity among hard-line Hutus, leading to preparations for mass killings. Rwanda’s 1990 civil war recurrence emblemizes the myriad ways that regional and international factors shape the Great Lakes conflicts. We have already seen the signaling and “learning” by Tutsi and Hutu constituencies across borders

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after waves of violence, and the importance of refugee communities as the source of mobilization of political organization and armies. “Refugees provide the conceptual link among all three forms [political, economic, and social] of exclusion,” according to Lemarchand (2004, 67). Their role derives not solely as direct protagonists of violence but also as sources of economic and social stress on the host society, which provokes scapegoating by host nations’ authorities and fuels cycles of discrimination if not demonization. Such was the case of Tutsi refugees who had first fled by the tens of thousands after the 1959 violence, and then had become central actors in the civil war of 1990. Given the persistent Hutu political domination in Rwanda throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Tutsi refugees in Uganda became key recruits and even commanders of the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA) organized by Museveni to overthrow Milton Obote. The Obote government expelled thousands of Rwandan refugees, who were subsequently permitted to return in 1985 to NRA-controlled areas. When they took Kampala in 1986, one-fourth of the 16,000 rebels were Banyarwandans. Among these was Paul Kagame, the future leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, who was named acting head of intelligence in Uganda (Mamdani 2001). Mamdani (2001) and Prunier (1995) argue that the RPF invasion cannot be understood outside the context of political events in Uganda. In the words of one RPF commander, “If the NRM [National Resistance Movement, the political arm of the NRA] could liberate Uganda, the RPF began to ask why it could not do the same in Rwanda” (quoted by Mamdani 2001, 173). In addition, Ugandan political events also pushed the RPF to launch an armed attempt to challenge the Hutu-led government in Kigali. According to the new Ugandan ambassador to the United States, two decisions by the new Kampala government pushed the Uganda-based leadership of the RPF to decide to invade in 1990: the decision to ban nonindigenous Banyarwandans from owning land in Uganda, and the decision to ban them from holding state offices there (Mamdani 2001). The RPF invaded from Ugandan bases on October 1, 1990, with ongoing combat halted only in July 1992 when a cease-fire was signed amid international pressure. That cease-fire failed within eight months, leading to renewed fighting and a new cease-fire forced on the government of Juvenal Habyarimana in August 1993. The downing of the airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi prompted the genocide in April 1994, and the taking of Kigali by the RPF three months later. Rwanda’s recurrence is distinctive insofar as it departs from the pattern identified by numerous analysts of the Great Lakes region of a limited uprising or assassination leading to the murder of one ethnic group by the hundreds or thousands, followed by massive reprisals costing hundreds of thousands of lives. However, Burundi in 1993 represents a return to this pattern.

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Burundi’s 1993 Recurrence In Burundi, Buyoya also embraced reforms leading to multiparty elections. Uvin (1999, 261) suggests that the end of the Cold War and the recognition that single-party minority rule was not sustainable contributed to this decision. A Hutu prime minister was appointed; a “government of national unity” was formed, with equal numbers of Hutus and Tutsis in the Cabinet; and a “Charter of Unity” was adopted that emphasized national rather than ethnic loyalties. The state even obliged educated Burundians to explain the notion of ethnic unity to poor farmers (Uvin 1999, 261). A new Constitution was adopted in 1992, which led to the election of a Hutu president for the first time in June 1993. The hope was that this process could overcome the pattern of the prior three years, and prior decades, described here by Uvin (1999, 259): “All these cases [of violence in 1972, 1988, 1991, and 1992] presented the same pattern: in response to rumors and fear, Hutu peasants attacked and killed local Tutsi, power holders, and even ordinary people. The army was then sent in to restore order and indiscriminately killed vastly more people in retaliation.” Weinstein (1972, 23) remarks similarly, “the repression after each Hutu revolt attempt has been intensified in geometric proportions.” As Lemarchand (2004, 63) indicates, Hutu rebellions had ended in “dismal failure, each time resulting in extremely brutal repression,” until the 1993 election of a Hutu to the presidency, inspiring hope that they may finally be lifted from this chronic discrimination and exclusion. Unfortunately, their hopes were crushed when the “all-Tutsi army killed the newly elected president” and the leaders of the Assembly, sparking renewed warfare and violence. Within three months an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 persons were killed, and millions fled as refugees (Uvin 1999, 262). The new war would last into the twenty-first century; there was a pause, with a cease-fire among important rebel groups in 2002, but the war ended only in 2006 when the last of the rebel groups agreed to a negotiated settlement. Buyoya’s experiment in the early 1990s marks the failure of informal inclusion and democratization as a means of preventing war recurrence. Note that this inclusionary mechanism was one of “power dividing” rather than powersharing, because the 1992 Constitution banned ethnically based parties and required parties to gather signatures in every province as an ethnic inclusionary measure (Uvin 1999, 261). In line with the theories of Horowitz (1985) and Roeder (2005), the Constitution eschewed powersharing in favor of efforts to draw ethnic groups into a competitive electoral system that rewarded intergroup cooperation. This case suggests that inclusionary behavior does not always work. It also suggests, however, that powersharing may be necessary as an interim measure, backed with external guarantees where required, to provide security reassurance to major groups.

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Moreover, these cases should not lead one to eschew exclusionary behavior as a significant factor. On the contrary, the scholarly consensus is that exclusion has played the most important role in the patterns of organized violence in Rwanda and Burundi during the past four decades. Rather, the cases suggest that where chronic, extreme exclusion persists, inclusionary efforts may in fact trigger armed uprisings through raised expectations. The experience of Burundi’s peace process since 2002, though not taken up here, suggests the potential that inclusionary mechanisms, including powersharing, can have in such a context with the presence of international guarantors and programs aimed at facilitating dialogue and mutual understanding.

Alternative Explanations and Conclusions What economic factors and other explanations can be discerned in these cases? Although Rwanda exhibits many of the risk factors for civil war recurrence— poverty, competition for scarce resources, weak state institutions, and a high portion of mountainous territory (though not excessive reliance on exports of natural resources)—specialists in the region’s violence subordinate these factors to political exclusion. In Rwanda and Burundi, the dearth of valuable exports or domestic production has made access to state power even more important. As Rwantabagu (2001, 49) notes, “Because the country is poor in terms of limited investment opportunities in the private, industrial, and services sectors, the main avenue for economic prosperity is through political activity, the civil service, or joining the armed forces. . . . After 1972, a notable rift was created between the Hutu and Tutsi communities in terms of access to wealth and privilege. . . . At another level, overpopulation and an acute land shortage in the countryside has heightened intercommunal tensions and precipitated violent clashes. Thus, the Burundian conflict has clear economic undertones as two groups compete for the control of limited resources.” Although Lemarchand (2004, 66–67) refers to political, social, and economic exclusion, political exclusion plays the most significant role in the Great Lakes violence:18 “If there is little doubt that the 1959 Hutu revolution in Rwanda received its impetus from the political exclusion of Western-educated Hutu elites, it is equally clear that economic exclusion had relatively little to do with the Hutu-Tutsi conflict.” In addition, Prunier (1995) acknowledges another economic factor. The drop in commodity prices that hit Rwanda so hard made it difficult for the government to accept the refugee return that was under negotiation with the RPF in the early 1990s. In conclusion, recurrent violence in Rwanda and Burundi holds four important implications for this study. First, although included in this study of civil wars, their distinctive pattern of violence (shared by other regions and countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa) bolsters recent calls (Cederman and Gleditsch

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2009) to disaggregate the study of civil wars. The pattern of mass-based violence, organized by rebel armies operating across borders in waves of violent reprisals led by the state, offers one pattern of what are classified as “civil wars” but that merit separate explanations. Second, the cases of Burundi, Rwanda, and the entire Great Lakes region (certainly including Rwandan and Ugandan involvement in postgenocide warfare in Zaire) exemplify the importance of a regional level of analysis and the salience of transnational factors. Third, both cases support claims that democratization can fuel mass ethnic violence. As Uvin (1999, 267) says, “The most recent and most extreme rounds of violence are the direct result of processes of democratization set in motion in large part by pressure from the international community.” In the absence of coherent prodemocratic political actors, democratization itself may prompt insecurity and mass violence. And fourth, the role of chronic, rather than precipitating, exclusion stands out, despite instances where inclusionary measures seemed to provoke mass violence. These cases point to the need for further conceptualization of types of exclusion and of the processes whereby it enervates war and violence. The cases of nonseparatist recurrence of armed conflict reveal important divergences in the character of recurrence, in the aims of insurgents, and in causal factors. The levels of violence diverged greatly, ranging from hundreds of thousands dead in Africa’s Great Lakes region to only dozens of combat deaths in Haiti and East Timor’s recurrences. The rebels’ specific motives also differed in these cases. Many hypothesized factors played a role in the recurrence of armed conflict in these cases. These include state weakness in all the cases examined in this chapter. Indeed, countries like the Central African Republic, Haiti, and East Timor have come to embody weak state institutions to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish those fragile institutions from the very violence that accompanies the frequent political changes of government, often through coups that may constitute internal armed conflicts. In addition, regional factors play an important role in recurrences in several countries. Although these countries are all extremely poor, this poverty was not directly related to the instigation of war recurrences without regard to the more unusual factors emphasized here— namely, exclusion. Exclusion by new postwar governments characterized all these cases of nonseparatist recurrences. These cases reinforce the important role identified in separatist cases and in Liberia of exclusionary behavior. In every case actors understood their own renewed violence mainly as a reaction to the exclusionary positions adopted vis-à-vis state power by postwar elected governments. In addition the cases of East Timor and Zimbabwe show that the exclusion of former enemies is not the only dimension along which warfare may recur. The exclusion of former allies or coalition partners after a successful rebellion also

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can prompt a recurrence of armed conflict. In both Zimbabwe and the recent case of East Timor, the perceived marginalization from state power represents the main armed violence experienced subsequent to independence. Thus exclusion may precipitate renewed armed conflict when postwar governments move to marginalize, exclude, or even persecute their former rebel partners. Finally, the cases of Rwanda and Burundi broaden our understanding of exclusion to reinforce an argument that has been prevalent for many years: that chronic oppression involving exclusion from political and economic power can elicit armed violence on a massive scale. This chronic exclusion constitutes a standing factor that must be combined with other explanations to fully account for the recurrence of wars in these cases. In both cases, political competition in democratization efforts represents an important trigger for ethnicity-based violence, as did the approaching implementation of the 1993 Arusha agreement in Rwanda. However, these five nonseparatist recurrences are not the sole cases of recurrence. Chapter 6 examines the causes of war’s recurrence in the four cases that seem to contradict the book’s central argument. Notes 1. United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Central African Republic: IRIN Background Notes,” June 11, 1998, www.africa.upenn.edu / Hornet / irin_61198.html. 2. On the “predatory” state, see North (1981); and on its existence in Haiti, see Maguire (1995). 3. This despite the presence of darker-skinned heads of state, such as Francois Duvalier and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. 4. National Coalition for Haitian Refugees / Human Rights Watch / Jesuit Refugee Service, “Fugitives from Injustice: The Crisis of Internal Displacement in Haiti,” August 1994 report, Washington, D.C. Also see Perusse (1995, 35). 5. UN Statistics Division, “National Accounts Estimates of Main Aggregates,” http: // data.un .org / Data .aspx?q=haiti&d=SNAAMA&f=grID percent3A101 percent3BcurrID percent3AUSD percent3BpcFlag percent3A1 percent3BcrID percent3A332#SNAAMA. 6. International Monetary Fund, “World Economic Outlook Database, October 2010: Nominal GDP List of Countries,” data for 2009. 7. Personal communication to the author from Shepard Forman, October 14, 2004. 8. The successive UN presences are as follows: UNAMET, June–October 1999, provided electoral assistance for the referendum; UNTAET, October 1999–May 2002, administered the territory until independence; UNMISET, May 2002–May 2005, supported strengthening of the state and security with lower numbers of troops; UNOTIL, May 2005–August 2006, a political mission with only thirty-four unarmed

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military observers supporting state building; and UNMIT, August 2006 until this writing. 9. For the details of the events of April and May 2006, I draw heavily on “UN Special Commission 2006” report, officially the “Report of the UN Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste.” 10. UN Department of Peacekeeping, “UNMISET Home Page: Facts and Figures,” www.un.org / en / peacekeeping / missions / past / unmiset / facts.html. 11. Australian Defence Force website on the International Stabilization Force in East Timor, www.defence.gov.au / op / eastTimor / general.htm. 12. Republica Democratica de Timor-Leste and UN Country Team, “Timor-Leste Millennium Development Goals Report,” United Nations, Dili, 2004, 15. 13. On the history of the independence struggle, see Stedman (1993), Sibanda (2005), and Bhebe and Ranger (1995). 14. See Stedman (1993), Sibanda (2005), and Bhebe and Ranger (1995). 15. On Nkomo and ZAPU, see Sibanda (2005). 16. For more details, see Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (1986). 17. Ibid. 18. Lemarchand (2004, 66) defines “political exclusion” in a liberal manner, as “the denial of political rights to specific ethnic or ethnoregional communities, most notably the right to vote, organize political parties, freely contest elections.”

6 Recurrences That Defy the Argument or factor can plausibly lay claim to playing the crucial causal role in recurrences of internal armed conflict. Despite my making a strong case for decisions by a state that render it exclusionary and insufficiently legitimate, exclusion is neither sufficient nor necessary for war recurrence. Of the fifteen core cases of recurrence, four cases do not support the role of exclusionary behavior in the recurrence of armed conflict. This chapter examines those four cases. It first explores Lebanon and Mali, two cases that directly defy the hypothesized role of exclusion. In both cases inclusionary behavior was adopted and maintained, yet dissident groups among former armed insurrectionary groups took up arms once again. The chapter identifies which factors these cases suggest are causally important, and why inclusionary behavior failed. The chapter then turns to Nicaragua and Peru, two postwar states that engaged in exclusionary behavior, but where other factors seem to trump the impact of government exclusion. These two cases suggest, respectively, the importance of external actors and of the rents from natural resources (viz., coca products). Despite the preponderance of evidence that shows the significance of exclusionary behavior in accounting for postwar recurrences of armed conflict, these cases represent exceptions. They show that other factors, including those hypothesized in the literature drawn from quantitative works, can play a salient role in war recurrence. Two cases show the limits of an explanation that relies solely on exclusionary behavior. In the case of Lebanon, a 1943 powersharing arrangement failed in 1958, and it was then restored after that initial civil war. Analysts concur that the failure of that powersharing arrangement constituted the precipitating factor in the second civil war of 1975–90. Other factors are explored below in the mini– case study. Of the entire pool of forty-two countries that experienced either war recurrence or nonrecurrence, Mali offers the only post-1988 case where powersharing failed to prevent recurrence. In both cases dissident groups reverted to armed conflict, despite the adherence to powersharing by some elements of the

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prior insurrectionary armed forces. Whereas religious difference constituted the lines of mobilization in the Lebanese case, in Mali tribal / ethnic rather than religious differences posed the lines for the mobilization of an armed revolt.

Lebanon in 1958 and 1975–90: Failed Powersharing Lebanon’s civil war of 1975–90 has been widely studied, especially as an example of the shortcomings of powersharing. Largely in response to the weakened hold that occupied France held on its colonies, Lebanese elites in 1943 negotiated a governance pact that smoothed the way to independence from the mandate system in 1946. The 1943 pact also served as the foundation for powersharing arrangement that succeeded until an armed conflict in 1958, and then resumed until the second civil war of 1975. The 1943 National Pact and the 1958 Civil War The National Pact represents one of the most oft-cited instances of powersharing, which makes it worthwhile to sketch its main features. Christians (including Maronites, Greek Catholics, and Greek Orthodox), Muslims (Sunni and Shia), and Druze are the most prevalent of the seventeen religions found in Lebanon. Ethnic identity—including self-identification by some Christians and others as Phoenician or Canaanites, as against the majority of Lebanese, who self-identify as Arab—is not nearly as salient a feature of identity as religion. Under the 1943 pact, Maronites held the presidency, Sunni held the premiership, and cabinet posts were allocated according to the relative prevalence of the religions (e.g., including a Druze defense minister and a Greek Orthodox deputy premier) (Zahar 2005, 228). The pact also allocated legislative seats according to a Christianto-Muslim ratio of 6 / 5. Although these seats were allocated by district and not religious community, they became vehicles for religion-based voter mobilization and patron–client networks that served elites and offered little responsiveness to the population (Zahar 2005, 229). The parties to the 1958 armed conflict raised the same issues that underlay the religious tensions of the 1940s. Most Lebanese Muslims opposed the apparent Lebanese Christian policy preference for increased proximity to the West and instead preferred closer ties to Syria and the Arab world. The pact signified a compromise between these two paths (Zahar 2005, 228). After the United States took Britain’s side in the Suez Crisis, Lebanese president Camille Nimr Chamoun, a Christian, refused to break ties with the West and also eschewed the United Arab Republic, which had been proclaimed by Nasser in early 1958. In the meantime, Muslims by the mid-1950s were discontent with the powersharing arrangement. Economic growth bypassed the agriculture sector, prompt-

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ing migration to the cities, which benefited Christian and Sunni communities but not Shia Muslims in the South (Makdisi and Sadaka 2005; 60; Zahar 2005, 229–30). This “created a never-before experienced socioeconomic gap that closely mapped onto religious affiliation” (Zahar 2005, 229). In light of this dissatisfaction with Muslims’ share of state power, they questioned the degree of power President Chamoun enjoyed to make decisions. Specifically, the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) objected to Chamoun’s joining the Baghdad Pact and thereby setting back Arab unification. With urging by radio broadcasts from Syria and Egypt to rise up and overthrow the government, the LNM launched a series of attacks. The army chief refused to send the army against the rebels for fear of mutiny, and American marines waded ashore among sunbathers to back the government against a feared loss of the country to Syrian control and the United Arab Republic. Roughly two to four thousand persons died in the fighting (Collelo 1989, 186). The president resigned, but the powersharing arrangement was revived amid new leadership. In this first crisis of powersharing, external influences were apparent. More than 140,000 Palestinians, 10 percent of them Christians, became permanent residents of Lebanon in conjunction with the creation of a Jewish state on Lebanon’s southern border (Picard 1996, 79). Their presence not only constituted a haven for armed resistance to Israel, and thus a hostile target of the Israeli Defense Forces, but also invited Arab and other meddling. Syria persistently attempted to exercise power in Lebanon, emboldened by the Arab nationalist movement that was embodied in the United Arab Republic. The West, especially the United States, also exercised its influence at this time. In contrast to most cases of civil war recurrence examined here, these divisions fell along religious rather than ethnic lines. External factors enhanced a sense of marginalization along religious lines to ignite the 1958 armed conflict. Marginalization was apparent, but not through a deliberate disruption, reversal, or reneging of the inclusionary approach taken in the 1943 National Pact. Civil War Recurrence, 1975 The customary marker of the beginning of the civil war is the exchange of attacks on April 13, 1975, between Palestinian militias and the predominantly Maronite Kataeb (Lebanese Phalange) of Pierre Gemayel (Picard 1996, 102). Tensions and attacks between the two communities had intensified in the previous years, especially after the 1967 war and the related strategic decline of the United Arab Republic. The second civil war’s factions divided along conservative / progressive lines and also religious lines. On one side lay the Christian-dominated forces defend-

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ing the status quo, including the Kataeb that would become part of the Lebanese Front (LF) and its allies, the Israeli-influenced Southern Lebanon Front, and the “Tigers” military wing of Camille Chamoun’s National Liberal Party. The state army, which initially stayed on the sidelines, would by 1976 break into fragments. Thus, the LF became the main protagonist defending the status quo. On the other side lay a less cohesive group led mainly by the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), under the Druze Kamal Jumblatt, and its allies in a rough coalition of Muslims, Palestinians refugees, and leftists (including roughly 10,000 Palestinians from the Rejectionist Front drawn partly from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, plus the pro-Iraq Arab Liberation Front, the Independent Nasserite Movement, the Syrian National Socialist Party, and the Communist Party). Although some Christian leftists belonged to the progressive coalition led by Jumblatt, very few Muslims were able to stay in the conservative forces led by the LF. After the attacks of April 13, 1975, led to a series of mutual recriminatory attacks against civilians, Jamblatt refused to participate in a government to which the Kataeb belonged. No Sunni political leaders would cross him, but neither would any Christian-dominated groups concede to form a government without the Kataeb. Hence a stalemate led to the formation of a Christian-favored military cabinet by Maronite president Suleiman Frangieh, leading to a summer of relative calm, aided by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat’s success in keeping PLO factions out of the fighting through the end of the year (Cobban 1987, 128). However, continued wrangling and maneuvering led to renewed and massive fighting among militias. By the fall of 1975, most of Beirut’s port and the city itself were destroyed, and within two years roughly 600,000 to 900,000 Lebanese had fled the country. The war would eventually result in the death of some 130,000 persons and cost $100 billion in damage (Collelo 1989, 181). The government became largely dysfunctional in early 1976, at which point many Palestinians joined in the warfare on the side of the LNM. Ostensibly to quell the violence, Syria launched a full-scale invasion in May 1976. At that point, the LNM and its Palestinian and other allies occupied 70 percent of the country. The fighting continued, however, with Israel and Syria tacitly cooperating to prevent the Palestinian groups and their LNM allies from gaining control of the country (Winslow 1996, 208–10). With Syrian advances, the Lebanese Forces made gains, taking back territory from the LNM and convening the Parliament to install a new government in September. Throughout 1976, Syria and other Arab states had engaged in dialogue, and after its invasion, Syria sought to legitimize its presence through the Arab League, which deployed troops (Winslow 1996, 210–12). A peace conference in Riyadh in October 1976 led to a significant

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reduction in armed actions, leaving Syria dominating the politico-military scene. Although the war continued through new evolutions, influenced heavily by outside actors, those latter phases are less relevant to the present inquiry. Analysis of the Lebanon Case The Lebanese case runs counter to two generalizations found in this study. First, it represents a failure of powersharing. That failure is not simply a correlation, because the powersharing mechanisms fueled conflict recurrence and impeded conflict resolution in the early weeks of both the 1958 and 1975 wars. Specifically, the faith-based allocation in the legislature permitted mutual vetoes that led to a deadlock once Jamblatt refused to work with Kataeb early in the fighting. Moreover, religiously based cabinet postings led certain ministers to favor specific militias in 1975–76. Once specific army commanders refused to obey orders out of a concern that the religious divisions would accelerate, the state’s armed forces broke apart. More broadly, Muslim dissatisfaction with the fixed allocation of power based on outmoded demographics certainly undercut the legitimacy of the state, which came to be seen as overly representative of wealthier Christian interests, especially once economic divisions deepened. Thus, Zahar (2005, 231) notes that “dissatisfaction with the powersharing formula that privileged the Christians was a major cause.” Second, the case calls into question the contribution of international troops to the maintenance of stability. Foreign troops departed Lebanon in 1946, and they were absent throughout the 1958 conflict and through the beginning of the 1975 war. The 1976 Syrian invasion did ultimately lead to a decline in violence in 1977–80. However, that incursion did not produce stability. It did prevent the emergence of one feared outcome, a radical Palestinian-controlled state in Lebanon, along with the feared alternative, the creation of a pro-Israeli Christian enclave state. Yet it enmeshed Syria in a more serious war and occupation than expected. The Arab Deterrent Force (which replaced a brief Arab Security Force after three months), largely a fig-leaf for the Syrians, did not bring enduring stability and departed in 1982. Perhaps because foreign troops, even when under the rubric of “peacekeeping” or “deterrent,” have generally deployed independent of a broad internationally agreed-on framework, their deployments have not yielded the sort of stability found in other cases. A UN Interim Force in Lebanon, deployed in 1978, helped bring some stability to southern Lebanon but played only a secondary role in fostering negotiations (Day 1986). Zahar (2005, 235–40) concludes that the presence of “multilateral protectorates,” such as after the 1989 Ta’if Accord, has provided the backing for powersharing to succeed. She finds that bilateral interventions (e.g., the invasions of Syria and Israel) fueled political crisis and conflict.

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Conversely, Lebanon’s war recurrence confirms other arguments put forth in this book. It ratifies the role of religious fractionalization but not that of ethnic fractionalization. In their explicit testing of the model of Collier and Hoeffler (2002, 2004) for the Lebanese case, Makdisi and Sadaka (2005, 59, 69) make this their central conclusion. In sorting out the complex religious panorama of Lebanese society, they follow Collier and Hoeffler in applying a Christian / Muslim distinction that maps onto a 45 / 55 ratio, which rendered Christians a market-dominant minority (Chua 2002). In addition, they find the economic motivations “weak” in the recurrence of civil war in 1975, and they “immediately dismiss” the role of natural resources. However, they amass considerable data showing that the various Lebanese factions received considerable rents—perhaps $15 billion locally and $30 billion from foreign supporters—that constituted an important incentive to persist in warfare and thus delayed a negotiated settlement (Makdisi and Sadaka 2005, 73–81). The case of Lebanon also reinforces the need to examine regional dynamics and external actors. Civil war and its recurrence in Lebanon were heavily influenced by external actors, especially the PLO, Israel, Syria, Iran, the United States, and other Arab states. The migration of Palestinians changed the politics, security, and demographics of the society in ways that fueled internal armed conflict. Syria and Israel at times brought periods of stability but also fueled warfare by supporting and even constituting some of the multiple armed factions to the conflict. One of the consequences of the extensive and at times sporadic involvement of external actors was an almost constant series of peace initiatives, mainly by Syria, but also by other bilateral and multilateral actors. The Arab League negotiated a number of cease-fires during the recurrence. Syria contributed to the elaboration of the Constitutional Document’s revisions to powersharing in 1976, to further modifications to powersharing in the Fourteen Points of Reconciliation in 1980 and again in 1984 in talks in Switzerland, and to the Ta’if Accord in 1989 that eventually ended the war (Zahar 2005, 237). The case of Lebanon does not represent an example of exclusionary behavior prompting civil war recurrence. The 1975 civil war reflects the shortcomings of powersharing, but this does not mean that powersharing is a failed mechanism for sustaining peace. Powersharing sustained stability for multiple decades, and some form of powersharing has been seen as necessary for reaching agreement on a stable political order by both internal and external actors, even up to the present. In fact the case shows both the necessity and the perils of powersharing.

Mali in 1990–96 and 2007: Failed Powersharing Mali is unusual as a case of a civil war that ended with a powersharing agreement that was largely respected, but where armed conflict nevertheless recurred.

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The conflict reflects exclusionary behavior at the outset, including chronic exclusion from before independence through the first civil war of the early 1990s. Exclusion and inclusion were based not on religion but on ethnic, regional, and other distinctions involving the pastoral, nomadic Tuaregs who inhabit mainly the northern, desertified portion of Mali and the western area of Niger. Recurrent armed conflict in the period 2006–9 reflects not exclusion so much as the initiative of a minority of former rebels pressing for more rights, power, and state benefits. Regional factors were important both because a Tuareg rebellion in Niger preceded that of Mali in the early 1990s, and interaction continued between Tuaregs in both countries. In addition, Libyan and Algerian governments both deployed troops and became active, along with other African states, in seeking to mediate a resolution. Control of smuggling routes played a role in the 2006 recurrence but was not the primary factor, and natural resources did not figure prominently. Despite its reputation as a peaceful West African country, Mali has experienced internal armed conflicts, mostly concentrated in what is generally called northern Mali, comprising the three (out of eight) regions of Tombouctou, Gao, and Kidal. These three remote, desert regions constitute 59 percent of Mali, a portion larger than Afghanistan or Texas. Uprisings against French rule were put down, as was an uprising by Tuaregs and Moors after independence in 1960. Tuaregs and Moors make up 5 to 10 percent of the population of Mali, and differ from other ethnic groups in the country as they generally have lighter skin and are considered to be related to North African Berbers.1 They numbered 621,000 of Mali’s 12.5 million inhabitants in the 1990s (Keita 1998, 6). Tuaregs (the term sometimes includes Moors) have episodically sought greater autonomy from empires and states during the past several decades. The former commander of a key base in the counterinsurgency of the 1990s described “a conviction among the Tuaregs” after independence in 1960 that “they were singled out for particular discrimination, and were more neglected than others in the distribution of state benefits” (Keita 1998, 10). From 1962 to 1964, Tuaregs carried out a number of hit-and-run raids that did not constitute a civil war and that were suppressed by the state. Keita (1998, 10) describes how Tuaregs at the time felt threatened by land reforms aimed at modernization by southern Malians unsympathetic to the northern tribes’ migratory pastoral lifestyle. As a result of the uprising, the government placed Tuaregs under a “repressive” military apparatus (Keita 1998, 10). The Initial Civil War The main civil war that Mali has experienced was waged by a few rebel groups dominated by Tuaregs from 1990 to 1996. In 1990 the spread of democratization

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in Eastern Europe and Africa also led to pressures in Mali for greater political and press freedoms, but then–president Moussa Traoré rejected calls for multiparty electoral system. In 1991 Traoré was ousted and arrested. A transitional government headed by Lieutenant Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré organized a constitutional reform process that led to the approval of a new charter in 1992 that provided for multiparty elections and the freedom of political parties except where based on ethnicity, religion, region, or gender (US Department of State 2010c). Alpha Oumar Konaré of the Alliance for Democracy became the country’s first democratically elected president in 1992, which ended eighteen years of one-party rule. In June 1990 the Popular Movement for the Liberation of the Azaouad (Mouvement Populaire de Libération de l’Azaouad, MPLA, “Azaouad” being the Tuareg term for Northern Mali) carried out attacks on two towns in Kidal that marked the beginning of the war, almost simultaneously with the onset of armed conflict by Tuaregs in Niger (Dillon 2007, 28; Vinding 2002, 355). These rebels sought greater autonomy and resources from the state. In contrast to the smaller rebellion of the early 1960s, the attacks spread across the northern regions and intensified in 1990–92. One factor here was the harsh repression that the Malian army visited upon not just the communities in areas of conflict but also on lighter-skinned peoples throughout the northern areas, which prompted more to flee and an intensification of the warfare (Poulton and ag Youssouf 1998). Other rebel groups emerged, some of which splintered. Under Algerian pressure four of these groups united as the Unified Movements and Fronts of the Azaouad (Mouvements et Fronts Unifiés de l’Azaouad, MFUA). Virtually every analysis of the Tuareg Rebellion of the early 1990s refers to social marginalization, exclusion, and cultural and political suppression. Krings (1995, 57) argues, for instance, that among the decisive factors for the “marginalisation and deprivation of the Tuareg” that led to war were the “negation of the existence of the Tuareg ethnic community” by black African leaders in Mali and Niger, along with “exclusion of the Tuareg from political participation.” Dillon (2007, 2) cites as a “root cause” of the war the “social exclusion of Touaregs from military and civil service positions.” Some have argued that severe drought in the North was a major factor in the Tuareg rebellion. Severe droughts struck the region in the years 1973–74 and 1983–84 (Poulton and ag Youssef 1998, 33; Somerville 1986). These droughts reduced grasslands and animal herds, made livelihoods more difficult for nomads, and forced mass migration (Dillon 2007, 47–49). One detailed study of the effects of drought concluded that this was not the main cause of the war (Benjaminsen 2008). In addition, these droughts cannot explain the timing of the onset of the 1989–96 war. The uncertainties unleashed by democratization better account for this timing.

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International factors played a role in the initial conflict. The onset of conflict came in June 1990, one month after rebel attacks began in adjacent Niger after 18,000 Tuareg refugees returned from Algeria. The Nigerian attacks, which were related but not coordinated, forced the MPLA’s leader, Iyad ag Ghali, to launch attacks earlier than he had hoped (Krings 1995). Libya also played a role. Although Libya’s Qaddafi in 1980 declared his country as the “homeland” for all Tuaregs and offered them citizenship, one researcher who interviewed Tuareg leaders found that they dismissed these claims, seeing Libya instead as having “abandoned” Tuaregs during the first civil war (Dillon 2007, 55). Vinding (2002, 355–56) emphasizes the role of unemployed youth who, affected by the drought and poverty in the 1980s, joined Qaddafi’s Islamic Legion and received military training, and then returned to Mali or Niger to fight. Peace Agreements and Powersharing Peace negotiations commenced early in the war. An initial accord fell apart with the ouster of President Traoré in 1991. In April 1992, coincident with Konaré’s election as president, Lieutenant Colonel Touré successfully reached a settlement with the MFUA. The National Pact, or “Bamako Accord,” provided for territorial, economic, and military forms of powersharing. The accord created new insurgent-majority units for a period of one year; stipulated that all minority populations would have a place in the local police, security forces, and civil service; and dismantled certain army posts in northern Mali. It also created a new commissioner for the North of Mali to report directly to the president, directed reconstruction resources to the region, and established local and interregional assemblies that would have authority over the local police forces and administrative decisions. Some of the agreed-on measures were implemented but others were not. In April 1993 610 ex-combatants were integrated into the army. Local assemblies assumed greater authority, as did the new commissioner for the North; however, the redistribution of power took time and created new uncertainties. There was little investment, and permitting instruction in the Tuareg language (Tamashek) took time to implement. Although the levels of attacks declined, some attacks continued, especially in 1994. Divisions within the rebels also undermined peace implementation. Arab groups within the rebel movements had formed their own insurgent group, concerned that negotiations would enhance Tuareg autonomy but not address Arab concerns. Other splits occurred over caste lines, between older traditional clan elders and younger men who sought chances for advancement, and between those demanding independence versus autonomy. Around 1994 Songhoi communities began forming militias that carried out attacks on Tuaregs, sometimes

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with the blessing of the Malian army, which fueled society-based warfare. In addition, some distrustful Tuaregs in the army mutinied and killed several of their colleagues (Keita 1998, 18). Violence continued through 1996, and it then dissipated to such an extent that the war was considered over. Ag Ghani’s group (split off from the MPLA and renamed first the FPLA and then the MPA) did not abandon the National Pact and helped defeat two other MFUA groups, the ARLA and the FIAA (Humphreys and ag Mohamed 2003, 21). The money of another group, the FPLA, dried up. Foreign states pressed for implementation of the National Pact during this time, and the United Nations Development Program funded a program working with local chiefs to reinforce peace. In 1996, a “Flame of Peace” ceremony in Timbuktu marked an official end to the war, because roughly 3,000 rebel weapons were destroyed. In October 1996 1,620 additional ex-combatants were integrated into the army, the various police and customs forces, and the civil service, including 77 at the officer level or equivalent (Dillon 2007, 100, based on Keita 1998).2 Recurrence of Armed Conflict In 2006, disaffected ex-combatant Tuaregs deserted the army and attacked and sacked a few villages in the North. A former ex-combatant, Ibrahim ag Bahanga, led what was called the Alliance Démocratique du 23 mai pour le Changement (ADC). Lieutenant Colonel Amadou Touré, the former interim leader, had won as an independent candidate for president and established a broad-based government in 2002. His government issued statements emphasizing its continuing commitment to an inclusive state, and negotiated a new peace agreement in 2006. Many of the ADC rebels demobilized and joined (or rejoined) the Malian army. However, in 2007, ag Bahanga led a further splinter group called the Alliance Touareg Nord Mali pour le Changement (ATNMC), which broke off and initiated attacks that killed dozens and displaced hundreds, constituting a renewed internal armed conflict. Attacks intensified in mid-2007 and were concentrated in the extreme northeastern region (Kidal), adjacent to Niger, where related but uncoordinated renewed attacks also took place. Tuaregs remained split, and some fighting continued in 2008–9, but not enough for the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) to score the armed conflict as continuing. An agreement in August 2008 was brokered by the Algerians, which led to a further incorporation of ex-combatant fighters back into self-contained units of the army deployed in Mali. However ag Bahanga still demanded greater autonomy (though not independence) for the Kidal region and the withdrawal of Malian army troops, which the government resisted. His forces

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continued attacks from the Tigharghar Mountains, and he took refuge in Algeria, from where he persisted in his struggle through 2009, even though the Malian army made important gains and won massive defections of the rebels. These splinter groups, mainly ex-combatant army deserters, claimed that the poverty and neglect of the Kidal region underlay their struggle, so it would be erroneous to see the recurrence as reflecting a reneging on the National Pact, certainly not its core elements. Instead, Mali’s recurrent armed conflict, albeit a small-scale recurrence, defies the argument of this book. What factors does this case suggest are important for the failure of peace? Mali points to the role that splintered groups and incohesion among insurgent forces pose for the consolidation of peace.3 The increasing involvement of these groups in smuggling also suggests an economic opportunity that fueled the recurrence. Smuggling had intensified in northern Mali over the previous years, ironically helped by the reduction of the state’s coercive forces there as part of the National Pact (Dillon 2007). The integration of ex-combatants was seen as both significant and successful, despite the problems that developed among some ex-combatants. Dillon (2007, 99–102), in 2006 interviews with Tuareg leaders and ex-combatants about the stability of peace, found that most Tuaregs brought up integration, citing it as either well implemented, helpful to peace, or beneficial to Tuaregs, or all the above: “Several [interviewees] saw the endeavor as the key factor that helped end the fighting and ‘establish peace’ in northern Mali. . . . By granting Touaregs access to these jobs, the integrations went a long way towards addressing the social exclusion that had contributed to the start of the rebellion” (Dillon 2007, 99, 101). In addition, economic aid to the North and greater power for the newly decentralized structures were functioning within a few years. That aid was less than hoped for and expected, partly due to economic downturn. Mali’s armed conflict recurrence resembles that of Peru in that many former combatants abandoned their struggle. However, in Mali, a series of negotiations played the crucial role, whereas in Peru intelligence feats that led to the capture or killing of crucial commanders played a key role. Moreover, the Malian state adopted inclusionary measures that were largely implemented and were not reversed by the Malian state. This case offers the most serious challenge to the argument that exclusionary behavior underlies war recurrence, and that the incorporation of combatants into the state army and police forces is a crucial element of consolidating peace. Analyzing the Cases of Failed Powersharing The cases of Lebanon and Mali clearly challenge the notion that exclusion is necessary for a recurrence of internal armed conflict after a period of stability. Inclu-

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sionary measures were deemed inadequate by some dissident groups of former insurgent forces, who took up arms once again against the state. In both cases the state had incorporated significant groups of former rebels as part of powersharing, and these largely remained opposed to taking up arms again. Doyle and Sambanis (2000, 2006) point to the importance of rebel cohesion as a factor in successful peacebuilding. These cases suggest that where a lack of cohesion exists, then powersharing can prove insufficient and war can recur. However, certain factors may be seen as qualifying the failure of powersharing here. First, the migration of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon certainly paved the way for social tensions and stress upon the carefully negotiated 1943 powersharing National Pact. Second, these refugees became a central element of regional and cross-border factors that played an important role in stimulating dissent from powersharing in both countries. In Mali the rebellion in Niger, which was supported by Libya and others, also helped spark insurrection. And in Mali expectations of inclusion may have been met in some areas, but resources promised were not forthcoming, which provided support for the complaints of dissidents who eventually took up arms. Weak institutions in both societies and a divided and dysfunctional state in Lebanon also played roles. Finally, it bears noting that, despite the problems of powersharing and conflict recurrence, in both societies powersharing and inclusionary measures are still viewed as indispensable to a sustained peace.

