What can we agree upon? Theorizing and modelling peace agreement content, compromise ability and their effects on armed intrastate conflicts.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Constantin Ruhe
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 448508600

Recent research argues that peace agreements in armed intrastate conflicts are more stable and prolong peace if they contain specific provisions, such as powersharing, justice measures or information-sharing mechanisms. Surprisingly, however, very little research analyzes when and why we see specific peace agreement content in the first place. A handful of studies investigate when individual types of provisions are included in agreements, but these studies are only loosely connected and unable to explain the overall agreement content. Consequently, we still lack a comprehensive theoretical and empirical framework to explain when and how actors achieve compromises on multiple crucial, but possibly controversial issues. Likewise, we have little evidence which variables affect peace agreement content. As a result, we may have overlooked endogeneity issues, which might undermine the conclusions of existing peace agreement research that certain provisions stabilize the peace.This research project addresses these gaps and develops a comprehensive theoretical framework of peace negotiations, agreement content and their joint effect on conflict behavior in armed intrastate conflicts. To this end, it connects and expands research on mediation, peace agreements and disaggregated conflict dynamics. The framework generalizes insights from mediation research and argues that conflict parties’ ability to reach a compromise is a central, but thus far unobserved variable, which determines both the content and the impact of peace agreements. The project will break new ground by developing a measurement model from the theoretical framework, which will enable us to quantify the latent compromise ability in over 1500 peace agreements in civil conflicts worldwide. Based on this new data, we will test the empirical implications of our theoretical framework: First, we will examine how the situation on the battlefield and third party intervention affect conflict actors’ ability to reach a compromise and shape agreement content. In a further step, we will use our new data to investigate how the compromise ability revealed in negotiations as well as the content of agreements influence subsequent conflict and negotiation behavior. Lastly, we will use our empirical results to reevaluate the conclusions of earlier peace agreement research and examine the possible mechanism through which individual provisions enhance peace stability.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants