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Introduction

Peacebuilding, Elites, and the Problem of Capture

The population does not value peace as a synonym for progress. Peace for most people does not make sense because it has no social content, or the content lacks justice. The impact of the neoliberal transition of the past fifteen years has laid a foundation for society that trends toward authoritarianism rather than democracy.

—Salvador Sánchez Cerén, October 2006¹

ON OCTOBER 15, 1979, a group of junior officers overthrew El Salvador’s military government with the intent of forestalling a revolution. Decades of systematic repression, socioeconomic exclusion, and the collapse of legal political space in the early 1970s had resulted in the mobilization of guerrilla organizations and affiliated social groups that wished to dismantle the existing political and economic order in one of Central America’s most unequal and violent societies. The subsequent juntas, composed of military officers and civilians, had hoped to loosen the military’s grip on the state and the oligarchy’s grip on the economy. The successive juntas failed to achieve the reforms it deemed necessary to prevent the escalation of violence, reforms that threatened the country’s most powerful economic elites. The levels of state violence increased and, by 1980, El Salvador was a country at war with itself.

More than seventy-five thousand Salvadorans were killed and one million more displaced in the civil war, making it one of the most destructive in the region. Driven to the negotiating table by a military stalemate with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, the Salvadoran government under President Alfredo Cristiani invited the United Nations to mediate a settlement that would end the war. El Salvador’s civil war was to be the first in which the United Nations agreed to act as mediator in such negotiations. The negotiations began in April 1990 and continued for almost two years, during which the participation of the UN and mediation by the secretary general’s office were crucial to the successful negotiation of sensitive issues, particularly military reform. On January 16, 1992, representatives for the government of El Salvador (GOES) and the FMLN signed the peace accords that aimed not only to end the civil war but to build lasting peace. The Chapúltepec Peace Accords, named after the castle where they were signed in Mexico City, promised a new beginning for El Salvador. Hailed as a success story of United Nations peacebuilding efforts, the peace process transformed the country’s political landscape. The accords placed the military under civilian control for the first time in El Salvador’s history. State-sponsored terrorism ceased to be the modus operandi of the country’s various “security forces,” which were eliminated and replaced with a new civilian police force. Opposition parties and their affiliated organizations were legalized and, over time, functioned without fear of recrimination. The FMLN transitioned from a guerrilla movement to political party, becoming the largest party in the legislature and governing more than 50 percent of the population following the 2000 legislative and municipal elections. The party later won presidential elections in 2009 and 2014. While implementation of the accords was not without its problems, the ceasefire has never been broken. According to a 1997 report of the United Nations secretary general, “the most notable development has been that the peace process has also allowed for the opening-up of political space for democratic participation. A climate of tolerance prevails today, unlike any the country has known before.”² El Salvador was undoubtedly freer than it had ever been throughout its history.

But all was not well in El Salvador. A mere seven years later, another UN secretary general’s report commented that the 2004 elections had “generated a wave of polarization that surpassed any seen since the signing of the Peace Agreement.”³ While the peace accords ended the armed conflict, numerous factors continued to undermine the quality of that peace. Democratic elections have become routinized, but Salvadoran voters are increasingly disenchanted with the political process. Political parties control the public discourse, and political polarization limits representation and political space. Corruption and impunity are pervasive, resulting in low levels of confidence in state institutions. Organized crime and social violence have replaced political violence, making El Salvador one of the most violent countries in the world. Successive administrations have failed to reduce the violence, and their authoritarian solutions to the problems have not only been in direct contradiction to the peace accords but have exacerbated the problem. Millions of Salvadorans still live in poverty and many are forced to supplement their families’ incomes by making the dangerous journey to the United States in search of work. More Salvadorans have left the country since the end of the war than during it, and their remittances sustain the stagnant Salvadoran economy. Twenty years after the signing of the peace accords, 62 percent of Salvadorans said that things were the same or worse than during the war, and 57 percent expressed little to no satisfaction with the functioning of Salvadoran democracy.⁴ While the peace accords ended the war, many Salvadorans remained dissatisfied with the quality of peace, as illustrated by the epigraph to this introduction from newly elected president Salvador Sánchez Cerén. One of the great ironies of El Salvador’s peace process is that while outsiders consider it a success, Salvadorans do not.⁵ All this begs the question, What happened to the peace in El Salvador?