Nicaragua in 1972–79 and 1981–90: Externally Driven Recurrence Apart from the cases of Lebanon and Mali that contradict the argument of this book, two other cases also represent nonconforming recurrences. The difference here is that both cases exhibited exclusionary conduct toward enemies. The policies of the Sandinista government after its revolutionary victory in Nicaragua in 1979, and those of the Peruvian government after the effective defeat of the Shining Path insurgency in 2000, were more exclusionary than inclusionary. Despite democratizing moves later on, the early days of the Sandinista government saw the departure of key allies, including political leaders of moderate political parties associated with the middle class, along with former rebel allies who became disillusioned with their exclusion (much along the lines of former rebels in Zimbabwe and East Timor). In Peru the state continued to treat the Shining Path as a terrorist organization, and no hint of powersharing or inclusion issued forth from the governments of presidents Fujimori, Paniagua, Toledo, or Garcia from 2000 to 2007.4 Given that Peru and Nicaragua engaged in exclusionary policies, why are these cases considered not to conform to the book’s argument? The answer is that

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exclusion seems to be ancillary to war recurrence. The secondary literature on these two Latin American cases does not identify this exclusionary behavior as a precipitating factor in the recurrence of armed conflict. As such, I do not emphasize exclusionary behavior in these four cases, but explore other causal factors. Nicaragua’s Successful Revolution Nicaragua experienced the first successful Communist revolution in Central America in 1979. The Marxist-Leninist Sandinista National Liberation Front, the “Sandinistas,” toppled the right-wing United States–backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza, whose family had ruled since 1932. The Sandinista party had been founded in 1961 to fight the dictatorship, but its military operations and threat became serious in the mid-1970s. Underlying this revolutionary struggle was resentment at a personalistic dictatorship that accumulated wealth for itself, suppressed any form of democratic competition, and repressed its opponents. The insurgency achieved victory only once the middle classes joined in protests. Neither ethnicity nor religious differences were sources of mobilization, although indigenous peoples and Creoles of African descent found mainly on the Atlantic coast make up roughly 5 percent and 9 percent of the population, respectively. Once Somoza fled the country in July 1979, roughly 5,000 to 7,000 National Guardsmen fled, mainly to neighboring Honduras (Prevost 1987, 7). A combination of exiled former Somocistas (as the former supporters of Somoza were called) and disillusioned Sandinista peasants and elites, organized and funded by the United States, launched a counterrevolution (leading them to be called “Contras” in Spanish) by late 1981. Nicaragua’s Civil War Recurrence As with most internal wars, the exact date of the start of the renewed civil war in Nicaragua is not wholly clear, but it is generally considered to be a year, perhaps two. Sporadic, uncoordinated attacks, especially at the hands of disgruntled peasants over land reform, occurred in the first half of 1980 (Padro-Maurer 1990, 2).5 During this time, former National Guardsmen and wealthy exiles began to meet and organize, but nothing beyond isolated, quick attacks by small groups on Sandinista forces or civilian targets. In this period peasants who spoke against the conversion of private farms to cooperatives were labeled “counterevolutionaries” and were harassed or arrested by the new authorities (Brown 2001, 14–16). And in April 1980 the first resignations of Sandinista cabinet members occurred, followed by a steady trickle that by 1981 included future president Violeta Chamorro (the widow of a popular opposition political figure) and one of the most charismatic and well-known commanders, Eden Pastora.

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Most analysts cite the attacks of 1981 in their accounts as significant openings to the counterrevolutionary war (Booth 1985; Padro-Maurer 1990; Dillon 1991). Sam Dillon (1991, 54), for instance, describes an initial attack led by Commander Tigrillo on June 13, 1981, in which six people died in an attack on a Sandinista jeep with civilians aboard. He describes one rebel’s sentiment that they had finally attacked and captured weapons “after starving in the hills for a year.” Prevost (1987, 8) reports that bands of former guardsmen and businessmen formed two groups, the Fifteenth of September Legion and the National Democratic Union, along the Honduran border, although these resulted only in “a few isolated attacks” on literacy workers in 1980. Invasive Neighbors: The Crucial Role of the United States To what extent was the origin of the recurrence instigated by Nicaraguan actors versus external actors, namely, the Americans with the support of the Argentina military? Although bands of resistance emerged in 1980, it was only with the United States’ organization, funding, encouragement, and pressure that a rebel army came together and began launching military operations that could constitute an internal armed conflict. In a perhaps self-serving statement, Contra commander Enrique Bermudez stated in the fall of 1981 that he knew of organized resistance in Honduras, but that without international backing it would not gain traction (Dillon 1991, 59). The initiative of the Americans in organizing the rebellion is omnipresent, even though the Contras are not entirely an American invention. In late 1979 Bermudez himself was initially recruited to join the rebels by US general Chuck Boyd, who was in charge of the Western Hemisphere for the US Air Force (Dillon 1991, 62). Within a few months, he quit his job as a truck delivery driver for Newsweek to go on the payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He reached out in 1981 to other ex-guardsmen in the United States, Honduras, and Guatemala. In March 1981 newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan authorized covert activities in Nicaragua, and $20 million was allocated to the task (Dillon 1991, 64). In 1981 the Argentines also began funding anti- Sandinista groups, and the United States paid for Argentine advisers to the nascent rebels. In August 1981 CIA officers arranged for the merger of the Fifteenth of September Legion (approximately sixty men) and two other groups. Bermudez assisted in this process, and he also moved their headquarters to Tegucigalpa (Dillon 1991, 65). Although former Somoza guardsmen wanted the National Guard in the name of the new rebel army, the Americans insisted instead on something more appealing to the public, and the Nicaraguan Democratic Force was born: “CIA agents drafted documents for the signing ceremony” (Dillon 1991, 65). Even the former Sandinista hero, Eden Pastora, was contacted by the CIA and

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eventually commanded a unit based in Costa Rica with funding from the CIA and the US Army (Dillon 1991, 86). Political exclusion played an important role. The Sandinistas made no effort to include their former enemies in the new government. People from the prior government who posed a potential threat (including National Guard officers) were pursued and assassinated rather than integrated into the government or armed forces (Dillon 1991). Moreover, the Sandinistas quickly showed intolerance for those who were former commanders of impeccable revolutionary credentials but who sought a less radical approach to both land reform and political life. Once land reform moved beyond taking the large haciendas of the wealthiest to taking private medium-sized farms, these Sandinistas objected, which led to their marginalization, to their treatment as potential subversives, and ultimately to their joining the opposition and even the armed resistance (Brown 2001, 15). The departure of many Sandinistas echoes, on a less influential scale, the split of insurgent coalitions in the proindependence movements in East Timor and Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to say that exclusionary policies constituted the primary explanation for recurrence. Exclusionary behavior drove many Sandinista supporters to support the insurgency, including objections to their political and economic policies. Ideological concerns and fear for their lives led many National Guardsmen to flee and join the rebels. The foreign policy decision by the Reagan administration to contest the Sandinistas on ideological grounds was a key factor in elevating these disparate elements into an organized fighting force capable of any serious military operations. The causes of war recurrence in Nicaragua lie with an “invasive neighbor” as much as Sandinista exclusionary policies or the objections to them. What of Ethnicity and Economics? Because many Miskito and other indigenous groups joined the Contras, some analysts pondered whether the counterrevolution could be considered an ethnic war (Stoll 2005). Certainly the recurrence mobilized Native Americans more than the initial revolution. Thousands of Indians fled from their communities once the Sandinista reforms threatened their traditional forms of authority, and many indigenous resisted recruitment into the Sandinista army. Yet this war recurrence reflected principally ideology and class rather than ethnicity. The mobilization was rooted in anticommunist claims, and very few of the commanders or troops were indigenous. Only 3 percent of the Contras who demobilized reported their origin as the Atlantic coast region, where indigenous and Creoles predominate (Horton 1998, vii).

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Natural resources played no role whatsoever in the origins of the civil war or its recurrence, except insofar as the banana and coffee export-oriented economy is seen by some scholars as associated with the one-man dictatorship that Somoza represented (Robinson 1996; Paige 1997). In summary, once in power, the Sandinistas set about consolidating their grip on control of the state. Even though they would later engage in limited inclusionary measures, including competitive elections, their policies excluded both former enemies and former commanders who criticized government policies or behavior. Nevertheless, that exclusionary conduct was not the principal trigger for the recurrence of 1981. The United States’ decision to provide funding and other support for organizing the remnants of the National Guard was the principal factor in recurrence.

Peru in 1980–2000 and 2007–Present: Exclusion, Coca, and Rebel Resurgence Peru’s recurrent armed conflict presents another case that does not primarily reflect exclusionary behavior, even though the former guerrilla army was not in any way included in governance. Instead the case supports the agency of rebel groups (more than the state), in contradiction to this book’s main argument about the crucial role of agency on the part of the postwar national government. The case is also one of the very few core recurrences where natural resources, illicit in this case, play a vital role in the resurgence of internal armed conflict. Peru’s Civil War Peru was one of several Latin American countries to experience civil war in the 1970s and 1980s. Its war began in 1980 with the emergence of a revolutionary movement called the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) under the leadership of a Maoist-Marxist academic Abimael Guzman. Although the movement operated mainly in the central and southern highlands, which are populated heavily by indigenous tribes, peasants were mobilized principally on class issues (and coercion).6 Guzman and most of the insurgent leadership were ladinos (i.e., of mixed European and indigenous heritage). A second less deadly and less successful insurgency emerged at the same time, with its first action in 1982, from the more conventional Marxist-Leninist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. These wars killed an estimated 70,000 persons, mainly civilians, and both ended in the late 1990s with a counterinsurgency campaign characterized by rights abuses and intelligence breakthroughs that resulted in the capture or death of most of the leaders.

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Peace via Strategic Victory The termination of Peru’s first civil war ended not via negotiations but via a petering out of military operations, which were considered a strategic victory by virtually all observers. By the mid-1990s, casualties and combat had diminished. One source found that the conflicts between the government and the two rebel groups cost 117 military and civilian lives in 1998, 60 in 1999, none in 2000, and only 5 in 2001.7 Another source, PRIO, lists between 50 and 100 battle deaths for 1999, and then in 2003 reported the conflict as terminated due to too few casualties from 2000 onward, despite one or two attacks in 2002 and 2003 (PRIO 2003a, 2003b, 2003c). By 2003 about 1,200 former Shining Path members remained in Peruvian jails (Taylor 2006). Peace was widely perceived to have been consolidated, despite an awareness that conditions in the indigenous-dominant areas home to the Shining Path had not changed significantly. Recurrence of Armed Conflict However, a number of Shining Path militants resisted capture. In 2007 renewed Shining Path armed attacks rose to a level that placed the country back on the list of active armed conflicts. Security experts estimated that the Shining Path numbers had reached 300 by the end of 2006. Peru engaged in no inclusionary behavior toward the former guerrillas, and it continued to prosecute and try its combatants from the 1990s to the present. In this sense, exclusion rather than inclusion characterizes the government’s posture toward the Shining Path. Conditions were not significantly altered for the population most associated with the insurgency—a region of small cities but mainly rural towns and remote peasant communities primarily of strong indigenous influence. However, the recurrence of armed conflict did not derive primarily from exclusionary policies by the state vis-à-vis the armed opposition or those it purported to represent. Nor did recurrence derive from external exertion of force or from religious differences. Instead, the gradual resurgence of the Shining Path beginning in 2007 derived from the insurgent initiative, as reconstituted and surviving units and leaders of the movement launched sporadic attacks. Those attacks targeted mainly state military and police forces, which represented twenty-two of twenty-six battle deaths in 2008 (Romero 2009). This reactivation came under the same rubric of the original goals of the guerrilla organization. A December 2008 report stated that the head of the rebel group, Comrade Artemio, “is the sole top-level [Shining Path] leader who has not yet been killed or captured” (Hyland 2008, 2). Although repressive actions and human rights violations have characterized the Peruvian army’s response to specific incidents and communities where guerrilla presence was apparent, state repression was not a major factor in this resurgence.

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High-rent exports of natural resources constitute another important cause of the recurrence. Following the example of the reinvigorated Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known as the FARC) of the 1990s in adjacent Colombia, the Shining Path made the processing of coca into cocaine a focus of its operations. It engaged in extortion of those involved in the trade and itself undertook trafficking and processing (Romero 2009). According to one news account, the Shining Path, “while still professing to be a Maoist insurgency at heart, is now in the business of protecting drug smugglers, extorting taxes from farmers and operating its own cocaine laboratories” (Romero 2009). According to a 2002 report from the US State Department, membership in the Shining Path had already begun to grow, due partly to the group’s greater involvement in the cocaine trade (US Department of State 2002). One Peruvian security analyst estimated that by 2009 the Shining Path had rebounded to some 500 workers in the cocaine trade and an additional 350 armed combatants (Romero 2009). Even incarcerated Shining Path founder Guzman referred in 2010 to the leaders of the movement as “mercenaries.”8 Mountainous geography facilitated this war and its recurrence in the highlands, as did ethnic (but not religious) differences. Most of the recruitment of the Shining Path occurred in highland areas populated mainly by indigenous peoples. However, the main leadership are ladinos, not indigenous, and the ideological basis for mobilization eschews ethnicity for ideology. Like the recurrences in Mali, the Central African Republic, Azerbaijan, and South Ossetia, Peru in 2007 and afterward experienced very few battle-related deaths—just enough to count as internal armed conflicts. Like Mali, Peru represents a case where insurgent agency played a more important role than any specific action of exclusion undertaken by the government. In these two cases no violation of expectations on the part of the insurgents explains the taking up of arms again. As such, the case does not confirm this book’s argument; nor does it disconfirm it, given the absence of any inclusionary behavior. This case supports theories that emphasize insurgent agency and the role of illicit resources in civil war recurrence. Peru’s recurrence offers a strong case for considering the violence as part of a continuous struggle—this would be the view of the insurgents. Even though most Peruvians saw the Shining Path as defeated in the early 2000s, the insurgents did not share this understanding.

Conclusion What do these four cases tell us about the causes of recurrence of internal armed conflicts? They first underline the lack of a single factor or approach that can fully account for war recurrence. The presence of exclusionary behavior by postwar

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states is neither necessary nor sufficient to elicit renewed warfare. It is worth noting the extenuating circumstances that help account for the failure, in particular, of powersharing in Lebanon and Mali. The massive influx of Palestinians into southern Lebanon transformed the demographic foundation upon which powersharing was based. It also aggravated political tensions, both in the expressed preferences of this refugee population and by drawing in regional interests and actors to a greater degree whose policies shifted accordingly. The postwar Malian government did not deliver on many of its promises of inclusion of Tuaregs, paving the way for complaints of persistent exclusion. This experience should serve as a cautionary lesson for cases (see Nepal and Bangladesh in chapter 7) where authorities are not moving to fulfill pledges made as part of powersharing arrangements. These cases nevertheless show the vulnerability of powersharing arrangements to changing circumstances and to perceptions of exclusion. These two cases of failed powersharing also suggest a new hypothesis that draws on the theoretical claim that rebel cohesion is important for peacebuilding success. They specifically point to the importance of rebel cohesion as a factor in the success of powersharing arrangements. One can also see the element of rebel cohesion in the Timorese and Zimbabwean recurrences, where victorious armies experienced divisions and then exclusion, which led to relapse into conflict. Atlas and Licklider (2005) point to the presence of a similar process of postindependence violence in Chad and Sudan. The cases of Nicaragua and Peru illustrate show that exclusion can exist but also be eclipsed by other factors in recurrence of armed conflict. The Peruvian case especially lends support to theories that emphasize natural resources as a central factor in civil wars and their recurrence. Coca products clearly helped provide the fuel for a resurgence of the Shining Path, much as they have given oxygen to the growth and persistence of the FARC. Nicaragua’s recurrence calls into question the level of analysis common to civil war studies: the state. The role of external states or other actors in not just abetting but also constituting civil wars and their recurrence requires reconceptualizing civil wars, armed conflicts, and their analysis. In particular, regional actors and dynamics, as well as extraregional actors and dynamics, merit systematic and integrated analysis when seeking to understand today’s armed conflicts. The three prior cases have utilized a particular method that bears reflection at this point. The method of “structured, focused” case comparison is not new. Numerous books and articles have utilized the method, which was initially developed by the insightful and personable Alex George (Bennett 2008). What is unusual is the degree to which these have been condensed, considering only those factors identified in the qualitative and quantitative literature reviewed initially. These “mini–case studies” constitute one of the contributions of this

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book. In contrast to the wholly acontextual research of quantitative methods, they offer the reader a sweeping glance of the entire pool of cases of recurrence of internal armed conflicts. This method offers a foundation from which the main hypothesized causes of a civil war and its recurrence can be explored and, at a minimum, found implausible, as occurred for so many variables in so many cases. Short of fuller historical accounts of each conflictive country, these case studies offer the most comprehensive understanding of each case. At the same time the method has its shortcomings. Relevant context is necessarily abridged, and important factors undoubtedly do not receive the attention they deserve, partly because available theories may omit relevant variables. This blindness to relevant variables is partly compensated by a careful and faithful adherence to the primary and secondary sources about the conflicts by those who are more specialized. Nevertheless, a generalist researcher does not possess enough knowledge of the context and history of each case to adequately sift through competing accounts or to discern where the secondary literature has omitted important factors. More likely is an oversensitivity to hypothesized variables in a necessarily brief account of these cases. Although I have sought to avoid a skewed interpretation of the origins of each armed conflict and its recurrence (or not), the mini–case studies may fall into this trap. Having analyzed these structured, focused “mini–case studies,” the entire pool of qualifying recurrences of internal armed conflicts from 1944 to 2007, I now turn to examine the pool of cases of nonrecurrence. These cases, twenty-seven in number, are too numerous to make mini–case studies a practical option as a research method. Consequently, the next chapter draws on a structured, focused examination of each case but presents it in a more synthesized format, though I still seek to be consistent, rigorous, and fair in assessing the relative importance of various factors.

Notes 1. Some 52 percent of Mali’s national population is of the Mande ethnicity (Bambara or Malinke), 11 percent are Fulani, 7 percent are Songhai, 7 percent are Saracolé, 5 percent are Moor and Tuareg, 4 percent are Mianka, and 14 percent are other ethnicities (US Department of State 2010c). The Songhai, Moors, and Tuaregs predominate in the North, where Tuaregs numbered about 621,000 in the 1990s (Keita 1998, 6). 2. This brought total integration of ex-combatants to 2,230, including 1,311 in the army, 348 in the National Guard, 301 in the gendarmerie and police, 100 in the customs service, 50 in the water / forest service, and 120 in the civil service (Dillon 2007, 100). 3. Doyle (2002) and Doyle and Sambanis (2006) emphasize this variable as one of several that influence successful peacebuilding.

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4. After debate among Peruvian officials, members of Shining Path were permitted to run for office for the first time in the October 2010 elections (Briceño 2010). See also Longmire (2009). 5. Brown (2001, 1–19) offers an account of the origins of anti-Sandinista actions that begins with disgruntled peasants, many former Sandinistas, that fled to hills in the face of land confiscations. His interviews with former rebels date the earliest attack as November 1979, when a group of “Milpistas” (People’s Anti-Sandinista Militias, formerly a component of the Sandinista army called the People’s Anti-Somoza Militias) attacked a Sandinista base with only five deaths among the attackers (Brown 2001, 14). 6. On the context of the war and the Shining Path, see McClintock (1998), Fumerton (2003), Fox and Starn (1997), Gorriti (1999), Campbell (1973), Taylor (2006). In the highlands, poverty correlated heavily with indigenous identity; see Arnson (2005). 7. See Ploughshares’ “Armed Conflict Reports: Peru,” www.ploughshares.ca / libraries / ACRText / ACR-Peru.html, which relies in part on data from Peruvian nongovernmental organizations, US State Department estimates, and data from Human Rights Watch, and was updated in February 2002,. 8. “Minister: Shining Path Remains a Threat in Peru’s Jungles,” Latin American Herald Tribune, August 6, 2009.

7 Making Peace Stick Inclusionary Politics and Twenty-Seven Nonrecurrent Civil Wars HAVING EXAMINED CASES of recurrence, what do cases of successful peacebuilding tell us? Is inclusionary behavior in some way associated with persistent peace? In turning to the cases of nonrecurrence, we will see that they offer more robust findings, ones that inspire some hope. Recall that peace is defined here narrowly as “negative peace” and that all cases of nonrecurrence refer to full-scale civil wars (not lesser armed conflicts), including those with the active involvement of other states or intergovernmental forces in combat roles. These twenty-seven cases of nonrecurrence (listed in table I.1 in the introduction) experienced no recurrence at all up until 2007. The first inference I draw from this pool of cases is that historical context is extremely important. Interests and ideas do not exist in a historical vacuum. The extent to which people see the resort to arms as viable or attractive partially reflects the global and regional ideational context. National elites’ choices about whether to negotiate a peace and about what governance models are possible reflect those ideas that seem to be viable and prevalent in a given time and place. The Cold War specifically provided legitimacy for ideas about governance and warfare that were backed by the interests of the two superpowers. The viability of Communism and single-party socialism was pronounced after 1917, and especially after 1945. Just as World War II transformed notions of sovereignty and colonialism, undercutting fascist totalitarianism as a viable regime type, so also the onset of the Cold War legitimated regime types ranging from Communist totalitarian to authoritarian regimes to democratic or electoral regimes. As mentioned, diplomatic pressure, foreign aid, military action, and development programs all advanced specific models of governance among new and less powerful countries. Diffusion, as argued by new institutionalists (Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Meyer et al. 1997), occurred via both strategic and interest-based decisions by local elites and global sociocultural ideas and understandings about what is normal and even trendy. Although such diffusion rarely took place without significant modification based on national or local realities, interests, ideas, and

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institutional trajectories in those less powerful or peripheral states, the impact of expectations and discourse about regimes was pronounced. The twenty-seven cases of nonrecurrence illustrate that the practice of negotiating an end to civil wars was not prevalent during the Cold War but became the norm after 1988. This empirical development has been noted elsewhere (Fortna 2004a; Wallensteen and Sollenberg 1997; Hartzell and Hoddie 2007). As table 7.1 notes, of the eleven cases of civil wars that concluded by 1988, nine ended in strategic victory for one side or another. Only two cases—Laos in 1973 and Cyprus in 1974—ended in negotiated settlements during the Cold War. Conversely, of the sixteen cases of nonrecurrence that ended after 1988, all but one ended in negotiated settlements, as coded by various sources. Angola in 2002, one month after Jonas Savimbi was killed by government forces, represents the only case of a strategic victory after the Cold War (there was also a negotiated accord that formally concluded this war, but the war represented more of a strategic victory). The changing interests of the United States and the USSR in the 1980s, in accord with realist thought, certainly shaped the trend toward negotiated settlements. The shift by both superpowers toward support for negotiated settlements and away from fueling armed conflicts contributed significantly to settlements in Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Mediated by the shifting strategic regional role of South Africa, the decline of the Cold War also opened the way for ending wars in Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa itself. The end of the Cold War also provided a historical window for the emergence of new internal armed conflicts, several of which spawned secondary armed conflicts from secessionist movements within seceding states. Thus the world witnessed new wars with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia in Georgia, Chechnya, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, and Croatia, which also eventually spread to Kosovo, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. In some of these cases, Russian pressure subsequently helped secure a cease-fire. In the region of West Africa, the end of the Cold War also heralded new civil wars in Mali, Senegal, and Liberia in 1989 and in Sierra Leone in 1991. These cases illustrate not only the regional dynamics and dimensions of the onset and termination of civil wars but also the role of powerful states in both fostering such wars and concluding them. At the same time, interests alone cannot account for clusters of cases of internal armed conflicts either spatially (i.e., in geographic regions) or temporally (i.e., concentrated within a few years). It is very difficult to maintain that this dramatic shift toward negotiated settlements stems entirely from interests of the great powers. Ideas and notional expectations vary over time about why and how armed conflict generally is or is not warranted, whether negotiation is generally seen as an acceptable or worthwhile

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Table 7.1 Mode of Civil War Termination by Historical Period, All Nonrecurrent Civil Wars, 1944–2007 Period Ended before 1988

Ended in or after 1988

Victory

Negotiated Settlement

Bolivia, 1952 Costa Rica, 1948 Cuba, 1958–59 Greece, 1945–49 Jordan, 1970 South Korea, 1949–50 Paraguay, 1947 South Vietnam, 1960–75 N=8

Cyprus, 1974 Laos, 1960–73

Angola, 1975–2002

Bangladesh, 1976–97 Bosnia, 1992–95 Croatia, 1992–95 Djibouti, 1993–94 El Salvador, 1979–92 Guatemala, 1968–96 Moldova, 1992 Morocco, 1975–88 Mozambique, 1976–95 Nepal, 1997–2006 Papua New Guinea, 1988–98 Sierra Leone, 1991–2000 South Africa, 1983–94 Tajikistan, 1992–97 United Kingdom / Northern Ireland, 1969–99 N = 15

N=1

N=2

Sources: Table I.1, drawn from Fearon and Laitin (2003), augmented by data from the Peace Research Institute Oslo, as described in the introduction to the present volume. Determinations of the mode of war termination (victory vs. negotiated) are the author’s.

practice, and whether international organizations are seen as having potential utility in mediation. In the wake of the Cold War, growing norms toward peaceful settlement of civil wars and the enhanced role of international institutions like the United Nations in settling such disputes contributed to and reflected a normative shift. Peace processes became more accepted and expected, and the role of international mediators also became more widely appreciated. On the side of interests, the incentives for warring parties to participate in peace talks increased in the 1990s, as did the costs of refusing to participate. In sum, a confluence of interests and ideas help account for a striking shift in the mode of civil war termination, from outright victory before 1989 to negotiated settlements beginning in that year. This finding is important because

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it demonstrates the possibility that normative changes could be an important factor in civil wars and peacebuilding. Negotiated settlements have also been shown to correlate with higher rates of reversion to internal armed conflict. Of course, they usually signify at least a temporary reduction in mass violence.

Inclusion, Powersharing, and Peacebuilding Success I now turn to another empirical conclusion suggested by an examination of all cases of nonrecurrent civil wars: the importance of inclusionary behavior. As discussed above, inclusionary behavior is defined broadly to include not just powersharing arrangements of political, military, and other forms but also political systems that meet the expectations of former rebels to have the chance to obtain political power either through elections or through fixed access to state posts. Thus both power-dividing systems and powersharing systems are compatible with inclusionary behavior, so long as the expectations of the parties for such political power are not violated. In this chapter I examine all cases of powersharing among the pool of cases of both recurrence and nonrecurrence. This is not a pool of all cases of powersharing, even for the pool of country cases listed above. Among cases of recurrence, it refers only to instances of powersharing associated with the termination of a prior war, and not to either earlier or subsequent powersharing arrangements. Thus the powersharing “pact” that emerged in the 2000s in Nicaragua is omitted because the relevant period for that country is between the end of its initial war in 1979 and the commencing of its recurrence in 1981. Similarly, this set of cases excludes analyzing powersharing arrangements that occurred well after the scored war termination (e.g., Djibouti 2001) or that were linked to the end of the most recent recurrent war termination, which thus means omitting such important recent powersharing experiences as Burundi (2004–5), Rwanda (2003), and Liberia (after 2003). In addition, this list excludes the many powersharing arrangements that have existed in the countries that have experienced multiple, simultaneous, or intractable wars (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen). Table 7.2 contains the list and types of powersharing for the twenty-seven cases of recurrence and nonrecurrence that undertook a powersharing arrangement.1 Of the fifteen cases of civil war recurrence, related powersharing arrangements were undertaken in ten. And of the twenty-seven cases of nonrecurrence, powersharing arrangements were undertaken in sixteen. The list given in table 7.2 shows that the most common types of powersharing are political and security; and the latter generally involves the integration of rebel forces into the state armed forces or police forces. In the following subsections I use specific

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Table 7.2 Powersharing by Type, All Cases of Recurrence and Nonrecurrence, 1944–2007 Country (relevant years) Angola (2002–) Azerbaijan (1994–2005) Bangladesh (1997–) Bosnia (1995–) Burundi (1988–93) Central African Republic (1997–2001) China / Tibet (1951–56) Croatia (1995–) Djibouti (1994–) El Salvador (1992–) Georgia / South Ossetia (1994–2004) Guatemala (1996–) Laos (1973–) Lebanon (1958–75) Liberia (1996–99) Mali (1994–2007) Moldova (1992–) Mozambique (1995–) Nepal (2006–) Papua New Guinea (1998–) Russia / Chechnya (1996–99) Sierra Leone (2000–) South Africa (1994–) Tajikistan (1997–) United Kingdom (1998–) Zimbabwe (1979–83) N = 26

Political

Yes Yes Yes ® Yes ®

Military

Territorial

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes

Economic Yes Yes

Yes ® Yes

Yes Yes Yes

Yes ® Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ® Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ®

Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes

Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes ® Yes Yes

Yes

Note: Where power sharing failed, the “Yes” is followed by “®” for “reversal.” Source: Author’s determinations, based initially and largely on Hoddie and Hartzell (2005).

cases of each of the four types of powersharing to illustrate its role in successfully consolidating peace. Political Powersharing In several cases, political powersharing was deemed indispensable to the success of a peace process. Powersharing was crucial in ending Djibouti’s civil war, for instance, which began in late 1991 when disgruntled members of the minority Afar ethnic group launched attacks as the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD). The government and the FRUD signed a peace accord in December 1994, ending the conflict, although a splinter group persisted in fighting.

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As part of the deal, several Afars and two FRUD members were appointed to the cabinet. In 1999 the FRUD campaigned in support of the governing People’s Rally for Progress party. This political powersharing was bolstered by security powersharing that led to seven hundred ex-FRUD being incorporated into the army by 1996.2 As one analyst put it, “Opting for an inclusive approach to tackling political differences seems to have helped in bringing an end to the Djibouti civil war” (Yoh 2003, 86). Tajikistan offers another example of a country where political powersharing has proven important to making peace stick. As per the 1997 agreement that ended the war, 30 percent of cabinet posts went to the rebel United Tajik Opposition (UTO). Although the elections of 2000 and 2005 yielded only two of the sixty-three lower house seats for either of the two parties to emerge from the rebel movements, the access to the system for UTO leaders seemed to make a difference. Again, security powersharing bolstered the political arrangement.3 By 2000, 4,498 UTO combatants had been integrated into the armed forces, mainly in stand-alone units with their own officers. Other cases of political powersharing also bear mention. Liberia’s recurrent civil war, from 1999 to 2003, ended in a powersharing accord that brought the main armed factions together in cabinet posts and other ministerial appointments during the Transitional National Government before elections in 2005. Despite serious corruption among senior officials, the political outcome of this more inclusionary experience has proven much more successful than the exclusionary Charles Taylor administration. Cases such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone provide better-known examples of political powersharing that have been successful to date. Conversely, some cases of political powersharing have resulted in failure and war recurrence. Lebanon was widely considered to have been a success for many years between its adoption of powersharing in 1958 through the renewed civil war in 1975. As mentioned in the discussion of powersharing’s weaknesses, most analysts point to the inflexibility of that particular arrangement in the face of shifting demographics that left Muslims, especially poorer Shiite Muslims, feeling disenfranchised as their numbers grew. The arrival of thousands of Palestinians in southern Lebanon also placed stress on the system. After 1989 Lebanon adopted a revised formula of powersharing for the executive based on revised population estimates. In addition, powersharing agreements have sometimes not been implemented, but the ongoing negotiations and / or promise of reaching an agreement seems to hold recurrence at bay. Such are the cases of Bangladesh (1997) and Nepal (2006), where some elements have been adopted but many others have not. Most important in these cases, outright violation, rejection, or reversal of inclusionary powersharing arrangements has not occurred.

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Two other cases of an apparent failure of political powersharing are not as damaging as they might seem. First, as discussed above, Laos is an unusual case in which regime change seemed to have occurred without warfare. If there had been sufficient resistance and armed opposition, powersharing’s demise amid the Pathet Lao Communist takeover of the state would have represented a recurrence of warfare. Instead, given that the Pathet Lao were heavily dependent on North Vietnam, after Saigon and Phnom Penh fell to Communist forces in early 1975, the ruling Lao noncommunists decided to cede the capital rather than see it taken by force. In other words, what would have been an ideologically driven war was preemptively ceded. The regional level of analysis—namely, the toppling of regimes to Communism and the end of the neighboring wars— played a crucial role here in leading to the failure of powersharing, but helps account for why war did not recur. Second, Burundi’s reversion to mass violence and armed conflict in 1993 was more a cause for the adoption of new powersharing mechanisms than it was caused by the failure of the minimal arrangements that had prevailed after the 1988 armed conflict. As argued above and posited persuasively by Lemarchand (1994, 2004) and Uvin (1999), Burundi and Rwanda’s waves of ethnic violence from the 1950s to the 1990s represent interrelated episodes of exclusion, rebellious attacks, massive counterattacks, and continued exclusion (Lemarchand 1994, 2004). The first serious attempts at inclusion of Hutus occurred with the presidency of Pierre Buyoya. Just before a coup brought Major Pierre Buyoya to power, Hutus held four of twenty government ministries, seven of sixty-five legislative seats, and two of sixty-five seats on the central committee.4 Buyoya gave more posts to Hutus in government after he came to power in 1987, but Tutsis still dominated his cabinet and the army. The ethnic killings and recurrence of armed conflict in October 1988 principally reflected the extreme exclusionary behavior that persisted in access to services and lower-level government posts. Powersharing did not fail in 1988 so much as it emerged at Buyoya’s instance from the ashes of the prior war. In 1993, the assassination by Tutsi soldiers of the country’s first Hutu president sparked a decade of warfare and ethnic violence. Weak state institutions contributed to the 1993 civil war, as did the initiation of multiparty elections pressed upon then–president Pierre Buyoya starting in 1990. In response to the earlier 1988 conflict, Buyoya had initiated a series of steps toward informal sharing of power with Hutus. As described above, these included a commission composed equally of Hutus and Tutsis to make recommendations toward an inclusive state and a Charter of National Unity. But these steps toward powersharing ultimately were unable to stave off the 1993 civil war. However, it was the failure of power-dividing measures, more than powersharing, that provoked Tutsis to interrupt the democratization process by assassinating

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the Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye. The assassination of Ndadaye could, of course, be seen as an abrogation of powersharing, in this case by the dominant Tutsis threatened with the potential loss of their access to state power. Former US ambassador Robert Krueger charged in his memoirs that Buyoya engineered the coup that led to Ndadaye’s death (Krueger and Krueger 2007). In any case, politics in Burundi after 1988 reflected a mix of small inclusionary measures amid widespread exclusion of the vast majority of the population. Inclusion also reflected partisan affiliations as much as ethnic allegiances (Uvin 1999, 266). Before the 1993 war, measures aimed at power dividing included the ban adopted in the 1992 Constitution on ethnicity-based political parties and the requirement that parties receive signatures from each of the country’s provinces (Uvin 1999). It was fears of a reversal of the minimal inclusion achieved, more than any setback in representation, that provided the context for the enraged outbreak of mass violence by Hutus once Ndadaye had been assassinated. Powersharing agreements followed in 1994, 1998, and again in 2004–5 in conjunction with the demobilization of important rebel groups. Burundi thus serves as an example of the reversal of powersharing in the recurrence of the 1993 civil war. Some inclusionary measures aimed at dividing power were clearly at work in the recurrence of warfare in 1993. More generally, however, persistent exclusion underlay recurrent episodes of violence and warfare. Security Powersharing As mentioned above, exclusion from the military and police forces seems to be a very provocative factor in prompting war recurrence. Conversely, the incorporation of former enemies is especially important because it provides concrete, and usually persistent (at least through several years), guarantees to rebels that sacrifice their military organization and weapons. It signifies a curb on the exercise of the arbitrary or deliberate targeting of former enemies by the state. As discussed above, a recent study shows that military integration is a statistically significant factor in the consolidation of peace. Security powersharing proved vital to consolidating peace in several cases. Although several contextual variables favored the successful peace process in Mozambique in 1992, the incorporation of former RENAMO rebels into the Mozambican armed forces was crucial. By 1995, three years after the negotiated agreement and cease-fire, 3,662 of 12,195 soldiers (30 percent) in the Mozambican armed forces were former RENAMO combatants (Young 1994, 2).5 As is explained above, several cases of political powersharing (e.g., Djibouti, Tajikistan) were accompanied by crucial security powersharing as well. El Salvador shows that security powersharing can also prove important within police rather than military forces. Although the majority of the members

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of the newly created civilian-run national civilian police were not former combatants, up to 20 percent of the force could be former guerrillas along with an equal number of members of the former military-controlled national police (Call 1999, chap. 4). The rebel participation in the new force, along with its participation in electoral processes, gave important security guarantees to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.6 Similarly, the creation of a new police service to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland via the 1998 Good Friday Agreement proved important in alleviating both sides’ fears about potential armed actions by spoilers. As part of the reform process, 50 percent of all new recruits for the Police Service of Northern Ireland have been Catholics. At the same time, security powersharing at times seems epiphenomenal, not essential to the maintenance of peace. Angola’s 2002 peace accord, for instance, included the incorporation of ex-UNITA combatants into the armed forces, but the killing of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi only weeks earlier is seen as the single biggest factor in drawing the bulk of the rebels to lay down their weapons. The unification of the three armies in the new Bosnian state encountered numerous obstacles and remains incomplete at the operational level. However, the political unification, intertwined with territorial autonomy, served as the foundation for the successful cease-fire, not the slow and partial unification of armed forces between the two entities. Territorial Powersharing Conflicts over territorial autonomy or secession merit special attention. Despite the prevailing sense that such territorial conflicts are very difficult to resolve, the data are unclear. Eight of the twenty-seven cases of nonrecurrence involved salient issues of territorial autonomy or secession. Of these eight successfully resolved armed conflicts, five (Bangladesh, Bosnia, Papua New Guinea, and Northern Ireland) included powersharing provisions regarding territorial governance. Territorial powersharing also may lead to war recurrence. Of the fifteen cases of recurrence, territorial autonomy or secession was salient in six. Of these six, five countries reached some sort of powersharing involving territory (usually in conjunction with other types of powersharing) before experiencing war recurrence. In such cases, powersharing was not a panacea. Cases such as Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Tibet / China, and South Ossetia / Georgia show that providing some measure of autonomy may help secure a cease-fire, but it does not ensure consolidated peace. In most such cases, an autonomy arrangement only kicked the can of final status down the road, permitting other factors to reignite warfare. In some cases inactivity on the part of a powerful state whose sovereignty is recognized over the territory seems common and may well have occurred before other triggers renew the armed conflict.

