Introduction

Is the implementation of a peace agreement a severe obstacle for peace? Conventional wisdom holds that the failure to implement peace agreements is an important explanation of the recurrence of war. Much scholarly work has been devoted to how the design of peace agreements can pave the way for peace. In this regard, power sharing is seen as a viable solution to end civil war. Agreement on the sharing of power is a concession by warring parties that can be seen as a sign of credible commitment. Such concessions often entail compromises on how political, territorial and military power is to be shared or divided in a future form of governance. However, the implementation of such power-sharing pacts has only to a limited extent been the focus of quantitative analysis. This chapter presents new data, namely the IMPACT dataset, to fill up this empirical deficit within the literature on post-civil conflict settlements. The IMPACT dataset contains data on internal armed conflict settlement provisions in 83 peace agreements struck in the period of 1989–2004. It includes data on the most important components of a peace agreement, with regard to the contested incompatibilities, namely political, military and territorial pacts. Furthermore, it includes unique data on to what degree such pacts were implemented following the signing of a peace agreement.

The chapter is structured in the following way. We begin by discussing literature on durable peace and peace agreements, and formulate four expectations based on this research.