UN Peacebuilding and the Liberal Peace

During the past two decades, the United Nations has become increasingly involved in the settlement of civil wars across the globe. Since 1989 more than a dozen civil wars have ended with UN-brokered peace agreements, including those in El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, and Guatemala. In 1992 former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali recognized that the needs of postconflict societies extended well beyond the bounds of traditional peacekeeping, which was generally limited to international conflicts and involved activities such as dispute settlement, monitoring ceasefires, and the separation of forces. In his book An Agenda for Peace, Boutros-Ghali pushes for an increase in international assistance to effectively rebuild these societies. Peacebuilding, he argues, requires that peace processes address the root causes of conflict in order to prevent any reversion to armed violence.⁶ The creation of lasting peace entails moving beyond the mere cessation of war and toward creating a stable, just, and reconciled society. His thesis reflects work done in the field of peace and conflict studies by theorists such as Johan Galtung, who developed the concepts of positive (eliminations of the causes of violence) and negative peace (absence of war) in an attempt to more fully define the criteria for the consolidation of peace.⁷ As such, peacebuilding efforts often comprised a wide variety of activities aimed at reconstructing postwar societies. These include conflict cessation (including disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants), institutional reform, human rights and elections monitoring, provision and training of security forces, and the repatriation of refugees. While much of this work was conducted by the UN and its programs and specialized agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also engaged in a vast array of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction activities. Among them were disarmament, education, health care, societal reconciliation, and infrastructure and development projects.

In practice, peacebuilding has often combined elements of traditional peacekeeping with statebuilding and economic development.⁸ As such, “liberal” peacebuilding, as it is often referred to by critics, seeks to establish democratic governments and market economies as the chief means of delivering peace and prosperity. This approach has been largely informed by the democratic peace theory, the idea that democracy reduces prospects for war between democratic states.⁹ While there has been increasing attention paid to the establishment of functioning state institutions, rule of law, and societal reconciliation or transitional justice, these elements have often been secondary to the dual processes of democratization and marketization.

Peacebuilding Outcomes

The results of UN peacebuilding efforts have been mixed, and measuring “success” has been difficult. Early peacebuilding missions tended to be overly broad and vague in purpose (prevention of the recurrence of conflict) and scope (extending to the many needs of postconflict societies). Moreover, there were no clear criteria for mission success beyond sustaining the cessation of armed conflict.¹⁰ In that regard, the results are discouraging: as many as one-third of negotiated settlements collapse within five years and the resulting violence may eclipse preaccord violence.¹¹ Additionally, relatively few peacebuilding efforts have resulted in liberal democracies. In an analysis of nineteen major peacebuilding operations, Christoph Zürcher has found that fewer than half could be considered liberal or electoral democracies.¹² Fewer still showed outward signs of established rule of law, societal reconciliation or economic development.¹³ Virginia Page Fortna’s study of the effect of peacekeeping missions on democratization demonstrates that while missions are generally effective at maintaining peace and security, they may serve to undermine democracy in the long term.¹⁴ It is worth noting, however, that this is not dissimilar from the broader experience of transitional countries that exist in what Thomas Carothers refers to as “the gray zone,” wherein countries have some characteristics of democracy but suffer significant democratic deficits.¹⁵ Dozens of countries remain trapped somewhere between dictatorship and liberal democracy, some with little prospect of making a complete transition any time soon. The modest, if not disappointing, peacebuilding outcomes resulted in the emergence of a wide-ranging critique of UN peacebuilding efforts.