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Economic Powersharing The definition of economic powersharing is wide-ranging, sweeping from minimal consultations with former rebel parties on economic development decisions to property guarantees to specified shares of oil or other high-rent natural resources. In South Africa, for instance, the guarantees of private property responded to a key insecurity among whites, given the apparent dominance that black South Africans would exercise politically. In Guatemala guarantees in the 1996 peace accords provided for land reform and for expanded recognition of social and economic rights among indigenous populations. The 2006 Nepalese peace accord also contained measures to reform the feudal land tenure system, to provide remedial development to the landless, and to protect private property. Unfortunately, these provisions lay dormant for the transitional period, and thus were neither abrogated nor fulfilled. At the same time, economic powersharing may have a relatively small impact on whether or not peace sticks. In Lebanon, for instance, the disenchantment over political offices far outweighed the relatively minimal influence of the stipulation that all religious communities would benefit equally from development aid. In addition, the sharing of natural resources as a means of conflict resolution can perversely aggravate civil wars. Such was the case with Sierra Leone’s 1999 Lomé powersharing accord. The agreement made Foday Sankoh, the leader of the Revolutionary United Front, a vice president and chair of a commission overseeing the country’s diamonds and other natural resources, a position he used to fortify his rebel group’s capabilities and attack peacekeeping forces in 2000. Ironically his participation in the government via the powersharing arrangement had brought him into the capital and made him more vulnerable.7 Government troops and intervening British forces were consequently better able to locate and capture him and his lieutenants, and thus bring a more decisive end to the civil war by 2002. Nevertheless, Sierra Leone’s 1996 Abidjan and 1999 Lomé powersharing agreements show that powersharing is not always successful, and can in the midst of war portend continued waves of violent warfare.

Powersharing and Peace Consolidation: Examining the Pool of Cases Above I examined the impact of the four types of powersharing, drawing illustratively on selected cases of nonrecurrence. Here I examine how powersharing correlates with both recurrence and nonrecurrence, drawing from the pool of forty-two cases of civil wars that either never recurred or that clearly recurred as internal armed conflicts. Of these forty-two cases, twenty-six experienced some form of powersharing.

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Table 7.3 Incidence of Powersharing among All Recurrences and Nonrecurrences, 1944–2007 Status of Powersharing Abrogated

Nonrecurrence Laos, 1973

N=1 Not abrogated

Angola, 1975–2002 Bangladesh, 1976–97 Bosnia, 1992–95 Croatia, 1992–95 Djibouti, 1993–94 El Salvador, 1979–92 Guatemala, 1968–96 Moldova, 1992 Mozambique, 1976–95 Nepal, 1997–2006 Papua New Guinea, 1988–98 Sierra Leone, 1991–2000 South Africa, 1983–94 Tajikistan, 1992–97 UK / Northern Ireland, 1969–99 N = 15

Recurrence Burundi, 1972, 1988, 1993–2006 Central African Republic, 1996–97, 2001–2 China / Tibet, 1950–51, 1956–59 Liberia, 1989–96, 1999–2003 Russia / Chechnya, 1994–96, 1999 Zimbabwe, 1972–79, 1983–87 N=6 Azerbaijan, 1992–94, 2005 Lebanon, 1958, 1975–90 Mali, 1989–94, 2007

N=3

Source: Author’s case-by-case determinations.

Table 7.3 includes twenty-five of these cases, based on whether or not these powersharing arrangements were abrogated in the key few years after conflict termination (Georgia is an ambiguous case, and so I have set it aside). The assessment of whether a powersharing arrangement is violated is based on whether any of the four types of powersharing was perceived to have been reneged upon or withdrawn by the state. Delays in meeting targets to incorporate former rebels into the armed forces, as has occurred in Nepal, for instance, is not sufficient to be deemed “abrogation.” Conversely, the ouster of hundreds of former rebels from the army’s ranks would be considered “abrogation.” Table 7.3 draws directly on table 7.2. Table 7.3 shows the high correlation between the abrogation of powersharing arrangements, on the one hand, and civil war recurrence, on the other hand. Fifteen cases of preserved powersharing did not experience a recurrence, and only three such cases (Azerbaijan in 2004, Lebanon in 1975, and Mali in 2007) did experience recurrence of internal armed conflict. As such, 87 percent of

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powersharing arrangements that were not violated resulted in the preservation of peace. All cases of peace have held for at least ten years except the recent cases of Angola (2002) and Nepal (2006).8 Among the seven cases where powersharing was abrogated, all but one case experienced a recurrence of internal armed conflict. These six cases include Liberia in 1999, ethnic warfare in Burundi and the Central African Republic, separatist struggles in Chechnya and Tibet, and the falling out among formerly allied proindependence rebels in Zimbabwe. Laos is the only case of nonrecurrence, and the circumstances of the choice not to contest the regionally supported Communist takeover in 1975 were discussed above. It is worth recalling here that powersharing is neither a surefire nor a permanent ticket to peace. Table 7.3 does not include many cases of powersharing experiments that have failed. As mentioned above, Sierra Leone’s two experiences with powersharing in earlier peacemaking efforts did not yield success, although they arguably may have laid the groundwork for subsequent resolution and success. Aside from the cases analyzed here, powersharing efforts have failed to bring about an end to civil wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Sudan, and Yemen. In Colombia, successful powersharing is blamed for creating the conditions for the emergence of the leftist insurgency in the 1960s that persists today (Hartlyn 1988; Oquist 1980; Bergquist, Peñaranda, and Sánchez 1992; Call 1995). The overall record of powersharing in the midst of civil wars—that is, not solely as powersharing is linked to periods of sustained peace, as defined here—has been the subject of much scholarship. Although contested, this scholarship increasingly sees powersharing as a positive and influential mechanism in resolving conflicts, despite its flaws and depending on the types of sharing and the context (Sriram 2008; Hoddie and Hartzell 2005). Therefore, only careful and qualified claims are possible based on the evidence examined here. Powersharing is not sufficient to ensure sustained peace, as cases like Mali and Lebanon show. However, table 7.3 suggests that powersharing as one instance of inclusionary behavior highly favors sustained peace. A total of 83 percent of cases where powersharing is observed correspond to the instances of nonrecurrence of civil wars or even internal armed conflict. These cases include not just celebrated successes such as Northern Ireland, El Salvador, Mozambique, and South Africa but also Angola, Tajikistan, Djibouti, and Papua New Guinea. Although powersharing has been marginal in some of these successes, as detailed above, in most cases observers unanimously argue that powersharing has proven essential to maintaining peace over a period of many years. Despite its flaws in concept and practice, powersharing shows a remarkable affinity with consolidated peace around the world. As stated, it is not sufficient to ensure peace, but it is highly favorable for peace. We now turn to instances

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of nonrecurrence that show how powersharing is not only insufficient but not necessary for peace.

Beyond Powersharing: Inclusionary Behavior and Peace As elaborated above, powersharing is one form of what may be considered “inclusionary behavior” by political actors. It is conceptualized here to include state and regime structures whose design permits the chance for diverse political parties, especially those associated with the prior combatant forces, to participate in governance through appointed or elective state offices. Inclusionary political behavior thus includes also instances of “power dividing,” whereby civil liberties are minimally guaranteed; electorally competitive regimes that permit the contestation for office; and decentralization of authority in ways that permit access to local power. Although territorial autonomy could be considered a form of power dividing, it is addressed as a form of powersharing above. What conclusions might one reach regarding the role not just of powersharing but also of inclusionary behavior more broadly in whether civil wars recur as internal armed conflicts? Recall from table 7.3 that among all core cases of recurrence plus those cases of the absence of any civil war recurrence, only eighteen instances of powersharing were maintained, of which fifteen corresponded to nonrecurrence and only three led to recurrent armed conflicts. Apart from these cases, I find only two cases of inclusionary behavior that do not represent powersharing arrangements. Both these cases—the Dominican Republic (after its war of 1965) and Cyprus (after 1974)—experienced political arrangements that provided some degree of participation in their own governance to the armed faction that contested state power and failed to find victory. Inclusionary behavior does not need to stem from heartfelt goodwill or a strategy aimed at integration or reconciliation. The crucial element here is that those insurrectionary forces that did not win were not killed, persecuted, or excluded from their own governance. In the case of Northern Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots have exercised significant self-rule, even as their aspirations of independence have remained deferred. Thus Northern Cyprus operates as a de facto state, electing its own president and Parliament, managing its own 5,000-person defense force as well as a larger reserve force, and issuing official documents like birth certificates and passports. In the Dominican Republic the 1965 US intervention halted the warfare and installed an interim government that organized elections in 1966, even as the killings of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of social democrat “constitutionalists” persisted.9 Jorge Balaguer, a protégé of the anticommunist former dictator Rafael Trujillo, was elected president and reelected twice (Torrijos 2008, 73–74). However, the constitutionalist former president Juan Bosch was a candidate in the

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elections, and his party gained five of twenty-seven Senate seats and twenty-six House seats in 1966 (Maríñez 1990). His party continued to compete in subsequent elections and elected presidents in 1978, 1982, and 2000. This form of democracy was illiberal and curtailed; it reflected the anticommunist foreign policy of the United States and its allies, and it thus inhibited participation by those who had risen up against a military government in 1965. Yet it was not exclusionary. Former combatants had the chance to participate in governance and did so, even though the inclusionary character of political authority was not benevolent nor perhaps even voluntary in this case or that of Northern Cyprus. If it were not for external powers and / or intergovernmental bodies using, and then threatening to use, force, then exclusionary behavior could well have ensued.

Peace and Exclusionary Behavior? Powersharing is not a necessary condition for making peace stick, because a number of long-standing cases of nonrecurrence had no powersharing arrangement. On the contrary, it is striking how many cases of nonrecurrence reflect quite exclusionary behavior—totalitarian or authoritarian regimes that have jailed, killed, or repressed political opponents. Such cases include Cuba in 1959, Jordan in 1970, Bolivia in 1952, Vietnam in 1975, South Korea in 1950, and Paraguay in 1947.10 Victorious Socialist Regimes One such group includes revolutionary Communist regimes that had little interest in the inclusion of their former enemies. In Cuba, for instance, hundreds of former soldiers and police officers were tried and executed, although many who had been deemed sufficiently nonpolitical were retained (Clark 1992). Large farms and private productive facilities were nationalized without guarantees for property owners, and opposition political leaders were harassed, monitored, and arrested rather than included in governance. In a statement that applies to the several socialist and Communist regimes of the Cold War era, “Within the logic of the revolution, there was no legitimate opposition to la patria and socialism, and opponents suffered repression or exile” (Perez-Stable 1999, 105). Such was the politics of Vietnam after its revolutionary victory in 1975. Bolivia’s 1952 postwar government represented a socialist military government that engaged in the repression and exclusion of its former enemies. Victorious Anticommunist Regimes Among counterrevolutionary cases of victory, exclusionary behavior was equally egregious in the initial years of their respective postwar periods. In Paraguay, for

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instance, the point of the internal conflict was precisely to keep leftists and Communists out of power, which the regime successfully did for decades until 1989. The Greek Civil War similarly ended with the Communist Party being outlawed (until 1974), many of its leaders tried and executed, and the remainder jailed or in exile (Samatas 1986). Even Costa Rica, which had been peaceful since 1948, represents exclusionary politics because victorious center-right rebels reneged on their pledge to permit the Communist Party to compete electorally and jailed some of its leaders. South Korea’s civil war offers another instance of postwar anticommunist exclusionary behavior technically followed by no recurrent internal armed conflict. Its civil war is not the major war that divided North Korea and South Korea, which were already separated by 1948 (and thus were considered to have fought an interstate war, one that has also not recurred amid heavy international troop presence). Instead, the South Korean nonrecurrent civil war that appears in the Fearon and Laitin data set is the insurrection of outraged residents of Jeju, an island where up to 30,000 were killed in the period 1948–50. Months after police fired on a demonstration commemorating Korea’s struggle against Japanese occupation in 1947, increasingly frustrated residents attacked twelve government police posts. Because many Koreans considered the government and police to have collaborated with the Japanese occupiers, the socialist South Korean Workers Party found fertile ground in organizing resistance on Jeju, joined (and armed) by several hundred defectors in mutinied units of the Korean armed forces. In this place, the lingering effects of World War II occupation politics coupled with Cold War ideological competition to fuel protests that grew into organized armed actions and deadly reprisal massacres by government troops and anticommunist youth volunteers. The rebels, who eventually received extensive material support from North Korea and began flying its flag, were brutally suppressed by anticommunist government forces.11 Exclusion followed the war. In 1948 the South Korean legislature banned the South Korean Workers Party and made it a crime to even mention the Jeju uprising and subsequent massacres. An official truth commission into the Jeju uprising found that, rather than any sort of inclusion of those who had arisen against the government, at least 14,373 had been killed, mostly amid the “wanton destruction” of 95 percent of the villages on a central mountain and the elimination of most of their inhabitants.12 In April 2006 President Roh Moo-hyun officially apologized for the massacres associated with the Jeju uprisings and granted the island’s long-standing wish for greater autonomy, denominating it “Jeju Special Self-Governing Province.”13 These cases of exclusionary postwar regimes that successfully averted subsequent civil wars reveal that excluding former enemies is compatible with sustained negative peace. However, they also reveal other insights. They show that

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historically specific and normative contexts shape the ideas and patterns of warfare, peace, regime type, and governance structures and behavior. Seven of these nine cases (77 percent) are best seen through a Cold War ideological prism, even where local power struggles and identity politics underlay wars exhibiting East / West ideological divides. Admittedly, locally specific contests were subjected to the manipulation of images, fears, and symbols to fuel the fears or interests of transnational movements for or against Communism. Nevertheless, transnational norms in historical moments worked to render acceptable and even laudable the abrogation of liberal democratic politics and the adoption of Communist or socialist one-party models. Those historical moments were global—the end of World War II, the delegitimation of fascism, and the rise of two models of democratic capitalism and Soviet-style Communism— as well as regional in nature—the wave of Communist regimes that swept Southeast Asia, the insurgencies that swept from Cuba to South and Central America, and the legitimation of military institutional authoritarian regimes in South America. These geographic contexts and historical moments are not determinate, but they are overlooked by both large-N quantitative methods that treat only countries as the unit of analysis and by qualitative studies that have a depth of only one or two cases. Inherent in the philosophical, political, and economic thought underlying these regimes was not just the marginalization of formerly dominant bourgeois political parties and economic elites but also their active suppression through physical elimination, incarceration, reeducation, and / or exile. Conversely, anticommunist governments dehumanized Communists and sought to destroy their organizations. For both Communists and anticommunists, torture and abuse were at times used as a public display of official rejection, humiliation, and terror. Analyzing the cases of exclusionary behavior among countries that experienced one civil war but no recurrence reveals the importance of historical context. Roughly two-thirds of the twenty-seven cases exhibited inclusionary behavior, and one-third showed exclusionary conduct. At first glance, exclusionary politics is not incompatible with sustained peace. However, every single case of nonrecurrence under exclusionary behavior occurred before 1989. Conversely, inclusionary behavior characterizes successful terminations of wars after 1988 (see table 7.4). Fifteen of seventeen cases (88 percent) of nonrecurrent wars that ended with inclusionary behavior occurred after the Cold War’s conclusion in 1989. Only two cases of nonrecurrence with inclusionary behavior occurred before 1989. In both those cases, Cyprus in 1974 and the Dominican Republic in 1965, external armies intervened to stop fighting on behalf of an ally, which led to the forging of a political transition that precluded a victory against the status quo ante but forestalled outright exclusionary behavior by the state’s armed forces.

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Table 7.4 Inclusion and Peace after the Cold War: All Cases of Recurrence and Nonrecurrence, by Political Behavior, 1988–2007 Type of Behavior

Nonrecurrence

Recurrence

N=0

Burundi, 1988, 1993–2006 Central African Republic, 1996–97, 2001–2 East Timor (Indonesia), 1975–99, 2006 Haiti, 1991–95, 2004 Liberia, 1989–96, 1999–2003 Peru, 1981–95, 2007 Russia, 1994–96, 1999– Rwanda, 1962–65, 1990–2002 N=8

Exclusionary

Inclusionary

Angola, 1975–2002 Bangladesh, 1976–97 Bosnia, 1992–95 Croatia, 1992–95 Djibouti, 1993–94 El Salvador, 1979–92 Guatemala, 1968–96 Moldova, 1992 Mozambique, 1976–95 Nepal, 1997–2006 Papua New Guinea, 1988–98 Sierra Leone, 1991–2000 South Africa, 1983–94 Tajikistan, 1992–97 UK / Northern Ireland, 1969–99 N = 15

Azerbaijan, 1992–94, 2005 Mali, 1989–94, 2007

N=2

Source: Author’s case-by-case determinations.

These cases suggest that the end of the Cold War marks a historic shift in historical contexts that dramatically shape the chances and character of sustainable peace in three important ways. First, ideology was the mobilizing principle and point of reference for most of the conflicts during the Cold War, but not afterward. Of the nine cases of exclusionary cases that did not recur, ideological battles over Communism were central to all of them except Jordan in 1970. Communist rebellions or anticommunist counterrevolutionary efforts lay at the core of efforts to mobilize support and articulate stances, whether it was Paraguay or Bolivia (with ethnic overtones) in South America; the Caribbean Basin cases of Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic; the Asian cases of Vietnam, Laos, and South Korea; or Europe’s Greece. And although several cases of postwar inclusionary behavior occurred in tandem with conflicts that began as ideologically centered wars during the Cold War, only one armed conflict of the nonrecurrences commenced after 1988 (Nepal in 1997).

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Second, global norms of war termination also shifted. As noted earlier in the chapter, outright victory had been the most common form of war termination during (and before) the Cold War. However, negotiated settlements became far more prevalent in conjunction with the end of the Cold War. We know this from other research on civil war settlements (Fortna 2004a). This shift reflected attitudes among armed factions as well as neighboring powerful states and international organizations.14 Third, just as international actors have played a more important role in facilitating and mediating peace agreements among warring parties since the Cold War, foreign troops have also played a notably more prominent role since 1988. In none of the pre-1989 exclusionary cases of nonrecurrence did international peacekeeping troops appear. Certainly foreign armed forces arrived and played combat roles in several cases. These include the assistance from US armed forces in putting down rebellions in Greece and South Korea. In addition, neighboring states such as Nicaragua and North Korea helped one or both sides in the civil wars of Costa Rica, Laos, Vietnam, and South Korea. The closest thing to international intervention in preserving peace in these cases of exclusion is the role of teams of diplomats and military experts from the Organization of American States in facilitating the resolution of conflicts launched by exiles from Nicaraguan soil against the government of “Pepe” Figueres in late 1948 and again in 1955. However, those were small missions with no combat component (Herz 2008, 6, 13). They also occurred after Figueres had dissolved the country’s standing army, failing not because of international deployments but because Costa Rica’s former insurgent combatants regrouped and joined civilians in taking up arms. Among cases after 1988, international troop deployments played a salient role in several. External combat troops helped reach and / or maintain cease-fires in Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone. In the first three of these cases, many observers maintained for years that a withdrawal of foreign troops would result in war recurrence. In addition, unarmed UN military observers (usually no more than three hundred) were deployed to strengthen peace processes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Tajikistan, and Nepal. Still others—such as South Africa, Bangladesh, and Djibouti—showed that external troops are not necessary at all to advance. Interestingly, the two cases of inclusionary behavior before 1989 are also the only two pre-1989 cases in the pool being considered here in which international troops deployed. These include the US and Organization of American States deployments to the Dominican Republic and the involvement of Turkey’s armed forces in forcing an end to hostilities in Cyprus in 1974. The latter two cases suggest that foreign troop deployments helped avert the normal outcome of exclusionary behavior during the Cold War. We will return to the issue of foreign troop presence and “frozen” conflicts.

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The dramatic turning point of 1988–89 marks important transformations of global norms and the interests of major powers. As such, I examined the cases of post–Cold War cases separately. Table 7.4 presents the ten cases of civil war recurrence after 1988, and the fifteen cases of nonrecurrence after 1988.15 Of those twenty-five cases, twenty-three (92 percent) conform to the argument here that exclusionary behavior is the key causal factor in recurrence, and that inclusionary behavior helps prevent recurrence. Only two cases of inclusionary behavior—Azerbaijan in 2004 and Mali in 2007—led to recurrence. In both cases persistent dissatisfaction with the status quo underlay recurrences that were triggered partly by external factors. In the case of Mali, Tuareg uprisings in adjacent Niger helped foment unrest and resentment among Tuaregs in Mali. In both cases casualties from the recurrence were fewer than a hundred deaths, and do not warrant designation as a full civil war. What are the implications of table 7.4 and the dramatic changes that occurred with the end of the Cold War? Most important, given the normative context of the post–Cold War era (as dated as that may sound), exclusion is no longer a viable path to negative peace. Whereas before the Cold War regimes could suppress dissent, jail opponents, and through repression cow armed opposition or nip it in the bud, since the Cold War’s end such post–civil war exclusionary behavior has led without exception to armed conflict. In none of the cases examined has exclusionary behavior produced sustained peace. This finding does not mean that exclusionary behavior is incompatible with suppressing dissent. In “grandfathered” cases from the Cold War, such as Cuba and Equatorial Guinea, a sustained exclusion of regime opponents has coexisted with a negative peace. In cases of multiple or simultaneous armed conflicts— such as Somalia, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—exclusionary behavior persists alongside conflicts, despite instances of inclusionary behavior toward some groups. Furthermore, the sort of repression and exclusion common during the Cold War has changed in character and content. Repressing ideological enemies has not been as common since 1988. Instead exclusion is much more often seen in terms of identity groups presented and perceived as threats to other identity groups. In addition, authoritarianism and exclusionary behavior are not equivalent. Thus some authoritarian or semiauthoritarian regimes like those of Burma and Rwanda have managed countries without internal armed conflicts, but with some degree of inclusionary behavior toward former enemies. Even as democratic regimes generally now include sufficient mechanisms of inclusion, the absence of democracy is not an automatic signal of exclusionary politics. Nevertheless, the importance of this finding about exclusion since the 1989 turning point in history should not be lost. The changed international context means that governments are not free to flagrantly exclude their former enemies

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after war and expect to be able to enjoy stability. Inclusionary behavior toward former enemies is the surest path to nonrecurrence; exclusionary behavior is the route to renewed armed conflict. Inclusionary behavior need not be powersharing, certainly not in the inflexible, timeless formula that facilitated the return to warfare in Lebanon in 1975. Yet former rebels and their supporters require some hope of exercising control over their own lives through institutions of authority, especially the state, either nationally or locally. Providing them with either a guaranteed share of that power or a regular guaranteed opportunity to seek it through elections with sufficient guarantees is the sine qua non of sustainable peace in the contemporary era. Several components of the international context are important here. Among them are new transnational norms of elections as legitimating mechanisms and global human rights standards. A form of authoritarianism that leaves large ethnic or religious groups with no hope of inclusion in the polity is likely to confront armed challenges. Even elected, formally democratic regimes that limit contestation for formerly mobilized populations can expect to face renewed armed conflict. This is precisely what occurred with governments that were elected in Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor. In addition, these cases suggest that postconflict societies are especially susceptible to the impact of transnational norms, institutions, and international influence in ways that render exclusionary politics unsustainable. The international peacebuilding “industry” emphasizes the importance of inclusion, competitive electoral systems, powersharing, and certainly some measure of responsiveness to former enemies. Governments that engage in outright exclusion can expect to receive a colder international reception and even a drop in international aid, as occurred in both Liberia under Charles Taylor and Haiti under President Aristide. Excluded groups and former combatants perceive these incentive structures and norms. Once they see that their political or physical fate is threatened, the international environment encourages rejection and justifies protest in the face of such injustice. In some cases external assistance for renewed armed conflict in the face of exclusion is more direct.

International Troops and “Frozen” Conflicts A survey of the cases of nonrecurrence points to an important element of nonrecurrence: the presence of international peacekeeping forces, either from an international organization or from interested bilateral powers. The positive impact of third parties, especially armed troops, is much celebrated in the literature and has reached near consensus as a factor in policy-oriented work. “Frozen conflicts” is a term that emerged in the 1990s to refer to the several wars that achieved cease-fires without any perceived permanent political settle-

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ment. The term was applied principally to the several wars and secondary civil wars related to the breakup of the Soviet Union: Moldova (Transnistria), Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), and the Caucasus (Chechnya). The moniker has been extended to a number of other conflicts, including Bosnia from 1995 to the present, Kosovo since its 1999 war, and Cyprus since 1963. The “frozen” character of these conflicts corresponds in all cases to the presence or threats of invasion by international troops stationed specifically to deter renewed combat. In Transnistria, for instance, some 1,300 troops (mainly Russian) of the Commonwealth of Independent States form part of a Joint Control Commission designed to prevent flare-ups of attacks. Even where the numbers of foreign troops have been reduced significantly (as in the Balkans), their value derives from their deterrent effect and the promise that more forces could be deployed if necessary. Scholars have still not fully fleshed out our understanding of the concept or the wars to which it refers. Lynch (2004, 41) has written that these wars are “events [that] have developed dynamically” in these conflicts, changing the objective conditions and subjective perceptions of these conflicts (Lynch 2004; 2005, 192–95). Most important, he suggests that the empirical administration of territory by de facto states has increased the practice, perception, and expectation of sovereignty among elites of contested separatist territories. An examination of the cases of recurrence and nonrecurrence of civil wars here suggests three important findings with regard to frozen conflicts. First, the concept of “frozen conflicts” calls into question whether “peace” can be said to prevail in these societies. I have counted most such societies as “peaceful” given a widespread perception that armed conflict is over, at least for the time being and the near future. It is not clear that all such societies conform to this definition, which again raises the question about my definition of “peace” and its operationalization. By including these cases, I have sought to cast a wide net on the diversity of manifestations of “peace.” However, one must acknowledge that the quality of perceived peace is less deep and sure in such frozen conflicts than in other postwar societies. Episodic skirmishes in Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan, for instance, show that peace was fragile even as no internal armed conflict was recorded. Second, these cases confirm a prominent, oft-cited claim in the literature on civil wars and peacebuilding: the importance of third-party forces in deterring renewed armed conflict. Of the twenty-seven conflicts that did not recur, five had such external troops serving in a deterrent peacekeeping role: Cyprus (after 1964), the Dominican Republic (1965), Moldova (1992–), and Bosnia and Croatia (1995–). In some cases that force was more welcome (e.g., South Korea) than others (the Dominican Republic). In several of these cases, observers widely believe that renewed armed conflict would recur if not for the presence of

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these external third-party troops providing a third-party deterrent and verification role. In Bosnia, for instance, the presence of the NATO-commanded Implementation Force (IFOR) (initially called the Stabilization Force, or SFOR) was indispensable in preventing a likely recurrence of war in the years after the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords. The peak deployment of IFOR troops was 60,000 in 1996, and the size had declined to some 12,000 by 2005, when the mission came under command of the European Union. However, the presence of these troops remains vital to the maintenance of the cease-fire and the beginnings of creating a multicultural state. Further evidence of the importance of the presence of external or third-party military forces is the timing of recurrences. In the three main cases studied earlier in the book—Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor—recurrence occurred within several months of the withdrawal of international combat-ready peacekeeping troops. In Liberia, the UN’s troops departed only three months after Taylor’s 1997 election, and the peacekeeping mandate of the Economic Community of West African States’ Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) concluded in February 1998. Although 5,000 ECOMOG troops remained after that time to conduct capacity-building tasks, the number had diminished by early 1999 as a result of tensions between the Taylor government and the regional organization (Tuck 2000, para. 7). The UN created a special peacebuilding support office with many of the same tasks as the concluding peacekeeping operation but without any troops. Liberia’s 1999 recurrence occurred within eighteen months of the termination of the peacekeeping mandate, and just as the last of ECOMOG’s capacity-building effort was being drawn down. The last troops left in October of that year just as the second civil war was beginning in earnest. Similarly, the UN’s successive peacekeeping operations to Haiti fully departed in 2000, shortly before the second election of Aristide to the presidency. Within three years of his February 2001 swearing-in, Aristide was beset by armed attacks that constituted an internal armed conflict by late 2003. With the departure of Aristide on Leap Day and the redeployment of international troops in March 2004, the threat to stability subsided. In East Timor the UN peace operation closed in 2002, and it was followed by a political mission that did not possess a troop component. Instead, Australian troops remained as a stabilization force until their full withdrawal in that role in June 2005, when they left only a handful of troops in a training function. Within one year, the tensions within the armed forces and the police had erupted into the recurrent internal armed conflict analyzed above. The Central African Republic offers another example where the recurrence of internal armed conflict seemed to follow on the heels of the withdrawal of international peacekeeping troops. As detailed above, the recurrence of 2001 involved first a coup attempt against then–president Patassé for his perceived

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bias in treatment of Yakoma soldiers, which led to clashes throughout that year and 2002. However, the presence of international troops corresponds to relative stability. First, deployments by the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board helped prevent violent attacks (including on the board’s forces) from growing into broader civil war. The subsequent deployment of peacekeeping troops by the UN Mission in the Central African Republic saw little violence between the 1997 Bangui Agreements and the end of the peacekeeping mission and the withdrawal of French forces from the Central African Republic in 2000. Second, however, violence emerged in early 2001, roughly one year after these troops withdrew.16 The Central African Republic, Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor all show the susceptibility of postconflict countries—especially poor countries with weakly institutionalized polities—to recurrent conflict in the early years after international peacekeeping deployments are withdrawn. They affirm the findings of research cited above by Fortna (2008), Walter (2004), Doyle and Sambanis (2006), and Sambanis (2008) that the presence of peacekeeping troops correlates with a longer duration of stability. Third, territorial powersharing may not be fruitful in the absence of political or military powersharing in more integrated, permanent arrangements. Indeed, territorial powersharing can create frozen conflicts with perverse incentives to achieve more sustainable, long-term solutions. Ultimately, once territorial de facto administration commences, the population looks to the de facto authority for services, shifts its expectations, and confers greater legitimacy on that de facto state and away from the de jure state. In this way, territorial powersharing is the most divisive form of powersharing, given that it does not require the separate pieces of a whole to communicate, much less cooperate. Minority members and even units within the armed forces or police must at least communicate and tacitly cooperate in order for the institution to function effectively and the leaders to receive accolades. Cabinets divvied up according to powersharing arrangements still must work together under the guidance of national leaders to function. In contrast, the incentives for cooperation between separatist regions that have won some degree of autonomy generally use it to institutionalize that autonomy. Moreover, their inhabitants become more accustomed to and influenced by the discourse of sovereignty and independence—making it extremely hard to reverse de facto quasi-statehood. Given these dynamics, unless powerful economic or symbolic capital is available to sway inhabitants of a separatist region not to separate, then consistent pressure for independence will probably persist, leaving armed action as more necessary to alter the status quo on the ground. To recap, “frozen” conflicts represent an important subset of nonrecurrent civil wars. The absence of recurrence in these cases may be due to the inclusionary behavior of the state and elites, but it may also (or instead) stem from the altered incentives that derive from third-party armed guarantors. Frozen

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conflicts also offer a number of hypotheses, some of which have been advanced and even explored by researchers. But one important and novel finding regarding these cases is the strong suggestion that the presence of international military forces—acting as a buffer, deterrent, or enforcer of a cease-fire—is a powerful factor in the prevention of recurrence of internal armed conflict. The cases examined, admittedly without systematic controls, in this book affirm the recent scholarly emphasis on the presence of international peacekeepers in preventing armed conflicts. Indeed, the cases of “frozen” conflicts may share an important trait with the Cold War–era cases of repressive authoritarian regimes that have been able to prevent recurrence. They both point to the dissuasive power of coercive force in the calculation of regime opponents about whether to contest state power through the force of arms. I would not wish to carry this comparison too far, because there are many instances of repressive, authoritarian regimes that insurgents have successfully challenged. However, the socialist cases of nonrecurrence suggest that the mobilizing, all-encompassing, society-penetrating projection of state power may have had some success in precluding the emergence of armed challenge. As suggested above, unless non-Western alternatives gain new prominence, the normative contemporary global environment seems very intolerant of such stifling and suppressing behavior, rendering this option null—as the empirics of this chapter testify. Conclusion What can one conclude from having extended this analysis of the failure of peace to the full pool of cases of civil wars that seem to have ended? As noted, exclusionary behavior played a central role not only in Liberia and the other two cases where peacekeeping troops had to be reintroduced, Haiti and East Timor, but also in several armed conflicts over the pool of civil wars since 1944. However, this is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for recurrence. Exclusion can lead to decades without civil war, just as it is often the trigger for conflict. When examining the cases of nonrecurrence, however, exclusion assumes new significance. After 1989 exclusion never produces stability, but it always leads to the recurrence of internal armed conflict. The cases of nonrecurrence also reveal the importance of inclusionary political behavior for sustaining peace. Among the pool of core cases examined here of war recurrence or nonrecurrence, 85 percent of instances of inclusionary behavior are associated with sustained peace, in some cases lasting for decades. In only three cases (Azerbaijan, Mali, and Lebanon) does inclusionary behavior result in the recurrence of internal armed conflict. This finding also contrasts with a prevalent claim that victory

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in warfare produces stable outcomes, because it seems that inclusionary behavior, after either victory or negotiated settlements, is key. To clearly summarize the main findings of this chapter, it is useful to enumerate them: • Among cases of nonrecurrence, two alternative paths stand out: inclusionary behavior, especially with regard to politics and the security forces; and exclusionary behavior accompanied by the rigid repression of regime critics and opponents. • These two paths reflect the context-dependent character of factors influencing peacebuilding success. The factors that shape success and failure in peacebuilding change over time, reflecting the prevailing normative environment. Norms, which both shape and are shaped by interests of powerful states and nonstate actors, constitute and constrain the character of regimes and armed conflict, especially in these ways: (1) Whereas all-out victories were the norm for war termination before 1989, negotiated settlements have become the norm since the Cold War; (2) transitions from peace since 1989 have rarely led to repressive, authoritarian regimes, but rather to elected regimes that, if not democratic, are semiauthoritarian or electoral authoritarian regimes that do not engage in sustained, egregious repression of their former enemies; and (3) powersharing of at least one form has become far more prevalent since the Cold War, and revolt or resistance thus may have become less what forms of resistance and rebellion are viewed as viable or acceptable, what kinds and degrees of exclusion and repression are acceptable, and what weapons and means of warfare are viable or acceptable. • Exclusionary political behavior by elites was certainly a path of prevention, but only before 1989, in the decades of the Cold War. Since that point, several normative changes have combined to make it extremely likely that exclusionary behavior will not prevent former combatants and the parties they claimed to represent from taking up arms again. • Throughout the 1944–2007 period examined, inclusionary behavior correlates highly with the consolidation of peace. Powersharing, which also reflects normative shifts insofar as it has become much more prevalent since 1988, remains the single most common manifestation of inclusionary behavior. Since the Cold War, nonrecurrence has correlated highly with the adoption of powersharing mechanisms. The cases suggest that the most common and influential

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•

•

•

•

forms of powersharing are of political offices and the integration of former enemies into the security forces, either the military or police. At the same time, important constraints accompany the claims suggested by the cases examined here. Inclusionary behavior, including powersharing, can and does fail. Powersharing experiments have failed before, both during and after cases of war recurrence and of multiple, simultaneous, or unrelated civil wars. Power-dividing models can also constitute inclusionary behavior, but only if they specifically meet the expectations of the vanquished parties and the groups they represent to find political representation. Thus strategies such as open competitive elections may also facilitate sustained peace. Yet the absence of democracy does not ipso facto mean exclusionary politics, because salient elites from previously mobilized guerrilla groups or social groups may find preserved seats of power in a semiauthoritarian structure. Such illiberal arrangements may not be desirable, and they may sow the seeds of new, different forms of protest and even armed conflict. But the evidence shows that the inclusion of former combatant elites helps prevent their return to combat. The cases ratify the importance of the presence of third-party international peacekeeping troops. In a number of cases (especially “frozen” conflicts), the presence of international troops has facilitated the maintenance of a negative peace, even as the underlying causes of warfare fester. This factor may be at work in some cases where powersharing correlates with nonrecurrence. Despite this finding, a number of cases of nonrecurrent peace consolidation have occurred without the sustained presence of international combat units serving as peacekeepers: El Salvador, Guatemala, Tajikistan, Papua New Guinea, and (to date) Nepal. This finding suggests that where internal factors on the ground favor the consolidation of peace, then international peacekeepers are secondary or epiphenomenal.

