Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term.
Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector–the police and military–and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. [Phi Beta Iota: when rebels win, absent outside subsidies, they generally held the moral high ground to begin with–Saudi Arabia is a good example of a regime ready to fall hard.]
Virginia Page Fortna has written a compelling and courageous book–compelling in the reinforcing comparisons that it makes between aggregate data and case-based research, and courageous in its first-person interviews, conducted with those who perpetrated as well as ended civil wars. The book bridges the worlds of the high-flying ‘quant' who sees only forests of data, and the ground-based case researcher knee-deep in political leaf litter. Drawing particular strength from the oft-ignored perspective of those on whose behalf peacekeepers do their work, Fortna's convergent analyses advance our understanding not only of how peacekeeping works but why.
Core Reference Note Social versus Economic Gap
