Countries emerging out of armed conflicts face immense challenges in their efforts to build electoral democracies. Contrary to our intuition that elections can transform violent competition to peaceful political contests, past research suggests that holding post-conflict elections only increases the chance of renewed violence. Why are elections unable to build sustainable democracies as expected? In this dissertation, I examine the question by focusing on two levels of analysis. First, I study the effects of violence on political behavior of mass publics at the individual level using the World Values survey Dataset. I argue that citizens are more inclined to support undemocratic leaders, when they are faced with threats from armed violence. Empirically, I find that presence of pre-election violence in post-conflict elections leads voters to prefer parties that are stronger in terms of their violence-wielding capacities over more moderate and peaceful parties. Second, I investigate how such an outcome might influence the risk of renewed conflicts in a country emerging out of armed conflict. The hypothesized mechanism can only be described as tragic. At individual level, fearful voters support violent parties mainly to maintain the status quo, fearing that parties with a violent reputation are likely to renew conflict if they lose the election. Tragically, however, placing undemocratic and violent parties in power only increases the likelihood of renewed conflicts. I test this expectation using an event history model to analyze all post-conflict countries from 1950 to 2010 and find that the presence of pre-election violence in a country increases its risk of renewed armed conflicts. The study has important implication for policymakers and election monitoring bodies. Rather than the current practice of observing only a single event Election Day, this study emphasizes the importance of creating a secure environment during the pre-election phase, about six months prior to the first election, in order to achieve a sustainable peace in post-conflict countries.

ABSTRACT PEACE BUILDING AFTER HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: THE CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Latif, Dilek Ph.D., Department of International Relations Supervisor: Prof. Dr. ihsan D. Dagi August 2005, 379 pages. This dissertation analyzes peace building process after humanitarian intervention. It conceptualizes peace building through questioning the feasibility of peace building following a humanitarian intervention. Addressing the deficiency of contemporary peace building approach, this thesis indicates the shortcomings of the various instruments of peace building in contributing peace and reconciliation on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Besides, it shows the drawbacks of the current practice that peace building is a learning process, which employs the lessons learnt to advance the efficiency of peace building process. There is a lack of comprehensive approach to peace building, based on case studies, evaluating the shortcomings and merits of all the instruments of peace building that provides a general strategy. Despite abundancy of policy oriented research to contribute policy making, academic work to analyze such a complicated phenomena has been frail. Within this context, contribution of the dissertation is to demonstrate the entire picture and question viability of the peace building process in war-torn societies. Therefore, it is enriching the study on the peace building operations. Failure of institutionalization of peace in BiH after almost a decade of rigorous peace building efforts of the international community shows the fault of the mainstream understanding of peace building. The dissertation also unveils that engagement in Kosovo is the product of a similar strategy, which in practice either repeated the same fruitless methods or tried to build on the experience obtained in Bosnia but failed to heal up the troubles and challenges faced in Kosovo. Overall, the study points out the inevitability of a novel approach and an alternative peace building strategy beyond the policy-related focus.