Critics of liberal peacebuilding argue that it has failed to deliver sustainable peace. Roland Paris, Michael Pugh, Oliver Richmond, and others argue that the application of neoliberal economic reforms, the imposition of Western values before institutional development (liberalization before institutionalization), the emphasis on stability over freedom, and the failure to incorporate civil society into peacebuilding efforts all may serve to undermine and reduce the quality of peace.¹⁶ Additionally, critics argue that this basic formula has been applied in countries as diverse as Bosnia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique, and Rwanda without respect to local cultures or realities. In each of these cases, the peace processes envisioned peace through democratization, focusing primarily on creating a climate conducive to holding free and fair elections as quickly as possible. The emphasis on elections was based on the underlying assumption that elections would create participatory democracy, which presumably would yield peace dividends. Given the failure of most transitions to produce liberal democracies, critics charge that electoral competition and neoliberal economic policies have undermined prospects for peace in most postconflict societies. According to Paris, such “Wilsonianism” is potentially destabilizing and may even reproduce the sources of conflict in postconflict societies.¹⁷ While the causes of recurrence of civil war (and peace failure) are more complicated than some of the critical literature suggests, it does succeed in highlighting the gaps between the stated intentions of peacebuilding and actual outcomes.¹⁸

The Importance of Local Actors in Peacebuilding

Both traditional peacebuilding literature and critical theory focus heavily on the ideologies, actions, and policies of outside actors (the peacebuilders). But peacebuilders do not bear the sole responsibility for the outcomes of peacebuilding. In his critique, Ole Jacob Sending argues that the focus on external actors largely ignores the extent to which these practices are shaped by the principle of sovereignty and the role of local actors.¹⁹ In fact, local actors are integral to the outcomes of every aspect of the peace process, from agenda setting through implementation. Peacebuilders are involved at the will of local actors and, by necessity, must work within the constraints set forth by them. As noted by Miles Kahler, “their [peacebuilders’] programs become part of an intricate set of political calculations on the part of existing elites and their rivals. Whatever the asymmetries in power, local actors possess bargaining power and often use it effectively.”²⁰ This bargaining power may occur through either formal or informal power at the negotiating table. As Roman Krznaric demonstrates in the case of Guatemala, the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF), the country’s most important business organization, wielded significant influence over the socioeconomic content of the accords despite not being a direct party to the negotiations.²¹

While local peacebuilding actors may include the state, armed opposition forces, civil society, and other political actors, elites often have the most influence on peacebuilding. Depending on the case, local elites may include economic elites, political elites, military elites, or some nexus of the three.²² The preferences, or desired outcomes, and capacity of local elites engaged in peacemaking and peacebuilding have been long neglected in both peacebuilding literature and the critical responses to it. Yet local elite preferences have a significant impact on peace processes and peacebuilding, more specifically. The two most obvious ways that elite preferences shape peace processes are through their desire to maintain the status quo and their control of state resources and patronage networks. It is, perhaps, not surprising that elites seek to preserve their interests during peace processes, which often seek to alter the status quo. As David Roberts notes, elite entrenchment is a characteristic of many postconflict societies.²³ While one result of this entrenchment may be institutional reform, patterns of patronage and clientelism continue to dominate political culture in these countries. In its most benign form, elite entrenchment can result in increased polarization and may undermine democratic governance. At its worst, elite entrenchment may result in the resuscitation of conflict as elites attempt to retain power and fight proposed reforms.²⁴

