This path-breaking book uncovers the important, under-appreciated role of armed opposition groups turned political parties in shaping long-term patterns of politics after war. Based on an empirically grounded and theoretically informed retrospective on nearly thirty years of post-conflict democratic state-building efforts, it examines whether this practice has contributed to peace and finds that engaging post-rebel parties in electoral politics has proven to be a viable long-term strategy for bringing political stability, that disparate post-rebel parties from different political contexts invest heavily in electoral politics and that few post-rebel parties actively seek return to civil conflict as a solution after becoming a political party. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in democracy, governance, elections, political parties, post-conflict peacebuilding, and more broadly to international relations, comparative politics, and regional politics.

Carrie Manning's illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the U.S. have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy. Tax structures embed, and reproduce, an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that produce unintended consequences that are rarely traced back to state and local revenue models. This book combines historical American political development with the study of state formation. It provides a clear-eyed investigation into the past, present, and future of the social contract between America's local governments and citizens.

Peacebuilding is an interactive process that involves collaboration between peacebuilders and the victorious elites of a postwar society. While one of the most prominent assumptions of the peacebuilding literature asserts that the interests of domestic elites and peacebuilders coincide, Costly Democracy contends that they rarely align. It reveals that, while domestic elites in postwar societies may desire the resources that peacebuilders can bring, they are often less eager to adopt democracy, believing that democratic reforms may endanger their substantive interests. The book offers comparative analyses of recent cases of peacebuilding to deepen understanding of postwar democratization and better explain why peacebuilding missions often bring peace—but seldom democracy—to war-torn countries.

Peacebuilding is an interactive process that involves collaboration between peacebuilders and the victorious elites of a postwar society. While one of the most prominent assumptions of the peacebuilding literature asserts that the interests of domestic elites and peacebuilders coincide, "Costly Democracy" contends that they rarely align.
It reveals that, while domestic elites in postwar societies may desire the resources that peacebuilders can bring, they are often less eager to adopt democracy, believing that democratic reforms may endanger their substantive interests. The book offers comparative analyses of recent cases of peacebuilding to deepen understanding of postwar democratization and better explain why peacebuilding missions often bring peace--but seldom democracy--to war-torn countries.

Manning examines issues of democratization and conflict resolution through the lens of the Mozambican experience from 1992-2000. Since the end of the Cold War, a formal democratization process has been at the center of virtually every negotiated peace agreement to end a civil conflict. Nearly a decade after the Rome peace accord put an end to 16 years of civil war, Mozambique stands out as one of the world's most unlikely postwar democratization success stories. What accounts for the durability of the postwar political settlement? What lessons does the Mozambican experience hold for other such cases?

Relying on original research conducted in Mozambique between 1994 and 1999, Manning argues that the country's relatively successful postwar political settlement depends upon the ability of the system to accommodate conflicting notions of democratic and system legitimacy, through routine recourse to processes of sustained elite bargaining which supplement formal democratic institutions. In building her case, Manning provides a thorough and provocative analysis of the country's civil conflict, presents ground-breaking work on the transformation of the Renamo rebel group into a political party, and the separation of the Relimo party-state into its respecive components, and he presents a clear-eyed analysis of the lessons and limits of Mozambique's postwar success. Of particular interest to scholars, students, and policymakers involved with democratization, conflict resolution, and southern African politics.