From War Economies to Predatory Peace: How Peace Settlements Legitimise Extraction

Author: Matthew Sterling Benson-Strohmayer

This brief identifies a recurrent pattern in post-conflict governance in which peace settlements reorganise wartime systems of extraction rather than dismantling them. Drawing on field research in South Sudan and comparative evidence across conflict-affected contexts, the analysis shows how fiscal arrangements embedded in peace agreements can stabilise predatory elite coalitions while leaving coercive revenue practices intact. The brief identifies five recurring dynamics: peace agreements as fiscal bargains that redistribute access to revenue among elites; strategic fiscal fragmentation, where overlapping revenue points sustain loyalty and diffuse accountability; off-budget and para-fiscal finance that operates outside legislative oversight; service substitution, where donor-funded delivery reduces pressure on rulers to convert domestic revenues into public goods; and fictive fiscal orders, where formal institutions perform reform for international audiences while the real political budget operates through opaque networks. Similar patterns are traced illustratively in Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Myanmar, Syria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.