Far from being impotent actors at the mercy of international institutions, local elites often find ways to use the peacebuilding process to (re)consolidate or establish their control. Elites may feign interest in reforms to appease peacebuilders in order to gain or maintain access to resources without ever intending to undertake liberalizing reforms or by undermining reforms through informal structures.²⁵ Michael Barnett and Christoph Zürcher argue that the interactions between state elites, who seek to maximize their own interests, and peacebuilders shape the content of negotiations and determine the outcomes of peacebuilding.²⁶ The authors describe a range of potential outcomes of this interaction, as defined by the extent of the antagonistic relationship between peacebuilders and local elites. The authors argue that most cases result in “compromised peacebuilding,” where “state elites accept the legitimacy of the peacebuilders’ reforms in exchange for international assistance and legitimacy but seek to preserve their self-interest.”²⁷ Under this model, state elites work with peacebuilders to jointly determine policies. The result is an outcome that promotes reform while protecting the interests of the status quo.²⁸ In a more recent work, Barnett, Songying Fang, and Zürcher elaborate on compromised peacebuilding by employing a game-theoretic model to examine the outcome of bargaining between peacebuilders, elites, and secondary elites. Not surprisingly, divergence between the peacebuilders’ ideal outcome and elites’ preference toward the status quo leads to compromised peacebuilding and, as such, contributes to illiberal democracy.²⁹ That said, the authors do not argue that compromised peacebuilding is necessarily detrimental to future democratic development but may create the basis for it.

One result of this bargaining between local elites and peacebuilders may be hybridity, a condition “where liberal and illiberal norms, institutions, and actors coexist, interact, and even clash.”³⁰ The literature on hybridity and hybrid governance seeks to explain peacebuilding outcomes as the by-product of the liberal peacebuilding agenda and local actors and culture.³¹ It can also, as Richmond demonstrates, serve as a critique about peacebuilding’s failure to engage the local.³² Hybridity is useful in explaining the wide variety of outcomes seen in postconflict peacebuilding, as most cases exist on the continuum between liberal and illiberal.³³ In its most illiberal form, hybrid governance may result in state capture by economic elites while still possessing some features of democracy.

Elites and Capture

The literature on state capture yields interesting insights for our understanding of the role of elites in peacebuilding. Derived from the literature on regulatory capture, which deals with the influence of firms (or interest groups) on policy outcomes, capture theory has recently been applied by theorists to examine corruption in transitional states and economies.³⁴ State capture occurs when powerful individuals or firms are able to influence the content and application of public policy in accordance with their own interests in exchange for bribes to public officials.³⁵ It is a system of corruption characterized by a “perversion of the rules of the game, through corruption, to the benefit of the captors, rather than for society as a whole.”³⁶ Recent studies on state capture indicate that it can affect a wide range of institutions, including the legislature, executive judiciary, ministries, and security. But elites do not just capture the state through bribes or special-interest groups; they occupy positions within the government. This capture may be facilitated by the overlapping economic and political interests of elites, or when “preexisting networks and new economic elites have secured positions of dominance in the transition environment creating a new fusion of economic and political power.”³⁷ Because states in transition and newly democratic states may be particularly vulnerable to capture, it may also help to illuminate obstacles in peacebuilding.³⁸

There is relatively little literature exploring elite capture in peacebuilding, though recent scholarship on corruption and peacebuilding helps illuminate many of the same challenges.³⁹ In addition to compromised peacebuilding, “captured peacebuilding” is one of the outcomes identified by Barnett and Zürcher. In captured peacebuilding, state and local elites are able to redirect the distribution of assistance so that it maximizes their interests.⁴⁰ Beyond merely protecting the status quo, this scenario allows elites to direct resources brought in by the peace process to reinforce those interests for years to come. In her work on decentralization and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, Melissa Labonte explores the problem of elite capture and its effects on peacebuilding. According to Labonte, elite capture occurs “when elites control, shape or manipulate decision-making processes, institutions, or structures in ways that serve their self-interests and priorities.”⁴¹ Elite capture is made possible by a variety of factors, including institutional design and enduring structures and power relations, that may transcend or limit prospects for peacebuilding and democratization. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson also find that some structures (particularly economic institutions) persist even in the face of radical change. In their explanation of “captured democracy,” de jure power (by right) is offset by de facto power (in fact) of elites, resulting in “captured democracy.”⁴² These findings reinforce the importance of path dependence and the legacies of deeply rooted institutions.⁴³ As old networks merge with new elites during the transition, it is not only the preferences of elites during the peacebuilding processes that influence outcomes but the cumulative effect of past preferences that have shaped structures within which peacebuilding occurs. As such, elites may adopt the language of peacebuilding and liberalism while retaining a political culture of patronage and clientelism. As David Roberts puts it, “the norm trumps the nomenclature.”⁴⁴

