The Cost of Respect : A qualitative study on the relationship between peace communities and governments in civil wars

Abstract: Peace communities are an “organized and sustained civilian mobilization in the midst of civil war to declare neutrality and to purposely end or prevent violent conflict in their community” (Kaplan. 2017). Scholars have long believed peace community could scale up from local oriented peace to connect to national peace processes but have overlooked the relationship between peace communities and their government. This study asks Why do governments respect the rules and boundaries of some peace communities and not others? I hypothesize that governments are more likely to respect peace communities with higher levels of cohesion, and more likely to disrespect less cohesive peace communities. I conduct a structured focused comparison study to test three empirical cases from the Philippines, comparing three first generation peace zones. I found some support for my hypothesis and causal mechanism. I then tested another empirical case from Colombia and found additional support for my hypothesis but not for my causal mechanism. Overall, this study presents a new theoretical framework, introduces a new dependent variable for measuring peace communities, and provids insight into the often under-researched first generation Philippine peace zones.