New journal article on power-sharing pacts in peace agreements

Making and keeping promises: regime type and powersharing pacts in peace agreements

Authors: Anna Jarstad and Desirée Nilsson

Journal: Peace & Change

Power sharing is increasingly recognized as an important tool for creating sustainable peace in war-torn societies. However, we have limited knowledge concerning why political, territorial, and military power-sharing pacts are reached and implemented. This article addresses this gap by providing a global study examining the signing and implementation of powersharing pacts in intrastate armed conflicts. We focus on how the type of political regime can influence these choices and theorize about the strategic incentives for warring parties in different types of regimes to sign and implement different pacts. Our large-N analysis is based on data on power-sharing provisions in eighty-three peace accords in forty intrastate armed conflicts between 1989 and 2004. In line with our theoretical expectations, we find that political and military pacts are more likely to be signed in autocracies, whereas territorial pacts are more common in democracies. Somewhat surprisingly, we find no difference in the implementation patterns across regimes.

Full text of the article can be found in the Publications section