Post-War Electoral Reform and Peace Duration Following Negotiated Settlements

1. Post-War Electoral Reform and Peace Duration Following Negotiated Settlements Eric Keels Ph.D. Candidate Department of Political Science University of North Texas erickeels@my.unt.edu

2. Building Peace after Civil Wars • Negotiated settlements are often unstable • Post-civil war peacebuilding and civil war recurrence • Peacebuilding security objectives • Successful Agreements • Reduce Commitment Problems (Walter 2002; Fortna 2004; Hartzell and Hoddie 2003) • Share Information (Mattes and Savun 2010) • Raise costs for Defection (Mattes and Savun 2009) • Peacebuilding and democratization • Incompatibility between security and democracy objectives

3. War-to-Democracy Dilemma • Democratization may generate post-civil war instability • Paris (2004), Jarstad and Sisk (2008), Autesserre (2009), Brancati and Snyder (2013) • Democracy objectives may undermine post-war security • Security objectives may undermine post-war democracy • How can post-war governments maintain security while instituting democratic reforms?

4. False Dichotomy • Post-Civil War Democratization and Security • Joshi et al (2015) • Primary focus on elections rather than democracy more broadly • Democracy Requires: • Broad participation • Open competition • Meaningful translation of votes into national representation

5. Theory: Electoral Reform and Peace Duration • Revisions to electoral laws act as a signal to opponents that the incumbent government is committed to the peace process • Revisions to electoral laws make it more difficult for dissidents to renege on peace process

6. Theory: Electoral Laws • Electoral laws have historically been a way for governments to limit political competition • Laws determine who is allowed to participate (vote or run for office) and how votes are translated into representation (electoral systems) • Post-war elections may occur under the old electoral system which limits competition

7. Theory: Reform as a Signal • Electoral reforms are costly for elites in the incumbent government • Past systems may have ensured access to goods and services • Elites shoulder considerable risk by alienating their supporters • Implementing these reforms act as a costly signal that elites are interested in the peace process • H1: The implementation of electoral reforms called for in peace agreements reduces the risk of civil war recurrence.

8. Theory: Reform as a Deterrent • Electoral reforms should make the initial post-civil war election more stable • Armed militant groups have an incentive to abandon the peace process after losing (Brancati and Snyder 2013) • Militant groups rely on some civilian support • Electoral reforms make conventional participation more attractive than supporting violent dissent • H2: First post-war elections that occur after electoral reforms are implemented reduce the risk of civil war recurrence as compared to first post-war elections that occur when no electoral reform has taken place.

9. Research Design • Post-Civil War Comprehensive Peace Agreements from 1989-2010 • UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset (Kreutz 2010) • UCDP Peace Agreement Dataset (Högbladh 2011) • Peace Accords Matrix (Joshi and Darby 2012) • Dependent Variable: Civil War Recurrence (0,1) • Independent Variable: Electoral Reform • 0=No reform implemented, 1= Reform initiated, 2=Partial implementation, 3=Fully implemented • Independent Variable: First Post-War Election*Electoral Reforms

10. Research Design cont. • Controls • Agreement Provisions: Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration. Transitional Power-Sharing and Peacekeeping • Conflict Variables: Conflict Intensity, Conflict Duration, Ethnic Conflict, Incompatibility with Government • Government Controls: Polity II • Economic Controls: Logged GDP Per Capita • Unit of Analysis: Post-war Country Year • Model: Weibull Duration Model • Robustness checks with Cox Proportional Hazard Models and LogLogistic Duration Models • Used Selection Models for robustness

11. Results: Electoral Reforms after Full Implementation

12. Impact of Electoral Reforms cont.

13. Graphical Illustration • Figure I: The Impact of Electoral Reforms on the Survival of Peace Following Negotiated Settlements

14. Further Robustness Checks • Examine rates of Pro-Government and Antigovernment violence after civil wars • SCAD dataset (Salehyan et al 2011) • Peace agreements in Africa and Latin America • Measured simple inclusion of Electoral Reform in peace agreements • Reduced rates pro-government violence by 76.8% • Reduced rates of antigovernment violence by 81% • Results remain robust when only looking at election violence

15. Substantive Findings and Conclusion • Post-Civil War Electoral Reforms • Reduce the risk of civil war recurrence • Implementing these costly reforms signals a willingness to abide by the peace process • Ensures that post-war elections are stable • Reduces the ability of dissidents to abandon the peace process by allowing conventional participation • Results remain robust when looking at post-war event data

16. Thank you for your time • Questions? • Eric Keels Ph.D. Candidate Department of Political Science University of North Texas erickeels@my.unt.edu

17. Descriptive Statistics

18. Full Model Coefficients Listed. Robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

19. DDR Robustness Check Robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

20. Selection Model (whether reforms are implemented) Robust standard errors in parentheses. Inverse Mills Ratio measures degree of selection effects. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

21. Selection Model (Whether reforms are included in peace agreement) Robust standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1

22. SCAD Data Coefficients listed. Robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1