After civil war: the demobilization of armed forces in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala

This thesis examines the factors that explain success in demobilization efforts after the termination of civil conflict by evaluating the scope of the capstone peace agreement, degree of international brokerage, strength of political parties, and effectiveness of socioeconomic policies targeting ex-combatants across three Central American cases: Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. It contributes to the post-conflict literature by providing insight into factors that facilitate or hinder the demobilization process, a subject that has heretofore only been addressed obliquely in the literature. The end of the Cold War precipitated the end of civil wars across several countries in Central America. The strategies used to meet the challenges of the post-conflict environment resulted in varying experiences with demobilization. Demobilization is the first step toward maintaining peace following the end of civil war but often one of the hardest tasks to achieve. At the most elementary level, what is missing is clear knowledge of those factors that make the difference between successful peace implementation and failure, between the assurance of peace and the resumption of war. This thesis redresses the shortcomings of the literature by attempting to identify those factors