Even if the messiness of peacebuilding has been recognized for some time, peacebuilding has still been viewed as quite linear, meaning there’s a transition from war to peace and that peacebuilding is a phase. Recently, other voices have been raised claiming we need a paradigm shift and to stop seeing peacebuilding as linear and instead see it as a never-ending constantly adapting practice. The question then arises, if it is possible to distinguish that peacebuilding connected to a specific conflict ends at some point and if society adapts to conduct peacebuilding for new tensions within society. That is what this thesis aims to find out, and it does so by mapping the activities of the civil society in a post-conflict country, as civil society constitutes an excellent indicator of what kind of peacebuilding is being done. The case studied is El Salvador, which ended a 12-year-long civil war with a peace agreement in 1992. The activities are mapped with the help of a framework for analyzing civil society peacebuilding. The study concludes that much of the peacebuilding activities connected to the civil war seem to have ended, except for when it comes to the rights of people who became disabled by the civil war, as well as trauma treatment activities addressing trauma from the civil war. Civil society also shows certain adaptation to the gang violence, by addressing it with trauma treatment activities and activities aiming at building a culture of peace.

The quality of peace at the end of civil war has emerged as an important concept for understanding persistent security threats. This study seeks to bridge two well established fields by asking: Does the failure to implement a peace agreement encourage terrorism? I argue that the psychological effect of a failing peace agreement shapes the individual’s propensity to terrorism by enhancing the appeal of a frame which favors “radical” action to advance the group’s struggle for recognition. Terrorism can be simultaneously an emotionally driven response at the individual level, and a rational choice at the group level. This paper employs mixed methods. A cross-case study measures the spatial/temporal variation in peace settlement implementation and the intensity of terrorism between/within 34 post-accord settings. A within-case study leverages temporal variation to illustrate how four violent non-state actors responded to perceptions of salient loss at various points in the Mindanao peace process. While each organization used terrorism strategically, the strategies were not always linked to peace settlement implementation. This study advances understanding of the event-driven relationship between implementation failure and terrorism, the process by which “radical” frames convert an individual’s emotional reaction into political violence, and the dynamic integration of quantitative and qualitative research.

Many scholars have researched on the effects of individual mediation strategy following the categorization by Touval and Zartman (1985), and Bercovitch (1991). Despite the growing recognition of the potential synergetic effects among different strategies, not many systematic studies have been done on that aspect. This thesis contributes to this understudied aspect of mediation approach by asking What is the impact of mediation strategy on quality peace after civil war? The study adopts the method of structured, focused comparison along with the detailed process tracing on four cases of peace agreements and their mediation process from Northern Ireland, Mindanao, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Niger. The study aims to test a theoretical argument linking combined-application of mediation strategies with high quality peace. The empirical findings provide a modest support to hypothesis and a weak support to the causal mechanism, as not all cases, having applied all three strategies, have achieved high quality peace and have promoted third-party guarantee and inclusivity. While the empirical findings point to other contextual factors that may affect the peace agreement implementation, the findings also indicate a potential promising mediation approach that combines directive strategy either with communicative-facilitative or procedural strategy putting more weight on the latter strategy.