With a focus on legitimacy, accountability, and protection equality, this thesis aims to investigate the impact of domestic institutions on the likelihood that peace succeeds in the aftermath of armed conflict. The argument is that the presence of such domestic institutions should facilitate the construction of a peaceful post-conflict environment by reducing commitment problems in the peacemaking process. A quantitative analysis is conducted on 82 peace agreements signed between governments and rebel groups during the time period 1989 to 2004. The findings suggest that the extent to which social groups within the state are protected equally by the government most significantly impacts the likelihood that peace prevails.

This paper addresses the relationship between Private Military Contractors and their use, whether operationally active or strictly training, on civil war recidivism. The paper aims to contribute to the wider research on Private Military Contractors, and specifically whether their use can cause commitment problems or information asymmetries that can hamper peace-making. To do this, the hypothesis that the use of Private Military Contractors in an active, operational role leads to a higher probability of civil war recidivism than the use of Private Military Contractors in a training, non-operational role is examined. The hypothesis is tested by applying Mill’s method of agreement on a pair of across-case, structured, focused comparisons between two cases with operationally active Private Military Contractors on the one hand, and two cases of strictly training Private Military Contractors on the other. The operationally active Private Military Contractor cases are Executive Outcomes in the first half of the Sierra Leonean Civil War and Wagner Group in the War in Donbas, and the strictly training Private Military Contractor cases are Sandline International in the second half of the Sierra Leonean Civil War and MPRI in the Croatian War of Independence. The first two cases had seen civil war recidivism and operationally active Private Military Contractors, and the latter two had not experienced civil war recidivism yet had seen training Private Military Contractors operate. The cases were selected to be as different as possible in other relevant factors. The empirical data is gathered from many different sources including the UCDP, the World Bank and a vast variety of reputable news media. This paper’s empirical findings do not lend support for the hypothesis, nor unequivocal support for the proposed causal mechanism.

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