Review article
https://doi.org/10.20901/pm.63.3.06
From Peace Agreements to National Security: A Normative-Institutional Model of the Security Sustainability of Peace
Krešimir Margaletić
Abstract
In the political science and security literature, peace agreements are predominantly analyzed as instruments for ending armed conflicts or as starting points for political transition, while their long-term role in shaping the national security of post-conflict states is rarely considered as an independent theoretical problem. In dominant approaches, security is mainly reduced to technical issues of violence control, disarmament and stabilization, while the normative and institutional effects of peace arrangements are ignored or treated as secondary. This paper starts from the assumption that peace agreements are not just temporary political compromises, but normative-institutional documents that establish the basic patterns of the security order in post-conflict states. The paper develops a normative-institutional model of the security sustainability of peace, based on an empirically based typology of peace agreements developed in the author’s previous research. The model starts from three initial structural dimensions – the type of war, the normative-institutional design of the peace agreement and the manner of ending the conflict, the impact of which on the security outcome is achieved through the implementation of the agreement and the functionality of post-conflict institutions, with the influence of contextual or moderating factors. The security outcome represents a dependent dimension of the model, i.e. the final result of the process of security sustainability of peace. The central thesis of the paper is that the normative-institutional design of peace agreements represents an important structural factor that, in interaction with the manner of conflict termination, agreement implementation, political will and the international environment, can contribute to the long-term security sustainability of peace in post-conflict states. The analytical value of the model is illustrated by a comparative typological analysis of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) and the Minsk Agreement.
Keywords
Peace Agreements; National Security; Security Sustainability of Peace; Normative-Institutional Design; Post-Conflict States; Typology
Hrčak ID:
352504
URI
Publication date:
27.10.2026.
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