These points are intended to clarify the findings of a complex and lengthy attempt to extrapolate from the findings of the three main case studies. By examining the full pool of cases, I hope to provide a more substantive picture of the causal mechanisms at work than large-N quantitative studies yield. I also seek to provide something more comprehensive and wide-ranging than detailed case studies that often show too little awareness of and relation to the broader range of cases of civil wars and internal armed conflicts.

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The findings of this study draw on and advance theories of civil war recurrence. They offer a critique of the prevalent views that emphasize economic factors and natural resources in civil war occurrence and recurrence. What are the full implications of these findings for peacebuilding theory? The following chapter takes up this question. Notes 1. I have drawn initially here on the data of Hoddie and Hartzell (2005), excluding only the Dominican Republic, where cease-fires and demobilization seemed the sole criterion for qualifying it as “security” powersharing. I then conducted my own categorization of powersharing types for all other cases. 2. Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “Chronology for Afars in Djibouti,” RefWorld, www.unhcr.org / refworld / country,,,CHRON,DJI,,469f3882c,0 .html. 3. International Federation of Electoral Systems, “Election Guide,” www.electionguide .org / election.php?ID=100. Ex-rebel parties gained none of the upper house seats in 2000. 4. World Directory of Minorities, “Hutu and Tutsi of Burundi,” www.faqs.org / minorities / Sub-Saharan-Africa / Hutu-and-Tutsi-of-Burundi.html. 5. Anthropologists have highlighted the role of tribal rituals for cleansing and reconciliation of ex-fighters; see Honwana (2006). 6. Personal interviews with Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front commander Shafick Handal, 1996, San Salvador; and with Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front political adviser Salvador Samayoa, 1996, San Salvador. 7. See Dupuy and Benningsbo (2008, 2). 8. Note that one case of war recurrence enjoyed peace under powersharing for more than ten years: Lebanon from 1958 to 1975. 9. On these events, see Atkins and Wilson (1998) and Torrijos (2008). 10. Jordan’s war was essentially King Hussein’s reestablishing control over the monopoly of coercive force in the territory after tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees entered the country and carried weapons openly and began exercising some degree of self-rule. Upon the defeat of the Palestinian forces, no powersharing was contemplated or adopted with these noncitizens. 11. “National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident,” report released by the government on December 15, 2003, www.jeju43.go.kr / english / sub05.html. 12. Ibid. 13. See “Special Act for a ‘Jeju Special Self-Governing Province’ Enacted,” on the website of the Korean Ministry of Public Administration and Security, www.mopas .go.kr / gpms / ns / mogaha / . Also see the entry on the Jeju uprising, in The New World Encyclopedia, www.newworldencyclopedia.org / entry / Jeju_Uprising.

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14. See Human Security Research Group (2005). 15. The case of Georgia is complex. First, I have sought to retain it as it comes close to refuting my argument as a case of nonexclusion that involved recurrence. Note that the recurrence scored here is the 2004 flare-up of fighting in South Ossetia (1992–94, 2004), in which only twenty-seven persons died, rather than the war that took place in 2008 involving domestic and external Ossetian nationalist forces versus the Georgian armed forces with the virtually immediate incursion and occupation of all of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as much of Georgia itself, by Russian troops eager to abet independence for these separatist territories. Although I could have used the civil war in Abkhazia as grounds to omit Georgia due to complex or simultaneous conflicts, the nonrecurrence of Abkhazia before this date and the core role played by Ossetia in the 2008 recurrence permitted me to count it as a recurrence. Second, it is one of two cases of civil war recurrence (the other is China in Tibet, 1950–51, 1956–59) that I abstain from classifying as exhibiting either inclusionary or exclusionary behavior. In both cases the state had reached a deal to grant some de facto self-governance and to eventually specify a more concrete powersharing arrangement. In both cases the recognized state army initiated efforts to solidify support for integration that then led to protests and armed resistance. Its conduct did violate some Ossetians’ (and in the case of China, some Tibetans’) expectations but did not explicitly violate an agreement, and was not inclusionary. 16. The deployment of a new Central African Multinational Force of African troops under the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa helped provide stability after 2003, despite occasional skirmishes that increased in intensity in 2006.

Part III Implications for Theory and Practice

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8 Conclusions for Theory Legitimacy-Focused Peacebuilding

HAVING EXAMINED THE POOL of the clearest cases of both successful and failed postwar peacebuilding, what can one say about the implications of these findings for the theory of civil wars and their recurrence, and for theories of postconflict peacebuilding? This chapter revisits the initial analysis of what scholars have found about the causes of civil wars and of consolidated postconflict peace. It first recaps the central findings of the five previous, empirical chapters (part II) of the book. Here the focus is on synthesizing the findings of the case studies, tempered by an examination of the range of cases of war recurrence and nonrecurrence that have informed the study. I then turn to theory, focusing on the principal overarching approaches to peacebuilding that dominate contemporary debate on postwar peacebuilding. The next section sets forth the concept of “legitimacy-focused peacebuilding” and its potential to address shortcomings of the four extant approaches. Then, informed by the perils of extrapolating policy implications from the theoretical findings, the subsequent chapter turns to what, if anything, these findings mean for the ability of internal and external actors to shape peacebuilding outcomes.

The Main Findings of the Book The first important implication of this book is that elite political behavior— more directly than economic risk factors, state capacity, natural resource dependence, or democracy per se—lies at the heart of the success of efforts to consolidate peace after civil wars. Political factors, shaped by national elites and to a lesser extent external diplomacy and leverage, condition the chances of whether peace can be consolidated or not. These findings underscore the focus on “spoilers” and the need to understand and manage them (Stedman 1997; Zahar 2003). Such factors figure in much of the literature on postconflict reconstruction and peacebuilding, but economic factors have been emphasized more recently, especially in the quantitative literature that has achieved a certain stature in political

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science. Moreover, the extensive literature on peacekeeping does not adequately address these challenges (Durch 1996, 2006; Howard 2008). Specifically, inclusion and exclusion are crucial factors in many cases of war recurrence, and should be the first place to look for evidence of potential reversion to internal armed conflict in postwar societies. This exclusion takes the form (as defined in this book) of perceived or actual deprivation of an opportunity to participate in state administration in ways that defy the expectations of former warring parties or the social groups associated with them. Exclusion is prevalent in many cases of recurrence. However, it is important to acknowledge the presence of several other pathways and variables that are associated with failure. I am calling special attention to the role of exclusion and inclusion but am not saying these are the sole causal variables in war recurrence. Recurrence cases point to other factors in explaining outcomes such as meddlesome or invasive neighbors; dissatisfaction in “frozen” conflicts with the status quo after some time; and the resurgence of rebels organizing after apparent defeat and without significant changes in government policy. Nevertheless, in many of these cases (recall Tibet, Nicaragua, and Peru), exclusion also played a significant role. Even cases that were omitted from the analysis as not enjoying sufficient levels of “interwar” peace, like Cambodia and Senegal, exhibited exclusionary behavior. Moreover, in cases where many of the postulated factors prevalent in current theory—natural resource dependency, poverty, and economic malaise—were present, these factors were not considered key factors in the recurrence of armed conflict. Recall the cases of Liberia, the Central African Republic, and Sudan (natural resource dependency) and the poor economies of Nicaragua and Mali. Conversely, here exclusionary behavior proved the most helpful for understanding these recurrent wars. And even where exclusion was not the predominant factor, neither were these more commonly touted variables. Consider again the cases of Nicaragua, Burundi, and Rwanda, where such factors cannot distinguish these recurrences from nonrecurrence in cases like Djibouti, Laos, Nepal, Sierra Leone, and Paraguay. These cases instead point to the importance of other sorts of factors—certainly to political exclusion, but also to a regional level of analysis (both for meddlesome neighbors and for the patterns of violence) and to the prevailing global and regional norms about state repression. Such factors have not received the same level of attention as poverty, inequality, and natural resources. This is not to say that other hypothesized variables are unimportant. Many cases examined here—Liberia, Haiti, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali, Nicaragua, East Timor, Burundi, and Zimbabwe—are poor countries characterized by very weak formal institutions, including state institutions. Despite the problems associated with conceptualizing and measuring state “fragility” or “weakness,” countries that have a low per capita income or whose formal institutions are irrelevant, penetrable, or unreliable appear to be more prone to recur-

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rent armed conflict. The robust quantitative correlation between poverty and the onset of civil war is not disconfirmed in these cases. The causal import of natural resource dependency is less persuasive based on the universe of cases, although this factor seems quite important in a subset of cases of civil war recurrences and especially in a subset of countries that have experienced long-standing, nonrecurrent internal warfare. For instance, specific export commodities play a salient role in the persistence of civil wars in Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conversely, such export dependency is not apparent in other long-lasting wars in Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Liberia shows how the availability of high-rent exports under a weakly institutionalized state facilitated the organization of insurgency and defections from government military forces. Yet even in this case, only in combination with exclusionary behavior did natural resources or low capacity contribute to war recurrence. Admittedly, the definition of “peace” used here is a narrow one focused on the nonrecurrence of internal armed conflict. This definition omits the dignity of life of a society, and the presence or absence of justice for its individuals and social groups. It falls well short of the preferred content of peacebuilding that has emerged in the scholarly literature and even policy statements by international organizations working on peace and development. Setting aside the lack of shared conception and measurement of “positive peace,” some substantive reasons warrant a study of negative peace. It has been the main operational indicator of failure for international peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts, and the main yardstick for the success of the UN Peacebuilding Commission. Without negative peace, positive peace is only a fleeting hope. And discerning how to achieve negative peace is a necessary first step in determining the steps to advance positive peace. Surprisingly little consensus exists about the causes of consolidated peace in international scholarship. Turning to the cases of nonrecurrence, this study reinforces, to an unexpected degree, the correlation between negative peace and inclusionary behavior, principally by the state toward its former enemies. Powersharing is the most prevalent form of inclusionary behavior. It takes many forms beyond allocation of the presidency or the cabinet to former warring parties, although such guaranteed quotas remain very prevalent. Especially important among alternative types of powersharing is the provision of security posts in the military or police forces, which provides crucial guarantees to alleviate fears of physical violence against demobilized fighters. This issue constituted a trigger for war recurrence in Liberia, the Central African Republic, and East Timor, and to a lesser extent in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Haiti. Although powersharing is neither necessary nor sufficient to prevent war recurrence, its presence corresponds greatly to peace consolidation, whereas its abrogation correlates with failure.

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Yet powersharing is not the only form of inclusionary conduct that helps peace to “stick.” The vanquished parties’ expectations of being included in political life can be met via the realistic hope of electoral representation, whether at the local, provincial, national, or supranational level. To the extent that electoral results are not rendered meaningless through either vacating the authority of public office or an outright reversal of voting outcomes, then such democratic processes constitute inclusionary politics. Yet democratic political forms can also coexist with exclusionary political behavior, as we saw in Liberia, Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, East Timor, and Haiti. These cases demonstrate precisely the limits of liberal peacebuilding models, to which I return just below. What are the implications of this book for the civil war literature, with its quantitative tendencies and its focus on onset rather than the prevention of recurrence? This study strongly suggests that the substantive significance of exclusionary or inclusionary behavior exceeds that of poverty, resource dependency, or state capacity in war recurrence. This research calls into question the strong focus by policymaking entities and scholars on fighting poverty as the most urgent means to advance peace, and it raises questions about our excessive heed to quantitative methods rather than drawing on some more contextualized analysis. Poor countries are at a greater risk of civil war and its recurrence, but inclusionary conduct seems to have much more analytic power in accounting for recurrence. One illustration of the limits of quantitative methods is what the cases revealed about the salience of religious fractionalization. Although this variable emerged as highly statistically significant for the recurrence of civil wars, it figured in only a few of the clearest cases of recurrence, represented by the fifteen core cases. Ethnic fractionalization also figured in several, but not in several others. Those findings are difficult to interpret, but they suggest that the way such social divisions are drawn on by elites or masses is complex. The interplay of these variables warrants more consideration. The picture here of war recurrence is one where risk factors elevate the likelihood of exclusionary behavior, often by elected governments reneging on the perceived commitments to losing factions or groups. It ratifies the findings of those who find that powersharing can play a positive role for peace, specifically in the sustainability of postwar peace. It suggests that elite agency is the locus for examining the chances of recurrence of internal armed conflict after civil war. The findings call into question a prevailing view that victory in warfare facilitates postwar stability, because how postwar polities—shaped by their own political contests, civil society organizations, and international actors—respond to power after warfare is more commonly the crucial factor. Including one’s enemies, rather than killing them, is the most frequent path to peace. But it is also vital to reconsider the nature of scholarship on civil wars and their occurrence and recurrence in light of the historically contextual nature of

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the phenomenon. Constructivists contend that shared, intersubjective understandings among subjects constrain and even constitute interests, rendering norms important causal factors in shaping outcomes of those subjects’ interaction—in this case, collective notions of what sorts of regime structures and behavior are relevant. In the past two decades, norms of elections as a mechanism for validating political power have spread to the vast majority of states. Even some decades-old holdout nondemocratic regimes like Cuba and Saudi Arabia have adopted elements of electoral ratification. Because wars—and their termination—often constitute important windows of opportunity for new actors, ideas, and structures to be adopted, it is more difficult for postwar regimes to embrace norms that have been eclipsed by emerging notions associated with or prevalent under new historical periods (Ikenberry 2000; Call 2002). Given the post–Cold War environment, those peoples who are excluded or repressed are more likely to resist such behavior and to call on international norms, incentives, and allies. It is difficult to imagine postwar countries that experience a regime transition in the twenty-first century adopting nonelective authoritarian regimes that engage in exclusionary behavior. Where such regimes emerge victorious, then they may retain their characteristics, but these are the exception. Norms are neither created nor advanced wholly independent of power. Given the generally increased power exercised by major donors, Western-influenced intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank, and regional organizations, postwar states are more susceptible to these pressures and transnational social expectations. Post–Cold War expectations facing postconflict countries include the following: negotiations amid warfare, intense international pressure for a settlement, domestic awareness of the possibilities of international assistance to postconflict societies, widespread domestic awareness of a strengthened human rights regime that focuses on conflict countries, and pressure to suppress terrorists that may contradict the impetus to include former enemies. These practices-cum-expectations modify what postwar politicomilitary elites see as possible, desirable, and acceptable. The crucial element of this normative environment is not that it ensures conformity with these expectations but that the norms are sufficiently prevalent to ensure that former parties to warfare will (perhaps selectively in their favor) refer to such norms, advocate for them, and draw on them to mobilize armed opposition in the face of flagrant violation of those norms in an exclusionary fashion by the postwar state. As such, the record of postwar peacebuilding shown here reinforces constructivism’s call for understanding the social construction of war termination and political regimes, and how these shape peace. Heuristically, the cases examined here demonstrate the limits of quantitative methods that compare all wars across decades without regard for social context. They also suggest the limits of case studies that ignore the causal impact of transnational normative

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environment and how norms constrain the choices available to individual or collective agents within a particular country or specific war. In this study I have not sought to specify which norms are at work in these cases or to formalize their role in outcomes—work that has begun elsewhere. Nor do I analyze or seek to anticipate what sort of normative changes are afoot in the international system. A number of potential trends regarding human rights, transnational activism, truth and justice, and peace itself suggest possible future norms, but these are beyond the scope of the study.

Rethinking the Aims and Approaches of Peacebuilding Given the importance of ideas in both constraining and empowering institutions and choices by postwar decision makers, what do the findings of this study mean for the conceptual frameworks for postconflict peacebuilding? How should theorists rethink prevailing approaches to peacebuilding and state building? This chapter begins by reexamining the liberal peacebuilding model, explicitly exploring alternatives in light of the findings of the research presented in the previous chapters. Abandoning the Liberal End State? The evolution of scholarship and the empirical experiences of successful and unsuccessful peace consolidation presented above call into question the pursuit of “liberal peacebuilding.” They do not necessarily call into question the correlations between democracy and internal peace or between economic growth / prosperity and internal peace. Crucially, it is the process of political and economic change, more than the attained existence of liberal politics and economies, that jeopardizes internal stability and peace. If one accepts this claim, then it may bolster the argument to salvage liberal peace. Indeed, Richmond and Franks (2009) lament that this is precisely the case with Paris (2004) and other reformers of liberalism, who seek to save liberalism through their critiques. However, the predominance of the liberal peacebuilding model induces internal and external actors to settle into pursuing liberalizing policies without acknowledging their contradictions and dangers. Richmond and Franks (2009, 185) note that the liberal model is the only framework upon which donors and international organizations can agree. Consequently, despite the reservations many diplomats feel about neoliberal economic prescriptions, and despite the skepticism many development specialists hold about elections, these liberal hallmarks by default attract support as a minimal consensus, especially in the absence of other frames. In addition, both national and international officials risk accusations of being “authoritarian” if they depart from democratizing conventional wisdom.

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Therefore, it seems sensible to seek to modify the conceptual end state—including the language of “democracy” and “liberalism”—that dominates the industry (Ponzio 2010). Transforming the liberal end state is necessary to modify the mindsets, frameworks, assumptions, policy models, and operational guidelines that prevail among donors and external peacebuilders. Without refocusing the strategic goal of peacebuilding, liberal assumptions and formulas will continue to squeeze out more inclusionary or participatory approaches. But what feasible and desirable alternative frameworks are there to liberal peacebuilding? Even recent articulate and thoughtful critics have difficulty coming up with viable alternatives that can attract the support of scholars, much less the more constrained policymakers and practitioners of international organizations (Newman, Paris, and Richmond 2009). Authoritarianism—and Repression Let us quickly dispense with the most obvious alternative to liberal peacebuilding: authoritarian or nondemocratic regimes or exclusionary state structures.1 Stepping away from “democratization” as an end or means of state legitimation would seem to require that international actors be open to some authoritarian strains of governance. Paris (2004, 180) explicitly considers this alternative, and he rejects authoritarianism because “it would rely on the permanent, forcible suppression of contestation” that would engender resistance. In fact, we saw in chapter 6 that many authoritarian states offer some of the most durable instances of nonrecurrence. The use of demonstrably violent repression against political dissidents can both eliminate armed opponents and remove the incentive to rebel, in some cases for decades. Authoritarianism is unappealing because it embodies a lack of even the possibility of fulfilling either individual (liberal) or group (communitarian) aspirations. Embracing authoritarian governance is not appealing for another reason: It requires repression. It suppresses contestation and breeds resentment and alienation. Obviously, these sentiments erode legitimacy, but they may not lead to armed rebellion in the short or medium run. Many empirical experiences of postwar authoritarianism—consider Vietnam and Syria—involve the repression and exclusion of wartime foes. Only through repression did these regimes survive and avoid war recurrence. It is both unrealistic and objectionable on humanitarian grounds to expect international actors to embrace severe repression as the route to avoiding renewed warfare. It is one thing to downplay the authoritarian traits of elected postconflict regimes, as donors have done in places like Cambodia and Guatemala. It is quite another to openly embrace severe repression in authoritarian regimes as a path to stability. Such policies fly in the face of the long-standing normative commitments of donors and international

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organizations, and would open Western states adopting them to scathing internal criticism. Revisiting Republican Peacebuilding Illiberal peacebuilding, however, is not necessarily authoritarian. Michael Barnett (2006) proposes a “republican” alternative to liberal peacebuilding. His approach comes closer to providing the scaffolding for an inclusionary approach to peacebuilding and thus offers valuable remedies for liberalism’s neglect of issues of exclusion and legitimacy. For instance, Barnett (2006, 94) argues that modern republicanism (represented by Niccolò Machiavelli and James Madison, rather than their republican predecessor Aristotle) is concerned largely with stability in the face of contentious factions. Drawing on republican theory, Barnett suggests three core elements of republican postconflict peacebuilding: deliberation, representation, and constitutionalism. On deliberation, Barnett (2006, 94) praises Machiavelli’s view of “the domesticating influence of public deliberation; by compelling individuals to speak in the language of community they might develop a greater sense of patriotism, that is, a love of country.” In line with the need for multivalent forms of participation that I advanced above, he suggests that representation go beyond democratic elections to include alternative forms of participation (p. 102). Such participation may include consultations, but it rests principally with representatives that eschew direct participation by the masses. Finally, Barnett calls for constitutional constraints that divide power and regulate the behavior of representatives. He contends that “all constitutional systems have (1) an agreement over the rules of the game and the underlying principles that are to maintain the political order; (2) rules and institutions that limit the exercise of power; and (3) rules that are relatively difficult to amend” (p. 105). In this Barnett falls not far from liberal theory and its concern with the social contract. Yet the assumptions inherent in republican thought are of questionable application to poor, weak states. Republican theory seems to assume that individuals and social groups already enjoy security, presumably within a single, statelike entity that provides the locus for debate and exchange of views. Patten (1996, 26) sets forth “the central republican problem, which is to identify the conditions under which a society can maintain the institutions of its freedom, despite [a] tendency to corruption.” Republican theory emerged from a Western context that took the state system for granted and assumed certain state functions and attendant capacities that exhibited sustained security from organized violence. Patten describes republicanism’s concern with reinstating “the proper value of community and public service.” Barnett’s call for deliberation echoes this concern. But how can one choose to dedicate one’s time to community or public

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service without some sense that one is safe and that such “service” will not lead to personal danger, group peril, or enhanced social conflict? The republican worldview emphasizes the dangers of factions, but its solutions seem blind to the ever-present possibility of armed violence and a perilous aggravation of social hatreds. Thus Barnett’s call for constitutionalism rests on an assumption of highly formalized institutions that constrain actors. It fallaciously presumes, rather than helps constitute, the requisite consensus on the rules of the game by society’s main groups. Madison and Hamilton emphasize the need for checks and balances (mechanisms that can certainly enhance internal state legitimacy and may reflect power dividing) to curb authoritarian tendencies. Nevertheless, the assumed milieu does not correspond to a fragile cease-fire amid intense identity conflict. Republican theory fails to recognize the intensity of group affiliation and loyalty. As Patten (1996, 26) says, “By assuming that there is some single good—such as civic friendship or self-government—that is a good for everyone, republicans seem insensitive to difference.” In this sense Barnett’s proposals for extended debates to reach shared understandings and views seem somewhat archaic, oddly reminiscent of the security enjoyed by eighteenth-century diplomacy. They appear incognizant of the simmering, hate-laced social relations among so many postwar societies. The notion of convening a series of conversations whereby shared understandings may emerge is attractive, and one that critical theorists like Richmond and Franks (2009, 212) also seem to favor. However, without some attention to security— to who will ensure safety against roving and (almost always) still-armed factions—such conversations are likely to lead to assassinations, threats, circumscribed debate, or mass violence in the extreme. Revisiting State Building as Peacebuilding The state-building agenda has much to offer the study and practice of postwar peacebuilding. It remedies some long-standing deficiencies in liberal theories and donor practices in postconflict societies. Nevertheless, scholars have identified at least three important challenges or shortcomings vis-à-vis state building. First, the empirical testing of the relationship between state strength and civil war recurrence, or even a sustained quality of peace, is difficult and in its early stages. The crux lies in the conceptualization, definition, and operationalization of state institutions and of peace, and it is difficult to identify measures enjoying widespread agreement. Second, the approach yields policies that are too blindly supportive of states with too little regard for whether they exclude, abuse, repress, or cheat their populations. For instance the recent emphasis by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

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on channeling resources through the state is a welcome antidote to the international tendency to channel money through external organizations.2 Without the means to provide for and distribute resources, states have little means by which to garner legitimacy, and political representation means little. However, the DAC’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness treats all states as if they are equally legitimate and without serious problems. It fails to recognize that there are sometimes good reasons not to channel international aid resources through the state, because they will only line the pockets of a few corrupt individuals, enabling unrepresentative leadership and failing to advance development. Third and related, the state-building agenda remains too focused on capacity. Despite paying lip service to state legitimacy, most of the works on state building in postwar societies focus on enhancing institutional capacity. Scholars like Fukuyama, Krasner, Zartman, Ghani and Lockhart, and Chesterman address how state structures and institutions and processes are important to institutionalizing bargains designed to include or exclude specific social groups and armed actors. However, this nod to legitimacy is overshadowed by a privileging of advancing the professionalism, service delivery, and efficiency of state institutions. Ghani and Lockhart (2008, 124), for instance, focus on the need to foster ten core functions of the state.3 Most of these functions are technical in nature, such as administrative control, public finance, infrastructure provision, public borrowing, and managing public assets: “We maintain that consensus on a specific set of functions provides the vital agreement for international agreement on . . . creative responses to the challenge of state-building.” Similarly, the World Development Report 2011 (World Bank 2011, 270) calls for “investing in the provision of citizen security, justice and jobs” as the key to preventing repeated cycles of violence. The report’s welcome emphasis on a broader understanding of postconflict violence emphasizes judicious enhancements of national and international capacities. It calls for fostering “inclusive-enough” coalitions that can provide buy-in, especially from leaders and factions that could prove to be spoilers of a peace process (World Bank 2011, 139; Stedman 1997; Gates and Strøm 2007; Nilsson 2008). However, it has less to say about how external actors can build inclusive coalitions. Without attention to legitimacy, capacity building can deepen illegitimacy and the likelihood of war by leaving a state better able to mistreat, exclude, or swindle its population. One reason for this focus on capacity is that it is both more difficult and more politically perilous for external actors to try to build state legitimacy than to build capacity. The former implicitly calls into question the authority of those who control the state, whereas the latter strengthens this authority. Scholars of state building have especially neglected horizontal legitimacy in postconflict societies. Sustained peace requires more than legitimacy via either well-articulated long-term state–society relations or broad calls for popular par-

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ticipation or simplistic prescriptions of democracy or elections. Adequate address of state legitimacy also includes the representational element of the armed protagonists of civil war and especially of the social groups that they purport to represent. Horizontal legitimacy should lie at the center of analysis of the role of the state in postconflict peacebuilding. In addition, the state-building focus on institutionalization and professionalization of the organs of the state downplays the role of civil society. The crucial vectors of state–society relations and trust at the local level remain deemphasized. Revisiting Critical Peacebuilding Theory Recall that critics of the liberal peacebuilding approach score the international pressure for neoliberal economic policies and liberal democratic political models. They also reject the emphasis of state-building theorists on the state itself and “governmentality.” As we saw in chapter 1, Richmond and Franks (2009, 6), criticize the prevailing convergence of “balance of power, hegemony, institutionalism and constitutionalism, and civil society” in an externally imposed, Western self-serving, and one-size-fits-all approach to postconflict societies (see also Autesserre 2010). Although cogent alternative approaches are not widely shared, an emphasis on broader and deeper participation on the part of the population in postconflict societies is a central element of this vision. The contribution of this approach is that it leads us away from single models of any sort of approach to postconflict societies. Critical theorists focus on context-specific analysis and policymaking. They also expose the interests that underlie external actors. Peacebuilding projects represent an exercise of power by powerful states and serve foreign economic interests. Being mindful of power in these interactions permits a clearer understanding of how they may contradict the interests of the population at large and of specific groups within postwar countries, along with the interests of their elites. This approach also usefully highlights the need for long-term legitimation. The shortcoming of these critical theorists is their lack of recognition of the need for minimum interests of potential spoilers to be addressed. This study finds that state institutions, and the participation of elites in them, are vital to the maintenance of stability. Neither justice nor affluence is possible without stability, which is a chief concern of poor and marginalized populations. “Governance” is crucial to making peace stick, even though that governance serves the interests of powerful external actors and is often implemented in ways that harm the economic well-being and political participation of the broader populace. Stepping back to examine these four principal theoretical approaches to postwar peacebuilding, one can draw some generalizations. Each of these theoretical approaches to peacebuilding offers important insights and contributions

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to the phenomenon. As shown in chapter 1, they often respond to deficiencies in previously articulated approaches. These contributions are genuine and substantial. Nevertheless, each of the main approaches fails to adequately recognize the causal factors identified in this study. Horizontal legitimacy, expressed most directly through some inclusion of former combatants and their associated populations in state offices, is the touchstone of peace consolidation. This book’s findings support the argument that the dominant approaches to peacebuilding do not place issues of political exclusion and inclusion sufficiently at the center of theory. Instead we have liberal democracy, which overemphasizes vertical legitimacy and underemphasizes (or explicitly eschews) horizontal legitimacy. One sees a republican peacebuilding that underrecognizes intense ethnic identities and loyalties and that places too much faith in the possibility of a dialogue that will not suffer attacks or lead to renewed violence. State-building approaches emphasize the functions and services of the state and thus implicitly focus excessively on its capacity rather than its legitimacy. And critical peacebuilding theorists eschew elite politics and deal making, pointing toward a greater involvement of civil society as the ticket to consolidating peace. The main contributions and shortcomings of each of these theoretical approaches are identified in table 8.1, which synthesizes the preceding analysis. Given the shortcomings of these principal theoretical approaches to peacebuilding, can one formulate an alternative? In the next subsection I turn to this question. Legitimacy-Focused Peacebuilding Two central findings of this book are that exclusion is highly correlated with civil war recurrence, and that inclusion is very highly correlated with the absence of recurrence, or “negative” peace. This finding suggests that national elites and international actors can foster sustained peace if they seek to meet the parties’ expectations about their role in governance even after initial elections and into the future. Various sorts of inclusionary behavior can meet this expectation. Powersharing in its various guises may do so, but so also may access to power by holding mayorships or a few posts in cabinet ministries or on local councils as a result of elections rather than fixed arrangements. In short, inclusion can include powersharing, power dividing, or simply access to compete in elections if poor results do not violate expectations concerning representation in the state. Once spoilers have been mollified in the early stages of war termination, then medium-term stability requires managing those spoilers by including some of them in accord with their expectations. However, minimal inclusion in government represents a highly mechanistic view of participation and the state. Although the cases point to inclusion as a

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Table 8.1 Key Contributions and Shortcomings of the Main Theoretical Approaches to Peacebuilding Approach

Contributions

Shortcomings

Liberal peacebuilding

Focus on political nature of peacebuilding Focus on rights as basis for stable polity

Overemphasis on vertical legitimacy, especially democracy and elections, versus horizontal legitimacy Too little concern with quality of elected governments Overly individualistic, insufficient focus on group interests and insecurities

Republican peacebuilding

Focus on finding common ground among factions Focus on tolerance Focus on intergroup dialogue

Presumes single common “good” Too blind to group identities and loyalties Neglects possibility of “virtuous” inclusionary policies in the absence of dialogue or interaction

State building as peacebuilding

Focus on state arena Offers framework of state legitimacy for addressing inclusion

Overemphasis on state capacity over legitimacy Overemphasis on state rather than legitimate authority at substate and suprastate levels

Critical peacebuilding theorists

Emphasis on long-term sustainable legitimacy Eschews one-size-fits-all formulae Focus on civil society participation

Undervalues elite politics and deal making Neglects threat posed by spoilers Rejects statism, conflating it with liberalism

crucial element, the historical context and linked factors in these cases suggest that a broader understanding of how new postwar governments relate to the main groups of the population is necessary. If stability requires inclusion of the main social factions in the state, it is because state institutions require internal legitimacy. To be sustained, that inclusion must be understood as part of state–society relations that are minimally institutionalized and accepted—that is, legitimate. State legitimacy, especially horizontal legitimacy, offers the conceptual mechanism for a more holistic understanding of the relationship for which inclusion serves as the most visible manifestation. Consequently, a concept of peacebuilding that encompasses not just inclusion of elites but also focuses more broadly on legitimation is appropriate. This book’s findings suggest a greater focus on legitimacy in peacebuilding. I have here used the cases examined in a heuristic manner to formulate an approach called “legitimacy-focused peacebuilding.” This term constitutes neither

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a well-developed theory nor a wholly original approach to peacebuilding. I draw freely on the positive features identified in existing approaches. And this approach is not as theoretically developed or philosophically grounded as the approaches described above. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding sees the consolidation of peace as dependent foremost on a state whose main social groups see the state as offering them acceptable levels of representation and participation. The state and its institutions are important, but the state’s relationship to society, including its composition, occupies a privileged position over capacity in this view. Again, state legitimacy and capacity are interrelated insofar as the capacity of the state to deliver basic services influences legitimacy—but service delivery is not the sole or even the primary criterion for overall legitimacy. State legitimation reflects tumultuous historical processes. Recalling the sources of internal legitimacy, the “embedded” element of the legitimacy of a particular state is extremely difficult to modify in the space of a few years. The delivery of specific goods and services reflects state capacity and is important for performance legitimacy. However, the cases analyzed above demonstrate that performance legitimacy per se is not as important as the perception that the state and its leaders are acting in a way that will not exclude, repress, or silence minority (or majority) ethnic, religious, or class-based groups, especially those involved in the prior armed conflict. Process legitimacy is the principal form of legitimacy that is relevant for an inclusionary pattern of conduct by the state. Of course, exclusionary behavior can be reflected in the delivery of goods and services, especially where the state controls a high portion of income via natural resources. Governments often flagrantly exclude certain social or political groups in providing access to revenues that are channeled through the state. In most such circumstances, however, those social groups are also excluded from political processes. Crucially, elections do not alone constitute process legitimacy internally. They may provide a certain degree of legitimacy for the population and even underrepresented groups that “lose” in the process. However, if social groups, even after elections, perceive that their access to power is inordinately curtailed—via exclusion from the military or police forces, from appointments to cabinet positions, from alternative levels of authority, or from territorial autonomy—then political processes have not conferred sufficient legitimacy. Indeed all three cases of failed peace processes after the close of successful peacekeeping operations (Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor) turned on the exclusionary practices of governments empowered by internationally supported and celebrated elections. Two crucial challenges to this notion of inclusion merit attention. First, what of the critique that elite-brokered inclusionary deals, especially where powersharing ensues with its built-in marginalization of third parties and the masses, can breed resentment and new exclusion that sparks new armed conflict? Do not

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these elite-brokered inclusionary arrangements inherently exclude others who may revert to combat—resulting in a “locked-out masses” problem? Second, are there some factions or leaders whose inclusion would undermine internal and external legitimacy? Might the inclusion of such unsavory actors endanger peace if they enjoy or acquire a reputation as illegitimate, prompting a rejection by some factions or social groups of the entire political process and even the postwar state? Here one can think of combatant commanders accused of war crimes, mass atrocities, or terrorism—producing a backlash against elite-brokered deals that “embrace the reviled.” Just as the Paris Declaration’s imperative to channel aid through the state seems blind to the problem of corrupt, abusive, or illegitimate states, is the imperative to include criminal or brutal individuals or factions in the postwar polity equally blind? These two problems are alleviated by emergent norms governing postwar political conduct. Here I utilize the same principle identified above about historically contingent options and constraints that reflect new normative environments. Just as the practices of mediated settlements grew once the Cold War ended, so too have new norms emerged regarding the “locked-out masses” problem and the “embracing-the-reviled” problem. First, it is increasingly difficult for internal elites and international actors to foster a negotiated agreement in which some broader popular participation is not involved. Certainly elite-brokered pacts remain a prevalent and positive tool of conflict resolution and mediation processes. However, given the spread of global civil society, transnational demands for greater popular voices in state-level governance, and increased pressures by bilateral powers and intergovernmental organizations, virtually all such mediation processes encounter demands for broader public engagement. Civil society organizations seek a seat at negotiating tables, and they have increasingly found such a seat since the innovative involvement of civil society in Guatemala’s transition in the mid-1990s. External development actors at least pay lip service to taking transitional political processes beyond narrow elites to include some level of popular input and participation. Critical theorists’ critique of the absence of local-level or mass voices and participation in peacebuilding remains well founded, but elites can no longer get away with cutting static deals among themselves without a recognition of the need to involve the mass level of various constituencies. Consequently, legitimacy-focused peacebuilding conceptually encompasses long-term legitimacy that reflects broader participation. Wider horizontal legitimacy includes the perceptions of the social groups mobilized in warfare. The inclusion of the elites in political bargains may not be sustainable if it comes at the cost of the exclusion of the broader population in the longer term. Legitimacyfocused peacebuilding must ensure that the interests—and therefore the voices and participation—of the masses of the population also have a stake in postwar

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peacebuilding. The march of thinking has expanded from including armed factions to including economic elite interests to including civil society and the broader population in postwar governance. As for the second problem of “embracing the reviled,” regimes governing international human rights and transnational crime make it somewhat more difficult for war criminals and alleged perpetrators of atrocities to become part of the political order in internationally supported transitions. The universal jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the increased codification of major violations of human rights help constitute a much stronger and broader web for catching the most egregious transgressors. Of course this regime and the transnational crime regime remain highly selective, inconsistent, and politicized in practice. For example, the persistence in the Afghan Cabinet of warlords accused of war crimes, such as those involved in transnational crime there and elsewhere, demonstrates the limits of this norm. As seen in chapter 9, candidate selection is one window whereby international actors can influence the inclusion of political leaders who may undermine the overall legitimacy of a transition or a postwar state; however, such action may well be seen as outside interference and prompt political backlash. Genuine trade-offs sometimes arise where inclusionary behavior may result in the accession to power of a faction or individual whose presence undermines state legitimacy. Under such circumstances, external and internal actors may perforce accept the temporary inclusion of these unsavory and delegitimizing leaders with the hope that criminal sanctions or popular sentiment may eventually politically incapacitate them. Human rights and criminal justice mechanisms that have shown their reach and tenacity well after transitions have involved senior state offices for the accused, as shown by the cases of Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Serbia’s Slobodan Miloševic, and Kosovo’s Ramush Haradinaj. Whereas one segment of the population usually intensely supports such individuals, another reviles them, which leads to a conundrum for horizontal legitimacy. Even with strengthened mechanisms of global criminal justice, however, they generally take time and do not adequately or consistently address the problem of embracing reviled leaders. Here I present legitimacy-focused peacebuilding as a skeletal framework for orienting postwar peacebuilding activities. The following statements are intended to clarify the main traits of this admittedly underdeveloped approach: 1. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding sees the political process as crucial because it lies at the crux of economic, social and institutional processes. 2. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding focuses on the relationship between state and society, encompassing the state and its legitimacy,

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4.

