Can Peace Agreements Beget Democracy? El Salvador’s Legacy of War Non-Recurrence

• In Event: Patterns of Violence And The Legacies of Internal Conflict

Abstract

Reaching any settlement in civil wars has proven to be complex and difficult given the casualties, economic disruptions, internal displacement, and instability resulting from the conflict. Despite these challenges, the international community has consistently expressed its strong preference for ending civil wars with negotiated settlements since the Cold War’s conclusion. This path is often seen as the best course to democratization. However, the legacy of civil wars terminated via peace agreements, stalemates, or ceasefires has been one of war recurrence. From 1940-2000, 56% of the civil wars ending with conflict parties reaching a peace agreement or experiencing a stalemate or ceasefire recurred (Toft 2010).

Existing literature has identified key determinants of civil war recurrence, but less attention has been paid to determinants of civil war non-recurrence and if those same determinants are mandatory elements in the pursuit of democratization. As such, this paper asks if the mechanisms underlying civil war non-recurrence are the same as those motivating successful democratization. I argue that the necessary and sufficient mechanisms for civil war non-recurrence are security and political reforms but insufficient for democratization. Successful democratization requires economic and social reforms in addition to security and political reforms.

El Salvador represents an ideal type case to test this argument, as it has positive results on both dependent variables being examined, civil war non-recurrence and democratization. Its brutal twelve-year (1980-1992) civil war resulted in the deaths of 75,000 people before a late 1989 Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) assault of a tony San Salvador suburb demonstrated the relative parity in capabilities between the FMLN and the El Salvadoran Armed Forces (ESAF). This stalemate motivated the push towards the signing of the 1992 Chapultepec Accords.

This paper proceeds in three phases. First, I use process-tracing to identify the critical mechanisms that have kept El Salvador’s civil war from recurring and completes the same identification for mechanisms of democratization. The second stage compares these mechanisms for similarities and differences between these two seeming herculean efforts of civil war non-recurrence and full democratization. I conclude by examining what, if any, implications El Salvador’s legacy of civil war non-recurrence might have for future civil wars.

Author

• Meg Guliford, Tufts University