Why do Armed Groups Return to War after Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration? Introducing the DDR-40 Dataset (1980–2020)

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) is a crucial component of transitions from conflict. DDR starts the demilitarization of politics, a critical first step in reducing the feasibility of political success through violence and preventing conflict recurrence. Existing research on DDR is hampered by the absence of cross-national data. This paper introduces DDR-40, a pioneering global dataset documenting 83 DDR programs with 57 yearly attributes, encompassing 407 program-years (1980–2020). DDR-40 captures detailed program-specific characteristics, including target groups, membership size, group type, cantonment period, budget, implementation scores for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, implementation bodies, and program outcomes. For the duration of every program, the dataset also codes the implementation of other peace agreement provisions, including commitments to amnesty, prisoner release, boundary demarcation, women’s rights, and children’s rights, as well as provisions for various institutional reforms, such as executive, legislative, electoral, constitutional, judicial, and military reform. The paper outlines the dataset structure, provides descriptive statistics, and shows how the data can be used to explain conflict recurrence during DDR.