5.

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but going beyond it to other forms of authority and emphasizing their articulation with society. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding acknowledges the importance of state services and state capacity but subordinates it to the process of legitimation of authority. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding emphasizes the importance of perceived legitimacy of authority among both potential spoilers (elites) and the entire population. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding acknowledges the role of electoral processes as legitimizing events, but it sees alternative forms of consultation and participation as useful vehicles for legitimacy. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding sees the postelection moment as especially perilous for peace. It urges sustained, creative engagement to enhance inclusionary state behavior after elected governments take office. Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding eschews two hallmarks of liberalism: the framework of democratization and neoliberal economic policies.

Legitimacy-focused peacebuilding serves here as a conceptual orientation to respond to the empirics of the cases of postconflict peacebuilding failures. It also draws on an examination of the pool of successes and failures of postwar peacebuilding. The principles described above provide a skeleton around which better understandings of the peacebuilding process, and its multiple outcomes, can be analyzed. It also offers clear conceptual alternatives to the most prevalent theoretical approaches to peacebuilding. However, the development of this conceptual approach by no means answers such crucial policy questions as the following: 1. Who should undertake such legitimacy-building efforts? 2. If internal actors should undertake these efforts, then which internal actors are best positioned to do so? 3. Will the internal actors with the capacity to act have the will, and vice versa? If not, what incentives might change their calculations? 4. What can external actors do to advance legitimate authority in postconflict societies? Will such efforts have the intended effect? These last questions are important in light of the disjuncture and even contradictions that have come to light between certain scholarly causal claims and policy responses. More simply put, the discovery or claim in the social sciences that factor A is correlated with outcome B does not necessarily mean that policy

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actions intended to enhance or stimulate A actually lead to B. Why not? Because other variables intervene, and because the action to stimulate A may itself produce other consequences that undermine or interfere with the desired impact on B. One prominent and relevant example took international relations by storm in the 1980s and 1990s: the democratic peace thesis. The thesis—democratic countries do not go to (interstate) war with one another—has extremely strong empirical support. Critics debate not the degree of empirical support for the thesis but whether there are any exceptions to it (Doyle 1986; Russett 1993; Russett and O’Neal 2001; Layne 1994; Maoz and Abdolali 1989). However, Snyder (2000) and Mansfield and Snyder (2005) show that efforts to initiate democracy in certain polities often have the unintended consequence of sparking armed conflict and thus undermining democracy and peace. Even if one agrees that democracy favors interstate peace, democratization does not foster peace unproblematically. As we saw above, democratization in Burundi and Rwanda coincided with renewed civil wars in those countries. Given the potential disjuncture between scholarly claims and prudent policies, what are the implications of the findings of this book for those who seek to consolidate peace? Who should undertake legitimacy-focused peacebuilding? Is it possible to “build” legitimacy, and to do so without causing harm? 4 The next chapter takes up these questions and thus offers conclusions for policy and practice. But before turning to these conclusions, it is important to acknowledge and reflect on some of this study’s main shortcomings or limitations.

Addressing Limitations The study makes ambitious claims about theory, method, and policy approaches to postwar peacebuilding. At the same time, the study exhibits several shortcomings, including the limits of the methodology, the concepts used, the empirics, and the argument. These limitations simultaneously suggest further lines of inquiry and thinking. This section addresses three of these weaknesses and some of their implications for the study of war and peacebuilding. Broadly speaking, I present each of these lines of inquiry in the order of its potential scope and significance. The Argument First, the argument advanced here—that sustained peace depends upon the inclusion of former enemies and the social groups associated with them—is not new. Others have pointed to the concept of exclusion as well as the main mechanism of inclusion, powersharing, in accounting for civil war outcomes, if not the

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less-researched concept of war recurrence. However, this study uses quantitative methods as a jumping off point for more in-depth qualitative research on a pool of cases. Even if one contests the criteria for creating the pool of cases, any adjustment of the pool would be unlikely to reverse the prevalent role of exclusionary behavior in recurrences, and of inclusionary mechanisms in the cases of nonrecurrence. Yet the principal manifestation of inclusion—powersharing—exhibits wellknown weaknesses. As analyzed in chapter 1, these weaknesses are (1) inflexibility; (2) a tendency to marginalize broader participation, at the expense of “vertical legitimacy”; and (3) exclusion of the most marginal or tertiary ethnic, social, or political groups. The Lebanese case exemplifies the problems of inflexible powersharing, because fixed quotas of state offices did not allow for evolving population growth, and much less for the influence of large numbers of noncitizen refugees whose presence altered society. These weaknesses underscore the possibility that powersharing will end in mass violence. However, this study’s empirics suggest that the likelihood of recurrence under powersharing is overstated. Moreover, comparable to measures that can mitigate the tensions inherent in inclusion of unsavory leaders, scholars and policy analysts have in recent years emphasized a number of ways to embrace the utility of powersharing while reducing its negative attributes. For instance, powersharing can be limited in time to a few years, after which a more flexible system of power (or elections) comes into effect, possibly including majoritarian elements. Similarly, the scope of powersharing can be scaled back over time, which gradually opens state offices to electoral processes or unrestricted appointments. Alternatively, powersharing arrangements can be revisited after a number of years, either through new elite negotiations or through a referendum or electoral process. One salient example of both these last mechanisms is the multifaceted (territorial, security, economic, and political) powersharing arrangement that ended Sudan’s second civil war in 2005. That agreement provided for elections after four years to replace a number of apportioned government posts, and for a referendum on South Sudanese independence after a six-year period. Another means of diminishing the shortcomings of powersharing is by adopting a system whose referents are “generic” minorities, determined through electoral outcomes, rather than concrete ethnic or religious groups. Thus the top four parties may be associated with shifting ethnic or social groups over time, which injects a flexibility that undermines rather than reinforces the reigning identity groups at the time of transition. Powersharing advocates increasingly also acknowledge the utility of these various means to mitigate the downsides of powersharing. Finally, it bears noting that powersharing, which figures prominently in my findings, has not been tested in this study. Although powersharing emerges as the most salient form of inclusion in sustaining peace, I did not use

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a method that permits me to determine the extent to which powersharing correlates with success or failure. That approach, carried out by others with regard to negotiated settlements (Hartzell and Hoddie 2007) and democracies, would have required examining the pool of instances of powersharing. That question is different from the one this study explores about why peace fails or succeeds, but its urgent relevance is made apparent by my findings. The Method Second, this study seeks to do something novel methodologically. It uses both quantitative methods and a more in-depth case study, but it combines these with mini–case studies of the entire pool of civil wars that experience recurrent armed conflict. It also draws heuristically on the pool of civil wars that do not recur. This tripartite method—seeking not only quantitative methods and case studies but also a middle ground of extremely short, focused case studies—has some deficiencies in both concept and execution. Conceptually, it is impossible for anyone to perform numerous mini–case studies with the degree of contextual vibrancy and fullness that in-depth case studies offer. Case specialists will always find themselves dissatisfied with the omission of key elements and causal relationships that did not make the cut. By drawing on a structured, focused tablet of hypothesized independent variables, any researcher will omit the unique or case-specific explanatory factors that have not been proposed or hypothesized. Using primary source material on such a large pool of cases is impossible except in large, well-funded collective research projects—which are discouraged by academic career incentives. Furthermore, comparativists (among whom I count myself) may find the comparison of widely disparate cases like Russia, East Timor, and Sudan excessively ahistorical and decontextualized, especially in the absence of regional similarities that act as controls. Although these sorts of disparate comparisons are at the core of quantitative work, such methods purport to control for potentially relevant variables, which renders the causal relationship more reliable than when such controls are not able to be exercised. In terms of execution here, the linear regressions presented would have been more robust and persuasive if they had included more complex methods. They could also have utilized armed conflicts themselves as the unit of analysis, rather than a country whose inclusion is clouded by multiple or unrelated armed conflicts, which unduly reduced the data set. In addition, the single case study of Liberia relies on secondary sources for judgments about things such as the quality if interwar peace and the role of various factors in recurrence. And experts may criticize the analyses contained in the mini–case studies, even in condensed form.

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Despite these flaws, the method of short, focused case studies also shows promise for future research on related topics. The presentation of such case studies, especially where the entire universe of cases can be covered, addresses the main deficiencies of the two most prevalent methodological approaches: large-N quantitative studies and a few in-depth case studies. As described in chapter 1, large-N quantitative studies cannot address variables that do not lend themselves to useful proxies or measurement. Case studies, including mini–case studies, can address such hypothesized factors. Furthermore, covering the full scope of cases gives the reader a sense of understanding of the dynamics at work for all the cases, which permits the identification of patterns and an understanding of interaction among different variables as well as the role of different levels of analysis. In-depth case studies, of course, offer all these advantages, but it is simply not possible to construct a dozen or two dozen such in-depth case studies in a way that is either feasible for researchers or digestible for the general reader. Concepts and Terms Third, and finally, this study shows the limits of the concepts of “civil war” and even “armed conflict,” which suggests the fruitfulness of exploring concepts that capture the complexities of contemporary organized violence. For most of the twentieth century, scholars of international security focused excessively on interstate warfare, a situation that changed only with the end of the Cold War and the decline of interstate warfare. During the 1990s scholarship focused increasingly on “civil wars,” and some specialists in interstate warfare brought their concepts to bear on these civil wars (Posen 1993; Walter and Snyder 1999; Walter 2004). The reality of organized violence in the past twenty years (and perhaps decades earlier) calls for scholars to explicitly recognize the limits of these concepts of warfare, on three grounds. First, the clean demarcation of cross-border warfare and intrastate warfare is obsolete. Many of the cases of intrastate recurrence explored here—Georgia, Lebanon, Sudan, Nicaragua, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, the Central African Republic, and Haiti—involved extrastate armed actors or sponsors of armed actors. The Peace Research Institute Oslo–Uppsala Conflict Data Program data set shows that only three armed conflicts of the most recently coded decade (1999–2008) were interstate wars that involved no intrastate armed forces (viz., Djibouti / Eritrea, 2008; Ethiopia / Eritrea, 1998–2000; and India / Pakistan in Kashmir, 2003). A new category of warfare—proxy wars—also deserves more attention. Some have suggested that the reason Africa records very few interstate wars is that these take the form of proxy wars instead (Craig 2011). As Salehyan (2008, 2010) shows, rebels are agents who seek out support from external sponsors, take action across borders, and attack across borders to draw more supporters

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and resources, often ensnaring other states as enemies. Conversely, states can constitute rebel organizations in other countries or inside their own borders to attack other states and to feed, arm, train, advise, and provide legitimacy and other communications support to such proxies. The relationship between state sponsors and their proxies requires much more research, and it falls through the cracks of most of our conceptual maps. Second, if civil wars are wars between two formed armies, then what happens when one side is not an army at all? Scholars must increasingly recognize the various and increasingly important roles played by civilians—as agents of violence, as victims, or as active supporters—in relation to armed combatants. There are various dimensions to this relationship. One is that scholars need to devote more attention to analyzing “one-sided violence” and its relation to more conventional notions of warfare. Andrew Mack and the Human Security Research Group have made pathbreaking progress in emphasizing this form of violence as distinct from warfare and going beyond genocide (Human Security Research Group 2005, 2009). It is clear that one-sided violence is a salient subject in its own right. What is not clear is how one-sided violence interacts with more conventional warfare. Many of the cases included in the Fearon and Laitin (2003) data set would not be counted as “civil wars” by many observers. Some, like the Central African Republic, come closer to coups involving dozens of deaths, whereas others represent high levels of one-sided violence. The cases of Rwanda, Burundi, Haiti, and others demonstrate the need for more discriminating concepts of what have been called “civil wars.” They also show the importance of analyzing how “onesided violence” interacts over territory and across borders with organized armed factions (civil, interstate, or proxy war). When does one-sided violence breed insurgent movements or trigger their attacks? Does one-sided violence draw in third-party armies / peacekeepers more often than what are seen to be civil wars? Do external states react differently once a civil war becomes one-sided violence? In addition to one-sided violence, the role of civilians further challenges our understanding of war. The most obvious is that civilians frequently comprise the bulk of both “combatants” and casualties. Attacks are often carried out by “civilians” who take on combat roles for only a few hours. Personally, for instance, I recall my experience in the late 1980s living in a village in El Salvador, where the guerrillas sadly pressured children to participate in brief nighttime excursions to burn buses in neighboring villages. And civilians conduct training and indoctrination for warfare, not to mention financing. The Human Security Research Group (2009) has also drawn attention to the role of civilians as the principal, often uncounted, victims of warfare in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where their flight from combat leads to disease and hunger-related deaths. Because these are not combat-related deaths, they are not conventionally counted as casualties of war. As the events in Libya of 2011 illustrate, civil-

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ian demonstrators and protesters can also spark internal armed conflicts, and even civil wars, if armies split and states militarize such contests. More broadly, other nonstate civilian actors—including members of diasporas, multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and regional intergovernmental organizations—also play increasing roles in armed conflicts. These multifaceted roles of civilians and how they relate to combat have received increased attention in recent years, but this scholarship has been poorly integrated into broader understandings of civil wars and their recurrence. In summary, the study of civil wars, their recurrence, and warfare more generally requires more nuanced concepts for the contemporary world. By delving into the specifics of the cases that are captured by some of the best data sets, data that are used to draw high-profile and widely read scholarly works on civil wars, this book reveals the diversity of these cases. Rather than assuming that more numerous and discriminating control variables can ensure that comparable events are being compared, scholars should press to develop more discriminating concepts that differentiate these kinds of violence in ways that might lead to better understandings, enhanced theory, and improved policy. The implications for this last arena—policy and practice—are especially important in a field so intertwined with those who actively seek to advance peace, justice, and development. The final chapter turns to these implications. Notes 1. Paris (2004, 181–82) also addresses partition as an alternative. However, partition is one solution that parties may reach through dialogue, and renegotiating state borders is not incompatible with liberal traditions. 2. See the 2005 Paris Declaration and the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action, both at www.oecd.org / document / 18 / 0,3343,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00& &en-USS_01DBC.html. 3. Zartman’s works are useful to consult—see Zartman (1977, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c) and Zartman and Berman (1982). 4. On “doing no harm” in postconflict state building and peacebuilding, see Call (2008a); DAC-OECD (2007).

9 Conclusions for Policy and Practice Can External Actors Build Legitimacy after War? the enterprise of consolidating peace fails in a high percentage of cases, often within the first few years of a cease-fire. Transforming states and their relationships with societies is even more challenging, and the role of external actors is complex and fraught with risks. The previous chapter explains how postwar inclusion of elites is tied to theoretical notions of state legitimacy, and advocates a “legitimacy-focused peacebuilding” that contains elements of, but differs from, liberal, democratizing, republican, state-capacity-focused, and critical approaches to peacebuilding. Given how difficult it seems for outside actors to foster inclusionary behavior and the state legitimacy that seems so central to making peace stick, is there a role for external legitimacy building? What role, if any, can outsiders play in fostering inclusion and legitimacy? The behavior of elites toward different ethnic or religious groups is shaped by numerous factors that are historically rooted, economically driven, and resistant to outside pressures. National elites and their own leadership (Machiavelli’s virtu) have historically proven decisive in the process of laying the foundation for a legitimate state in a war-torn society, one in which divided groups eventually consent to conform to the political order and acknowledge, albeit begrudgingly, the authority of political structures, rules, norms, and governments. Exclusionary behavior occurs foremost through the agency of national elites, especially office holders. The ability of international actors to influence such behavior is not straightforward. A less politically engaged role for donors and the UN system— focusing on state capacity, basic needs like health and education, social dialogue, or verifying peace agreements—might seem to make more sense than trying to engage the complex and perilous process of enhancing horizontal legitimacy in war-torn societies. This final chapter argues the contrary. I contend that there is a positive role for external actors in enhancing inclusionary behavior and legitimacy-focused peacebuilding, despite the limits and perils of their influence. Those perils are PAST EXPERIENCE INDICATES THAT

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extraordinary. External actors face systematic and, in most ways, growing constraints in their ability to shape the legitimacy of postwar states through deliberate efforts. The chapter begins with the formidable obstacles facing external actors to engage in the tasks of enhancing inclusionary governance and building legitimate authority. It then returns to the earlier point that no single formula or model of inclusionary governance will guarantee legitimacy. However, I do find a set of persistent challenges, trade-offs, or decision points common to most postwar societies. The chapter then breaks down the process of transition from warfare into four “moments,” or temporal junctures, whose dynamics differ from one another, but that hold some common challenges across most postconflict societies. These four moments are (1) the decision on what structures and which individuals will rule for an interim period, (2) the long-term “design” of the state, (3) elections and the end of an interim administration, and (4) the postelectoral period. Although the first three phases are important, it is the “postelection moment” where exclusionary behavior has led to recurrence in the case studies examined here, and the phase that has been neglected in research. The chapter outlines the particular challenges and possible steps to overcome them for each of these phases in a postconflict environment. In doing so, it advances several principles for peacebuilders that maximize the chances to overcome the obstacles to inclusion and state legitimacy described in the previous chapter.

Why Legitimacy Building Is Exceptionally Difficult Given the centrality of political legitimacy for peace consolidation, external actors must recognize up front the severe constraints on their ability to foster this legitimacy. It is difficult for multilateral or bilateral actors to deliberately enhance the legitimacy of a specific regime, and nigh impossible to do so consistently across the gamut of postconflict or fragile states. Why is that the case? The Inherent Conundrum of Enhancing Legitimacy from Without External efforts to enhance legitimacy represent an inherent conundrum or contradiction. To the extent that outside actors use either resources or leverage to influence the state or its relations with society, they substitute for or interfere with the relationship between state and society. The extensive literature on the informal state, the “shadow” state, and the “quasi-state” in Africa shows that the very effort to legitimize a state can and often does readily undermine that state’s legitimacy in important ways (Herbst 2000; Reno 1999; Jackson 1990). It creates or strengthens a constituency (viz., the outside actor) other than its core constituency (its own people). Even a “sincerely autonomous” request by

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national-level authorities for external assistance or recognition means that the state has sought out a competing constituency and, perhaps unwittingly, undercut its direct relationship with its own population. Of course, the recognition and support from international actors contributes in important ways to the legitimacy of a given state as well. Admission into regional or multilateral organizations confers more legitimacy on a polity than exclusion. Yet states that acquire a good portion (some receive more than 50 percent) of their revenues from donors must answer to these donors, often with fiscal and monetary policies that may attract foreign investment but have differential internal economic and political consequences. They may adversely affect not only the poor but also ethnic groups whose members see themselves as losing in such policies. Moreover, where populations know that nonstate outsiders provide services, they have no reason to respect, invest in, or heed national authorities. Incentives to follow electoral campaigns, vote, or lobby legislators evaporate when decisions about services and resource provision come from external actors. Political office seekers then have fewer grounds on which to make appeals, and thus turn to more symbolic politics, and perhaps identity politics. To the extent that elections and interest group relations with office holders function as sources of accountability or mediation of state–society relations, this accountability and mediation is weakened by the exercise of external leverage. Increased Resistance to the West Resistance to liberal policies and to perceived Western manipulation has increased in recent years. Boosted lately by resentment in the Muslim world at US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global South is articulating and acting on rejection of US and Western liberal notions. In 2001, for example, UN member states opted not to elect the United States to the Human Rights Commission for the first time since its creation in 1947. China and other “nontraditional donors” increasingly urge poor countries to reject the liberalizing and “democratization” conditionality that often accompanies aid from the West. In Latin America, the “pink tide” of governments aligned with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez signaled a surge of antineoliberal and, to a lesser extent, anti–United States stances in that region. The election of President Obama blunted the sharpest edges of this trend, but has not reversed the more structural elements of this reaction to US hegemony. In terms of Western efforts to build state legitimacy abroad, the perception that outside, hegemonic, Western, or imperial interests are orchestrating state reform or backing a particular set of elites can produce a backlash. Such a perception can lead to nationalist resentment, anger, and rejection of the national elites allied with the external interests. In effect, even if legitimacy builders are

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heeding national elites’ wishes and deferring to their judgments, they could still undermine the latters’ legitimacy solely by virtue of their external character. This “legitimacy-building conundrum” presents especially difficult hurdle in contemporary international relations in the wake of intensification of global Southern rhetorical resentment of Western dominance, especially in the Arab world. The Curious Strength of the Sovereignty Norm In recent years, scholars have increasingly proclaimed the demise, or at a minimum the attenuation, of the sovereignty norm that underlay the postwar international system. Even as some analysts have argued that Westphalian notions of sovereignty have never existed in reality, many analysts have argued that recent developments have eroded the sovereignty enjoyed by states since World War II.1 Several factors are allegedly at work: increased economic interdependence and activity; globalized communications; transnational regimes for trade, human rights, and transnational crime; and heightened expectations of states’ responsibilities to “protect,” to govern ungoverned spaces, and to deliver basic services (Rosecrance 2000; Keohane and Nye 1977; Ruggie 1993). Transnational sources of power, in this view, are inevitably supplanting sovereignty. And yet recent developments have shown that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of state sovereignty’s death are greatly exaggerated. Many states, especially the very strongest and very weakest, cling to state sovereignty in ways that systematically undermine the ability of international bodies or coalitions to engage domestic affairs within states, including some of the central state-building tasks. Diplomatic leverage respects certain boundaries much more than one might expect with the talk of globalization and the International Criminal Court. Oil-rich and corrupt dictators’ rule and riches remain unchallenged by Western states’ trade and foreign policies. The unwillingness of the world to enter into combat in Darfur emblemizes the strength of sovereignty in the face of perhaps the most widely agreed upon exception to its rules: genocide. Indeed, resource-rich states like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia have in many ways increased their leverage in the twenty-first century. Within the United Nations, the persistent success of the permanent five members of the Security Council in blocking a more representative council, of states that weaken the enforcement mechanisms of the UN Human Rights Council, and of poor states that oppose putting a “responsibility to protect” into practice all reflect a rejection of incursions on sovereignty. The sovereignty norm persists among weak states in a variety of ways that complicate international efforts. First, Western and international officials have limited leverage in dealing with sovereign states. They could use military force, but this is an option that is only used in the extreme, and often with unforeseen negative consequences—as the Iraq war reminded us. They can also exercise

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leverage by threatening to cut things like travel privileges, trade preferences, and diplomatic relations. Yet such steps are disproportionate for trying to stimulate political will to reform the judiciary or to seat a representative on an electoral tribunal. Of course, the aid for specific programs themselves can be threatened (or offered as incentives), but all too often sovereign states can enjoy the benefits of aid without in the end complying with the strings attached. And donors are reluctant to follow through on such threats, because it leaves them with no leverage and little to show to their constituents back home. As mentioned above, some poor states are also expressing a clearer rejection of political conditionality because they have been encouraged by competing nontraditional donors. In addition, development actors tend to see themselves as providing resources even to illegitimate regimes, emphasizing “getting along” with the government in order not to be cut off or kicked out of the country by sovereign states. They have historically been reluctant to threaten to withhold resources over “politics” (e.g., exclusionary behavior or a lack of transparency) that lie at the heart of legitimacy. Many development officials also resent the idea that peacekeeping organizations or diplomats might leverage their “neutral” development aid for political ends such as incentivizing spoilers or bolstering powersharing. The Negative Effects of “Democracy Promotion” Efforts to foster legitimacy also seem to face the same challenges that democracy promotion has faced. Indeed, given that democratic regimes are the main standard for legitimacy in the international system, why focus on “legitimacy building” at all, rather than democratization? After examining the contributions of democratization to the study of peacebuilding, this section sets forth several important advantages of legitimacy building over democracy promotion. However, both enterprises confront some of the same obstacles. First, it is important to recognize that democracies themselves are more internally stable and more prosperous than nondemocratic or anocratic regimes. They virtually never go to war with one another (Doyle 1986; Russett and O’Neal 2001; Ray 1998). Democracies are generally less likely to experience civil war than nondemocracies (Krain and Myers 1997; Henderson and Singer 2000).2 Moreover, democratic forms of authority enjoy support from oppressed and excluded populations (Ponzio 2010), and they hold an initial level of legitimacy within postauthoritarian societies, as reflected in the Arab Spring of 2011. However, the process of abetting democracy differs in its risks and consequences from the presence or existence of democracy. As mentioned above, even though democracy is positive, steps to reach it—namely, democratization and democracy promotion—are perilous and often harmful. Below I provide a more detailed analysis of elections; however, a few brief observations are warranted

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here. Although elections have come to epitomize the institution whereby rulers can supplant one another nonviolently, they can also spark social division and conflict, especially where uncertainty due to past authoritarianism or warfare reigns. As Kumar and Ottaway (1998, 230) admit in a volume that advocates the positive impact of elections for postconflict societies, “In the absence of a tradition of democratic contestation, elections in the aftermath of civil war can be highly divisive.” Multiparty democracy injects a chance at power, but also a chance for others to gain unfairly. Societies experiencing fair and competitive elections for the first time also face uncertainty about who might cheat and how, especially in the absence of an effective third-party arbiter of election behavior (be it the courts, a trusted electoral tribunal, or even an international third party). Unfortunately, international actors are often not authorized or are ill prepared to confront the worst cheating and election-related violence. Therefore, much like the situation in which a commitment problem can lead to violence between two parties whose relationship undergoes a transition once an overarching authority is weakened (Fearon 1998), so also a transition from a single-party regime to a multiparty one can spark violence centered on the electoral timetable. For external actors, promoting elections may channel attention and resources away from inclusion. As Carothers (2009, 10) says, “A narrow focus on the basic institutions of political competition, especially elections, may not help aid providers to arrive at ways of broadening inclusion, representation, and participation.” Most notable here is the role of elections in sparking mass violence. Mansfield and Snyder (2005, chap. 5) find that in countries undergoing transitions to democracy, the risk of interstate warfare goes up by a factor of four to fifteen. Snyder (2000) documents a number of instances where democratization, and specifically the introduction of competitive, multiparty elections, played a leading role in the onset of civil war. Prominent cases include the internal wars that became cross-border wars in Yugoslavia after 1991, Rwanda in 1990, Burundi in 1993, Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992, and Georgia in 1992 (Snyder 2000; Mansfield and Snyder 2005). Mansfield and Snyder (2005) describe the polarizing effect of elections via the stirring up of nationalism. The poster child for the violent potential of postwar national elections is Angola in 1991. During peace negotiations, UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi used the international fascination with a presidential election as a means to regroup, buy time, and test the opportunity to gain legitimate access to state power, without a commitment to abide by the results. Once his loss was apparent, he resumed warfare. Whereas the war before the elections had cost 100,000 to 350,000 in battle deaths, with hundreds of thousands displaced, the postelectoral violence was by most accounts even more deadly (Tvedten 1997, 111; also see Duke 1998; Stedman 2002). Between 300,000 and 500,000 people died just between the

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1992 elections and 1994, which illustrates the dangers of an ill-conceived rush to national-level winner-take-all elections.3 Since that tragedy, most policymakers and scholars have aggressively disavowed prompt presidential elections as a sufficient marker for democracy (US Agency for International Development 2005; United Nations Development Program 2007). They have instead championed the demobilization of insurgents before national elections (e.g., Liberia after 2003); the delay of elections until state institutions are sufficiently in place to manage potential instability (e.g., Kosovo); and the holding of municipal and / or legislative elections before presidential elections, a point to which I return below (Paris 2004). Each of these modifications of the crudest form of postwar democracy promotion signals a greater flexibility and context-specific approach to postconflict assistance. Even with these alterations to the “liberal” or “democratic” peacebuilding model (see Paris 2004; Ottaway 2000; Richmond and Franks 2009), however, elections continue to serve as the focal point for international legitimation efforts in postconflict settings. Thus the holding of a procedurally free and fair election is deemed to settle the question of internal and external legitimacy. External actors are understandably reluctant to broach indicators of broader illegitimacy, because these might be interpreted as stepping back from the principles of democracy. Within the “democratization” framework, national actors have no clear alternative framework within with which to challenge exclusionary behavior. The presumptive answer, aside from resort to violence, is to wait until the next election. And the international community is unlikely in the medium term to agree on an alternative regime type as preferable to some form of competitive multiparty electoral system (on democracy assistance, see Carothers 1999, 2009; McFaul 2004).4 In posttransition states that are even minimally reliant on external assistance, some form of electoral regime remains the sine qua non of interstate legitimacy. If democracy promotion can be harmful, why is legitimacy building any less perilous? Given that state legitimacy inevitably involves some form of electoral democracy, it would be deceptive and naive to pretend that it is possible to conceptualize “legitimacy building” or to engage in it in a way that is wholly independent of many of the challenges posed by democratization. The inherent contradiction of using outside influence to empower “rule by the people” applies to both “legitimacy building” and democracy promotion. The tensions between elitedriven bargains and popular inclusion and participation also afflict both these enterprises. And the greater a state’s legitimacy, the less influence or leverage enjoyed by outsiders, whether elected in a shallow democracy or selected through a nonelectoral form of consultation or participation. Nevertheless, the concept of legitimacy building offers some advantages of democracy promotion. As discussed in chapter 2, state legitimation is distinct

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from a particular regime type, although some form of popular consultation and participation constitutes a minimal foundation for broader state legitimacy. First, state legitimacy encompasses more multivalent political relationships than the rules of the political game and their procedures connoted by democracy. Among those political relationships, “legitimacy” more explicitly includes broader elite bargains than the more formal constitutional or other pacted agreements that appear in the democratization literature and are connoted by democracy promotion (Karl 1990; Mainwaring, O’Donnell, and Valenzuela 1992; O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead 1986; Przeworski 1991; Hagopian 1991). The political relationships connoted by “legitimacy” also encompass a broader array of forms of participation for society, including various social sectors or the “masses.” Furthermore, state legitimacy derives not solely from the representational element of society in the state, although this is one core element. The “legitimacy” of a state and its authorities may derive from forms of consultation or participation that differ from formal party-based elections that are the hallmark of democracy. In this sense, legitimacy is more difficult to define, to measure, and to influence. But it is also more flexible than the specific features or structures associated with democratic regimes. Second, the terms “state legitimacy” and “strengthening legitimacy” do not raise the hackles of the global South nearly as much as the language of “democracy” and “democracy promotion.” Thomas Carothers (2009, 6) speaks of a “growing backlash against both democracy promotion and democracy more generally.” The spread of elective, one-party regimes in parts of Africa (Ottaway 2000), together with a renewed wave of coups and coup attempts (LeVan 2011), calls into question the unbridled march of multiparty competitive regimes and liberal rights (Carothers 2006). In addition, China and other nontraditional donors now deliberately seek to offer an alternative to conditions related to human rights and democratic governance placed by Western donors on their foreign aid. These trends, coupled with the backlash against US hegemony surrounding the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the perceived entanglement of the United Nations and other international organizations with Western power, deepen the mixed reception of much of the world to Western democracy-promotion efforts. Although the global South does not embrace the concept of state legitimacy, it remains more amenable to the concept than to democratization. Legitimacy has the advantage of including a crucial element of state–society relations: the ability of the state to meet social expectations about delivering basic services. These basic services at a minimum include ensuring security from external and internal threats, minimal regulation for the economy, and minimal public goods such as infrastructure, education, and health. One study, by the economist Philip Keefer (2008), finds that the ability of leaders to make credible

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commitments, especially to service delivery, is crucial in whether armed challengers emerge. This conceptual link also represents a disadvantage relative to democracy, because it inextricably ties capacity to legitimacy. State capacity, therefore, is somewhat endogenous to legitimacy. This complicates the useful distinction between legitimacy and capacity, given that very capable states can also suffer legitimacy deficits, just as legitimate states (think of postcolonial states at the dawn of independence) can also be quite weak. In sum, legitimacy building confronts some of the same challenges as democracy promotion, plus others, such as less denotative specificity and its inextricable partial reflection of state capacity. However, it also offers important advantages. It focuses more squarely on the relationship between state and society. Most important, in an era of increasing resistance to the discourse of democracy and democracy promotion, the term “legitimate authority” is less threatening to national elites, enjoys broader and wider acceptance as a normative end for poor and war-torn countries, and encompasses mass aspirations at least to the same extent. In addition, it maintains a focus on the state and its institutionality, but it is flexible enough to pertain to other levels of suprastate and substate authority. Such levels of authority reflect changing governance models amid globalization, a challenge to which I now turn. Globalization’s Added Hurdles to Legitimacy Building Globalization has had multiple positive effects on the ability of states to foster legitimate states abroad. First, the spread of global norms surrounding core elements of legitimacy is quicker, more intense, and farther reaching into nonelite populations and remote territories than ever before. These include norms about elections, an independent media, popular empowerment, autonomy for both judicial and legislative branches, and related accountability checks on the executive. Economic liberalism has spread even more widely, as emblemized by Communist Cuba and China. The Internet has empowered poor, remote communities to access models of governance around the world, and given voice to many who were previously voiceless. At the same time, globalization poses serious challenges for would-be legitimacy builders. The global reach of the Internet and communications provides new and quicker means for spoilers to undermine peace processes. The diaspora can channel funds in ways that advance inclusive relations, but various diasporas too often act in favor of exclusionary elites back home. The association of globalization with the West also undermines its effectiveness. The Internet and social networks can thus be mobilized more readily against external actors solely on the

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basis of their status as external. Globalization thus presents both opportunities and obstacles. These obstacles constitute systematic and serious challenges facing external actors that would undertake efforts to seek to consolidate peace by enhancing legitimate authorities in postconflict societies. Given these obstacles, can and should external actors seek to enhance legitimacy in war-torn societies? Why should they have a positive impact? One crucial factor is the distinction between horizontal and vertical legitimacy. International actors tend to focus on vertical legitimacy and capacity in their peacebuilding, state-building, and democracypromotion efforts, but to give short shrift to horizontal legitimacy. The cases of Liberia, Haiti, and East Timor show the perils of this approach, especially after new governments have been elected. Yet we have seen numerous instances where external states, international donors, and intergovernmental organizations have been able to abet the inclusion of former enemies in postwar political regimes. Verification and monitoring of inclusionary agreements—namely, when accompanied by a multidimensional deployment of troops and civilian assistance—has played a positive role in several cases of nonrecurrence of civil wars. Prominent examples include the wars of Southern Africa and Central America. In other cases, such as Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea, external support for legitimacy took the form of diplomatic and economic roles, but not troops, in support of inclusionary behavior building on peace agreements. Are there lessons from prior experiences that might guide external actors? The remainder of this chapter addresses this question.

