This chapter leverages a within-case variation in the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a rebel organization that operated in a country that neighbored Eritrea at the same time as the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) from Chapter 5. The SPLM/A initially articulated less transformative goals, and despite knowing about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) governance, refused to introduce any elements of it, consistent with expectations. In 1994, however, the SPLM/A articulated a new set of moderately transformative objectives and correspondingly introduced governance initiatives that more closely approached, but did not replicate exactly, the CCP’s strategy, also consistent with expectations. The SPLM/A in conjunction with the EPLF and Eritrean Liberation Front cases in Chapter 5 offers a comprehensive test of the theory using the full range of variation in the independent variables (transformativity of rebel goals) and the corresponding range of the dependent variable (rebel governance strategies).

This chapter examines the case of Timor-Leste, the first peace settlement negotiated after the United Nations launched its anti-amnesty policy. As a UN-led process, initial acceptance of the anti-amnesty position was guaranteed: none of the resolutions that provided for the settlement of East Timor’s independence struggle included amnesties, and soon after independence a hybrid tribunal was established to prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations. However, this anti-impunity/pro-accountability stance quickly eroded in the post-conflict period with persistent calls for amnesties being translated into practical impunity measures. As this chapter demonstrates, both Indonesian and East Timorese leaders have emphasised the importance of state security, stability, and survival in justifying the use of impunity measures. For Indonesian, in particular, acceptance of impunity for human rights violations came in the context of the threat to state disintegration posed by separatist claims in other parts of the country. For both, resistance to the anti-amnesty norm was the result of a norm hierarchy that prioritises the survival of the state over individual human rights claims.

The objective of this chapter is to evaluate whether rebel groups imitate the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) if they articulate more transformative goals but do not share the CCP’s communist ideology. To do so, the chapter examines the governance of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN). FRETILIN leaders articulated more transformative, revolutionary goals but were not communist. Consistent with expectations, FRETILIN leaders explicitly decided to imitate the CCP’s governance approach almost exactly and even continued to implement the CCP’s strategy despite encountering military challenges to it. The chapter includes archival data from East Timor, Australia and the United Kingdom.

This chapter begins by outlining the mixed-methods approach used to test the argument. To assess causal mechanisms, it relies on process-tracing techniques drawing on archival and primary data, in addition to secondary sources, within a paired case comparison framework. To assess generalizability, the chapter tests an observable implication of the theory using a large-n quantitative analyses with an original dataset. Next, it delineates the observable implications of theoretical contentions, then it discusses three rival explanations that are simultaneously evaluated in each chapter. The chapter explains the case selection strategy and presents an overview of the results. It concludes with a discussion of data and measures for the key variables.

Chapter 8 empirically evaluates the hypotheses proposed in Chapter 7. The first set of hypotheses examines the effectiveness of conflict management efforts to settle the border within the context of rivalry. The empirical patterns are consistent with our expectations. Negotiation and mediation generally increase the likelihood of border settlement but this relationship does not hold when power endowments are present. Legal approaches generally help neighbors settle borders with and without power endowments, but are generally more effective in the absence of power endowments. We then examine the relationship between border settlement, power endowments, and rivalry termination. The probability of rivalry termination increases with border settlement but termination is less likely when power endowments are present. Rivalry relationship transforms once border settlement occurs but the rivalry does not immediately terminate. Crises and disputes are less severe and of shorter durations.We find little evidence that democratic neighbors, allied, closer in parity, or the presence of ethnic kin in the border region affect the odds of rivalry termination.

This chapter examines the peace process undertaken by the Government of Nepal and the Community Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M). Nepal’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), negotiated in the presence of United Nations officials and signed in 2006, does not include an amnesty provision but a commitment to accountability for human rights violations and an agreement to end impunity for such crimes. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, agreement to include anti-impunity measures in the CPA was driven, not by a commitment to end impunity for human rights violations, but by a desire to avoid criticism from the international actors present during the negotiations. This lack of intention to comply with the human rights terms of the CPA was evident in the negotiating process and has been born out in the post-conflict period, with several successive governments attempting to legislate in favour of introducing amnesty laws. At the same time, a lack of capacity within those local institutions committed to ending impunity for human rights violations, exacerbated by the withdrawal of UN support for their processes, has hampered efforts to combat these impunity measures.

In the 1990s, United Nations (UN) peacemaking policy and practice underwent a significant transition. At the beginning of the decade, UN practice followed a long-standing tradition of accepting, condoning and even promoting the use of amnesties in peace agreements. By the turn of the century, however, it had instituted a new ‘policy of opposing amnesties for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or gross violations of human rights, including in the context of peace negotiations’.1 As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights remarked in the Foreword to the UN’s Rule-of-Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: Amnesties: ‘The United Nations has recognized that, when properly pursued, justice can help ensure a just and sustainable peace. By opposing amnesties that establish impunity for atrocious crimes, United Nations policy seeks to safeguard a space for justice even when conditions for prosecutions are not yet adequately established.’2 This shift, Pillay noted, ‘represents an important evolution’ in UN peacemaking policy.3

This chapter argues that rebel groups’ long-term goals determine rebels’ governance strategies. Rebel goals are defined on a spectrum of transformativity, bookended by more transformative goals of revolution at one end and personal enrichment at the other. After rebel leaders determine their organizations’ goals, they are uncertain about how to pursue them and look to examples for guidance. Because of the CCP’s propaganda campaigns, almost all rebel leaders are familiar with the CCP and its intensive and extensive governance, but not all rebel groups decide to learn from and imitate the group. Rebel leaders learn from and decide to imitate the CCP’s governance almost exactly when they share revolutionary goals similar to the CCP’s, even if they do not share an ideology. As more rebel groups with revolutionary goals imitated the CCP’s governance, global expectations converged upon the CCP’s governance model as the appropriate strategy for revolutionary rebel groups, creating material and ideational incentives for revolutionary rebel groups to conform to the CCP’s governance. The less transformative rebel groups' goals become, the degree of compatibility with the groups’ goals and the CCP’s objectives declines, so the extent to which rebel leaders decide to imitate the CCP's governance also declines.