State Building and Peace Agreement Implementation

It is often argued that rebuilding state capacity following intrastate conflict will serve to stabilize the post-conflict environment. Past scholarship has sought to formally model the effect of rising state capacity. Yet, two models of post-conflict environments produce conflicting expectations for the effect of state capacity on the commitment problem and the prospect for peace agreement implementation. This project summarizes the core logic of the two models, compares and contrasts their assumptions, and derives a set of hypotheses about the implementation of peace agreements. These hypotheses are tested using data from the Peace Accords Matrix. The empirical findings indicate that increases in military capacity are associated with lower levels of peace agreement implementation. However, increases in state capacity related to the rule of law are associated with higher levels of implementation. The starting level of coercive and administrative capacity appears to be uncorrelated with the degree to which peace agreements are implemented. This finding points to a possible early warning for peace agreement breakdown. Likewise, it suggests that state building may be less a driver of post-conflict success than it is a manifestation of the preferences of key actors.