Post-Aid Peace: How Domestic Resource Mobilization Reduces Conflict Recurrence Better Than External Peacebuilding
Résumé
For three decades the liberal peacebuilding orthodoxy has channelled billions of dollars of external assistance into post-conflict states on the assumption that foreign-funded statebuilding produces durable peace. The empirical record now contradicts that assumption. Drawing on a cross-national quantitative and qualitative analysis of four cases — Rwanda (1994–), Colombia (2016–), South Sudan (2011–), and Afghanistan (2002–2021) — this article argues that countries which built domestic tax capacity after conflict experience significantly lower recurrence than those which remained dependent on aid-driven statebuilding. The article introduces the concept of "fiscal social-contract depth" — the reciprocal relationship between taxation, public-service delivery, and citizen voice — and shows that it is the strongest statistical predictor of post-conflict stability among the variables examined. Rwanda, which raised tax-to-GDP from 10.5% in 2003 to 14.6% in FY 2023/24 and financed 59% of its budget from domestic sources, has recorded no large-scale recurrence since 1994. Colombia, despite high residual violence, has institutionalised a tax-and-peace linkage through the 2016 Final Agreement and its 2022 tax reform. South Sudan, where non-oil revenue is below 5% of GDP and ODA has averaged 23.8% of GDP since 2020, relapsed into civil war in 2013 and again in 2024. Afghanistan, where aid financed 75–80% of public expenditure before 2021, experienced an immediate fiscal and security collapse the moment external funding was withdrawn. The article draws on Political Settlement Theory (Kelsall et al., 2022) to explain why some post-conflict states successfully develop tax capacity while others remain dependent on external assistance; engages conflict-sensitivity (Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, 2022), gender-responsive budgeting (OECD, 2023; UN Women, 2023), climate security (IPCC, 2023; UNDP, 2024), and the human-security lens (United Nations, 2023) to broaden the analytical framework; incorporates the digital transformation of revenue administration through electronic tax systems, digital ID, mobile payments, and AI-driven risk management; and positions the Post-Aid Peace framework within the Humanitarian–Development–Peace (HDP) Nexus (OECD, 2022; United Nations, 2023). The article challenges the liberal peacebuilding paradigm centred on Richmond's (2024) critique and Paris's (2024) defence, and centres fiscal sociology — the tradition of Schumpeter, Levi, and Prichard — in peacebuilding theory. It concludes with a Post-Aid Peace framework presented as a dynamic governance cycle: domestic revenue mobilisation feeds public-service delivery, accountability, state legitimacy, economic development, and sustainable peace, each of which feeds back into the next stage — a cyclical, mutually reinforcing process that better reflects the complexity of post-conflict state-building than the linear models that have dominated peacebuilding theory.
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