Distributive justice and the durability of peace agreements

This study explores the relationship between principles of distributive justice (DJ) and the durability of negotiated agreements. Sixteen peace agreements negotiated during the early 1990s were coded for the centrality of each of four principles of DJ – equality, proportionality, compensation, and need – to the core terms of the agreement. The agreements were also assessed on scales of implementation and durability over a five-year period. Another variable included in the analysis was the difficulty of the conflict environment. These data were used to evaluate three sets of hypotheses: the relationship between DJ and durability, the role of the conflict environment, and types of DJ principles. The results obtained from both statistical and focused-comparison analyses indicate that DJ moderates the relationship between conflict environments and outcomes: when principles of justice are central to an agreement, the negative effects of difficult conflict environments are reduced; when principles are not central, the negative effects of difficulty are heightened. These relationships are accounted for primarily by one of the four DJ principles – equality. Implications of these findings are discussed along with a number of ideas for further research. Daniel Druckman is Professor of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University and Distinguished Scholar at the Public Memory Research Centre, University of Southern Queensland in Australia. He is a board member or associate editor of nine Journals and coedits a new book series on International Negotiation. Among his many publications are two recent books: Doing Research: Methods of Inquiry for Conflict Analysis (Sage, 2005) and, with Paul F. Diehl, Evaluating Peace Operations (Lynne Reinner, 2010). He received a lifetime achievement award from the International Association for Conflict Management. Cecilia Albin is Professor of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has published extensively on international negotiation and conflict resolution, and is the author of Justice and Fairness in International Negotiation (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and ‘Using Negotiation to Promote Legitimacy’ (International Affairs, 2008), among other books and articles. Current projects focus on relationships between justice and the effectiveness of negotiated outcomes, and on multilateral trade negotiations.