Rebel—Military Integration and Civil War Termination
| Date | 01 May 2008 |
| Published date | 01 May 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343308088816 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
365
Introduction
Of 140 civil wars since 1945, just 18% ended
with a settlement by the end of 1999. Even
with a settlement, the risk that countries
emerging from a civil war will go back to war
is high. This might be because of the time-
inconsistency of peace agreements: once the
rebels demobilize, they lose bargaining power,
and the government can renege on its
promises. In the presence of such a problem,
rational actors will hesitate to agree to or
implement a peace agreement unless they
are given credible security guarantees.
Guarantees can be provided by third parties,
or the rebels and the government can reach a
self-enforcing agreement. Self-enforcement
usually implies that each party retains some
self-defense capability to discourage unilat-
eral defections from the agreement. One way
to structure such an agreement may be to
integrate the rebels in a new national army.
This should reduce the rebels’ insecurity vis-
à-vis the government.
We label this solution rebel–military inte-
gration (MI). MI is an increasingly popular
peacebuilding strategy, having been used in
almost one-third of all peace processes in the
1990s. However, we still do not know when
© 2008 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 45, no. 3, 2008, pp. 365–384
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343308088816
Rebel–Military Integration and Civil War
Termination*
KATHERINE GLASSMYER & NICHOLAS SAMBANIS
Department of Political Science, Yale University
Civil wars are far less likely to end in peace agreements than are international wars, and more than a
third of civil wars restart within a few years. This may be due to the time-inconsistency of peace settle-
ments in civil wars: once the rebels demobilize, they lose bargaining power and the government can
renege on its promises. This makes rebels reluctant to stop fighting and quick to remobilize for a fight.
A self-enforcing agreement could prevent this, but it is difficult to create such agreements. Recent efforts
to structure self-enforcing agreements after civil wars have involved the integration of former rebels in
a new national army. This solution should make unilateral defection from peace settlements more costly.
This is an increasingly popular mechanism used in peace settlements, but it is not yet well understood.
We do not know if it works or under what conditions it is likely to be used. This article provides the
first systematic study of rebel–military integration agreements and considers if and how such agreements
can help build peace. It also analyzes the conditions under which such agreements will be reached and
implemented. The analysis suggests that rebel–military integration has not been an effective peace-
building mechanism, but this is often due to poor implementation of the agreements.
* We thank Elisabeth Wood, Caroline Hartzell, Bruce
Russett, Steve Saideman, Matthew Krain, and the editor
and reviewers of Journal of Peace Research for useful
comments, and the World Bank (Project on Political
Institutions, Development and Domestic Civil Peace) for
financial support. The data used in this article and
supplementary analysis mentioned in the text can be found
at http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets and at http://pantheon.
yale.edu/~ns237/. Addresses for correspondence: Nicholas.
Sambanis@yale.edu; Katherine.Glassmyer@yale.edu.
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 45 / number 3 / may 2008
366
1The only other relevant study is Hoddie & Hartzell
(2003). They look at 16 cases of MI and argue that suc-
cessful implementation of MI within five years of the war’s
end increases the prospects for lasting peace. They do not
consider that peace failure may be the reason for failure to
implement MI, or that the greatest risk of peace failure
occurs in the first few years after the war, so a peace that
has lasted five years is likely to continue, independent of
MI. They look only at cases of negotiated settlement from
1980 to 1996, but MI has also taken place after military
victories. They also do not analyze the impact of MI on
peace by controlling for other relevant variables while com-
paring cases with and without MI. Walter (2002) briefly dis-
cusses ‘military pacts’, but does not analyze the effects of MI.
MI is likely to occur or if it is effective. This
article provides the first systematic analysis of
MI.1We offer a mainly empirical perspective,
looking at data that we collected on MI agree-
ments and trying to distinguish between an
economic and a security mechanism through
which MI can affect the peace. We find that
MI often fails to provide credible security guar-
antees and that it serves mostly as an economic
strategy (providing employment to rebels). We
also find that MI may be more effective if it is
combined with political power-sharing, but
this evidence is only suggestive.
The article is organized in four sections
beyond the introduction. In the next section,
we discuss three hypotheses on the relation-
ship between MI and peacebuilding. The fol-
lowing section tests those hypotheses and
identifies conditions leading to the signing
and implementation of MI. We complement
the statistical analysis with illustrative ex-
amples from actual cases of MI to gain
insights into the mechanisms through which
MI affects the peace. The last section con-
cludes with a discussion of the theoretical
and policy implications of this article.
Hypotheses: Impact of MI on War
Resumption
Civil wars are difficult to end, partly because
the parties have incompatible preferences,
partly because war is profitable for some
groups, partly because of imperfect informa-
tion about the parties’ relative resolve or
capabilities, and partly because of the parties’
inability to reach a credible commitment to
end the violence. We focus on the commit-
ment problem and draw on literature on the
commitment problem to think about the
ways in which MI can affect the peace (see
Fearon, 2004, 1995; Walter, 2002).
The commitment problem is due to the
fact that the government, which retains
control of the military after the war, can
renege on its promises and punish the rebels
after they disarm. MI could, in principle,
mitigate this problem by giving rebels some
control over the state’s coercive capacity. By
joining a new national military, former com-
batants can mutually deter violations of the
peace. This security mechanism is based on
the higher costs of mutual defection with
MI. MI, however, can also work through an
economic mechanism: by offering rebels
employment, it creates economic disincen-
tives for war (see United Nations, 2000).
The security and economic mechanisms
should have the same effect:
H1: Signing and implementing an MI agree-
ment should reduce the risk of peace
failure.
MI is a critical component of security sector
reform (SIDDR, 2005), and MI provides a
costly signal of the parties’ commitment to the
peace. Implemented MI is a costlier signal than
simply declaring intent to integrate rebels in
the military. However, even signing an MI
agreement may send a positive signal, com-
pared to cases where the parties cannot agree
to stop fighting. But, failure to implement MI
could be both a cause and a symptom of
broader peace failure: if the parties intend to
return to war, then the need for MI is greater,
but so is the risk of failure to implement MI
agreements.2Thus, we argue that:
H2: Successful implementation of MI should
be less likely in difficult peacebuilding
2This implies a selection effect that we consider in the
empirical section.
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