I would add that elite capture need not be the result of a transition but may actually precede it. In the case of El Salvador, elites captured the state through a political party before the negotiation and implementation of peace accords. As Ho-Won Jeong notes, incumbent governments that remained in power through the transitions enjoyed significant advantages by controlling state institutions and resources. Relatively few incumbent governments have lost elections in the immediate aftermath of conflict, giving them significant leverage over the peacebuilding process.⁴⁵ Miles Kahler finds that “control of the state provides a key resource to local actors,” and may ultimately diminish the influence of peacebuilders.⁴⁶ Thus, incumbents (and those who support them) can use the state to wield significant influence over peace processes.

Argument and Structure of the Book

This is a book about politics—it shows how those in power seek to preserve their own interests at the expense of their professed commitment to peacebuilding, how an incumbent party wields this political advantage throughout the peace process (in terms of both negotiations and implementation), and the consequences of that advantage to the quality of peace that results.⁴⁷ Incumbents may leverage such benefits as the control of state institutions and resources, perceptions of experience, access to resources (such as the media), and international recognition and legitimacy to obtain desired outcomes, namely protecting their own self-interest. Drawing on Labonte’s definition of capture, I use the term to describe the system by which elites controlled and manipulated institutions (whether formal or informal) and policy outcomes to preserve and advance their own interests.

The case of El Salvador presents a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of local actors, particularly incumbent elites, on peacebuilding. The incumbent party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), held the presidency for twenty years (1989–2009). Those twenty years spanned the final months of the war, peace negotiations, the implementation of the accords, and four presidential election cycles that culminated in ARENA’s loss of the presidency, in 2009. The structure of the Salvadoran political system, alliances with smaller parties, and U.S. assistance gave the party near complete dominance over policymaking during that period. I argue that ARENA’s incumbency gave it significant political advantages in determining the content of negotiations, overseeing the implementation of the peace accords, and directing economic policy. This control enabled ARENA to minimize its losses in the negotiated settlement—at least in the short term.

The primary goal of the Alfredo Cristiani administration (1989–94) was to end the war in order to restore economic stability without sacrificing political power. Unlike elites in other conflicts and even some factions among the Salvadoran right, ARENA did not need to be convinced of the benefits of democracy. Salvadoran elites had a long tradition of electoral politics, which it used to protect its own interests. Moreover, as Elizabeth Wood so convincingly argues, elites had determined that they could preserve and even promote their economic interests while supporting democratic reforms.⁴⁸ Cristiani envisioned El Salvador as the financial capital of Latin America, something that could only be accomplished with the end of the war. To that end, his administration was willing to sacrifice the apparatus responsible for carrying out the violence and to agree to basic reforms that would create the minimal climate necessary for democratic elections. Cristiani made it clear to the FMLN at the beginning of negotiations that there would be no discussion of the neoliberal economic policies that ARENA was implementing. The FMLN, despite its opposition to the neoliberal model, accepted these terms as a price of the negotiated peace.⁴⁹ Both Cristiani’s terms and the FMLN’s acquiescence diverged from popular opinion about the fundamental objectives of the peace process. In a 1991 poll, 30 percent of respondents said that the most important issue to be addressed in the peace negotiations was economic reform. Additionally, it was agreed that the 1983 constitution, written during the civil war without the participation of the full spectrum of Salvadoran political society, would serve as the basic political instrument for the new democracy. Any institutional reforms negotiated by the parties would be implemented by amending that constitution. These factors gave ARENA a significant political advantage by establishing the basic framework of the state and limiting the scope of possible reforms.