Beyond Blanket Inclusionary Formulas: Four “Moments” for Key Choices and External Strategy Neither powersharing nor power dividing should be embraced as “models” to be advanced in postconflict societies. As described earlier, legitimacy-focused peacebuilding eschews blanket formulas suggested by either elites or outsiders. Instead, the most sustainable processes of consolidating peace have emerged from consultative processes that mollified the main spoilers and simultaneously met the expectations of the members of broader society, including their desires for representation and participation. Sustained long-term peace depends on at least the bare outlines of a social contract with the populace that also recognizes the diversity of society as seen in important ethnic, religious, or social groups whose existence and power cannot be denied, and whose salience in identity among segments of the population has been heightened by war. Yet in postconflict societies, these processes are fraught with difficulties and dangers. In the conundrum of local ownership,

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someone must decide who the deciders will be. Actors who exercise control by virtue of contested sovereign claims or because they can deploy military force (including external actors like neighboring states, African Union forces, or UN peacekeepers) will influence at some initial point the determination of who are the “genuine” spokespersons for society and for major social groups. Someone must decide which social groups merit a place at the table to begin with. Such decisions will of course vary from society to society, and national actors usually fulfill that determining role. In exceptional cases (e.g., Bangladesh in 1997 and Djibouti in 1994), international actors will play no direct or influential role in such decisions. Where international actors play such a role, it may well be possible for the major international and national stakeholders to agree virtually unanimously on the composition of a consultative process, even where no elections validate the composition. Yet the power of the groups with guns will always play an oversized role in the constitution of the earliest foundations of a process of determining who is a legitimate representative of a particular ethnic group or of society as a whole. External actors perforce shape such a decision where their armed forces are involved. This is certainly true of processes without electoral validation (speaking here of processes in the earliest stages of consultation to determine when, whether, and what sort of transitional or political process should be adopted), but also true even where elections are held in the immediate aftermath of warfare. Here I turn away from specific formulas for enhancing legitimate authority and from given processes that should be followed in postconflict societies. Instead, I suggest that thinking about particular decision “moments” in the evolution of postwar political processes offer clusters of decisions that will shape the incentives for exclusionary behavior by national actors during and after a transition from war. Rather than suggest processes to be followed, I suggest that common choices confront international and national actors at specific moments in most transitions from armed conflict. Thinking sequentially about possibilities should supplant thinking mechanistically about implanting a particular form of governance-like powersharing. When addressing the ability of international actors to make enhanced legitimacy a cornerstone of peacebuilding policy, it is useful to focus on four moments or phases. International actors face different challenges in each of these phases. There is no formula to help international actors address legitimation challenges in any of these moments. However, it is possible to provide midlevel generalizations (George and Bennett 2005) about what has tended to produce problematic—or positive—outcomes. These points of guidance can serve as cautionary tales or encouraging tales for possible lessons to be adapted. These moments are intended to help organize our thinking (i.e., conceptual approaches) to postconflict international efforts. In particular, some of these moments have received

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insufficient attention in favor of others. Finally, the identification of these four moments does not imply that there are ready formulas or correlations of success found in any of them. On the contrary, none lends themselves to easy answers. In this discussion, I draw on episodic illustrative examples of recent transitions from warfare. The First Moment: Deciding on Transitional Arrangements and Rulers The first moment is the decision on a transitional political arrangement and transitional rulers. Unless an existing regime successfully defeats insurgents, wars end with either a regime change or a negotiated settlement. Regime changes may result in immediate instauration of a new regime, as in revolutionary Nicaragua and Iran in 1979. Yet even when a regime falls or withdraws—as in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and East Timor—interim arrangements may emerge until more permanent arrangements can be negotiated among the victors (and sometimes the vanquished). Similarly, negotiated settlements may retain the existing regime (as in El Salvador and Guatemala), but they usually involve some transitional confidence-building arrangements. Transitional governments constrain permanent arrangements in three ways. If such interim arrangements are blatantly corrupt, unrepresentative, or abusive, they can contribute to stagnant or negative legitimacy. The impact of an interim administration is neither necessary nor permanent, but it is not negligible. Conversely, some of the legitimacy of an interim arrangement can rub off on a more permanent arrangement if citizens feel included or represented in the interim arrangement, and / or if the interim administration acts competently and cleanly. Finally, transitional governments, which often reflect the historical institutional arrangements inherited from the past, also tend to provide the most salient departure point for choices about permanent institutions. Bargaining over such institutions naturally converges on existing arrangements as departure points for debate and choice. In this sense interim arrangements shape the choices available for permanent governance. Past experiences tend to separate transitional arrangements into two categories: (1) countries that have experienced a robust international transitional authority (e.g., Kosovo, East Timor, and Iraq) and (2) those whose experience has been one where domestic actors never lost sovereignty, even where they had to negotiate with powerful rebel forces and with international actors during a transition where foreign forces may have been present. The latter societies include the three Central American cases, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. In between lie a number of experiences where national sovereignty was formally maintained but with either a high degree of formal international prerogatives (e.g., Cambodia and Bosnia) or a low degree of formal international

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prerogatives but a high degree of informal external influence (e.g., Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi, Haiti, and Afghanistan). In most of the latter cases (e.g., Haiti and Afghanistan), external control is high in the immediate aftermath of war but becomes more circumscribed once a national interim government is formed. Less common are cases (e.g., Bosnia) where international prerogatives grow after an initial period. One of the most striking bifurcations among the staff members of bilateral actors and international organizations (and some academics) is between those whose experience lies in cases where international actors exercised intrusive, robust prerogatives and those where they did not. The former group exhibits a striking tendency in postconflict peacebuilding discussions to presume as their starting point that international actors will or should exercise such heavy authority. Conversely, those analysts shaped by the latter experiences tend to assume a norm that national actors will remain the primary transitional agents. The reality is that most transitional arrangements are chosen and led by national actors, even where international troops, aid agencies, and diplomats exercise important influence on the selection of rules and / or individuals. In the next subsections I distinguish between transitions from war where international actors had a decisive influence on decisions about interim authority and those where they did not. Interim Governance: Cases of a Decisive International Role What do recent cases indicate about what actions foster more legitimate political arrangements, especially interim authorities? Let us begin with transitions where international actors play a robust, even determinative role in deciding on transitional authorities and rulers. Such a role may arise out of the defeat of a state’s armed forces and / or the toppling of its regime. It may also result from the withdrawal by a sovereign from a particular territory after a struggle for national liberation, as occurred in East Timor. First, the conditions of a war’s termination shape the role that international actors will play in deciding on the subsequent interim administration of a state or territory. NATO’s victories in forcing the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo and in toppling the Taliban regime in 2001, for instance, left NATO states at the center of decision making about subsequent governance arrangements. When the state withdraws or disappears, the victors become the protagonists in selecting a successor regime. As the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti (in both 1994 and 2004) illustrate, international forces that constitute or support the victorious side are quite influential. At the same time, the conditions on the ground—literally—generally place national rebel armies in a position of influence (or at least of veto power) vis-àvis decisions about both interim rulers and any redesign of the state. National rebel armies often play the key ground troop role supported by (or supporting)

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international air attack campaigns. Thus in Afghanistan in 2001, East Timor and Kosovo in 1999, and Haiti in 2004, national forces were virtually the sole ground army. The Northern Alliance defied NATO’s bidding not to enter Kabul upon the withdrawal of the Taliban regime in 2001, and thus it took and held the capital on the ground and guaranteed itself an important role in the negotiations that produced the Bonn agreement on interim governance in Afghanistan. The Kosovo Liberation Army was the sole ground invasion force in defeating the Serbian forces, because NATO was so concerned with force protection that it refused to send in ground forces and flew at such a high altitude that its bombing accuracy suffered. It is useful to briefly consider these cases in more detail. Afghanistan. The wisest route to fostering sustainable legitimate authority will generally be reliance on relevant national actors to deliberate over and decide on an interim government. Such a path was followed, with initial but ephemeral success, by the international actors involved in negotiating the Bonn agreement for Afghanistan in December 2001. After Kabul fell in mid-November, NATO deferred to the special representative of the UN secretary-general, Lakhdar Brahimi, to convene a process to decide on an interim authority that would enjoy the support of international donors, NATO itself, and the armed factions that had fought against the Taliban (Chesterman 2002, 2007). Brahimi rejected suggestions for an international protectorate and adhered to the “light footprint” of retaining national sovereignty and minimizing international civilian presence, as he had urged to no avail for the East Timor mission. Instead, he drew on advice from those with intimate knowledge of Afghan politics to convene a select group combining both potential spoiler warlords with key civilian political figures. That group, which had been picked by international actors in consultation with the main political and armed figures, was by no means representative. (Nixon and Ponzio 2007; Deledda 2006). It included warlords who had committed the worst atrocities of the prior decade, thereby assuring that justice for those abuses would not be punished in the near term.5 It also excluded those vanquished by the war, the Taliban, and the allied factions that had fought NATO’s forces. Nevertheless, it drew in the main potential spoilers from among the victors. Their role was to define, without any formal role for external actors, a process whereby an interim government would be chosen. This interim government would then facilitate the process defining the selection of a permanent government. The process defined by Brahimi and his colleagues was praised by many as wise and prudent. In the Afghan context, a heavier exercise of external authority would likely have elicited a violent backlash and thus jeopardized the fragile coexistence among the various elements of the victorious Northern Alliance. The light footprint approach was also criticized as being undemocratic, especially when a traditional council mechanism (the Loya Jirga) used to determine the

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interim government structure and personnel featured warlords who intimidated civilian political representatives (Thier 2002; Johnson et al. 2003). As discussed later in the chapter, the presidency of Hamid Karzai neither ended the ongoing war against the Taliban nor resulted in an internally legitimate or responsive state. Nevertheless, this process did prevent the feared fragmentation of Afghanistan at the hands of the various armed factions that toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. Iraq. The experience of Iraq, considered only briefly here, marks a contrast with the consultative, inclusive interim government fostered in Afghanistan. The administration of George W. Bush opted initially to appoint a US general to head an interim authority in Iraq. When the tasks proved overwhelming, it appointed a diplomat to head the interim administration, with a shadow interim Iraqi administration. Before the US invasion, the Pentagon deliberately ignored the advice of an expert panel convened by the State Department on postconflict reconstruction and instead imposed a handpicked group of mainly exiles on this interim administration. Not only were internal Iraqi factions not consulted; neither were other US federal departments, allied governments, or the United Nations (Diamond 2005). Having flaunted lessons of multiple transitions from warfare, the Bush administration also purged all Baathists from the state apparatus, leaving them angry, alienated, and jobless, while depriving the state of a vast number of experienced civil servants. Before the constituent assembly, each phase of decision making about who would lead the interim administration reflected centralized, ill-founded decisions by Bush administration officials rather than a previously announced clear process of consultation with Iraqi factions. As in Afghanistan, the defeated regime was entirely snubbed, which facilitated the recruitment of their followers into the armed resistance. These choices, along with al-Qaeda strategies and other factors unrelated to the interim government, contributed to the emergence of the fierce armed insurgency and the civil war that cost more than a hundred thousand lives, including more than four thousand among the US and other occupying forces.6 Haiti and East Timor. Two cases illustrate the limits facing international actors even where war ends through the capitulation of the opposing force. In 1994, when a UN-authorized US-led intervention restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, it was unthinkable that the international community would have supported someone else as even interim leader. If it had done so, confusion and popular outrage would have ensued. In 2004, after helping oust Aristide, the United States had considerably more sway in the selection process of an interim administration, because the insurgent forces were inchoate, relied on international support, and mainly shared a fervent opposition to Aristide rather than a coherent policy program. In East Timor, upon Indonesia’s withdrawal following the violence after the 1999 referendum on independence, international actors (especially the Aus-

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tralians, Americans, Europeans, and the UN) played an important legitimating role in a process that would clearly lead to a new state. However, the protagonists remained the national liberation forces—the Timorese National Council of Resistance (CNRT) and its armed wing, FALANTIL, both under the leadership of Xanana Gusmao—which could now claim victory after a twenty-five year struggle that had left about two hundred thousand dead. International actors considered several options, including a collaborative relationship with the CNRT; outright CNRT governance; and the path eventually chosen, a wholly sovereign international administration under UN leadership. Although Gusmao initially favored an executive mandate for the United Nations mission, he later came to feel that the UN had marginalized Timorese leaders excessively in its interim administration (Forman 2005). The choices made about the scope of international authorities in Timor, where the CNRT leaders enjoyed very high legitimacy both internally and externally, offer insights into the dangers of robust international mandates. Analysts are remarkably divided about what international actors, mainly the UN, should have done differently in East Timor. In accord with some findings of this study, some argue that the armed violence in 2006 would have been prevented if the international community had maintained a longer-term and more robust presence, especially with respect to security. Others argue, also in accord with this study, that the UN assumed excessive authority and included popularly supported Timorese leaders in governing too little and too slowly (Chopra and Hohe 2004; Caplan 2004b). One way to square these findings would have been to agree on more robust authorities for Timorese nationals earlier and more explicitly. At the same time, the international community could have extended a robust technical support role, especially one that could have helped provide for institutional coherence, transparency, and accountability in the security and justice sectors for several years. In other words, a less intrusive but meaningful mandate to provide checks on interim administration might have proven wiser. As in Haiti in the 1990s, the widespread and intense support for national leaders rendered it virtually unthinkable that any Timorese besides the CNRT could have been chosen as interim leaders in 1999. International actors’ role in selecting who would serve as interim rulers was constrained, even as important choices remained about the types of power that national and international actors would hold. Similar constraints confront most transitions from wars that end through a negotiated settlement. Below I turn to these cases. In concluding this discussion of international interim authority, note that external actors, especially intergovernmental bodies, influence what role they will play. This includes whether their own authorities will be robust and decisive, or more subordinate to national interim or permanent authorities. Of particular importance, international actors tend to prefer greater power and authorities.

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They do so for both principled beliefs in their enhanced ability to foster peace, prosperity, and justice and for self-interested goals of power and profit. Despite the allure of greater prerogatives and powers, external actors should resist this temptation unless it is absolutely necessary. The starting assumption and the preferred option for external actors’ optimal role should always be minimal unless circumstances dictate otherwise. If legitimation of internal state authority is the linchpin for success in peace consolidation, then it makes no sense to usurp this authority unless compelled by circumstances. And even where circumstances do seem to dictate a heavier hand for international actors, the longterm formation of legitimate authority in a territory may suffer. Such a scenario unfolded in Bosnia, where the Office of the High Representative accrued greater powers to disempower spoilers but in the process undermined the emergence of an unmediated relationship between the Bosnian state and the population (Cox 2008). Interim Governance: Cases of a Decisive Role by Domestic Actors In negotiated settlements, domestic actors virtually always determine who shall rule and under what interim arrangements. In many cases—including Mozambique, Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Burundi—the sovereign state and the government in power retain authority during a transition, often accepting confidence-building measures, constitutional changes, and / or some degree of interim powersharing. In other settlements—such as Liberia, Nicaragua, South Africa, and Sierra Leone—the constitutional order is preserved with modest reforms and a change in regime or government. In such cases, national actors determine both who and what form the transitional authority shall assume. International actors face even more limits in the selection of interim rulers and interim arrangements than in cases where their own forces have been involved in interventions. Dividing these cases of domestic-actor predominance into two further categories is useful: negotiated settlements and outright victory. Where the parties to warfare have reached a negotiated settlement, international actors tend to prioritize encouragement of adherence to the terms of the agreement.7 They also often advance powersharing in peace processes and press for the inclusion of potential spoilers ( Jarstad 2008, 2009). The main logic of international engagement therefore becomes support for the peace agreement, pressure to maintain any powersharing elements, and efforts to keep potential spoilers on board. Often sacrificed are investigation and prosecution for past atrocities, consultation and communication with the broader public, accountability for ongoing misconduct (including corruption), and responsiveness to popular preferences. Admittedly, knowing which national actors are representative is difficult, and external actors inevitably exercise their own judgment or preferences in selecting who will partic-

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ipate in the determination of a participatory process. At the end of the day, peace tends to trump justice, participation, accountability, and “good governance.” Here external actors are generally supporting a more inclusionary peace process of former combatants. Because peace agreements tend to privilege the security and interests of the warring parties, promoting adherence to them generally helps alleviate any uncertainty and insecurity that the armed parties may have. International privileging of the warring parties’ interests over broader social demands is understandable, given that concern in the first few years about reversion to conflict is paramount. Unfortunately, such privileging has a downside. Negotiated settlements often do not include sufficient incorporation of civil society and the broader public, not just in their preparation but also in their substantive terms. Third parties need to balance the concerns of the potential spoilers in decisions about interim authority against those of the broader population. One might think of this as balancing horizontal legitimacy (to the extent that this derives from the interests of the parties to an accord) with vertical legitimacy. From another angle, prioritizing the demands of the warring parties may be good for short-term stability but may work against the long-term legitimation of state authority. Many peace processes reflect a marginalization of civil society participation and demands, such as Liberia’s peace agreements of 1996 and 2003, as well as Bosnia’s Dayton Accords. One example of a peace agreement that successfully incorporated civil society into the negotiations process and pacts was Guatemala. The multiple agreements of 1995–96 included many of the issues and demands of civil society. The weakness of the Guatemalan insurgents, who had been strategically defeated by the mid-1980s, provided the permissive condition for civil society to have such a weighty role in the negotiations with the government. Many civil society actors enjoyed greater internal and external legitimacy than the rebels. Unfortunately, the peace process in Guatemala is regarded as flawed in the extent to which civil society’s interests actually were met (Stanley and Holiday 2002). Most of the important elements of the peace agreements went unfulfilled. However, the flaw was not in a failure to emphasize the interests of the parties sufficiently vis-à-vis the vertical legitimacy. Instead, the problem lay in the unwillingness or inability of external actors to extract from Guatemalan entrenched interests enough concessions to put teeth into the peace agreement and its implementation (Stanley and Holiday 2002; Prado 1998; Alvarez and Prado 2002). This case reflects the problem identified above of how difficult it is to wrest concessions from undefeated factions and how military reality constrains the range of options. The other situation of selecting interim arrangements is where one side emerges victorious. Here again the victorious domestic faction holds the cards

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in fashioning an interim or permanent authority. And these victorious forces tend to select an interim leader from the ranks of the leadership of the military (or politico-military) ranks. Upon recognition (and at times relief) that national actors have determined what the interim form of governance and leader shall be, the impulse of international actors is often to seek to curb exclusionary behavior on the part of these actors. This tendency also conforms to the dictates of strengthening the legitimacy of national actors and ensuring that they do not alienate potential spoilers. As with coups, postwar interim leaders may renege on initial promises to relinquish power, especially if no threat to continued rule appears. The Second Moment: State Design The second moment concerns decisions about state design (e.g., federalism, regional autonomy, the relative strength of the central state vis-à-vis society) and adoption of regime norms, rules, and procedures. Some transitions, especially where the ancien regime emerges victorious, involve no regime alterations. The old rules of the political game persist, perhaps with very minor changes. The least disruptive transitions were the Latin American transitions from authoritarianism—not war—that involved only lifting the ban on Communist parties alongside a de facto cessation of repression. Most contemporary transitions from war, however, involve important alterations of the regime. Interim governments are often tasked with rewriting the rules and procedures of governance. These, of course, may be prescribed in a prior Constitution. Even where a new Constitution is adopted, the “old ways” of organizing the state tend to endure. State design refers to where and how state powers are allocated or arranged.8 States can vary in different dimensions. First, they can distribute power over the territory differentially. They can reflect federal or confederal systems whereby the component provinces or entities wield the most power, and the internationally recognized federal entity has more limited power than in centralized states. They can also grant ethnic or social groups a degree of territorial autonomy in a certain region. Second, state power can vary by levels of government over the territory, such that local or provincial governments might hold more (or less) budgetary and regulatory powers. Finally, states vary in their degree of intrusiveness in social life, that is, in the range of roles they play.9 Some states, such as the American and Swiss, are relatively unintrusive, leaving services that states provide in many industrial countries to the private or nongovernmental sector. The social expectations of this latter dimension of state design are reflected in the cultural aspect of the state, as mentioned above. In fact, all such arrangements shape popular expectations of the role of the state over time, as people come to expect the state to act

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more or less intrusively, or to restrict its actions in certain arenas or geographical territories. State design may also distribute power across different branches of government (e.g., legislatures vs. executives). In this sense, it is difficult to distinguish state configurations from regime configurations. However, the allocation of state power refers more to territory and levels of power, whereas regimes vary more with regard to the relative powers of different branches of government and the selection criteria for rulers. The extraordinary circumstances of war and its termination both compel and provide windows of opportunity for national elites (or external powers) to revisit the state’s organization, for better or worse.10 The design of the state is often the most crucial element of a negotiated settlement of a separatist struggle. In addition, state design issues are linked to questions of extrastate authority—both “below” the state with regard to local or tribal authorities and “above” the state in relation to regional or transnational arrangements that usurp some state functions (e.g., the European Union and World Trade Organization) (Reno 2008; Van den Brande et al. 2008; Call 2008b). Governance can be achieved without state institutions, something that discussions of state design should take into account. It is virtually impossible for decisions about state structures not to favor certain social or political groups, as well as the process of the selection of rulers, thus influencing regime type.11 How can international actors advance legitimacy via state design? First and foremost, they can avoid appearing to control or engineer the process of state design. The perception of colonial or imperial interference in domestic matters has always elicited resentment and often armed resistance. Nothing is more central to a political community’s identity than how it achieves expression in, or is suppressed by, state power. The American policies in post-Saddam Iraq offer a recent example of the perils of foreign control of state design, but direct foreign occupation is not necessary. Even supposedly benign, UN-endorsed multilateral efforts to shape political institutions can spark umbrage and resistance, as seen in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Haiti, and Rwanda. In the current historical phase of self-determination and anti-Western sentiment, fostering legitimate national authority requires deference to national processes and actors, even while seeking to ensure that these do not lead to illegitimate outcomes. Second, external actors can seek measures that provide checks on exclusionary behavior. Where such power-dividing mechanisms as multiple levels of authority (especially the decentralization of power, revenue, and expenditures) and checks and balances are possible, then such measures are likely to reduce the scope for abuse. During the Salvadoran war, for instance, the government acceded to international pressure and introduced the election of mayors and mayoral councils, as well as the dedication of certain state funds for municipalities

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(Tulchin and Bland 1992). Once the peace process concluded in 1994, the leftist guerrillas initially enjoyed electoral success only at the local level and as a minority party in the legislature, through proportional representation. Given that the former guerrilla parties only won the presidency in 2009, seventeen long years after laying down their arms, some analysts believe that decentralization in El Salvador was crucial to keeping the former insurgents from resuming armed conflict (Tulchin and Bland 1992). Lyons (2002, 222) laments that too many countries concentrate power and resources in the presidency rather than decentralized systems. Because of the potential for patronage and abuse, mechanisms of accountability and transparency at lower levels of governance are just as urgent as at the national level. To the extent that governance may be distributed at different levels above the state, including allocating functions to the suprastate level, then dividing power may also help prevent war recurrence. The most salient success of such measures has been achieved in Europe. The allure of accession to the European Union not only elicited the institutionalization of improved human rights mechanisms in the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe but also served as an incentive for more inclusionary state design and behavior. The Organization of American States and the African Union, as well as subregional African organizations, offer the most promising avenues for the creative design of legitimate authority at the suprastate level. However, as indicated above, the willingness of armed factions to diffuse power and create checks on state power may be limited. The guarantees afforded by powersharing may be the best (or only) option for convincing armed factions to cease their armed struggle. Similarly, electoral systems that seem to smooth the path to stability may be necessary not just to bridge a transition but also to exist into the future in order to alleviate uncertainties in the short term. Two skeptics of proportional representation for its reifying effects in the long term, Reilly and Reynolds (1999, 29–31), nevertheless acknowledge that “large-scale [public relations] appears to be an effective instrument” for smoothing democratic transitions. To the extent that those deciding on both interim and permanent structures can build in mechanisms to alleviate the weaknesses of powersharing, then all the better. South Africa, El Salvador, Liberia, and other countries have placed sunset provisions on their powersharing mechanisms with some success thus far. However, there have been too few cases to draw firm conclusions about adopting interim mechanisms of powersharing that end in winner-take-all systems or decision points. For instance, once the ten-year phase before a vote on independence takes place in Southern Sudan, armed conflict may well resume, just as the protracted negotiations on Kosovo’s final status have not resulted in a resolution embraced by all parties.

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The Third Moment: Elections and the End of Interim Governance The third moment concerns the decisions about how an interim government is terminated. This moment generally involves the convening of local and national elections, sometimes through alternative consultative processes. Analysts have devoted considerable attention to the role of elections in postconflict countries, often in the context of the relationship between democratization and peacebuilding.12 An interim arrangement may also end with a coup d’état or with a resumption of warfare. In many cases interim arrangements are extended with the claim that the country is not ready—because of political, security, or technical preparedness factors—for a national election. Putting Elections in Context As was made plain above, international scholars and policymakers have lent elections excessive emphasis in postconflict legitimation strategies. Elections are fraught with the problem of sparking renewed conflict, and they offer a potential flashpoint for violence and duplicitous politics, along with negotiation (Collier 2009; Mansfield and Snyder 2005). Of course, elections are not the sole mechanism for consultation. However, for permanent national administrations, it is difficult to imagine a selection process that does not involve some sort of nationwide election. It may be, as in East Timor, that a national president or head of government is named by an elected parliament or other body. Or it may be that some parliamentarians are appointed as a result of a powersharing agreement or other arrangement. Yet external legitimacy is likely to be withheld without some form of national election whose winners represent or are responsible for naming the head of government and / or head of state. Moreover, internal legitimacy increasingly requires elections as ratification of a political regime. The level, scope, timing, and sequencing of elections are variable. But in any internationally assisted transition from warfare, internal critics will seek to undermine a regime’s legitimacy if some permanent political authority is initiated without any election process whatsoever. Some type of national election is therefore necessary to signal the end of an interim process and the initiation of a political regime. Nor do electoral processes need to monopolize or terminate informal or traditional means of consultation by elite representatives or the transitional state, on the one hand, and with the broader population, on the other hand. Continued involvement with and participation in governance by society, through context-specific mechanisms at the local or provincial level, can be important. Consultative consensual selection of local leaders may also persist as a means of state legitimation. Society may participate in the formulation and debates over

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policy in specific functional areas of the state, such as health, education, security, hunger response, disaster preparedness, and justice. Before turning to some of the salient experiences and their implications for the electoral process in transitioning to a long-term new political authority, it is important to recall that election day itself is usually a small piece of the electoral process. Because of heightened domestic scrutiny, security presence, and international presence, violence is often much less than in the preparatory or the postelection period. One study of electoral violence in East Timor, for instance, showed that election day was the least violent phase of the electoral cycle, from preparation to the campaign through to the counting and immediate postcounting periods (Timor-Leste Armed Violence Assessment 2009). As with all electoral processes, the preparation and campaign season is crucial in whether the process will be seen as a free, fair, and accurate indicator of popular preference. The politics of that preparation, including the electoral tribunal or commission tasked with overseeing the processing and tabulation of results, will reflect the most divisive and serious threats to political coexistence among the main parties. Too often, transitional governments have monopolized control over electoral tribunals, undermining the credibility of the process, not to mention the institutionalization, of open competitive elections. The Importance of Elections However, elections remain extremely important for several reasons. Most obvious is their value for democracy broadly, because they represent a means by which social and political interests and groups can resort not to coups or violence but to nonviolent processes in the quest and exercise of power. They do so (assuming they operate as stipulated by the Constitution or convention) by providing a future date by which the possibility of a change in government will occur, and by generally creating uncertainty about who shall emerge victorious. A surprising number of rulers (e.g., Chile’s Pinochet and Nicaragua’s Ortega in 1990) have convened elections confident that their tenure will be ratified, only to be turned out of office. In terms of uncertainty, elections are the gift that keeps on giving. In democracies generally, elections also offer a means for popular participation in governance. In transitions from war, elections can play additional roles. First, in theory they offer the chance to settle control over the state, often the chief aim of armed struggle, without violence. Of course, elections often spark armed conflict, as we have seen. At a minimum, elections indicate where popular preferences lie with regard to the programs offered by former armed factions. Second, elections also offer an inducement for parties to adhere to the peace process during an interim phase. For instance, demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration processes have a different value if the hope of political representation lies at their termi-

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nus. Third, and on the downside, elections offer the possibility of definitively excluding losing parties. The tenure of elected officials marks a period of certainty about who shall rule, clarifying who has lost and for how long. The end of uncertainty here offers disincentives for engagement with the political process in the short term after elections. Finally, elections also offer flash points for international engagement. Most saliently, they offer external actors the chance, in the name of newfound sovereignty rooted in the popular will, to defer to legitimately elected national authorities by reducing their financial, troop, and other commitments. Insofar as elections become the exit strategy for international actors, they earn the resentment of many internal and external actors that believe the continued engagement and resources are necessary to conclude a positive transition from war. In addition, they offer a somewhat arbitrary, and often misleading, marker for the end of “transitional” economic, security, political, or humanitarian processes. As such, elections figure into timetables, often in ways that distort context-based assessments of how well internationally supported internal processes have met needs and expectations. Electoral Experiences Worth Considering What do cases of war recurrence and nonrecurrence tell us about decisions on elections and peacebuilding? That literature tends to focus on two issues: electoral systems, and the sequencing and timing of elections vis-à-vis other processes (Lyons 2005; Bjornlund, Cowan, and Gallery 2006; Sisk 2009).13 Having addressed the conceptual issues underlying debates about electoral systems in the discussion of powersharing above, here I focus on issues of sequencing and timing. Demobilization before national elections: the Angolan experience. One of the cardinal lessons of peacebuilding in the past two decades is that demobilization must precede national elections, as emblemized by Angola’s failed peace process. The Angolan experience included not only the 1992 election described earlier but also a powersharing agreement that would forge a new army out of the prior government army and the UNITA rebels. Hedging his bets, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi held back thousands of his troops and his arms until the outcome of the election—his own loss—was apparent and produced a bloodier phase of the war. A similar powersharing agreement that was reached in 1994 failed again when some 30,000 UNITA troops were held back from a demobilization and disarmament process. As a result of the Angolan experience, international organizations have sought full demobilization before a national election. Although rebel groups rarely demobilize and disarm totally during a transition, a much more substantial demobilization than that allowed by Savimbi is necessary to make it difficult to return

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to warfare and to send a signal of commitment to the other side and to one’s own militants that political contestation is replacing the battlefield as the locus of struggle. International actors have sought to infuse peace agreements with this sequencing, with a good degree of success. Delayed elections: the Bosnian experience. A second generalization is central to the state-building approach to peacebuilding, especially Paris’s “institutionalization before liberalization”: delaying national elections until the institutional skeleton is strong enough to ensure their validity, acceptance, and translation into effective governance. Here the Angolan experience was also informed by that of Bosnia, where the outcome of national elections surprised international actors by dealing a blow to their peacebuilding project. Bosnia’s Dayton Agreement of 1995 “put the first round of elections on an exceptionally tight schedule,” sparking heated debate (Cousens 2002, 554). It provided for national elections within nine months of the accord, permitting but not requiring local elections. The Bosnian experience elicited a critique of quick elections not only for the technical difficulties but also for the security and political problems posed by such a rushed timetable. Despite the insecurity perceived by many voters and the technical challenges in mounting registration and balloting, the elections took place in September 1996. As many feared, they served only to legitimate the nationalist wartime leaders of their respective ethnic constituencies. Elites who consented to Dayton under duress and amid warfare now could impede its implementation with the imprimatur of being democratically elected. The nationalist parties triumphed not just at the presidential level but also in all three entity-level parliamentary bodies (Cousens 2002, n57). The moderates made slight gains in four subsequent elections before winning substantial power in the 2000 elections, which opened the door to progress on more provisions of the Dayton Agreements. Although the nationalists made gains in the 2002 elections, the moderates once again surged in the 2006 voting. One factor in the critique of prompt elections is the widespread perception in the 1990s that quick timetables were driven not by context-specific factors on the ground but by political and financial factors in Western capitals. In the United States, which mediated the Dayton Agreements, President Bill Clinton faced a reelection campaign in 1996 and pledged to withdraw troops by December. Thus the September elections became an urgent exit strategy for US troops. Moreover, financial concerns about extended peacekeeping operations and their costs have historically driven members of the UN Security Council to seek to conclude operations promptly. Here again, elections became the sine qua non not of democracy (as put by Huntington 1991, 9), but of a swift exit. What are the problems of early elections? First and foremost, demobilization and disarmament (or whatever degree of disarmament occurs, which is never 100 percent) require enough time to proceed. Schedules for demobilization and

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disarmament—not to mention reintegration, which usually takes a year or more to implement—are often not met. Retention of troops is the ultimate guarantor of security and survival for rebel armies, as well as for governments where they are demobilizing. In addition, the process of transforming armies—their leaders, their internal organization, their goals, and their organization throughout the country—into political parties takes time. Second, early elections provide a focal point for violence before other issues have been settled and before the parties and the population have adjusted to a cease-fire. An interim administration can make significant progress in implementing a peace agreement and can reassure minorities that their rights and opportunities will be respected. State institutions can show that they are functioning at least minimally, instilling confidence in the process. In addition, wars can reinforce identity rather than policy preference as the basis for voting, and a prompt election can reinforce the built-in advantage that armed factions enjoy by having the best-developed organizations already in place. Of course, lengthy periods before elections may lead to violence because of a loss in confidence in either the peace process (because agreements are unmet) or the electoral process (because polls show a likely loss). Yet such cases are exceptional. Third, early elections may disenfranchise one or more parties to a peace process, leaving them less incentive to cooperate in a peace process or in democratic politics. To the extent that elections lead to the winner holding all the levers of power in a society, political marginalization may then prompt desperation and violence. Elections, more than any other single event except disarmament, signify a gain in power for some and a loss for others. Thus it seems prudent to put off elections until other gains of peace can be recognized and valued. Of course, it may not be possible to delay elections indefinitely if some domestic actors demand them. This type of situation unfolded in Iraq in 2005, when the Americans sought to hold elections but the Shiite Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani insisted on prompt elections that favored Shiites and reduced the leverage of the Americans in Iraqi politics. Local and legislative elections before presidential elections: Kosovo and East Timor. If the dangers of concentrating power in the hands of a single party represent part of the perils of elections, then one strategy has been to emphasize local and legislative elections rather than the national election of a head of state. Rather than a dominant party emerging as the sole winner (e.g., of a presidency), multiple parties representing minorities can accede to electoral offices. Such sequencing offers concrete political gains for former rebel forces and minority ethnic or religious groups. As these groups gain some measure of political power, even if it is in a minority in parliament or a minority of the country’s districts, they become more wedded to the political process and more aware that the presidency may not signify power.

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This process was followed in Kosovo, but with a relatively quick sequence of elections. Under Kosovo’s constitutional framework, municipal elections were held in 2000, only a year after Serb forces capitulated and withdrew in June 1999, followed by territory-wide legislative elections in 2001. These elections were organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe under the UN’s authority.14 The Kosovan Assembly’s 200 members are elected for a three-year term, and half of them are elected by proportional representation and 20 are reserved for ethnic minorities, including 10 for Kosovan Serbs. Under the framework, the Assembly names a president and prime minister, which it first did in early 2002. Municipal elections and legislative elections have been held every three years since then, without being interrupted by the declaration of independence by the Assembly in February 2008. Kosovo’s Albanian community has experienced relative stability under this system that encourages a plethora of political parties. However, the process has not satisfied the members of Serb and other minority groups, who have been divided between participating and abstaining from participation in elections, pending their desire for unification with Serbia.15 In East Timor, presidential elections were not seen to hold the potential for destabilizing violence, because support for the revolutionary leadership of Xanana Gusmao was widespread and evident. Nevertheless, elections for a constituent assembly that would become a parliament preceded presidential elections. Elections of the eighty-eight-member body, seventy-five of whose seats were by national proportional representation and the remaining in single-seat districts, took place in August 2001, two years after Indonesia’s withdrawal.16 In April 2002, Xanana Gusmao won 87 percent of the territory-wide direct vote as president, the new Constitution was then finalized, and independence was declared and internationally recognized in May 2002. Local-level elections were also held. In 2000, a World Bank project organized the very first electoral processes under the authority of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, with the election of 6,400 hamlet-level village development councils composed of a dozen or more men and women (equally divided; see Ospina and Hohe 2001, chap. 4). Those councils were apart from traditional councils of elders that had largely survived the violence. They were given decision making over how to spend tens of thousands of dollars in grant monies for local projects, and they operated in consultation with both the CNRT informal administrators across the territory and the traditional elders. Then, after the first parliamentary and presidential elections, during a ten-month period from 2004 to 2005, village (suco) leaders and councils were elected and exercised control over some development resources. There were few violent incidents, and these were isolated in the 2001, 2002, and 2004–5 elections, but the parliamentary elections of 2007 resulted in two deaths, dozens wounded, and

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7,000 families displaced.17 President Jose Ramos-Horta was also elected in a runoff second-round election in 2007. As in Kosovo, despite the swift holding of elections, analysts consider the fact that parliamentary elections preceded presidential elections helpful in East Timor’s political transition. Holding parliamentary elections is a way to distribute power early, to emphasize centers of power other than the presidency, and to offer representation to multiple and minority parties. In each of these cases, both a president and a prime minister held important executive powers, and proportional representation served as the main basis for parliamentary elections to a single chamber. Decentralization, largely at the instance of international actors, resulted in some important gains in control over resources at the local level, further lowering the stakes of a presidential victory. This approach seems promising for fostering legitimacy without a recurrence to warfare; however, in some contexts, local elections could well aggravate tensions, threaten a peace process, or spark violence. Maneuvering to favor the “right” candidate: Liberia in 1997. One controversial aspect of international strategies in postwar elections is their role in shaping which candidates compete and which ones emerge victorious in postwar elections. What reasonable conclusions, rooted in past experiences, can one draw about such an external role? From the perspective of the long-term legitimation of elections as instruments of domestic legitimation, external interference would seem self-defeating. This is true as it relates to a specific country and in terms of the general utility of elections. Nothing crushes the ideals of young supporters of self-determination and democratic processes like seeing powerful countries manipulate such processes in ways that pervert the will of the populace, especially when they get away with it. Such external manipulation applies not just to self-interested foreign countries (like former colonial powers) but also to international organizations that claim the mantle of neutrality and popular empowerment yet still favor certain candidates. Even where a candidate may enjoy popular support, the perception that his or her power derives from external support or endorsement may be self-defeating. Because of the inherent contradiction discussed above, external support as an instrument of legitimation can backfire and thus undermine internal support or legitimacy. The American experience in Iraq exemplifies the backlash against the leadership proposed initially by the George W. Bush administration. That group of exiles, whose highest-profile member was the controversial Ahmed Chalabi, enjoyed little support among Sunnis or Shiites who had endured the regime of Saddam Hussein (Diamond 2005, 28–33). The growing resentment during 2003 of the extended American-led occupation further eroded support for this group.

