The Peacekeeping–Peacemaking Dilemma

Peacekeeping has become an increasingly prominent tool for conflict management and there has been an accompanying explosion of scholarly studies on peacekeeping. Yet, such analyses typically ignore the process of getting a peace agreement itself, missing the potential impact that a peacekeeping force might have in facilitating a peace agreement between protagonists. In this paper, we explore among both enduring rivalries and civil wars whether the presence of a peacekeeping force enhances the prospects for gaining an agreement between protagonists. The academic literature suggests opposing logics: one suggesting the desirability of peacekeeping forces while the other implies that they may be counterproductive. We consider whether the presence of peacekeeping enhances or inhibits mediation and negotiation attempts. We also explore whether the success rates for international mediation and negotiation efforts in those conflicts are affected by the presence of peacekeeping forces. Our results suggest support for the pessimistic view of peacekeeping as it discourages diplomatic efforts and decreases the likelihood of achieving a settlement, although the results are clearer for interstate conflict than for civil wars.     

Killing Time: The World Politics of Civil War Duration, 1820–1992

Policymakers often trumpet the potential for third parties to stop the killing associated with civil wars, yet third parties as strategic actors also have incentives to encourage longer civil wars. We argue that in order to assess the influence of third parties on civil war duration, it is necessary to consider the interdependent nature of third party interventions as they are distributed across the set of civil war combatants. We also argue that it is important to consider the geopolitical context in which civil wars occur, rather than focusing solely on characteristics internal to these conflicts. To test our hypotheses about the impact of third parties and geopolitical factors on civil war duration, we rely on event history analysis and a sample of 152 civil wars for the period 1820–1992. We find empirical support for the idea that extremely long civil wars correspond to the equitable distribution of third party interventions—stalemates prolong wars. The analysis also indicates that separatist civil wars and ongoing civil wars in states proximate to the civil war state result in civil wars of longer duration. Finally, we find that when third parties raise the stakes of the conflict by engaging in the use of militarized force against the civil war state, the duration of these conflicts is reduced. In general, our analysis underscores the importance of modeling the interdependent and dynamic aspects of third party intervention as well as the world politics of civil wars when forecasting their duration and formulating policy.     

The motivation of European Union mediation in civil conflicts

ABSTRACT

Since the EU has expanded its common security focus in the 1990s, this important regional organisation has become the most frequent mediator in low-level civil conflicts worldwide. Under what conditions is the European Union (EU) likely to become involved in mediation in civil conflicts? Is the participation in mediation only explained by the EU's bias toward its near abroad, or is the EU more strategic? Some scholars have suggested that the EU's regional bias for its near abroad is the key explanation for the onset of EU mediation, but we propose that the reality of EU mediation presents a more nuanced story. We posit three explanations based on mediator bias: regional bias, economic bias, and normative bias. Overall, we argue that the EU will mediate in civil conflicts that are in its near abroad, but also where the EU has economic bias and where the EU can exercise its normative power in highly intractable conflicts. We test our hypotheses using statistical analysis of the UCDP low-level civil conflicts data from 1993 to 2004 and Civil War Mediation data from 1974 to 2005. We find strong support for our hypotheses, determining key factors that reveal the EU's strategic onset of mediation.     

Is the Sum Greater than the Parts? The Terms of Civil War Peace Agreements and the Commitment Problem Revisited

The dominant theoretical approaches to civil war negotiations in the field of political science have sought to explain both the scarcity and high failure rates of negotiated agreements in civil conflicts. This historical pattern, however, has fundamentally changed in the last two decades as changes in international norms and laws, as well as the increased prevalence and competence of peacebuilding professionals, now require conflict actors to have a greater commitment toward negotiations and the enforcement of agreements. While actors in interstate wars seek to avoid accountability, civil war actors seem to embrace the opportunities that these new dynamics create to achieve broad‐based reforms across numerous areas of policy and government. The result, we suggest, is that stakeholders evaluate agreements based on their potential to accomplish an array of sociopolitical objectives. In addition, for strategic and practical reasons, they perceive that those agreements that include more reforms across multiple policy sectors will have the greatest potential. Our examination of nearly two hundred agreements found evidence that the peacemaking potential of a negotiated agreement between civil war adversaries is greatly enhanced when reforms are pursued across many different policy domains. Conversely, our analysis suggests that the greater the number of policy areas left untouched by a peace agreement, the more likely the stakeholders will be to follow that agreement with additional negotiations to enhance that agreement, or, alternatively, the more likely that violence will resume.     

