The Politics of Risking Peace Revisited: The Fate of Rebel Leaders Who Signed Peace Agreements

Abstract

Are rebel leaders punished for signing peace agreements? Many studies have found that leaders face domestic punishment for signing peace agreements. However, while this may be true for state leaders, it remains unclear whether this is also the case for rebel leaders. Between 1975 and 2018, I describe what happened to the rebel leaders who signed a peace agreement. One-third of rebel leaders in these countries experienced exile, imprisonment, or unnatural death, while the rest shifted to politics or pursued rebellion. I describe two prototypical life paths after peace agreements of former rebel leaders in Colombia and Niger: the unpunished and the punished. This study shows how the database of rebel leader attributes (ROLE) can be advanced with novel data, enabling the kinds of studies on rebel leaders that scholars have conducted on state leaders in international politics. Future studies should extend research on rebel leader characteristics and peace negotiations.