Peace Agreements as Political Texts: Performance, Interpretation, and the R-ARCSS Implementation Gap

Peace Agreements as Political Texts: Performance, Interpretation, and the R-ARCSS Implementation Gap examines the persistent gap between negotiated commitments and lived political order, showing how this gap is produced as much by interpretation and performance as by technical incapacity. Centering South Sudan without treating it as exceptional, the study situates the case within broader debates in interpretive political science, sociolegal studies, and performative theory. It develops the concept of the performative peace text to explain how formal provisions, institutional design, and struggles over authority become fused during implementation. Drawing on interpretive textual analysis of the CPA (2005), ARCSS (2015), and R-ARCSS (2018); implementation tracking through Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission reports; interviews with negotiators, mediators, and civil society monitors; and comparative analysis with the Arusha, Lomé, and Abuja agreements, the study advances three linked propositions. First, ambiguity in peace agreements functions as political design rather than technical flaw. Second, implementation unfolds as an interpretive struggle among competing actors. Third, participatory drafting reshapes the authority and contestability of peace texts. The analysis addresses the central puzzle of how the R-ARCSS should be read as a political text, showing that its ambiguities, omissions, and contradictions reveal the underlying political settlement it encodes rather than the formal order it appears to establish. It treats institutions, narratives, and policy frameworks as political instruments rather than neutral containers. The study concludes that reform efforts fail when they target implementation gaps without addressing the underlying distribution of power