When Rebels Sell Out or Stand Firm: Civilian Power Shapes Peace Deals

📌 The Puzzle: When Do Leaders 'Sell Out' or 'Stand Firm'?

Leadership choices over peace terms reflect competing audiences—constituents, fighters, and rebel elites—each with distinct preferences. The central question is when rebel leaders sign settlements that favor group elites at the expense of the broader constituency versus when they secure benefits that broadly serve the civilian population.

📊 How the design of peace agreements was measured

• Original dataset covering all final peace agreements reached between 1989 and 2009.
• Several proxies used to capture a group's level of reliance on civilian supporters for military and political power.
• A variety of statistical tests applied, with explicit methods to account for nonrandom selection into peace agreements.

🔎 Key Findings

• Leaders of groups that are more reliant on civilian support for military and political power are more likely to sign agreements that deliver broad benefits to civilian constituents.
• Leaders who do not depend on civilian support for their political and military power tend to sign agreements with fewer public benefits.
• Results are robust across multiple specifications and after addressing selection into agreement formation.
• These patterns are consistent with a model in which leaders push for settlement terms favored by the audience on whom their power and accountability most depend.

📣 Why It Matters

The findings clarify how internal audience structure within armed groups shapes the content of peace settlements. Understanding which audiences rebel leaders depend on helps explain variation in the public orientation of agreements and informs expectations about post-conflict representation and the distributional consequences of peace deals.