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Who Spoils and Why

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Fighting Over Peace

Part of the book series: Rethinking Political Violence ((RPV))

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Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that a variety of actors—inside and outside the peace agreement—can resort to spoiling: the state, the military, paramilitary groups, other domestic opposition forces, rebels, and rebel factions. In addition, the objectives and capabilities of these actors can vary considerably across cases. The chapter defines two types of spoiling: “termination spoiling”—spoiling intended to terminate a peace agreement; and “modification spoiling”—spoiling aimed at forcing modifications to an agreement or its implementation. Using the new dataset, the chapter shows spoiling intended to modify an agreement is just as common as that intended to terminate an agreement, demonstrating that spoiling is a tactic used to achieve a wide range of goals, not just a behavior attributed to extremists who oppose peace.

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  1. Department of Politics, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA

    Andrew G. Reiter

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Reiter, A.G. (2016). Who Spoils and Why. In: Fighting Over Peace . Rethinking Political Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40102-7_2

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