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This paper introduces the new dataset of Political Agreements in Internal Conflicts (PAIC) and presents its first application. PAIC captures the institutional provisions in political agreements concluded between 1989 and 2016. It provides information on 91 variables, along five dimensions: power sharing, transitional justice, cultural institutions, territorial self-governance and international assistance. First, the paper presents the data collection and coding procedures. Then it replicates Hartzell’s and Hoddie’s (2007, Crafting Peace, The Pennsylvania State University Press) seminal study on the relationship between power sharing and negotiated agreements, showing the long-term importance of a previously overlooked realm: commissions.

This article considers initiatives to reform religious education after violent identity-based conflicts in Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Macedonia. The Taif Agreement, Belfast Agreement and Ohrid Agreement mapped extensive education reforms and established consociational power-sharing in the three jurisdictions, altering state identity and inter-communal hierarchies. The existing literature generates two hypotheses on the political function of religious education after violent conflicts: (a) religious education tends to entrench existing ethnic, national and political cleavages; or (b) religious education helps further mutual knowledge, integration and social cohesion after violent conflicts. This comparative research employs original interviews and documents to evaluate initiatives to reform religious education (as a curricular subject) in post-conflict Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Macedonia. It suggests that the first hypothesis reflects more accurately the political function of education: religious education helps entrench existing cleavages in these deeply divided societies, but this does not necessarily hamper short-term peace and political stability. in Education, Skopje: UNICEF.

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