Ceasefires in Civil Conflict: A Research Agenda

Abstract

Ceasefires are arrangements through which conflict parties commit to stop fighting. They are a common part of intra-state conflict. Existing research on intra-state ceasefires is largely limited to case studies and guidance notes for the policy and practice community. What has to date been lacking is a complementing body of comparative quantitative analysis to identify broader ceasefire trends and test the wider applicability of theory. Recent advancements in ceasefire data offer new opportunities to broaden the research agenda on ceasefires. This special section sets out the current state of the art in ceasefire research and provides the intellectual foundations to advance a new sub-field of quantitative ceasefire research. We discuss the conceptual challenges facing the study of ceasefires, offer a brief overview of ceasefire research focusing on the functions, timing, and sustainability of arrangements, and discuss the collective contributions of the articles included within this special section, and the implications for research and practice.

Introducing the ETH/PRIO Civil Conflict Ceasefire Dataset

“…And in what way do they relate to, and ultimately shape, a peace process? Researchers currently lack suitable data on ceasefires that would allow them to answer these and many related questions (Clayton et al 2022a). In this article, we introduce the ETH/PRIO Civil Conflict CeaseFire (CF) dataset, the first comprehensive global dataset covering the full range of state-based ceasefire arrangements in civil conflicts between 1989-2020.…”

“…All ceasefires have been mapped onto and made compatible with the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (ACD, Gleditsch et al 2002) and the UCDP Dyadic Conflict Dataset (Pettersson, Högbladh & Öberg, 2019). The CF dataset makes it possible for the research community to tackle important theoretical questions and model more adequately issues related to ceasefires, which until now has been an omitted variable in many analyses of civil conflict and patterns of violence (Clayton et al 2022a). Moreover, the data allow the community to offer novel insights into important policy questions related to the management and mitigation of violence and peace processes.…”

Your Reputation Precedes You: Ceasefires and Cooperative Credibility During Civil Conflict

“…We focus instead on ceasefires as a driver of states’ reputation. A ceasefire is an arrangement that includes an explicitly declared intention, by at least one belligerent, to suspend hostilities from a specific point in time (Clayton et al 2022c; Clayton et al 2022a). Ceasefires are a common feature in almost all civil conflicts.…”

“…Ceasefires can occur at any point during a civil conflict, and serve a number of different purposes (Clayton et al 2022a; Clayton et al 2022c; Clayton, Nathan, and Wiehler 2021). One common function is signaling cooperative intentions to an opponent (Clayton and Sticher 2021).…”

“…While it may be difficult to identify the underlying purpose of a ceasefire agreement ex ante (Clayton, Nathan, and Wiehler 2021), some ceasefires arguably signal more of a cooperative intent than others, and so are more likely generate cooperative reputation. Ceasefires are a diverse collection of agreements which vary depending on the context in which they are declared and the purpose they serve (Clayton et al 2022c; Bara, Clayton, and Rustad 2021). We can make use of this variation between ceasefires (in terms of the signals they send) to examine our causal mechanism.…”