Private Goods for Peace: Economic Provisions of Peace Agreements and the Durability of Peace

Author: Elisa D’Amico, Santiago Sosa and Molly M. Melin

We consider how agreement terms create a national framework for development to address the root causes of conflict (public goods) and prevent recidivism through the economic reintegration of ex-combatants (private goods), thus offering agreement terms that are acceptable to both parties and enabling long-term peace. We argue that peace agreements that include promises of public goods, such as national development, and private goods, such as training opportunities and direct fund transfers to ex-combatants, are more capable of preventing violence resurgence. We examine variation in peace agreements contents and how these relate to the durability of peace using newly coded data on private goods. Using a series of Cox proportional hazard models, along with a variety of robustness checks to account for matching, placebo effects, selection bias and implementation factors, we offer evidence that peace agreement content has important implications for post-civil war outcomes. Our results suggest that agreements with provisions for fiscal federalism and for the economic reintegration of ex-combatants are more durable than those that do not. Moreover, contrary to expectations, most economic development promises do not affect the durability of peace.

This article was published online in the Journal of Peace Research