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At the same time, it is tempting and sometimes sensible for external actors, whether they are states or international organizations, to seek to influence the selection or performance of particular candidates. Most obviously, when candidates widely known for their human rights abuses or atrocities run for office in the wake of warfare, international organizations have a principled obligation to withhold their support. The United Nations now is precluded from lending its support for the candidacy of persons accused of war crimes, and most international organizations now shy away from lending support to such candidates, even where these candidates benefit from externally funded peace processes involving elections. Nevertheless, from Cambodia to Afghanistan to Bosnia to Liberia and beyond, the United Nations and regional bodies have supported both transitional and permanent governments that have included those implicated in war crimes. That is because peace processes so frequently include commanders or warlords accused of international war crimes in interim powersharing or governance roles.18 The justification of diplomats who negotiate and support such peace agreements is that an outright ban on dealing with thugs and human rights violators would preclude the possibility of a cease-fire and peace. With a peace process, the mechanisms of justice—whether domestic, third-party, or international—can begin to function and bring abusers to account for their crimes. Even in peace processes, international actors may have good reason to support one candidate over another. Liberia offers an example. As was discussed in chapter 3, international actors felt compelled to support a peace agreement that offered a chance for success after more than a dozen failures in 1996. Charles Taylor was the leading candidate in opinion polls, and no other candidate appeared to enjoy much electoral support. And yet by supporting that process, rather than delaying elections and seeking avenues to undermine Taylor’s reputation, the international community implicitly endorsed his candidacy and was implicated in his administration after the 1997 election. Taylor’s past record and subsequent corrupt and exclusionary rule, which led to renewed warfare, suggest that international actors might in some circumstances want to seek to weigh in against a candidate, especially one accused of war crimes. Powerful countries have long sought to influence electoral processes in less powerful countries, even as the former profess commitment to open, democratic processes as expressions of the will of the people of the latter. Of course, how international actors express their favoritism shapes the extent to which it is effective. Where external favoritism takes the form of recruiting candidates who might otherwise appear reluctant, and where much of the campaign appears overtly funded by external actors, the outcome can be the opposite of the desired effect. This is especially true for candidates who are perceived to be solely the native tool of a military occupation, as emblemized by Russia-occupied Chechnya’s

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fixed elections in 2003, whereby the Russian-appointed candidate won, only to be assassinated by separatists the following year. In this era of strong national identity and sovereignty, the backlash against the idea of outside interference is virtually universal. In general, the most prudent measure for outside actors confronted with an electoral process that is likely to result in the election of a spoiler is not to seek to favor one or more candidates over others but to shape the timing and circumstances of the elections in a more evenhanded manner. This may mean urging a delay, seeking more consultation internally in deciding on the electoral format and timetable, or exploring other options that might offer the chance to alter the electoral dynamics. In the contemporary climate, where sensitivity to outside meddling in elections is extremely high, even the slightest form of influence may be perceived as undue meddling. For instance, statements that aid or investment might be endangered (or, conversely, that more might be forthcoming) if a particular candidate wins are unmistakable signals to the electorate, which are often resented but perhaps are effective in shifting support in the desired direction. Threats of a lack of external recognition (or even of external support for armed resistance) if a particular candidate emerges victorious may also distort the democratic process in the desired direction and complicate the legitimation of the eventual victor. Often the international community’s preference for a candidate is apparent without any visible demonstration. The background of the particular candidate— for instance, that he or she has worked abroad for a multinational corporation or intergovernmental organization—will suggest an affinity with specific international interests. In cases like Chechnya (Russia) or Afghanistan, the pertinent relationships lie elsewhere, with neighboring powers. More important, the stated policies of such candidates make clear their likely affinity with outside actors. Such a convergence of external preferences favoring a candidate who commands support internally would seem a happy coincidence. Few postconflict cases have represented such a candidate. Some who might fall into this category include the rightist presidential candidate of the ruling party in El Salvador in 1994, Calderon Sol; Xanana Gusmao of East Timor, in 2002; and Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf of Liberia, in 2005. Many candidates like these have enjoyed success. In other cases, candidates who specifically are not favored by most international actors have emerged triumphant. Examples include the nationalist parties in Bosnia’s first election after the Dayton Agreements, and Hamas’s 2006 victory in Palestine. Unfortunately, the perception of an implicit or explicit international preference for a candidate may have perverse consequences for the consolidation of peace or democracy, or both. Consider the example of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. The sort of candidate favored by international actors is often one more

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beholden to foreign interests than national interests, and whose disposition is more that of an administrator than a visionary political leader capable of forging nationhood and statehood (Thier 2002). Karzai was not a military commander, and he represented a compromise candidate who was largely brought to prominence because of international preferences. He was reliant on warlords for the main elements of the new national army, and was without control over the international security forces, so he faced limits on his ability to extract resources from provincial leaders and weaken political rivals who sought a weak central state (US Department of Defense 2009). A plethora of factors explain the Afghan state’s inability to provide stability and development during the past decade. However, one factor is this peculiar affinity between reliance on international political support and lukewarm leadership capacity and internal support. The Fourth Moment: State Legitimacy after Elections The fourth and final, and least analyzed, moment of engaging state legitimacy occurs after the first national election that brings an end to a transitional authority (Sisk 2009; Wallensteen 2008). This postelectoral period is especially important in postwar countries because of the intensity of loyalties and identities that are fostered by armed conflict. The work involved in mobilizing people to risk their lives requires creating intense political and / or identity-based loyalties. Wars require an “other,” especially civil wars among people who have lived within the same state for decades or more. Creating the “us” versus “them” of armed conflict involves loyalties that are difficult to dismantle. A transitional period is generally insufficient to see these loyalties and preferences, much less identities, change. As a consequence, one common notion is illusory: that a national presidential election marks the end of a transition from warfare as well as the beginning of a democracy that resembles other rocky, new, and poorly institutionalized democracies that will “mature” over time. Although social groups in non-war-torn societies grappling with legitimacy crises are often deeply divided to the point of potential armed conflict (consider Zimbabwe, as of this writing), the dynamics and challenges of war-torn societies are more acute. People are quicker to take up arms, even though war weariness has taken its toll. Collier and others argue that postwar countries face a higher risk of civil war, even though the degree of that risk remains in dispute. Although elections offer the important possibility of an alternation of power, these intense affiliations require attention beyond an electoral event every four to six years. In many ways, the postelectoral period is the most dangerous for exclusionary behavior. The trappings of sovereignty confer a crucial role on national elections as the main marker for a return to “normal” status among bilateral, regional, and intergovernmental actors outside the country. UN agencies, international finan-

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cial institutions, and donors tend to return to a mode of treating the state as its sole and most important partner, the legitimate voice and representative of the territory’s entire society. The “development” moment has arrived, closing the “peacekeeping” (and “peacebuilding”) moment for too many actors. And development agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are loath to jeopardize their good relations with the host government, which they now can embrace as their crucial partner and counterpart. Even where international actors embrace development projects aimed at easing tensions between former warring groups, at enhancing the sense of belonging of those marginalized groups, and at dissuading the state from behaving in an exclusionary manner, the mentality underlying the planning and consultation by external actors prioritizes the state to the detriment of those marginalized sectors. In postwar Sierra Leone, for instance, leaders of the opposition party expressed their surprise that after their electoral loss in 2002, international embassies’ contacts and invitations to meetings dropped off precipitously. They were left in the cold in terms not only of domestic governance but also of shaping the views and business of the United Nations, bilateral actors, and international NGOs. These external actors concentrated on their counterpart—the state— and organized their strategies, planning processes, and implementation regimens with the state, leaving the political parties that emerged from the conflict to sort out their own relations with one another. When the opposition gained power in the 2007 elections, its leaders felt once again besieged by the flood of attention from international organizations. Of course external actors confront a dicey challenge in seeking to engage opposition or minority parties after a recognized national election has occurred. There is no set template or protocol for international actors to maintain relations, dialogue, or involvement with opposition or minority parties. After all, the former insurgent forces (or state armies) are no longer armies that merit attention as security threats from international forces. Instead, they have presumably become political parties subordinating themselves to the rules of the political regime, not above the power of the state. Elected governments are likely to be uneasy or threatened when external actors try to involve former warring parties or other, third parties in governance—whether in dialogue over state priorities, budgetary questions, planning processes, sector specifics, implementation, or the creation or modification of mechanisms for accountability and transparency. They will quickly decry outside interference and hark back to state sovereignty. But it is precisely in this phase when external actors must seek to retain a peace-oriented engagement and thus prioritize the prevention of exclusionary policies and practices. Speaking of postconflict societies, Peter Wallensteen (2008, 238) argues for “long-term readiness for the international community to remain engaged, for the benefit of democracy and peace.” As described above,

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this is extremely challenging, especially once elected governments can claim the mantle of sovereignty and legitimation via elections. However, there are a number of means to overcome the barriers to emphasis on legitimation via inclusionary processes. The groundwork for such a role to be played by international actors must be laid before an election is held for a posttransition head of state. Where UN Security Council mandates for verification and monitoring of a peace agreement exist, an extension of this mandate through the tenure of the first elected head of state is one means of providing the legal and political basis for continued international verification and monitoring. Because external monitoring roles generally offer informal leverage over the parties to the accord, some means for influencing elite and governmental behavior persist, especially where foreign troops remain present. The practice of extended peace operations with a gradually reduced peacekeeping troop presence seems to have provided useful leverage to the UN missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as to international efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo. In addition, a newly elected government can extend transitional powersharing or other co-governance mechanisms past the swearing-in of a government to continue providing voice to those who potentially could be marginalized. Such groups may include the armed groups that did not emerge triumphant; the ethnic, religious, or social groups associated with those armed groups; and vulnerable minority groups that were not represented by armed groups or in a peace deal. The inclusion of other marginalized groups (e.g., representing women, moderate third parties, and ethnic groups that no army claimed to represent) can help extend horizontal legitimacy. Extended built-in consultation and voice (one can think of them as “extended transitional” measures) may, of course, be embedded in a political or electoral system in one of the powersharing mechanisms described above. Powersharing brings the attendant benefits and limitations of an institutionalized role for particular social groups in the state and governance. Conversely, extended consultation mechanisms could be fashioned which represent temporary or ad hoc arrangements that expire either on a specific date or after certain predetermined events have occurred (e.g., the transfer of power from one party to another). Here, I call such arrangements that extend past the swearing-in of a nontransitional elected government “extended transitional” measures. Rather than the result of renegotiation processes or Pierre DuToit’s (2003) “postsettlement settlements,” these are negotiated earlier and persist beyond elections. Because elected governments are generally reluctant to cede power immediately after having won it at the polls, extended transitional measures are unlikely to emerge unless a prior agreement has been reached on them. One of the most promising areas for external actors to support inclusionary peacebuilding is in fostering such agreements before the beginning of the cam-

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paign season for elections of a government under a permanent regime. Negotiating such extended transitional arrangements as part of a peace agreement will build in a greater acceptance and expectation of this guarantee. Possible examples include a preagreed temporary role for former guerrilla forces in determining how state resources are spent in particular regions of the country where insurgents enjoyed strength. They include temporary powersharing measures like quotas for an initial hiring of the security forces or for seats in the legislature, or consultation with other political parties in major decisions on things like natural resources, declaration of an emergency, or defense expenditures. Equally important, the international financial institutions, especially the World Bank, can emphasize the inclusion of former enemies and other political representatives in the project design, assessment, and execution phases and structure them to persist through an initial postelection period, though not permanently. World Development Report 2011 (World Bank 2011, 285) points also toward a role for external donors in pressing for greater budgetary oversight and transparency from postconflict states as a means to curb transnational crime and other obstacles to stability. Civil Society Beyond the inclusion of political parties and former insurgents, civil society organizations offer the possibility of advancing broad participation and shunting exclusion. Here the concerns of critical peacebuilding theorists converge with a legitimacy-focused approach that includes both elite inclusion and broader mass inclusionary practices. Civil society is already incorporated into the formulation of the main national economic planning document used by the World Bank, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Projects undertaken by the international financial institutions also routinely consult with NGOs and other civil society elements. Donors channel many of their funds through national-level NGOs, although more pass through UN agencies and international NGOs. However, consultation of civil society tends to be project centered and not provide the sort of broad participation and accountability that are useful to reduce exclusionary governance. Haitian NGOs, for instance, complained even after participating in consultations all over the country that their views were largely ignored when the government and international technocrats drafted the Interim Cooperation Framework in 2004.19 It is rare that civil society groups are formally part of state decision making about funding priorities or about resource management and allocation in ways that affect specific regions and ethnic groups. Externally supported state reforms in specific sectors, such as justice reform and education reform, have increasingly included civil society representatives. Yet civil society has not generally substituted for the sense of participation and ownership that comes with powersharing arrangements. Furthermore,

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governments are adept at co-opting civil society organizations, converting them from agents of oversight, accountability, and diverse types of participation into fig leaves for advancing the interests of the governing party or dominant ethnic group. “Layered” Legitimacy Building The manner in which international actors operate can shape their ability to prevent exclusionary practices and to overcome the inherent contradictions of external efforts to enhance internal legitimacy. Chief among these is the degree to which individual countries act in a unilateral as opposed to multilateral way. Despite the stated commitment of many donors like the United States and the United Kingdom to multilateralism, advances have been slow and difficult. Unilateral action persists, especially in the policies of donor development agencies and occasionally in military operations. Unilateral action persists for several compelling reasons. Every international actor has divergent interests, making it rare for the objectives of particular policies or projects to fully coincide. Donor countries, which are mostly democratic, are also held accountable by the public and by legislative bodies for their development aid and foreign engagements. They need to exercise sufficient control over their programs to achieve their objectives. In addition, the complex logistics of planning, executing, and funding projects becomes even more complicated when done in concert with other actors. Finally, bilateral actors often feel that other donors, NGOs, and regional and international organizations do not engage in peacebuilding or development projects as effectively or accountably as they do. As a result, they often eschew harmonized approaches because of the corruption, inefficiencies, slow pace, or high transaction or administrative costs (read: headaches) of working with others. If, however, the legitimacy of both international efforts and internal state institutions lies at the core of the peacebuilding process, then the importance of perceptions of the motives and modes of external interventions is paramount. Many bilateral actors have largely discounted the benefits of multilateral harmonized efforts for this legitimation process (e.g., as seen in local perceptions). These advantages must be weighed against the transaction costs, inefficiencies, and risks of concerted multilateral efforts. Acting in concert with others minimizes two of the hurdles to legitimacy building identified above: (1) the perceived Western bias and interests underlying these programs, and (2) the notion that external actors act in their own interests at the expense of the interests of the population of a postwar society. Fortunately, the twenty-first century has seen a serious weakening of unilateralism in postconflict peacebuilding. Bilateral and other international actors can deepen this multilateralism in three ways, which I call “layered” legitimacy

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building, that will enhance efforts to build legitimacy. The first of these layers is enhanced coherence among bilateral donors. Even the most unilateral aid efforts engage in coordination exercises and proclaim a commitment to coordinated development assistance. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) was erected by the main donors to help coordinate and harmonize aid efforts, and to develop and advance their conformity with broadly agreed-on standards. In the area of postconflict countries and fragile states, the OECD-DAC has developed a good number of standards to enhance not just coherent development efforts among its members but also mutual accountability with the host country.20 In terms of military action, unilateral interventions or wars remain the exception rather than the norm. Most international deployments of troops are undertaken not by a sole power but in multilateral form. For example, even the epitome of recent “going-it-alone” wars—the US war in Iraq—involved not just the United States but also an assortment of ancillary coalition partners. Of course, greater coherence within each donor country in “whole-of-government” approaches (encompassing development, diplomacy, defense, and more) is also important for the coherence of external efforts. The second “layer” of legitimacy building is the United Nations system. Most obviously, military efforts to end (or start) wars can conform to the UN Charter’s demand that military actions beyond self-defense must be authorized by the UN Security Council. Although most UN member states saw the 2003 US war on Iraq as a violation of this legally enshrined principle, the US experience in that country seems to have ironically produced a backlash in favor of the wisdom of this international standard. Beyond providing authorization for military interventions into unconsenting countries, the UN Security Council also approves political missions and postconflict peacebuilding support missions. Individual countries can coordinate their diplomacy with these missions, can provide material support to them, and can coordinate their funding priorities in concert with other regional actors. When elected governments tend toward exclusionary policies and practices, the most influential states can help curb this behavior by coordinating conditionality and leverage with one another, with neighboring states, and with the senior representatives of the United Nations and other regional organizations. The third and final layer of legitimacy building is composed of regional and subregional organizations. The most important of these bodies are the African Union, the Organization of American States, and the European Union, but other groups like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Organization of the Islamic Conference also have potentially important roles. Regional organizations are playing an increasingly important role in peace operations, including postconflict peacebuilding. One reason is the desire of Western powers and

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donors to foist off the financial and diplomatic responsibilities for international support for these processes to others, especially in Africa. The African Union’s deployment of troops to Burundi in 2003 and 7,000 troops to Darfur by 2005 reflects this trend as well as the union’s distrust of the UN and its interest in enhancing its stature and impact (Bah 2009). A factor favoring the increased activities of regional and subregional organizations is the notion that these states can provide technical civilian assistance that is more culturally appropriate than that provided by civilian staff members from other regions. Judicial advisers, security advisers, and advisers for institutional capacity building and demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration programs will be more effective if they speak common languages and share common histories. In places like Africa, such regional civilian assistance will presumably cost less than if deployed from a wide range of wealthier UN countries. However, a more compelling reason for providing an enhanced place for regional organizations (and subregional ones like the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS; the Intergovernmental Authority on Development; and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) is the legitimating function they can play. World Development Report 2011 (World Bank 2011, 288) urges “better aligning international assistance behind regional governance efforts” and thus points to the crucial legitimating role those organizations can play. If curbing exclusionary behavior by elected governments is crucial for peacebuilding success, then diplomatic leverage remains a key tool for discouraging such behavior. The ability of Western governments to exercise this leverage without sparking a backlash against outside interference is limited to the extent that it smacks of either unilateralism or Western self-interest. Working with and through the United Nations system, and its various organs and agencies, helps mute this sort of objection. In early March 2011, the European Union and the Obama administration both followed this approach to regional organizations’ role in legitimating international actions. In stating a position also embraced by the United States, a European diplomat stated: “The position even of European countries who theoretically support a no-fly zone is clear that it would require the full support of the Arab League or African Union, and a UN Security Council Resolution.”21 Of course, regional organizations themselves or their most influential members are often contributors to the causes or persistence of warfare. In virtually all the civil wars examined in this book—from the Central American wars of the 1980s to the Central African wars of the 1990s, and from the West African wars to the Southeast Asian wars of the 2000s—meddlesome neighbors have spawned or abetted war. Powerful regional states have a self-interested and perverse influence not only on what happens in neighboring states but also on the decisions of regional and subregional organizations, which often act in pathological ways

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(Barnett and Finnemore 2004). The dominant role of the United States in the Organization of American States and NATO, of Nigeria in ECOWAS, and of South Africa in the Southern African Development Community emblemize this tendency. Nigeria’s leadership of the Economic Community of West African States in Liberia, for instance, was seen in the region as corrupt and advancing both the strategic interests of Nigeria and the personal interests of the troops it deployed. Nevertheless, nothing blunts the charges of Western interference more than a regional or subregional organization taking the lead in diplomatic steps or even adopting certain sanctions to lean on governments to eschew exclusionary practices. In this sense, regional and subregional organizations represent the gold standard for the legitimate exercise of outside leverage. Regional institutions can also embrace regional-level norms of good governance that signal the need to conform to standards of inclusionary conduct. As the World Bank (2011, 288) claims, “supporting regional platforms to discuss the application of governance norms is an effective way to increase ownership.” The legitimacy given to such measures does not ensure that they will achieve their aims, especially in Africa, where states are notoriously reluctant to lean on one another. But it does remove one of the principal shields behind which national governments hide when they flout international standards of conduct: sovereignty. For these reasons, both regional and subregional organizations are likely to play a much more salient role in international affairs in the coming decades.

Conclusion National-level leaders and organizations hold responsibility for making decisions that can alienate and exclude salient groups from power. They can also create state structures and adhere to them in practice so that these groups, including potential spoilers, feel that their expectations of participation are being met. I have offered here four different “moments” in which national leaders confront different points in a postconflict transition to make such decisions. Many others have written on specific aspects of these moments, including the design and content of interim administrations; the different constitutional, powersharing, and other options in state design; strategies about the timing and systems of elections that bring transitional periods to an end; and the postelection period that proved so harmful for peace in Liberia, Haiti, East Timor, and other cases. In this chapter I hope to have structured the contingent choices that confront both national and international actors in these processes. It is difficult for outside actors to respond to the imperative to enhance inclusionary behavior and horizontal legitimacy. However, in this chapter I have set forth some ways in which international actors can engage these processes constructively. Engaging processes that strengthen inclusion is more productive than

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advocating specific structures. No one-size-fits-all blanket recommendations apply to all postwar societies. International actors can play important roles, using leverage on aid and diplomatic strategically to support participatory processes. Just as globalization can undermine efforts to build legitimacy, so it can also abet the need for external legitimation and the role of external actors, including both multilateral and nongovernmental actors. Given the complex globalized context of peacebuilding, legitimation depends not solely on elite inclusion but also on the inclusion of the broader population. Although this book’s empirics point mainly to elite accommodation in inclusionary practices, the shifted norms regarding popular voice and participation in processes determining postwar polities require broader participation. Such broader inclusion is imperative if the negative peace standard examined in this study is to be transformed into at least a consolidated and self-sustaining peace, if not “positive peace.” And beyond their role in enhancing national horizontal authorities’ legitimacy, external actors must also pay heed to their own legitimacy as actors in these societies (Rubin 2008). By working in conjunction with other external actors, and ensuring meaningful partnerships with domestic actors and groups, international actors can enhance their own effectiveness. In seeking to fully explore the potential and perils of this book’s findings for policymakers, this chapter may not appeal to the theoretically oriented reader. However, scholars frequently invest inordinate time and effort in research that points to particular policy pathways but fails to analyze the specific likely contributions and pitfalls of those implicit recommendations. The policy implications of an inclusionary peacebuilding approach are intimately tied to state legitimacy. One implication of the forty-two cases examined in this study is that the behavior of a postwar national government—especially during the first years after the election, which are seen to mark the end of a transition from war—is a moment of special danger. The most underrecognized moment of vulnerability to conflict-sparking exclusionary behavior is when a new government is installed after an internationally accepted election. At this moment, when the trappings of sovereignty, the illusion of a terminated transition, and the exhaustion of external actors are all ascendant, domestic actors count on international deference and negligence to nudge out (or worse) their former enemies. The hour of celebrating an externally facilitated postwar transition is a time of heightened danger of war recurrence. Rather than turning away their attention and resources after the postelection moment, external actors should instead remain engaged with national actors and do what is prudent to encourage inclusionary behavior. Although national actors remain in the driver’s seat of processes that may spark renewed conflict, international actors can influence this behavior through judicious, farsighted, and careful diplomatic leverage. This road is a more prudent one than assuming that electoral democracy will produce a responsive regime

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and ultimately a legitimate and sustainable state. Peace and good governance depend on numerous factors, but they are likely to depend heavily on sound judgment and sustained engagement.

Notes 1. See Krasner (2001). Even so, the international system reflected greater coherence, coverage, and comparability of states in the late 1800s and early 1900s than before or after. 2. Hegre et al. (2001) found that countries experiencing regime transitions of any sort are more inclined to civil wars than stable democracies or autocracies. 3. See Tvedten (1997, 111); also see Duke (1998); Stedman (2002), plus UN estimates of 450,000 to 500,000 dead between October 1992 and December 1993, including secondary deaths due to starvation, given by SIPRI (1994). 4. Most regimes considered among the less democratic (e.g., Cuba, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Burma) hold elections, and some (e.g., Uzbekistan and Iran) include multiple parties. Two potential alternatives, Chinese-style single-party open economy and Islamic republics, may attract additional adherents. 5. NATO’s continued alliance with warlords who had overseen the worst atrocities, along with its refusal to risk its forces to detain alleged perpetrators, assured that transitional justice would be on the back burner for many months, which became many long years (and still pending as of mid-2010). In his departure speech as special representative of the secretary-general in January 2004, Brahimi rued this decision. 6. See “Iraq Body Count,” www.iraqbodycount.org. 7. Where human rights violators are part of an agreement and interim arrangement, external actors may also seek prosecution for atrocities, or at least exclusion of said violators from power. Outside powers also may seek to favor one side over another in a peace process. 8. For various perspectives on what is here called state design and its relation to war termination, see Elazar (1994), Burton and Higley (1998), Horowitz (1985), Bermeo (2003), and Fukuyama (2004). 9. Fukuyama (2004, 6–14) refers to this as “scope” of the state. 10. See Call (2002). For an analogous view at the interstate systemic level, see Ikenberry (2000). 11. On the well-trodden distinction between states, regimes, and governments, see Lawson (1993); Eagles, Holoman, and Johnston (2004); O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (1986); and Fishman (1990). 12. See, e.g., Kumar (1998); Lyons (2002, 2004, 2005); Ottaway and Carothers (2000); Jarstad and Sisk (2008); Diamond (2005); Doyle and Sambanis (2006); and Paris and Sisk (2009). 13. The elections literature also addresses technical challenges of electoral observation and monitoring, which I do not take up here.

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14. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, “Kosovo Municipal Elections 2000–Final Results,” 2000. Reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for municipal and assembly elections for these and other years can be found at www.osce.org / kosovo / 13208.html. 15. See Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development (2009). 16. On the parliamentary process and results, see International Foundation for Electoral Systems (2005). 17. Timor-Leste Armed Violence Assessment, “Elections Violence in Timor-Leste: Mapping Incidents and Responses,” Issue Brief 3, June 2009. 18. Sometimes the most prominent candidates to emerge from the populace associated with the former rebels have not been military commanders but instead political opposition figures not associated with armed action. Examples include the election of Ibrahim Rugova as Kosovo’s first president in 2002 and Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua in 1990. 19. See open letter from sixteen Haitian nongovernmental organizations, “Haitian Civil Society Organisations’ Declaration on the Interim Cooperation Framework,” June 14, 2004, stating that “the process of drafting the ICF is controlled by external actors with the complicity of the current government in the framework of a technocratic approach. This excludes all real participation of the majority and vulnerable sectors of our country” (para 1.3), www.grassrootsonline.org / node / 723. 20. See the 2005 Paris Declaration and the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action, both at www.oecd.org / document / 18 / 0,3343,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00& &en-USS_01DBC.html. 21. Anonymous quotation from a European “knowledgeable diplomat,” given by James Kitfield, “The Libyan Crisis: Grounding No-Fly Talk,” National Journal, March 10, 2011, www.cnas.org / node / 5963.

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Index

Tables are indicated by t following page numbers. Arabic surnames starting with “al-” are alphabetized by the following part of the name. Abacha, Sani, 83 Abkhazia as separatist struggle, 46, 110, 111, 210n15 Abuja I accord (1995, Liberia), 80, 84 Abuja II accord (1996, Liberia), 75, 78, 80, 84 Accra Peace Agreement (2003, Liberia), 89, 90 Addis Ababa agreement (1972, Sudan), 103–4 Adebajo, Adekeye, 73, 74, 81 Afghanistan: election candidates in, 265–66; exporting from, 215; failed powersharing in, 194; “failed state” in, 34; informal external influence on, 248; international decision making on interim government for, 249–50; national forces on ground in, 249; NATO in decision-making role for, 248; no peace agreement in, 2; state building in, 35, 48n9; war criminals within Afghan Cabinet, 228 African Union, 82, 95n23, 256, 271, 272 Ag Bahanga, Ibrahim, 171 Ag Ghali, Iyad, 170–71 Akosombo Agreement (Liberia), 80 Algeria: and Mali, 168; war for independence in, 21n16 Alkatiri, Mari, 141 Alliance Démocratique du 23 mai pour le Changement (ADC), 171 Alliance for Democracy, 169 Alliance Touareg Nord Mali pour le Changement (ATNMC), 171 Angola: interim governance, role of domestic actors in, 252; peace accord (2002) attributed to killing of rebel leader in, 191; peace agreement and failure to secure peace in, 34; peacekeeping troops withdrawn from, 9; postwar national elections leading to violence in, 241–42, 259–60; sovereignty of, 247; strategic victory in, 184 Annan, Kofi, 85, 144

anticommunist regimes, 196–202 Anti-Terrorism Unit (Liberia), 80–81 Anya-Nya (Sudan), 103, 105 APODETI (Popular Democratic Association of Timor), 137 Arab Deterrent Force (Lebanon), 166 Arab League, 165, 167 Arab Spring (2011), 240 Arafat, Yasser, 165 Argentina and Contras (Nicaragua), 175 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 129–36, 150, 160n3, 202, 250. See also Haiti Aristotle, 33, 220 armed conflicts, defined, 11 Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor (FALINTIL), 137–38, 140, 145 Armed Forces of Liberia, 75, 76, 79 Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), 77, 83 Armée Populaire pour la Restauration de la République et la Démocratie (APRD; Central African Republic), 129 Artibonite Resistance Front for the Overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 133 Association of Southeast Asian Nations, 271 Atlas, Pierre M., 123, 149, 180 Australia’s peacekeeping in East Timor, 141, 144, 145, 204 authoritarianism. See repression Avril, Prosper, 131 Azerbaijan: fragile peace in, 203; inclusionary behavior, yet recurrence in, 201 Baathists (Iraq), 250 Baev, Pavel, 106–7, 109 Baghdad Pact, 164

304 Balaguer, Jorge, 195 Bangui Agreements (1997, Central African Republic), 125–26 Barnett, Michael N., 33, 220–21 Basaev, Shamil, 108 Bennett, Andrew, 16 Bermudez, Enrique, 175 Binningsbø, Helga Malmin, 40 Boley, George, 73, 76, 79 Bolivia, 196 border disputes, 46 Bosch, Juan, 195–96 Bosnia: elections in, 260–61, 265; formal international influence on, 247–48; international troop deployments to, 200, 203–4; marginalization of civil society in, 253; political powersharing in, 188, 191; state building in, 35; withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from, 33–34 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 31 Boyd, Chuck, 175 Boyle, Francis, 108 Bozizé, François, 126–29 Brahimi, Lakhdar, 249 Brown, Timothy C., 182n5 Burundi, 1, 150–52, 154–55; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 194; alternative explanations for recurrences, 150, 158–60; background of, 152; chronic exclusionary behavior in, 123, 154, 155, 160, 190; democratization in, 157, 159, 230, 241; economic factors in, 158; ethnic violence in, 154–55, 189; informal external influence on, 248; institutional weakness in, 189, 214; interim governance, role of domestic actors in, 252; multiple recurrences in, 18, 21n19; recurrence and mass atrocities (1988), 154–55; recurrence as failure of inclusion (1993–2006), 157–58, 189; regional factors in recurrences, 159; severity of exclusionary behavior in, 99; war and mass atrocities (1972), 154 Bush, George W., 77, 90, 135, 250, 263 Buyoya, Pierre, 154–55, 157, 189–90 Call, Charles T., 66n6 Cambodia: exclusionary behavior in, 214; formal international influence on, 247; interwar peace, perceptions of, 12, 15; negotiated settlement in, 184; postwar repression in, 219; resource curse in, 27 Cannibal Army (Haiti), 133 capacity vs. legitimacy, 7, 47, 222, 244 Carothers, Thomas, 241, 243 Carr, Burgess, 103 Carter, Jimmy, 132

Index case-study approach, 9–15, 232–33; “structured, focused” case comparison, 180–81 Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (Zimbabwe), 147 cease-fires: and “frozen” conflicts, 202–6; nature of, 2, 12; third-party guarantors of, 28. See also peace agreements Cederman, Lars-Erik, 58–59 Cedras, Raoul, 132 CEMAC (Economic Community of Central African States), 127–28 Central African Republic, 1, 124–29; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 194, 215; Bangui Agreements (1997), 125–26, 205; coup in, 10, 128–29, 234; economic factors in, 214; ethnic and religious composition of, 125, 128–29; exclusion precipitating recurrence in, 98, 124–25, 149; French and regional troops in, 150; initial conflict (1996–97), 125; institutional weakness in, 99, 124–25, 127, 159, 214; recurrence in, 18, 126–28; subsequent armed conflict and coup attempts (2002–present), 124, 128–29; withdrawal of peacekeeping forces, effect of, 149, 204–5 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; US), 118, 132, 175–76 Central Revolutionary Council (Liberia), 73 Chad, relationship with Central African Republic, 127 Chalabi, Ahmed, 263 Chamorro, Violeta, 174, 276n18 Chamoun, Camille Nimr, 163–65 Chandler, David, 35 Chechyna, 1, 106–10; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 194; alternative explanations for recurrence in, 109–10; economic factors in, 109; election candidates, Russian interference with, 264–65; first Chechen war (1994–96), 12, 106–7; international factors in recurrence in, 109–10; Khasavyurt Accords (1996), 107–8, 119; recurrence precipitated by exclusion in, 98; second Chechen war (1999), 12, 18, 108–9, 119; territorial autonomy, reneging on, 119, 191 checks and balances, 221 Chesterman, Simon, 222 Chevron, 105 China fighting in Tibet. See Tibet chronic exclusion. See exclusion Cisse, Lamine, 126 Civilian Mission in Haiti, 132 civilians participating in wars, 234–35 civil society organizations, 227, 253, 267, 269–70

Index civil wars: defined, 11; devastation of, 2; extrastate aspects of, 233; new civil war in same country or territory, 14t; number of battle-related deaths for internal armed conflict to qualify as, 12; scholarship on, 59–65, 233–35; theories about, 26–30. See also nonrecurrence; onset of civil war; recurrences classification of conflicts, 13–15, 14–15t, 21n14, 51 Clinton, Bill, 132, 135, 260 CNRT. See National Council of Timorese Resistance coercion, 28, 130 Cold War: and anticommunist regimes, 196–202; breakup of Soviet Union, wars related to, 203; and ideology as mobilizing principle, 199; negotiated settlements during, 184, 200; post–Cold War era vs., 5, 184, 201, 207; and regime types, 183; and victorious Communist regime in Cuba, 196 Collier, Paul: adhering to neoliberal macroeconomics, 63; on “conflict trap,” 124, 127; on economic factors, 6, 72, 105, 130–31, 135; on ethnicity factor, 48n2; on postwar countries’ risk level for recurrence, 266; on rate that armed conflicts recur, 61; on rebel leaders hiding their true motives, 95n21; on religious factor, 167; on resource curse and civil war, 26–28, 127; on variables and regressions, 52–54 Colombia: natural resources in, 27, 215; renewal of offensive actions in, 48n7; successful powersharing in, 194 colonialism, effect of, 45 Commission of Inquiry (Sudan), 102 Committee to Protect Journalists, 135 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, 272 Community of Sahel-Saharan States, 127 comparativists, 232 Condominium Agreement (Sudan), 101 conflict diamonds, 84, 87, 90 conflict resolution. See negotiated settlements; peace agreements; peacebuilding Congo, Democratic Republic of. See Democratic Republic of the Congo Conneh, Sekou, 77 Conselho Nacional de Resistência Maubere (CNRM; East Timor), 138 consociational democracy, 40 consolidation of peace, 3, 4, 207, 226. See also peacebuilding constitutionalism, 221 constructivist theory, 217 Contract and Monopolies Commission (Liberia), 91

305 Contras (Nicaragua), 174, 175–76 Correlates of War Project, 9, 21n11, 27 Costa Rica: regional assistance in civil war in, 200; victorious anticommunist regime in, 197 Côte d’Ivoire and Liberian unrest, 71, 73, 81, 82 coups, 10, 128–29. See also specific countries critical peacebuilding theorists, 35–36, 44, 223–24, 225t, 227 Croatia, international troop deployments to, 200, 203 Cuba: nonrecurrence in, 19; victorious Communist regime in, 196 Cyprus: international troop deployments to, 200, 203; negotiated settlement in, 184; no powersharing, but inclusionary behavior in, 195–96, 198 Dailey, Peter, 135 Dalai Lama, 116–18 Daly, M. W., 104, 105, 106 Dayton Accords (1995, Bosnia), 253, 260 DDR. See disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration decision “moments” in postwar political processes, 246–73; elections and end of interim governance, 257–66; interim governance, decisive role of domestic actors in, 252–54; interim governance, decisive role of international actors in, 248–52; state design, 254–56; state legitimacy after elections, 266–73 Defense Forces of Timor-Leste (FDTL), 140–43 Del Castillo, Graciana, 32 demobilization. See disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) “democracy promotion” and democratization: consociational democracy, 40; negative effects of, 7, 240–44; and prevention of recurrence, 28. See also specific countries democratic peace thesis, 230 Democratic Republic of the Congo: civilian victims in, 223; failed powersharing in, 194; multiple armed conflicts in, 201; natural resources in, 215 Des Forges, Alison, 153 De Soto, Alvaro, 32 Detzel, Julian, 90 Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC), 221–22, 271 Development Research Group (World Bank), 26 De Waal, Alex, 106 diffusion, 183–84 Dillon, Karin, 169, 172 Dillon, Sam, 175

306 disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), 28, 84–85, 89, 172, 181n2, 193, 209n5, 242, 259–60 disillusion of recurrence, 3 Djibouti, powersharing in, 187–88 Doe, Samuel, 73, 80–81 Dokie, Sam, 78 Dominican Republic: international troop deployments to, 200, 203; no powersharing, but inclusionary behavior in, 195, 198 Doyle, Michael W.: on capacity, 7, 20n5; civil wars data set of, 9, 51, 67n16; on international aid, 63–64; on liberal peacebuilding, 32; on peacekeeping troops’ role in maintaining stability, 205; proxy use by, 62; on rebel cohesion, 173, 181n3; on severity of war, 28; on UN peace efforts’ effectiveness, 30, 90 Dudayev, Djokhar Musayevich, 107 Dupuy, Kendra, 90, 134 duration of prior war as factor in recurrence, 28 DuToit, Pierre, 268 Duvalier, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc,” 130–31 East Timor, 1, 136–46; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 215; background of, 136– 37; conflicts with few deaths in, 10, 159; divisions among former allies leading to recurrence in, 149, 159–60; economic factors in, 144–45; electoral violence in, 258; end of first war in, 138–39; exclusionary behavior in, 98, 122, 142–43, 146, 149, 202; institutional weakness in, 99, 143–44, 149, 159, 214; interim government, international decision making on, 250–51; internal armed conflict (2006), 140–41; international and regional factors in, 46, 145–46; international transitional authority in, 247; international troops and stability in, 144; languages used in, 136–37, 145; local and legislative elections before presidential elections in, 261–63; no peace agreement in, 2; peacekeeping considered successful, yet conflict recurred in, 2, 9; postwar government reneging on commitments in, 150; rebel cohesion in, 180; religious and ethnic factors in, 136; UN’s role in, 3, 139–40, 141, 144–45, 146, 251, 255; war for independence followed by civil war in, 13, 18, 137–38; withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from, 33–34, 149–50, 204 East Timor Transitional Authority, 140 Eckstein, Harry, 16, 20n10, 97 ECOMOG. See ECOWAS Cease-Fire Monitoring Group Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, 210n16