Selling to Both Sides: The Effects of Major Conventional Weapons Transfers on Civil War Severity and Duration

Civil wars are primarily fought with small and light arms, but the availability of major conventional weapons to states and rebels can alter the nature of the war being fought. This study explores the impact of major conventional weapons transfers on civil war severity and duration. By using a recipient based approach to arms transfers, I find rebel acquisition of major conventional weapons from international sources leads to conflict escalation and deadlier conflicts. State importation of major conventional weapons is associated with longer conflicts. These findings provide researchers a means to account for rebel capabilities in civil war research and policy makers insight to limit the destructiveness of civil wars.     

Militarism and Dual-Conflict Capacity

This research note examines how domestic institutions can moderate the relationship between domestic and interstate conflict involvement. Previous work has found that military dictatorships are more likely to become involved in either domestic or international conflicts, compared to party-based autocracies. We argue that the same institutional explanations for why military autocracies are more conflict-prone also make them less capable of successfully carrying out multiple conflicts at the same time. Analyzing interstate and domestic conflict involvement on a sample of dictatorships over the period 1947–2004, we show that military autocracies dealing with internal armed conflict are less likely than their nonmilitary counterparts to become involved in an international conflict.     

Toward a Theory of Weakness Politics: Does Weakness Rule the World?

This article argues that the debate on “new wars” and “post-Westphalian” wars and conflicts misses a crucial dimension, that of the importance of weakness in the relations between states as well as between states and non-state entities. Most analyses of war examine power relationships between states as if power were an essential determinant of success or failure in war. Recent wars, however, show that weakness can in fact become a strength, that inequality is not so much a problem as an advantage. The author suggests the need to rename and re-problematise “new wars” as “new international conflicts” (NICs), for otherwise we miss the fundamental reasons why “powers” are often defeated, or at least held at bay by the “weakness” of their adversaries. Suggestions will also be made about how to potentially resolve such unequal conflicts and wars.     

Strategic rebels: a spatial econometric approach to rebel fighting durations in civil wars

ABSTRACT

Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects.     

The Short‐Term Effects of Mediation on Low‐Intensity Civil Wars

International diplomacy, to the extent it is effective, should not only prevent escalation of low‐intensity conflict, but should also facilitate de‐escalation. This article focuses on the short‐term effects of managing low‐intensity civil wars through third‐party mediation. Specifically, we compare the efficacy of third party‐mediated direct (face‐to‐face) and indirect talks in low‐intensity civil wars from 1993 to 2004 using the Managing Intrastate Low‐Intensity Conflict data set. We argue that a focus on short‐term success is valid because of the relationship among mediation, short‐term success, humanitarian aid access, and peacebuilding. We also assess the roles of mediator identity, mediation strategy (behavior focus versus incompatibility focus), peace agreements, war type, per capita gross domestic product, level of democracy, and conflict duration. Our overarching finding is that direct forms of mediation in which all parties meet face to face were the most likely to yield short‐term success in the sample of civil wars that we analyzed.     

Credibility and Strategy in International Mediation

We study mediation in international conflict as a process of strategic interaction among the two disputants and the (would-be) mediator. We develop a rational model that examines the choice, process, and outcome of mediation. We start with a conflict game of incomplete information played by rational players that examines the conditions under which disputants and would-be mediators would consider mediation a preferred strategy. The mediation game that follows models the mediator's choice of mediation strategy and the possible responses of the disputants offers. Finally, we explore the conditions under which a mediated solution emerges and the conditions under which mediation fails.

