The president-led peace process and institutional veto players

Abstract

What makes a negotiated settlement of civil wars so complicated? This question attracts much scholarly attention. Many existing studies focus on information asymmetry and commitment problems when examining civil war termination or duration. These studies tend to assume conflicting parties as unitary, not grasping the dynamic nature within the conflicting party. This article disaggregates government actors, drawing on the ‘veto player’ framework, and examines how political relationships among them affect the peace process, using the Mindanao conflict as a case study. The Philippine case illustrates how government actors influence the peace process, shedding light on a neglected aspect of the government influence on civil war termination.

Keywords

civil war termination government actors peace process the Mindanao conflict

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