In addition to limiting the scope of negotiations, ARENA also leveraged significant control over the implementation process.⁵⁰ The responsibility for key reforms that supported the peace accords was assigned to domestic authorities, most of which were highly politicized and controlled by ARENA. Not surprisingly, successive ARENA administrations either stalled or failed to implement necessary reforms or offer meaningful solutions to El Salvador’s most pressing problems because they conflicted with their own interests—often to the detriment of building peace. Little more than a year after the signing of the accords, David Holiday and William Stanley noted the lack of political will of the government to purge the officers’ corps, as well as delays and funding shortages in the start-up of the new National Civilian Police (PNC) and the human rights ombudsman’s office.⁵¹ According to Larry Ladutke, this lack of will “increased the ability of authoritarian forces within both state and society to take back the concessions which the government had made at the negotiating table.”⁵² The failure to fully support these new, accord-mandated structures has had a significant impact on the credibility of these institutions, as well as serious consequences for civilian security.⁵³ The National Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (COPAZ) also suffered from serious deficiencies and lacked the ability to enforce compliance, even though it was the national body created to verify implementation of the accords.⁵⁴ Other reforms that threatened elite interests stalled or were diluted under ARENA leadership. Having the ARENA-dominated Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) in charge of electoral reform set the foxes to guard the hen house. The tribunal failed to enact many reforms mandated by the accords, including depoliticization of the institution. The sole economic body created by the peace accords, the Forum for Economic and Social Consultation (Foro), failed due to a lack of support from ARENA and the business community. The Cristiani administration developed the National Reconstruction Plan (PRN) with very little input from either the FMLN or the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Finally, the very public rejection of the findings of the Truth Commission by President Cristiani and the sweeping amnesty law that passed mere days later were indicative of the impunity that long characterized Salvadoran politics. As stated by Antonio Cañas and Héctor Dada, “within the forces and authorities charged with leading state institutions, interests and powers persist that have found it more beneficial to operate by the old system of unwritten, undemocratic rules of the game than to cultivate respect for and adherence to the rule of law.”⁵⁵ Such practices and thinking continued during the Armando Calderón Sol, Francisco Flores, and Antonio Saca administrations and, it would appear, influenced various aspects of the Mauricio Funes administration. The peace accords may have restructured some of the country’s most notorious institutions, but it did little to change the preferences or interests of elites.

The consequences of this incumbency can be felt throughout Salvadoran society and extend well beyond the implementation of the accords. For two decades, ARENA and its allies dominated the country’s political, economic, and social agenda. In the political sphere, institutions became highly politicized and limited the scope of representation. Political parties, not citizens, became the primary political actors in El Salvador’s new democracy. Moreover, the lack of reconciliation between the wartime adversaries limited prospects for societal reconciliation. Neoliberal economic reforms failed to generate long-term sustainable growth, and Salvadorans increasingly came to rely on remittances to sustain their households. The delays and difficulties associated with the restructuring of the armed forces and the creation of the new civilian police force resulted in a security gap that has had profound consequences for every aspect of Salvadoran society. This book investigates the political, economic, and social aftermath of the peace accords in an effort to illuminate the serious limitations of peacebuilding in what might otherwise be considered a successful peace process.

