Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars

4 Implementing Power-Sharing and Power-Dividing Agreements

4 implementing power-sharing and powerdividing agreements Up to this point, we have been concerned with the process through which power-sharing and power-dividing mechanisms are established in the aftermath of civil war and how the development of these institutions enhances the prospects of an enduring postwar peace. In this chapter, we shift our attention from the postwar institutions themselves to focus on the behavior of former enemies operating under the constraints and expectations of a signed agreement. We seek to address the following question: How do the actions of competitors in the postwar state facilitate or hinder the continuing efforts to establish a lasting and self-enforcing peace? The behaviors we consider consist of efforts by former enemies either to support or derail the process of implementing the provisions of a peace agreement. Our central finding is that the established peace will more likely remain undisturbed when former combatants ensure the full implementation of a settlement’s provisions mandating the creation of power-sharing or power-dividing institutions. We interpret this relationship between implementing an agreement’s power-sharing provisions and maintaining peace as reflecting that former enemies monitor one another’s behavior closely for signals of intentions. By implementing the provisions of an agreement, signatories indicate to one another that they have a genuine interest in furthering their newly established cooperative relationship; conversely, the failure to act in accordance with the expectations outlined in a settlement signals that the reneging party cannot be trusted to act as a partner in the peace effort. implementing power-sharing and power-dividing agreements 87 Earlier Research Concerning the Implementation of Civil War Settlements On first impression it may appear intuitive to suggest that the good-faith efforts of former combatants to implement a civil war settlement further the potential for an enduring peace. This has been the conventional wisdom in the literature on this subject, which has found that an immediate postwar environment of uncertainty and distrust makes the full implementation of settlements a challenging but crucial prerequisite to peace. Implementation is characterized as vital because it provides reassurances during the transition from war to peace that former opponents value stability over conflict and remain steadfast in their support of the peace process.1 In short, implementation is thought to be significant because it makes the adversaries’ commitments to maintaining peace credible.2 While the central findings of this chapter confirm expectations regarding this association between full settlement implementation and the maintenance of peace, they also enhance our understanding of this dynamic in two ways. First, our findings offer a new theoretical explanation as to exactly why the process of settlement implementation favors an enduring peace. Implementing peace agreements, particularly ones that call for the sharing or dividing of power by former adversaries, we argue, generates significant costs for a group’s leaders through the compromises mandated by the agreement as well as the attendant loss of political support among those disenchanted with the peace process. Only by demonstrating a willingness to endure these costs do signatories send credible signals to their competitors emphasizing the integrity of the commitments they have made to peace. Second, the research we present in this chapter joins only a handful of other studies in offering a systematic, cross-national investigation of the signi ficance of the implementation process.3 Most previous studies of peaceagreement implementation have taken the form of country-specific case studies rather than systematic, cross-national investigations. While the case 1. For studies that offer this perspective regarding the importance of peace-agreement implementation , see de Soto and del Castillo 1994, Hampson 1990, Stedman and Rothchild 1996, and Stedman 1997. 2. See Leeds 1999 and Walter 1997, 2002 for a discussion of the importance of credible commitment in postwar states. 3. Other studies include those by Stedman, Rothchild, and Cousens 2002 and Walter 2002. 88 crafting peace study approach has provided a wealth of insights regarding the peace processes in individual states, it has inhibited the development of a generalizable theory about how implementation relates to the durability of peace. The value of the cross-national approach we adopt in this instance is its capacity to reveal common patterns among cases that might remain obscured, if not isolated, from the minutiae of a particular peace process. Implementation and the Role of Third Parties The post–civil war environment is defined by uncertainty...