Judicial Institutions and the Pursuit of Enduring Peace after Civil War

• In Event: Peace Negotiations and Post-Conflict Transitions

Abstract

While the post-Cold War world witnessed a considerable shift of the predominant theater of war from the realm of interstate relations to the domain of intrastate politics, the twenty-first century has seen the increasing prevalence of civil wars recurring within the same conflict state. The literature identifies post-conflict institutions as key factors in understanding, assessing, and ameliorating the risk of conflict recurrence, with scholars focusing particularly on the influence of institutions on issues of power-sharing, elections, democratization, security sector reform, post-conflict justice, and economic development. However, often absent from the literature is a direct focus on the effects of post-conflict judicial institutions, and this lacuna presents a number of important research puzzles in light of the considerable funds and resources states, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations invest in post-conflict states to build and bolster domestic judiciaries and the rule of law. In this paper, I turn the focus to post-conflict judiciaries to analyze whether and how changes in a post-conflict state’s judicial institutions can help or hinder state-building efforts following civil wars and reduce the risk of conflict recurrence. I analyze whether the degree of autonomy enjoyed by domestic courts, the qualifications required to be a judicial officer, and the scope of jurisdictional division of judicial power—each measured as a function of constitutional changes from the pre-conflict termination phase to the post-conflict environment—have an impact on a state’s likelihood of experiencing recurrent conflict using a series of cox proportional-hazards models. I find that increases in judicial autonomy, technical requirements, and reductions in judicial fragmentation brought on by the consolidation of judicial power reduce the risk of conflict recurrence, with the influence of the jurisdictional boundaries exhibiting the strongest effects. This latter effect suggests that federalized judiciaries may be problematic in stabilizing post-conflict states. The results in this paper will aid scholars and policymakers in identifying the institutional qualities that render a post-conflict judiciary most effective in combating the scourge of civil war.

Author

• Joseph Michael Cox, University of Arizona