Index Economic Community of Central African States (CEMAC), 127–28 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 71, 74–75, 80, 82–84, 90, 95n23, 272–73 economic factors, 6, 8, 27, 72, 119–20, 144–45, 214, 216. See also natural resources; specific countries economic liberalism, 244 economic powersharing, 192 ECOWAS Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), 74–75, 83–85, 87, 95n23, 204 electoral representation and elections: candidate maneuvering, 263–66, 276n18; decision “moments” in postwar political processes, 257–66; delayed elections in Bosnia, 260–61; demobilization prior to national elections (lesson from Angola), 259–60; importance of, 258–59; as inclusionary process, 216; in less democratic regimes, 217, 275n4; local and legislative elections, 255–56, 261; as process legitimacy, 226; sequencing and timing of, 259–66; violence linked to, 241–42 elite political behavior. See exclusion; inclusion El Salvador: interim governance, role of domestic actors in, 252; international pressure and elections in, 255–56, 265; negotiated settlement in, 184; nonrecurrence in, 19; organized criminal violence in, 20n7; security powersharing in, 190–91; sunset provisions on powersharing in, 256; UN mediation of peace in, 32, 200 embedded legitimacy, 45, 226 ethnicity: and bloody wars, effect on peace duration, 64; and civil war onset, 26, 28; recurrence and ethnic fractionalization, 28–29, 48n7, 54–59, 55–56t, 66n5, 216; social contract with diverse ethnic groups as basis for sustained long-term peace, 245–46. See also specific countries European Union, 204, 256, 271–72 Evangelista, Matthew, 109 exclusion: agents (who do excluding), 38; chronic exclusionary behavior, 122–23, 150, 153–54, 160; as decisive factor, 4, 6, 20n3, 100, 199t, 206, 213–14; defined, 4, 37, 161n18; forms of, 38–39; history of concept, 37–39; international actors’ ability to influence national elites’ behavior, 236, 255; nonseparatist recurrences precipitated by, 122, 123–24; not as decisive factor, 162–63, 179–80; separatist recurrences precipitated by, 98; severity of, 38, 99; subjective perceptions among former warring factions, 4–5; targets (who are excluded), 38. See also specific countries Ex-Liberators (Central African Republic), 128–29

Index external actors’ role, 236–37; deciding on transitional arrangements and rulers, 247–54, 273–74; and elections, 259; shaping legitimacy from without, 45–47, 237–38, 270–73; strategy of, 245–47. See also peacekeeping operations “failed peace,” 1, 25–49; civil wars and ethnic conflict, 26–30; defined, 8, 11; exclusion, inclusion, and legitimacy, 36–47; reasons for, 25; recurrence as universally accepted indicator of, 8; standards for, 8–9 failed states, 6 FALINTIL. See Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor Famille Lavalas party (Haiti), 133–34 F&L. See Fearon and Laitin data sets Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (El Salvador), 191 Fearon and Laitin data sets, 74; on Burundi and Rwanda, 151; on Central African Republic, 124; civil war at end for at least one year, 12–13; civil wars data set of, 9–10, 20n1, 51, 66nn1–6, 67n7, 67n13; classification of civil wars not always clear, 234; collapse of Soviet Union, effect of, 121n4; colonial wars for independence included, 21n16; conditions favoring insurgency, 27; ethnic fractionalization, 29, 54–56, 55–56t; GDP as factor, 53–54; proxies in, 61–62; and religious fractionalization, 54–56; and resource curse, 74; on South Korea’s nonrecurrent civil war, 197; on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, 110, 111; variables and regressions in, 52–54, 53t Fifteenth of September Legion (Nicaragua), 175 Fifth Brigade (Zimbabwe), 147 Figueres, “Pepe,” 200 Firaku (Timorese people), 136–37 FOMUC (Central African Republic), 128 foreign troops. See international troops; peacekeeping operations Forman, Shepard, 139–40 Fortna, Virginia Page, 28, 30, 48n5, 64, 90, 205 France: aid to Central African Republic, 128, 150; role in Haiti, 133 Frangieh, Suleiman, 165 Franks, Jason, 35, 36, 218, 221, 223 FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front of East Timor), 137–38, 140–43, 146 Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, 132 Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD; Djibouti), 187–88 “frozen conflicts,” 6, 202–6, 214 Fukuyama, Francis, 3, 35, 222

307 Garang, John, 101, 105 Gemayel, Pierre, 164 genocide, 48n10, 150, 151, 154, 239 George, Alexander, 16, 180 Georgia and South Ossetia, 110–14; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99; coding in data bases for, 110–11; economic factors in, 114; ethnic factors in, 112; failed powersharing in, 194; first conflict (1991–93), 111; fragile peace in, 203; international factors in, 46, 233; recurrence precipitated by exclusion in, 98; second conflict (2004), 18, 112–13, 210n15; separatist recurrences in, 97; territorial autonomy, reneging on, 119, 120, 191 German, Tracey, 109 Ghani, Ashraf, 7, 35, 222 Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, 61 globalization and state legitimacy, 244–45 Goldstein, Melvyn, 115 governance: interim governance, decisive role of domestic actors in, 252–54; interim governance, decisive role of international actors in, 248–52; as key to peace, 33–35, 233. See also state building Governance Reform Commission (Liberia), 91 Great Lakes region (Africa). See Burundi; Rwanda greed / grievance debate, 26–27, 58 Greek Civil War, 197, 200 grievance-based approaches: and civil wars’ onset, 26–27; in recurrence, 72 gross domestic product (GDP). See economic factors Guatemala: civil societies, involvement in peace negotiations, 253; economic powersharing, 192; interim governance, role of domestic actors in, 252; negotiated settlement in, 184; nonrecurrence, 19; organized criminal violence, 20n7; postwar repression, 219; UN military observers, 200 Guinea and Liberian unrest, 71, 76, 82, 150 Gurr, Ted Robert, 26, 37, 41 Gurses, Mehmet, 64 Gusmao, Xanana, 138–41, 143, 251, 262, 265 Guzman, Abimael, 177, 179 Habibie, B. J., 138 Habyarimana, Juvenal, 155–56 Haiti, 1, 129–36; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 215; background of, 129; coup attempts in, 131; economic factors in, 130–31; elections of Aristide, 135–36; exclusion precipitating recurrence in, 98, 122, 123, 129, 134, 135, 202; explanatory factors for recurrence in, 130, 134–36; first armed conflict (1990–95), 130–32; informal external influence on, 248;

308 Haiti (continued) institutional weakness in, 99, 134, 159, 214; interim government, international decision making on, 250; international forces’ influence on, 248; no peace agreement in, 2; onset of peace in, 132; peacekeeping considered successful, yet conflict recurred, 2, 9; political upheaval in, 10; recurrence in, 18, 132–34; religious factors in, 129; UN peacekeeping in, 3, 134, 136; US role in, 130–35, 150; withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from, 33–34, 204 Hamas, 265 Hamilton, Alexander, 221 Haradinaj, Ramush, 228 Harrington, Andrew, 142–43, 145 Hartzell, Caroline, 28, 40, 63, 64, 130–31, 209n1 Hegre, Håvard, 28 Hoddie, Matthew, 28, 40, 63, 64, 130–31, 209n1 Hoeffler, Anke, 48n2, 167 Holsti, Kalevi, 43–44, 49n15 horizontal legitimacy, 43–44, 222–23, 225, 227, 244, 245, 268 Horowitz, Donald L., 40, 157 Human Rights Watch, 84 Human Security Report Project, 21n13, 67n12 Human Security Research Group, 234 Humphreys, Macartan, 28 Hussein (King of Jordan), 209n10 Hutus. See Burundi; Rwanda IFOR (NATO) troops, 204 inclusion, 39–41, 195–96; and avoiding recurrence, 38, 199t, 202, 206, 214, 216; and consolidation of peace, 4, 207, 230; defined, 39, 186; external actors’ influence on, 236–37; legitimation depending on, 274; monitoring of inclusionary agreements, 245; policy implications of, 274; reneging on, 148–50; war criminals, problematic inclusion in political order, 228, 275n7. See also exclusion; powersharing “inclusive-enough” coalitions, 222 Independent NPFL, 73 Indonesia: and Aceh independence struggle, 10; East Timor involvement of, 137, 140, 145, 150; separatist recurrences in, 97 informal states, 237 institutional weakness / strength. See state building Inter-African Mission to Monitor the Bangui Agreement, 126 Intergovernmental Authority on Development, 272 Interim Cooperation Framework, 269 interim governance. See governance internal armed conflicts, defined, 11

Index international actors. See external actors’ role international aid, 63–64, 82–83, 133, 135, 202, 222, 240 International Court of Justice on border disputes, 46 International Criminal Court: and human rights violators, 228; and state sovereignty, 239 International Crisis Group, 111 International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), 144 International Monetary Fund, 32, 63, 105, 131 international troops: deployments to prevent or end war, 144, 200, 208; and “frozen” conflicts, 6, 202–6; in legitimacy building, 271. See also peacekeeping operations Iraq: elections in, 261, 263; international forces’ influence on, 248; international transitional authority in, 247; multiple recurrences in, 21n19; separatist recurrences in, 97; US control of state design for, 255; US decision making on interim government for, 250 Islam: in Lebanon, 163–64, 188; in Sudan, 103, 104 Islamic Legion (Libya), 170 Israel: and Lebanon, 164, 167; and legitimacy of state, 44 Itano, Nicole, 81, 94n13 Iyob, Ruth, 106 Jackson, Robert H., 46 Jarstad, Anna, 40 Johnson, Douglas H., 105 Johnson, Roosevelt, 73, 76, 78–79 Johnson, Yormie, 73 Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen, 77, 79, 89, 265 Joint Control Commission (South Ossetia), 114 Joint Peacekeeping Force (South Ossetia), 111, 113–14 Jones, Bruce, 45 Jordan: nonrecurrence in, 19; Palestinian refugees in, 209n10; totalitarian government in, 199 Jumblatt, Kamal, 165 Jungle Fire (Liberia), 81 Kabbah, Ahmed, 76, 83 Kabila, Laurent-Désiré, 126 Kagame, Paul, 156 Kaladi (Timorese people), 136–37 Kant, Immanuel, 36 Karzai, Hamid, 250, 265–66 Keefer, Philip, 243–44 Keita, Kalifa, 168 Khadiagala, Gilbert, 106 Khasavyurt Accords (1996, Chechnya), 107–8, 119 al-Khattab, Ibn, 108

Index Koehler, Jan, 106–7 Kokoity, Eduard, 113 Kolingba, André, 125–26, 149 Konaré, Alpha Oumar, 169–70 König, Marietta, 111 Kosovo: international factors and separatist struggle in, 46; international transitional authority in, 247; local and legislative elections before presidential elections in, 261–63; national ground forces in, 249; NATO bombing of, 13, 110; NATO in decision-making role for, 248; no peace agreement in, 2; withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from, 33–34 Kosovo Liberation Army, 13, 249 Krahns (Liberia), 73, 77, 79, 80, 92 Krain, Matthew, 149 Krasner, Stephen D., 222 Krings, Thomas, 169 Kromah, Alhaji G. V., 73, 76, 78–79, 85 Krueger, Robert, 190 Kumar, Krishna, 241 Lafontant, Roger, 131 Laitin. See Fearon and Laitin data sets Laos: negotiated settlement in, 184; nonrecurrence in, 194; regime change without warfare in, 189; regional assistance in civil war, 200 Latortue, Gerard, 134 Lavalas Family (Haiti), 133–34 Lebanese Front (LF), 165 Lebanese National Movement (LNM), 164–65 Lebanon, 1, 163–67; analysis as anomaly to study’s generalizations, 162, 166–67; economic powersharing in, 192; failed powersharing in, 162, 164, 166, 167, 172–73, 180, 188, 202, 231; institutional weakness in, 173; international troops to maintain stability in, 166, 233; multiple recurrences in, 21n19; National Pact (1943) and civil war (1958), 163–64; recurrence (1975), 18, 164–66; religious factors and marginalization in, 163–64; Ta’if Accord (1989), 166, 167 Lebed, Alexsandr, 107, 109 legitimacy building, 36–37, 237–45; and democratization, 240, 242; external actors enhancing, 237–38, 270–73; importance of, 222–23; increased resistance to Western manipulation, 238–39; “layered,” 270–73; and negative effects of “democracy promotion,” 240–44; and sovereignty norm, 239–40. See also horizontal legitimacy; state legitimacy legitimacy-focused peacebuilding, 6–7, 19, 213, 224–30; and blanket formulas, 245; framework for, 228–29; and policy questions, 229–30

309 Lemarchand, René, 151, 153–54, 156, 157, 158, 161n18, 189 liberal peacebuilding, 19, 31–33, 44, 47, 218–19, 224, 225t Liberia, 71–95; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 194, 215; constitutional order, preservation of, 252; demobilization and reintegration process in, 84–86, 89; election candidates in, 263–66; exclusionary behavior of Taylor regime, 72, 78–81, 98, 100, 123–24, 202; first civil war, 72–74; “greed” and natural resources in, 73–74, 86–88, 214, 215; informal external influence on, 248; international factors in, 82–84; marginalization of civil society in, 253; media suppression by Taylor, 79; onset of peace (1996), 1, 12, 74–75; peacekeeping considered successful, yet conflict recurred in, 2, 9, 204; political powersharing in, 188, 256; political repression under Taylor, 78–79; regional factors in, 81–82, 150; second civil war, 1, 16, 71, 76–78, 188; second postwar peace process (2003–present), 88–91; security forces, exclusion in, 79–81; UN peacekeeping in, 3, 16, 204 Liberia Coalition for Reconciliation and Democracy, 76, 88 Liberian Forest Development Company, 86 Liberian Peace Council, 74, 76, 86 Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), 71, 76–77, 80, 86, 88, 92, 94n3 Liberia Peace Council, 73–74, 76, 94n3 Libya: civilian participants in uprising (2011), 234–35; and Mali, 168, 170, 173 Licklider, Roy, 123, 149, 180 Lieven, Anatol, 107 Lijphart, Arendt, 40 Lobato, Rogelio, 141 Locke, John, 36 Lockhart, Clare, 7, 35, 222 Lofa Defense Force (Liberia), 73, 76 Lord’s Resistance Army (Uganda), 128 Loya Jirga, 249 LURD. See Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy Lynch, Dov, 203 Lyons, Terrence, 75, 256 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 33, 220, 236 Mack, Andrew, 234 Madison, James, 33, 220–21 al-Mahdi, Sadiq, 104 Makdisi, Samir, 167 Making War and Building Peace (Doyle & Sambanis), 32

310 Mali, 167–73; analysis of, 162; background of, 168; droughts in, 169; economic factors, 214; ethnic factors in, 163, 168, 181n1; exclusionary behavior in, 168; failed powersharing in, 162, 172–73, 180; inclusionary behavior, yet recurrence in, 172–73, 201; initial civil war, 168–70; institutional weakness in, 99, 173, 214; peace agreements and powersharing in, 170–71, 180; recurrence (2006–08), 18, 171–72; reintegration of ex-combatants in, 172 Malu, Victor, 83 Mamdani, Mahmoud, 151, 156 Mandingos (Liberia), 73, 74, 77, 92 Mansfield, Edward, 230, 241 Mao Zedong, 18, 116–17, 119 Maskhadov, Aslan, 107, 108–9 Massaquoi, François, 76 mass violence: classification as civil war, 158–59; failed powersharing resulting in, 231; genocide vs., 151 McLeod, Patrick, 64 mediation. See negotiated settlements; peace agreements Metayer, Amiot, 133 methodology, 6, 15–16; limitations of, 230, 232–33 Miloševic, Slobodan, 228 Min, Brian, 58–59 Minorities at Risk data set, 37 Mitchell, Christopher R., 104, 105 MODEL (Liberia), 71, 77, 92 Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (Central African Republic), 205 Mouvement Populaire de Libération de l’Azaouad (MPLA), 169–70 Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (MLC; Central African Republic), 126 Mouvements et Fronts Unifiés de l’Azaouad (MFUA; Mali), 169–71 Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), 71, 77, 92 Mozambique: end of war in, 184; interim governance, role of domestic actors in, 252; international troop deployments in, 200; nonrecurrence in, 19; political powersharing in, 188; security powersharing in, 190; sovereignty maintained in, 247 Mugabe, Robert, 147–48 multiparty democracy, 241 Nagorno-Karabakh: elections sparking mass violence in, 241; ethnicity and recurrence in, 48n7; exclusion from study, 120n1 National Council of Maubere Resistance (Timor), 138

Index National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), 138–40, 142, 262 National Democratic Union (Nicaragua), 175 National Liberal Party (Lebanon), 165 National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), 73–77, 80, 85–86, 94nn5–6 National Police of Timor-Leste (PNTL), 141 National Reconciliation (Sudan), 104 National Reconciliation Commission (Liberia), 78 National Resistance Army (NRA ; Uganda), 156 NATO, 13, 34, 110, 248–49, 273, 275n5 NATO-commanded Implementation Force (IFOR), 204 natural resources: high-rent exports of, 179; leverage of resource-rich states, 239; precipitating warfare, 26–27; sharing as means of conflict resolution, 192; significance as factor, 180, 215. See also specific countries Ndadaye, Melchior, 190 N’dayen, Didace, 125 negotiated settlements, 184–86, 185t, 200, 207, 253 Nepal: economic powersharing, 192; ongoing negotiations in, 188; UN military observers, 200 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations). See civil society organizations Nicaragua, 173–77; Communist revolution in, 174; constitutional order, preservation of, 252; economic factors in, 177, 214; ethnic factors in, 176; exclusionary behavior in, 123, 162, 173, 176; international intervention in, 200, 233; invasive US role in, 175–76; negotiated settlement in, 184; powersharing pact in, 186; recurrence in, 1, 12, 18, 174–75; religious and ethnic factors in, 174 Nicaraguan Democratic Force, 175 Niger, role in Mali unrest, 168, 169–70, 171, 173, 201 Nigeria, relationship with Taylor in Liberia, 75 Nimeiri, Gaafar Muhammad, 103–5, 119 Nkomo, Joshua, 147–48 nonrecurrence, 19, 183–210; and economic powersharing, 192; and exclusionary behavior, 199, 199t; and inclusionary behavior, 186–92, 199t; paths to, 207; and political powersharing, 187–90; pool of cases, 14t; and security powersharing, 190–91; and territorial powersharing, 5, 191. See also inclusion; peacebuilding nonseparatist recurrences, 18, 122–61; Burundi, 150–58; Central African Republic, 124–29; East Timor, 136–46; exclusionary behavior precipitating, 123–24; Haiti, 129–36; reneging on inclusion, 148–50; Rwanda, 150–58; Zimbabwe, 146–48 norms, creation after termination of wars, 217–18

Index Norris, Pippa, 40 Northern Alliance, 249 Northern Ireland: nonrecurrence in, 19; political powersharing in, 188; security powersharing in, 191; sovereignty maintained, 247 NPFL. See National Patriotic Front of Liberia O’Ballance, Edgar, 106 Obama, Barack, 272 Obote, Milton, 156 Office of the High Representative (Bosnia), 252 Ohlson, Thomas, 148 oil exporters, 67n9, 99, 105, 109, 127 one-sided violence, 234 onset of civil war: and ethnicity, 26, 28; grievance in, 26–27; reasons for, 27–30, 29t; recurrence vs., 17–18, 50–67 Operation Camp Johnson Road (Liberia), 78 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 111–12, 114, 262, 276n14 Organization of African Unity, 127 Organization of American States (OAS), 132–33, 136, 200, 256, 271, 273 Organization of the Islamic Conference, 271 organized criminal violence, 20n7, 27 Ottaway, Marina, 241 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 165, 167 Palestinians, 164, 165, 167, 173, 209n10 Paris, Roland: and delayed elections, 260; on liberal peacebuilding, 31–32, 218–19; on partition, 235n1; on state building as condition precedent, 34, 36 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, 222, 227 partition and secession: as alternative, 235n1; and ethnic group identity, 29. See also territorial powersharing Pastora, Eden, 174–75 Patassé, Ange-Félix, 124–26, 128–29, 150, 204 Patriots for Renewal / Ex-Liberators (Central African Republic), 128 Patten, Alan, 220–21 peace, defined, 183, 215 peace agreements: during Cold War vs. post–Cold War era, 5, 184–86; and deepening divisions among former allies, 149; and duration of peace, 64–65; expectations shaped by, 5; focus on warring parties, downside of, 253; no peace agreement and one side as victor, 2. See also negotiated settlements peacebuilding, 17, 30–36; critical theories of, 35–36, 44, 223–24, 225t; defined, 8, 215; legitimacy-focused, 6, 19, 213, 224–30; paths to,

311 207; peacekeeping distinguished from, 20n9; pool of cases, 183–85, 185t; in postconflict societies, 25; republican peacebuilding, 33, 220–21, 224, 225t; rethinking aims and approaches of, 218–30; Sambanis on, 64; as state building, 33–35, 221–23, 225t. See also consolidation of peace; liberal peacebuilding; powersharing peacekeeping operations, 2, 3, 6, 9, 127, 132, 149–50, 200, 208. See also UN peacekeeping operations peacemaking. See peacebuilding Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), 9, 13, 94n4, 110, 120n1, 124, 171, 178; Uppsala Conflict Data Program data set, 233 People’s Liberation Army (PLA; China), 115–17 People’s Rally for Progress party (Djibouti), 188 perceptions about peace between periods of war, 12–13, 15, 97 performance legitimacy, 45 Peru, 177–79; civil war (1980–2000), 177; conflicts with few deaths in, 179; ethnic factors in, 179; exclusionary behavior in, 162; natural resources in, 179, 180; peace via strategic victory in, 178; recurrence (2007–present), 18, 99, 178–79 Philippe, Guy, 133 plausibility probe, 16, 97 Poggo, Scopas S., 102 Police Service of Northern Ireland, 191 political exclusion. See exclusion political inclusion. See inclusion; powersharing political powersharing, 187–90 Popular Movement for the Liberation of the Azaouad, 169 “postsettlement settlements,” 268 postwar norms, 217–18 poverty. See economic factors poverty reduction, questioning focus on, 216 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (World Bank), 269 powersharing: abrogation of arrangements, 99, 193– 94, 193t, 215, 216; brokered deals for, 226–27; consultation and voice in, 268; criticisms of, 41, 49n13, 122, 231–32; defined, 39–40, 48n12; economic powersharing, 192; failed powersharing, 162, 164, 166, 167, 172–73, 180, 208; multifaceted approach to on multi-year schedule, 231; need to test for effect on failure or success, 231–32; not essential for nonrecurrence, 196; ongoing negotiations, effect of, 188; political powersharing, 187–90; pool of cases, 186, 187t, 192–95, 193t; power-dividing arrangements, 5–6, 28, 186, 189–90, 208; prevalence of, 207, 231; and prevention of recurrence, 28, 64, 194,

312 powersharing (continued) 215; security powersharing, 4, 188, 190–91, 215; sunset provisions on, 256; territorial powersharing, 5, 191, 205; types of, 40. See also specific countries pragmatic legitimacy, 42 Preval, René, 133–34 Prevost, Gary, 175 PRIO. See Peace Research Institute Oslo process legitimacy, 45, 226 Provisional Electoral Commission (Haiti), 133 Provisional Government of East Timor, 137 proxy wars, 233–34 Prunier, Gerard, 105, 151, 156, 158 Putin, Vladimir, 107, 109, 119 Qaddafi, Muammar, 170 “quality of life” indicators as predictors of recurrence, 27–28 quantitative methods, 59–65; arbitrary or questionable estimation, 60–61; limits of, 216, 233; omitted variable bias, 62; policy applicability, 62–65, 231; proxies, use of, 61–62; on recurrences, 27–30; too few observations, 60; unit heterogeneity, 60 quasi-states, 237 Quiwonkpa, Thomas, 94n5 Ramos-Horta, José, 141, 144, 263 Reagan, Ronald, 175–76 rebel cohesion, 173, 180 recurrences: criteria for study, 13; duration of prior war as factor, 28; and ethnicity, 28–29, 48n7, 54–59, 55–56t, 66n5; list of core cases, 15, 15t; not exclusionary behavior, 162–82; not fitting the model of exclusionary causes, 162–63; onset of civil war vs., 17–18, 50–67; pool of cases, 2, 13–15, 14–15t, 51; “quality of life” indicators as predictors of, 27–28; quantitative research on, 27–30, 29t; refining analysis of, 54–56; regression analysis of, 18, 51–59, 232; territorial autonomy, reneging on, 118–20; variables and regressions, 52–54. See also nonseparatist recurrences; separatist recurrences; specific countries Regan, Jane, 142 regime changes, 247–54 regime legitimacy, 43. See also state legitimacy regional factors, 46, 81–82, 127–28, 159, 214. See also specific countries regional organizations, role in legitimacy building, 271–72 Reilly, Ben, 256 Reinado, Alfredo, 141

Index reintegration programs. See disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) religious fractionalization, 54–56, 216; social contract with diverse religious groups as basis for sustained long-term peace, 245–46. See also specific countries RENAMO rebels (Mozambique), 190 Reno, William, 87 repression, 214, 219–20 republican peacebuilding, 33, 44, 220–21, 224, 225t research design, 7–17; more nuanced concepts needed in, 235; standards for “failed peace,” 8–9. See also case-study approach; methodology resistance to Western manipulation, 238–39 resource curse. See natural resources Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 179–80 Revolutionary United Front (RUF; Sierra Leone), 76–77, 82–83, 87, 192 Reynolds, Andrew, 256 Richmond, Oliver P., 35, 36, 218, 221, 223 Roeder, Philip G., 28, 41, 48n12, 49n13, 157 Roh Moo-hyun, 197 Rosberg, Carl G., 46 Rose Revolution (South Ossetia), 113 Rost, Nicolas, 64 Rothchild, Donald S., 28, 41, 48n12, 49n13 Royal Ulster Constabulary, 191 Ruggeri, Andrea, 61 Russia: and “frozen” conflicts, 203; role in ceasefires, 184. See also Chechyna Rwagasore (King of Tutsis), 153 Rwanda, 150–58; alternative explanations for recurrence in, 150, 158–60, 215; background of, 152; democratization in, 157, 159, 230, 241; economic factors in, 158; ethnic violence in, 152–53, 189; exclusion precipitating recurrence in, 123, 153; genocide in, 150, 151; multiple recurrences in, 21n19; peace agreement and failure to secure peace in, 34, 152, 156; recurrence (1990) in, 18, 155–56; regional factors in recurrence in, 159; severity of exclusionary behavior in, 99; violence (1959) and war (early 1960s) in, 152–53 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), 152, 155, 156 Rwantabagu, Hermenegilde, 158 Saakashvili, Mikheil, 112–13, 119, 121n7 Sadaka, Richard, 167 Salehyan, Idean, 233 Sambanis, Nicholas: on capacity, 7, 20n5; civil wars data set of, 9, 51; on international aid, 63–64; on liberal peacebuilding, 32; on mass atrocities in Burundi, 151; on peacekeeping troops’ role in

Index maintaining stability, 205; proxy use by, 62; on rebel cohesion, 173, 181n3; shortcomings of research of, 63–64; on South Ossetia, 110, 121n5; on sustainability of peacebuilding, 64; on UN peace efforts’ effectiveness, 30, 90; on variables leading to recurrence, 28–30 Sandinistas. See Nicaragua Sankoh, Foday, 87, 192 Savimbi, Jonas, 85, 184, 191, 241, 259 Schevardnadze, Eduard, 110 Schmitt, John, 15, 50, 66n6 “security dilemma” approach to internal armed conflict, 26 security powersharing, 4, 188, 190–91, 215 Sendero Luminoso. See Shining Path (Peru) Senegal: exclusionary behavior in, 214; interwar peace in, 12, 97 separatist recurrences, 96–121; Chechyna, 106–10; China and Tibet, 115–18; exclusionary behavior precipitating, 98; Georgia and South Ossetia, 110–14; and political exclusion, 4; pool of cases, 97–98, 98t; Sudan, 100–106 Seventeen-Point Agreement (Tibet, 1951), 116, 118 “shadow” states, 237 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 111, 121n7 Shining Path (Peru), 99, 173, 177–78, 180, 182n4 Shoesmith, Dennis, 140 Sierra Leone: conflict resolution and sharing of natural resources in, 192, 194; constitutional order, preservation of, 252; informal external influence on, 248; international troop deployments to, 200; and Liberian unrest, 71, 76, 77, 81, 82, 83, 150; Lomé powersharing accord (1999), 192, 194; political powersharing in, 188; resource curse in, 27, 87; state legitimacy after elections in, 267; withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from, 33–34 Sierra Leone Expert Panel, 94n18 Simonsen, Sven Gunnar, 142 Singer, David J., 9, 21n11, 51 al-Sistani, Ali, 261 Small, Melvin, 9, 21n11, 51 Smith, Ian, 146 smuggling, 172 Snyder, Jack L., 28, 230, 241 Sochi Agreement (1992, South Ossetia), 111–12 social exclusion, 37, 48n8 social expectations and state legitimacy, 243–44, 254–55 socialist regimes, 196 Somalia: interwar peace, perception of, 12, 15, 97; multiple armed conflicts in, 201; peacekeeping troops withdrawn amid failure, 9

313 Somoza, Anastasio, 174, 177 South Africa: constitutional order, preservation of, 252; economic powersharing in, 192; end of war in, 184; nonrecurrence in, 19; organized criminal violence in, 20n7; political powersharing in, 188, 256; sovereignty of, 247 Southern African Development Community, 273 Southern Lebanon Front, 165 Southern Party (Sudan), 101 South Korea: nonrecurrent civil war in, 197; regional assistance in civil war in, 200; US role in, 200 South Korean Workers Party, 197 South Ossetia. See Georgia and South Ossetia South Ossetian Popular Front, 111 South Ossetian Supreme Soviet, 111 South Sudan Liberation Movement, 103 sovereignty norm, 239–40 Special Security Service (Liberia), 78, 80–81 Sriram, Chandra Lekha, 41, 49n13 stability of postwar societies: and deepening divisions among former allies, 149; and inclusion of state’s main social factions, 225; and third-party military troops, 6 state building, 6–7; to consolidate peace, 3; institutional weakness, 58, 99–100, 109, 120, 149, 159, 214–15; as more conservative than liberal, 36; peacebuilding as, 33–35, 221–23, 225t; shortcomings of, 224 State Department. See US State Department state design, 254–56 state legitimacy, 41–47, 226, 243–44; after elections, 266–73; bases of, 243; defined, 41–43; and democratization, 243; embedded, 45, 226; and globalization, 244–45; international sources of, 45–47; performance legitimacy, 45; pragmatic, 42; process legitimacy, 45, 226; and social expectations, 243–44; vertical, 43–45, 49n15, 245; Western efforts to build, 239–40. See also horizontal legitimacy; legitimacy building Stedman, Stephen John, 148 Stepashin, Sergei, 109 “structured, focused” case comparison, 180–81 Suchman, Mark, 41–42 Sudan, 100–106; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99; background of, 101; exclusion precipitating recurrence in, 98, 105, 123; failed powersharing in, 194; first civil war (1955–72), 100, 101–3; institutional weakness in, 99, 214; international factors in recurrence in, 106, 233; natural resources in, 105–6, 119, 214; peace in, 103–4; powersharing after 2005 involving elections after 4 years and South Sudanese inde-

314 Sudan (continued) pendence after 6-year period, 231; relationship with Central African Republic, 127–28; second civil war (1983–2005), 18, 104–6; separatist recurrences in, 97; territorial autonomy, reneging on, 119; world unwillingness to enter into Darfur, 239 Sudan African National Union (SANU), 102–3 Sudan People’s Liberation Army, 105 Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, 105 Suez Crisis, 164 Suharto, 138 Suliman, Mohamed, 105 Syria: involvement in Lebanon, 165–66, 167; postwar authoritarianism in, 219 Ta’if Accord (1989, Lebanon), 166, 167 Tajikistan: external support for legitimacy in, 245; powersharing in, 188; UN military observers in, 200 Taliban. See Afghanistan Tate, Joe, 81 Taylor, Charles, 71–93, 94n12, 188, 202, 228, 264. See also Liberia territorial autonomy, reneging on, 118–20 territorial powersharing, 5, 191, 205 third-party military troops, 6 Thomas, Lowell, 118 Tibet, 115–18; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 194; first Chinese war over (1950–51), 115–16; recurrence precipitated by exclusion in, 98, 118; second Chinese war over (1956–60), 18, 97, 115; territorial autonomy, reneging on, 119, 120, 191 Timorese National Council of Resistance (CNRT), 251 Tishkov, Valery, 111 Tonton Macoutes (Haiti), 130 Touré, Amadou Toumani, 126, 169–71 transitional arrangements and rulers, 247–54, 274. See also decision “moments” in postwar political processes; “democracy promotion” and democratization Traoré, Moussa, 169–70 Trujillo, Rafael, 195 Tuaregs. See Mali Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Peru), 177 Tutsis. See Burundi; Rwanda UDT (Timorese Democratic Union), 137 Uganda, role in Rwanda wars, 156, 159 ULIMO. See United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy

Index ULIMO-J, 73–74, 76, 94nn2–3 ULIMO-K, 71, 73–74, 76, 86, 94nn2–3 UN Development Program, 7, 171 UN Human Rights Commission, 238 UN Human Rights Council, 239 Unified Movements and Fronts of the Azaouad (Mali), 169 UN Integrated Mission in East Timor, 144 UN Interim Force in Lebanon, 166 Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR; Central African Republic), 128–29 UNITA (Angola), 191, 241, 259 United Arab Republic, 163, 164 United Kingdom: sanctions on Liberia, 83–84; Zimbabwe’s war for independence against Britain, 146. See also Northern Ireland United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), 73, 92 United Nations’ role: in legitimacy building, 271; as military observers, 200; negative reaction to role in shaping political institutions, 255; in peaceful settlements, 185; support of election candidates prohibited, 264. See also UN peacekeeping operations United States: Dalai Lama support in Tibet, 118; dominance in NATO and OAS, 273; putting down foreign rebellions, 200; resistance to manipulation of, 238–39; role in Dominican Republic, 195–96; role in Haiti, 130–35, 150, 250; role in Iraq interim government, 250; role with Contras (Nicaragua), 174, 175–77; sanctions on Liberia, 83–84 United Tajik Opposition (UTO; Tajikistan), 188 UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), 89–90, 268 UN Mission in the Central African Republic, 126, 205 UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL), 84, 85, 89 UN Panel of Experts on Liberia, 94n18 UN Peacebuilding Commission, 3, 8, 215 UN Peacebuilding Support Office (Liberia), 84, 89 UN peacekeeping operations, 3, 32, 96, 112, 132. See also specific missions UN Security Council: East Timor actions, 139; monitoring post-national elections, 268; rejecting incursions on sovereignty, 239; resolution on Haiti, 132; sanctions on Liberia, 83–84, 87, 90, 95n24 UN Special Commission of Inquiry for TimorLeste, 142, 143 UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, 134, 136 UN Support Mission in East Timor (UNMISET), 140, 144, 160n8

Index UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), 139–40, 144–45, 160n8, 262 Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 9–10, 21n13, 233 US State Department, 78–80, 179, 250 Utas, Mats, 85–86 Uvin, Peter, 151, 153, 154, 157, 159, 189 vertical legitimacy, 43, 49n15, 245 victory as method of war termination, 2, 178, 196–97, 200, 207, 216, 253–54 Vietnam: nonrecurrence in, 19; postwar authoritarianism in, 219; regional assistance in civil war in, 200; totalitarian regime in, 196 Vinding, Diana, 170 Wakoson, Elias Nyamlell, 105 Wallensteen, Peter, 267 Walter, Barbara F., 21n18, 27–28, 29, 51, 62, 85, 121n5, 205 war criminals, problematic integration into political order, 228, 275n7 weak state approach. See state building Weinstein, Jeremy M., 28 Weinstein, Warren, 152, 157 Welt, Cory, 112–13 Wimmer, Andreas, 58–59 Wion, Madison, 78, 94n11

315 women, exclusion of, 48n11 World Bank, 7, 32, 63, 105, 133, 262, 269, 273 World Development Report (World Bank), 2, 222 Yeltsin, Boris, 107–9, 111 Yemen: failed powersharing in, 194; multiple armed conflicts in, 201 Yugoslavia, former: difficulty coding wars of, 13; elections sparking mass violence in, 241 Zahar, Marie-Jöelle, 166 Zartman, I. William, 222 Zhou Enlai, 115 Zimbabwe, 146–48; abrogation of powersharing arrangements in, 99, 194, 215; divisions among former allies leading to recurrence in, 149, 159–60; exclusionary behavior in, 123, 148, 149; initial war for independence (1972–79), 146–48; institutional weakness in, 99, 149, 214; postwar government reneging on commitments in, 150; rebel cohesion in, 180; recurrence precipitated by exclusion in, 98 Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU & its armed wing ZANLA), 146–48 Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU & its armed wing ZIPRA), 146–48 Zurcher, Christoph, 106–7