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Increasingly, scholars studying civil conflicts believe that the pace of postconflict economic recovery is crucial to a return to peaceful politics. But why do some countries' economies recover more quickly than others'? The authors argue that the inability of politicians to commit credibly to postconflict peace inhibits investment and, hence, slows recovery. In turn, the ability of political actors to eschew further violence credibly depends on postconflict political institutions. The authors test this framework with duration analysis of an original data set of economic recovery, with two key results. First, they find that postconflict democratization retards recovery. Second, outright military victory sets the stage for a longer peace than negotiated settlements do. This research deepens the understanding of the bases of economic recovery and conflict recidivism in postconflict countries and points to future research that can augment this knowledge further still. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright.]

Which components of power sharing contribute to the duration of peace and what explains the linkages between institutional design and stability? The authors argue that certain types of political power sharing are associated with more durable peace than others, primarily through their positive effects on governance and public service delivery. In particular, closed-list proportional representation (PR) electoral systems stand out among power-sharing arrangements, due to their ability to deliver superior governance outcomes which, in turn, can promote stability by undercutting the initial motivations for conflict or by reducing the feasibility of rebellion. The authors argue that these positive outcomes result from closed-list PR's ability to increase party discipline and checks on executive power, while reducing incentives for personalistic voting. The introduction of political institutions in postconflict negotiated settlements allows us to test the independent effects of institutions on governance and stability using survival analysis and a case study.

Scholars have argued for decades about the relationship between biological sex and organized violence, but feminist analysts across numerous disciplines have documented the range and variety of gendered roles in times of war. In recent years, research has brought new understanding of the rapidity with which ideas about masculinity and femininity can change in times of war and the role of militarization in constructing and enforcing the meaning of manhood and womanhood. In the post–Cold War period, "new wars" ( Kaldor 1999 ) have mobilized gender in multiple ways, and peace-building is often managed by external humanitarian organizations. A strange disconnect exists between the massive body of scholarly research on gender, militarism, and peace-building and on-the-ground practices in postconflict societies, where essentialized ideas of men as perpetrators of violence and women as victims continue to guide much program design.

This article critically examines the notion that wealth sharing in the aftermath of internal armed conflicts can bring about long-lasting peace. While wealth sharing is increasingly considered a crucial element of peacebuilding, the evidence concerning its success is inconclusive. Previous studies unfortunately suffer from weak theoretical and empirical definitions of wealth sharing and from examining only a subset of postconflict societies. This article improves the research by disaggregating the concept of wealth sharing to concrete policy relevant natural resource management tools and by introducing new and better data on wealth sharing and including more postconflict peace periods than previous studies. This article examines the relationships between armed conflict, wealth sharing and peace by studying two independent but interlinked research questions: In which postconflict societies is wealth sharing most likely to be adopted? And can wealth sharing bring stable peace in postconflict societies? The analyses show that wealth sharing is more likely to be implemented after natural resource conflicts. Nonetheless, the article does not find that wealth sharing is successful in bringing postconflict peace after these conflicts. Reasons for this can be that (1) other factors than wealth sharing explain the outcome better, and (2) the wealth sharing policies are poorly designed and implemented. The article concludes that wealth sharing can only be a suitable path for societies recovering from armed conflict if such policies are carefully designed to fit the specific context and take into account the challenges that will arrive.

Entrepreneurship is generally regarded as a productive force of change, innovation, and development in modern economies. Particularly for institutionally less developed environments, however, it has been argued that the same energy and talent can also be allocated to unproductive ends. In this article, we present a model that analyzes the allocation of entrepreneurial talent into productive activities and raiding in Postconflict environments, where most formal and informal institutions have broken down. We show that the distribution of initial wealth and entrepreneurial talent play a decisive role. Our analysis also suggests that microcredits can support the transition to a productive equilibrium, because they help to overcome credit constraints without creating incentives for raiding.

Consociational democracy, as a political project of passive coexistence and agreement among ethnic elites, has been shaping sociopolitical processes in the world's postconflict regions, including Northern Ireland, Lebanon, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). In BiH, this political model, when combined with continuous governance by the International Community, solidifies war‐generated ethnic segregation and erodes state sovereignty. Furthermore, these political, social, and spatial arrangements lead to the institutionalized separation of ethnic groups and territories in BiH. At the famous Mostar Gymnasium, my primary research site, this is manifested in the simultaneous unification of the school management and segregation of classroom spaces, classroom instruction, and students along the ethnic lines. The implementation of a top‐down cartography of peace building at the school led to the destruction of common spaces for students to interact. This spatial ethnic division limited what the students call, in the local vernacular, miješanje (mixing). I understand mixing as a long‐standing cultural practice of interconnectedness and intermingling among ethnic groups. This article pays special attention to the practices of bathroom mixing at the school that unfolded alongside the consociational model of democracy and the history of mixing as an interethnic social order. Focusing on bathroom mixing illuminates the paradoxes and unintended effects of the spatial governmentality of peace‐building in BiH.