Civil Society at the Negotiation Table, Legitimacy Beliefs and Durable Peace

It is argued that including civil society at the negotiation table can increase the perceived legitimacy of peace treaties. As a result, it can contribute to the consolidation of peace. In this paper, the author presents the findings from a controlled experiment in order to test the impact of inclusive peace negotiations on the perceived legitimacy of peace treaties. Contrary to the expectations of the scholars working on the inclusiveness and the consolidation of peace hypothesis, the results show that the treatment group in the experiment does not perceive inclusive peace agreements to be more legitimate.