Police reforms in peace agreements, 1975–2011
| Published date | 01 July 2016 |
| Author | Julia Strasheim,Felix Haass,Nadine Ansorg |
| Date | 01 July 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343316628932 |
| Subject Matter | Special Data Features |
Special Data Features
Police reforms in peace agreements,
1975–2011: Introducing the PRPA dataset
Nadine Ansorg
University of Kent & GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Felix Haass
GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Julia Strasheim
GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract
This article presents new data on provisions for police reform in peace agreements (PRPA) between 1975 and 2011.
The PRPA dataset complements past research on the determinants and effects of specific terms in agreements with
detailed data on police reform provisions. The PRPA dataset also adds a quantitative dimension to the thus far largely
qualitative literature on post-conflict security sector reform (SSR). It includes information on six subtypes of police
reform: capacity, training, human rights standards, accountability, force composition and international training and
monitoring. We show that there is currently a high global demand for the regulation of police reform through peace
agreements: police reform provisions are now more regularly included in agreements than settlement terms that call
for power-sharing or elections. We observe interesting variations in the inclusion of police reform provisions in
relation to past human rights violations, regime type, or the scope of international peacekeeping prior to negotiations,
and illustrate the implic ations of police reform provisions for the duration of post-conflict peace. Finally, we
stimulate ideas on how scholars and policymakers can use the PRPA dataset in future to study new questions on
post-conflict police reform.
Keywords
dataset, peace agreements, police, police reform, security sector reform
Introduction
Establishing a well-functioning and legitimate police
force as part of a wider security sector reform (SSR)
process is one of the most vital components of post-
conflict peacebuilding (Call, 2002; Brzoska, 2006;
Schroeder & Chappuis, 2014). There are a number of
reasons for this. The police force represents the most
important provider of internal security in post-conflict
states, particularly after international peacekeepers have
left and national military forces have relinquished
responsibility for handling internal policing tasks
(Downie, 2013). Further, if dysfunctional or illegitimate
institutional structures underpinning the police contrib-
uted to the onset of war in the first place, reform is
crucial to ensure that these deficiencies do not fuel a
relapse to violence in the post-conflict period. Lastly, if
officers were themselves perpetrators of violence during
the conflict, reform is an important part of restoring trust
in the police and, ultimately, creating a legitimate post-
conflict state (cf. Goldsmith, 2005).
At the same time, police forces in post-conflict states
are frequently ill-equipped, lack basic training in human
rights, and are asymmetrically constituted in terms of
ethnic groups or warring parties. Consequently, large
volumes of development finance are now being targeted
Corresponding author:
felix.haass@giga-hamburg.de
Journal of Peace Research
2016, Vol. 53(4) 597–607
ªThe Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343316628932
jpr.sagepub.com
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