Armed Law and Conflict Resolution investigates why civil wars recur. While how best to end and prevent the recurrence of bloodshed is up for debate, a conventional wisdom has emerged suggesting that one way to effectively terminate the armed conflict is through power-sharing. Yet, nearly 50 percent of power-sharing agreements fail to bring about long-term peace, and the evidence for why is mixed. With everything we have learned, why is the success rate a mere flip of a coin? To this end, the manuscript introduces a new theoretical mechanism for understanding conflict resolution and the return to large-scale political violence: the degree of congruence among shared legal preferences. It argues that the willingness of former belligerents to accept a nonviolent resolution to post-civil war conflict may be conditional on the perceived legitimacy of the governing legal system. Former adversaries with greater congruence in their legal preferences over fundamental governance functions (e.g., dispute resolution over authority, property rights, social diversity, and justice) should be more likely to co-govern peacefully than adversaries with greater incongruence or diametric legal preferences. If former belligerents have conflicting legal preferences, one side may perceive the available legal mechanisms as illegitimate. In such cases, a conflicting group becomes unwilling to avail itself of adjudication or other nonviolent legal mechanisms as alternatives in the choice set, thereby affecting extralegal alternatives such as fighting. To examine this argument, the book applies qualitative and quantitative methods. It shows that rebels not only have legal preferences but that these preferences can align with or diverge from the incumbent's facilitating or obstructing, respectively, conflict resolution and civil war recurrence. The manuscript makes significant scholarly and policy contributions. First, it introduces a new theoretical mechanism for understanding conflict resolution and the return to large scale political violence: the degree of congruence among shared legal preferences. Second, it implies that the willingness of former belligerents to accept a nonviolent resolution to post-civil war conflict may be conditional on the governing legal system’s perceived legitimacy. Third, this study conceptualizes legal preferences and opens the black box of rebel law. It highlights how conflict resolution and state-building efforts should begin with a deep understanding of the legal foundations of peace and the rules actors govern themselves with.
*This research has been generously supported by theNational Science Foundation (Award #2017173), The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, Purdue University, the University of Pennsylvania's Office of the Vice-Provost for Research, Rice University Social Sciences Research Institute, and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.
The above photo includes pamphlets made by the FMLN and other rebel groups during the Salvadoran Civil War. It was taken during my Jan 2019 archival visit to the UCA, San Salvador, El Salvador.