ABSTRACT
The question of how to establish sustainable peace in divided and post-confl ict societies has been the focus of much scholarly and practitioner attention for several decades. The end of the Cold War saw many multiethnic authoritarian regimes open and embark on a thorny road to democracy. Many of the civil wars that had their geneses in Cold War rivalries came to an end as the new postconfl ict societies built institutional structures that would help avoid renewed confl ict. In their attempts to resolve intrastate confl icts and to consolidate democracy, many of the world’s post-confl ict and divided societies have implemented consecutive reforms of their political institutions in recent decades. As a result, the topic of institutional reform has grown from a purely academic subfi eld into an issue of considerable policy importance, with numerous international and regional organizations and governments having a strong interest in the subject.
