From participation to provision: How civil society secures procedural rights through peace negotiations

Abstract

Civil society inclusion in peace processes has many positive externalities, but does inclusion lead to improved rights for civil society actors themselves? We theorize how civil society actors leverage peace processes to secure state commitments to an improved advocacy environment after conflict. Using new data on civil society participation in peace negotiations (1990–2020), we show that participation significantly increases the likelihood of a provision formalizing these actors’ procedural rights in the resulting peace agreement. This relationship is conditional on relatively low pre-agreement repression of civil society, suggesting a minimal threshold of freedoms for effective advocacy during negotiations. Civil society actors in conflict settings may allocate scarce advocacy resources to secure procedural protections of their post-conflict survival, not only principled outcomes. Our findings suggest a possible mechanism allowing civil society to influence longer-term policy outcomes after conflict.