Chapter 1 identifies patterns of elite behavior and interests that have characterized the Salvadoran state, with the intention of identifying patterns and structures that made captured peacebuilding possible. As demonstrated herein, Salvadoran elites have historically used state resources to consolidate control and advance their own interests. This tendency is evident in the political and economic foundations of the independent Salvadoran state, as demonstrated by the consolidation of power by the Salvadoran oligarchy in the late nineteenth century. I seek to identify critical junctures in El Salvador’s past that underscored elite preferences and shaped the context of negotiations and implementation of the accords. As such, I examine the 1881 and 1882 land reforms; the resulting socioeconomic and political tensions of the early twentieth century sparked by the 1931 coup and 1932 peasant rebellion led by Farabundo Martí (and the crushing response to it) that resulted in the a precarious arrangement between the oligarchy and the military; the succession of reactionary and reformist military governments in the 1960s and 1970s that culminated in heightened repression and the overthrow of the military regime in October 1979; and the consequences of U.S. support for the military and democracy promotion in the 1980s.

Chapter 2 examines the structures and dynamics of the peace process that made captured peace possible. I begin with an overview of the peace negotiations and the contents of the agreements that made up the peace accords, examining the extent to which local actors were able to shape the scope and the contents of the agreements. I then address the implementation of the accords, with particular emphasis on the gap between the content of peace accords and their actual implementation. I also examine the extent to which the incumbent government undermined societal reconciliation through the 1993 amnesty law, which has had significant implications for peacebuilding. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the 1994 “elections of the century” that mark El Salvador’s transition to democracy, as well as the return of the incumbent ARENA party to power.

Chapters 3 through 5 offer an empirical analysis of postwar peacebuilding in El Salvador by exploring the political, economic, and social dynamics of a captured peace. Chapter 3 assesses postwar politics, including the challenges of democratization and increasing polarization. I review the electoral reforms implemented during and after the peace accords in order to highlight systematic barriers to participation that may have benefited the incumbent party. The chapter then focuses on the monopolization of political discourse by political parties, as well as the extent to which parties provide a meaningful conduit for popular representation. I also provide a discussion of the internal development of political parties and examine how party polarization affects representation and the quality of democracy. This is followed by an analysis of the postwar election cycles after 1994 for presidential elections (1999, 2004, 2009, 2014) and legislative and municipal elections (1997, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015).

Chapter 4 examines the postwar economy, which has been characterized by deepening economic exclusion through the application of the neoliberal model across four successive ARENA administrations. The policies implemented under the administration of Alfredo Cristiani were concurrent with the negotiation of the peace accords and the early phases of their implementation. The continued application of the model by the Calderón Sol and Flores administrations deepened the reforms, which resulted in increased political and social opposition. The popular dissatisfaction with the economy under Flores led to a change in discourse under the Saca administration, which was instead imbued with populist language and social programs while continuing neoliberal policies. ARENA’s policies did little to alleviate socioeconomic exclusion, and the economy became overly dependent on remittances sent back from Salvadorans living abroad. The failure of these policies was exposed by the global financial crisis, from which the country has yet to recover. I also assess the extent to which the Funes administration was able to diverge from the model established by the ARENA governments and the conflicts that arose as a result of policies that threatened elite interests. Additionally, various corruption scandals exposed the extent to which those in power used the state for their own benefit.

Chapter 5 addresses three dominant problems of postwar society: migration, crime, and the limitation of political space for civil society. Social exclusion and marginalization have both political and economic roots that precede the peace accords, although the impact of neoliberalism and the retraction of the state from public spheres have contributed greatly to these problems. The failure to deal with these issues has resulted in the mass emigration of Salvadorans in the postwar era, which has resulted in the deterioration of families and society and has helped fuel a wave of crime and violence of epic proportions, for which El Salvador has now become notorious. The multifaceted causes of this crime and violence are examined, which includes a discussion of state complicity and failures during the implementation of security reforms. This chapter also explores policy responses to crime and highlights how ARENA used social exclusion and authoritarianism as instruments of the state to maintain the status quo.

In the final chapter I summarize the book’s major findings and discuss the extent to which it is possible to reclaim the captured peace. I also discuss the lessons that El Salvador’s captured peace holds for peacebuilders and seek to identify mechanisms that might limit the advantage of incumbent elites.