Electoral Reforms and Post-Civil War Stability
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NEW RULES TO AN OLD GAME: ELECTORAL REFORMS AND POST-CIVIL WAR STABILITY Eric Keels, B.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2016 APPROVED: T. David Mason, Major Professor J. Michael Greig, Committee Member Idean Salehyan, Committee Member Jacqueline DeMeritt, Committee Member Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, Chair of the Department of Political Science David Holdeman, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Victor Prybutok, Vice Provost of the Toulouse Graduate School Keels, Eric. New Rules to an Old Game: Electoral Reforms and Post-Civil War Stability. Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science), August 2016, 141 pp., 13 tables, 1 figure, bibliography, 87 titles. One of the most common features found within peace agreements are provisions that call for post-civil war elections. Unfortunately, recent research on post-civil war stability has consistently demonstrated that the initial elections held after civil wars significantly increases the risk for renewed fighting. While this research does highlight a danger posed by post-war elections, it focuses only on one element associated with post-civil war democracy. I argue that by implementing electoral reforms that are called for in peace agreements, post-war countries reduce the risk of renewed civil war. Implementing these peace agreement provisions increases the durability of post-war peace in two ways. First, by implementing costly electoral reforms called for in the peace agreement, the government signals a credible commitment to the peace process which reduces security dilemmas faced by opposition groups. Second, electoral reforms generate new avenues for political participation for disaffected citizens, which reduces the ability of hardliners to mobilize future armed opposition. I examine how implementing post-war electoral reforms impact the risk of renewed conflict from 1989 through 2010. Using duration models, I demonstrate that implementing these electoral reforms substantially reduces the risk of renewed conflict. Copyright 2016 by Eric Keels ii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On October 31st of 2010, the Ivory Coast held its first presidential election since the signing of the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement in 2007. The Ouagadougou Peace Agreement had brought an end to the regional and sectarian violence which had destabilized the country since 2002, with Northern Muslims fighting Southern Christians for greater political rights. Soon after the results were tallied up by Ivorian officials and international monitors, the Ivorian Constitutional Council (composed mainly of supporters of incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, who represented the largely Christian Baoule´ and the Be´te´ ethnic groups) claimed that roughly 660,000 votes were nullified (Bellamy and Williams 2012). The Gbagbo regime had also engaged in targeted political violence and voter intimidation prior to the election so as to ensure electoral victory. Once it became clear, though, that Laurent Gbagbo was going to lose the election, his supporters began to escalate their attacks so as to discredit the electoral process. These bursts of pro-government violence set off a cycle of reprisal attacks which eventually led to a recurrence of civil war between the aggrieved North of Cote d’Ivoire and the prosperous South. While the initial civil war was spurred by systemic political exclusion, the second Ivorian civil war was triggered by events tied to the tenuous first post-war election. While troubling, the violence of the second Ivorian civil war is far from uncommon. Rather, elections (and democracy more broadly) often generate circumstances which undermine the post-civil war peace process (Paris 2004; Jarstad 2008; Brancati and Snyder 2013). For instance, following the 1992 peace process in Angola, the initial elections spurred the UNITA rebels to abandon negotiations and resume fighting. Similarly, shortly after Charles Taylor won the presidency in Liberia’s 1997 1 post-war election, opposition forces began amassing in the Ivory Coast and Guinea. By 1999, the civil war had restarted in Liberia. Practitioners of contemporary peacebuilding face a dilemma when trying to resolve intrastate conflicts. In an effort to promote security in war-torn nations, they must often place limits on the degree of post-war democracy so as to promote post-war security and stability (Sisk and Jarstad 2008). This often entails postponing elections, banning parties that campaign on ethnic divisions, and placing unelected militant leaders in prominent positions of power through establishing transitional political power-sharing so as to reduce commitment problems (Paris 2004; Jarstad 2008). Unfortunately, the process of limiting democracy in favor of ensuring post- war security limits the ability of dispossessed citizens to resolve their own grievances through an institutional process. Absent such a device, aggrieved citizens only have unconventional avenues for effecting political change. Without well-functioning democratic mechanisms, citizens are more likely to support hardline elements within the dissident movement or the government. This war-to-democracy dilemma presents considerable problems for the international community as they attempt to solidify peace. As many peacebuilding missions are tasked with not only bringing an end to armed conflict but also with establishing new democratic practices and institutions (Paris 2004), contemporary efforts to establish durable post-war peace must juggle the need for adequate security as well as the process of instituting new democratic institutions. While the war-to-democracy dilemma would suggest that the establishment of post-war security and post-war democratization are contradictory efforts, there is reason to believe that democracy and security need not be mutually exclusive in the aftermath of civil wars. Much of the previous work on post-war stability focuses almost exclusively on one aspect of the democratic process: elections. This emphasis on only one aspect of functional democracy tends 2 to obscure the need for other parts of the democratic process. Specifically focusing on changes to electoral laws in post-war government, I analyze an avenue for pursuing democratic reforms while at the same time preventing a resumption of fighting by combatants. Elections are assuredly a necessary part of a functioning democracy, but as noted by Dahl (1971; 1989) democracies require much more than regular electoral contests. For democracy to endure governments must allow widespread, if not universal, participation in voting; they must allow open political competition by political parties and by candidates; and governments must have a system in place to translate votes into meaningful national representation. Unfortunately, countries that suffer civil war often have institutions in place that prevent meaningful competition so elites may consolidate their control of the coercive apparatus of the state (Hardin 1995; Bueno de Mesquita et al 2003). From Apartheid in South Africa to the redistricting efforts of 1952 in Lebanon, elites often manipulate the electoral laws of countries to ensure that their collaborators have a place within government. This manipulation of electoral practices helps to generate grievances within disaffected populations, who in turn engage in revolution to effect political change. Peace agreements present an opportunity for post-war governments to reform the electoral process so as to allow for meaningful competition in elections as well as institute mechanisms that effectively translate votes into national representation. By reforming the electoral process, post-war governments signal their intent to allow meaningful political competition which reduces the risk of renewed civil war. In turn, aggrieved citizens are less likely to engage in risky political violence in favor of using new institutional mechanisms to resolve their grievances. On the other hand, in the absence of electoral reforms post-war dissidents are forced to engage in the same electoral process that was in place prior to and during the civil war, stoking animosity towards new post-war governments. 3 While reforms may be agreed to as part of the peace process, there is no guarantee that the government will follow through with establishing them. The implementation of electoral reform present an avenue for new post-war governments both to signal their willingness to abide by the political process as well as to provide avenues for aggrieved citizens to effect change without resorting to political violence. Allowing increased political competition in the post-war process also ensures the survival of post-war democratization. While much of the literature on post-civil war stability focuses exclusively on the risk of renewed civil war, relatively little attention has focused on the survival of democracy in these fragile states. The phenomenon of democratic failure (or autocratic backsliding) should be of special concern to new governments that emerge from negotiated settlements, as the abandonment of democratic practices may undermine the tentative post-war peace. Following the establishment of a peace agreement, elites within the incumbent government often both agree to form a transitional political power-sharing government with their opponents as well as to hold future elections. While elites associated with the previous government may agree to democratic reforms in an effort to prevent future fighting, there is no guarantee that these elites are willing to abide