This pathbreaking book uncovers the important, underappreciated 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 30 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.