The credibility of the mediator—defined as the extent to which disputants believe the mediator's statements, threats, or promises and her ability to deliver the promised agreement—emerges as a key factor that drives the model. Each disputant has an assessment of the mediator's credibility. Broadly speaking, the more credible the mediator is perceived by the disputant, the more accepting the disputant will be of her offers. Yet, the mediator does not know how credible she is in the view of the disputants. This uncertainty affects the mediator's decision to intervene and her choice of strategies. We derive testable propositions from this model and test them on a dataset consisting of mediation efforts in international conflicts over the years 1945–1995. The findings generally support the propositions derived from the model, and we explore the theoretical and empirical implications of these findings.     

Which type of international organizations can settle civil wars?

International organizations (IOs) take on an increasing share of civil war mediation around the world. The determinants of IO mediation effectiveness remain poorly understood, partly because prior research has not adequately captured the institutional heterogeneity of peace-brokering IOs. To explore how mediation effectiveness depends on institutional variation, I combine newly gathered data on the design of 13 peace-brokering IOs with existing data on 109 civil war mediation episodes in the 1975-2004 period. I find that IOs with institutionalized capabilities to deploy field missions, such as peacekeeping operations, outperform other IOs as mediators of civil wars, whereas information-gathering capacity does not yield a significant advantage. The results suggest that IO enforcement assistance has a forward-looking effect: the ability to credibly signal, ex ante, that peacekeeping or monitoring forces will be deployed to enforce an agreement, helps IOs shape negotiations long before forces are actually deployed. Reaffirming the credible commitment theory of conflict resolution, the study demonstrates that there is considerable variation among external guarantors, which explains why some IOs can shift civil war disputants away from violent bargaining strategies whereas other cannot.     

Civil war mediation and integration into global value chains

How does the globalization of production affect interstate behavior? While scholars have paid significant attention to the effect of global value chains on trade and political economy, there has been substantially less focus on the interaction between globalized production and conflict behavior. However, the changing economic landscape has the potential to alter the decision calculus of leaders on a variety of issues, including conflict mediation. In this research note, I argue that when deciding how to allocate scarce mediation resources, major powers pay attention to the position of potential beneficiaries in the global production network. In particular, among states involved in intrastate conflicts, those that are more heavily involved in the production and sale of intermediate inputs are more likely to receive mediation from major powers. I test this argument using data on intermediate trade and civil war mediation between 1991 and 2011. The results of the analysis are consistent with the theory, suggesting that major powers are more likely to provide mediation for producers of intermediate goods, but not for consumers.     

Less conflict,more peace? Understanding trends in conflict persistence

Persistent civil wars constitute a serious challenge to human security and have received growing attention in recent years. Yet our understanding of patterns of conflict persistence suffers from both the absence of clear definitions and measurements as well as a lack of attention to changes over time. As a result, the prevailing image of conflict persistence as an increasing threat does not adequately reflect reality. This in turn limits our ability to identify factors that favour or prevent persistence. The paper will highlight largely overlooked developments in intrastate conflict persistence over the last decades, showing that new conflicts appear to be shorter than before, while long duration and high recurrence rates are predominantly found in relatively small and peripheral conflicts. I argue that the major drivers of these patterns include changes in the nature and context of civil wars since the end of the Cold War, as well as changes in state capacity. The relationship between state capacity and conflict persistence, however, is ambivalent, and in some cases state strength appears to be a permissive factor of conflict persistence.     

Peace from the Inside: Exploring the Role of the Insider-Partial Mediator

Previous quantitative research on mediation in intrastate and interstate conflicts has highlighted the role of external mediators. This study represents the first effort to systematically explore the role of internal—insider-partial—mediators. We suggest that the insider-partial mediators bring important indigenous resources to a peace process and that they can complement external mediators by mitigating the bargaining problem of information failure. Exploring new data on the occurrence and effect of mediation in unarmed insurrections from 1970–2006, we find that the insider-partial mediators significantly increase the likelihood of negotiated agreements. This applies even after controlling for so-called selection effects, where external mediators are selected, or self-selected, into the most difficult conflict situations, whereas insider-partial mediators are utilized in conflict situations that are less severe; and where insider-partial mediators have a substantially higher frequency of activity in unarmed as compared to armed insurrections. We therefore conclude that the insider-partial mediators play an important and positive role in peacemaking that merits further exploration.     

Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace After Civil War

This article examines international interventions in the aftermath of civil wars to see whether peace lasts longer when peacekeepers are present than when they are absent. Because peacekeeping is not applied to cases at random, I first address the question of where international personnel tend to be deployed. I then attempt to control for factors that might affect both the likelihood of peacekeepers being sent and the ease or difficulty of maintaining peace so as to avoid spurious findings. I find, in a nutshell, that peacekeeping after civil wars does indeed make an important contribution to the stability of peace.     

Guns,roses and democratization: Huntington's secret admirer in the Caucasus

Georgia is the most democratic country in the Caucasus, but arguably its democratization has also been riddled by Huntingtonian developmental crises, resulting in ethnic conflicts and civil wars. We argue that variation in the type of political instability is best understood by focusing on the interaction between nationalism and political institutionalization rather than on their independent effects. We show that Gamsakhurdia's “state-breaking nationalism”, coupled with political deinstitutionalization, produced separatist and centrist civil wars. When Saakashvili's “state-making nationalism” enhanced state capacity, it marginalized the opposition and rekindled frozen separatist conflicts, but stronger administrative institutions enabled the government to avert another revolutionary regime change.     

Does Democracy Promote Interstate Cooperation? Lessons from the Mercosur Region

A rapidly growing body of research suggests that democracy enhances prospects for the peaceful settlement of interstate conflicts. To what extent can democracy also be linked with increased international cooperation? Building upon the literature on political cooperation as well as recent discussions of the "democratic peace," this study offers a plausibility probe of the hypothesis that democracy increases the likelihood of interstate agreement. The analysis, which draws upon a data set covering dyadic interactions among Mercosur nations during the 1947–1985 period, utilizes both logistic regression and negative binomial regression methods to assess the relationship between democracy and cooperation. The findings offer only limited support for the hypothesis that democracy promotes cooperation and challenge the recent literature on the relative peace among democracies in several theoretically suggestive ways. The study points to the potential fruitfulness of more extensive and rigorous research on the nexus between domestic institutions and international cooperation.     

The Escalation of Terrorism: Microlevel Violence and Interstate Conflict

Following the 9/11 attacks, transnational terrorism is seen as a potential catalyst for interstate war. Yet, the willingness of states to fight in response to terrorist violence is puzzling, given that the damage created by terrorism is relatively marginal. This raises the question: if terrorists are so weak and create such little damage, and interstate conflicts are so costly, why are states willing to initiate seemingly ruinous wars to fight terrorist groups? This essay proposes an explanation to address this question using current theoretical and empirical research on terrorism and interstate violence. Recent work indicates that while terrorists appear weak compared to states, terrorists can wield significant coercive power in smaller geographic areas. I argue that if these areas are strategically crucial to the government, such as areas with oil wells or mineral deposits, terrorist activity may precipitously weaken states relative to their rivals. I therefore argue that even if groups are only capable of killing at low levels, terrorism may lead to macrolevel power shifts, which may contribute to interstate violence.     

The Limits of Peace: Third Parties in Civil Wars in Southeast Asia, 1993–2004

At of the end of 2005, Asia had the highest number of active civil war dyads. The number of active dyads in other regions was either low or declining. Africa, in particular, experienced a sharp drop in the number of active dyads from 2001 to 2005. Civil wars in Asia also last longer than wars in other regions. With a high number of warring dyads fighting in long wars, the expectation would be that the region would be the focus of third-party conflict management, but this is not the case. In this article, we use an original data set to take a closer look at this gap in expectations by focusing on third-party efforts in Southeast Asia between 1993 and 2004. Bilateral talks were the most common form of third-party engagement, but mediation has been the most likely form to lead to agreements between warring parties. We conclude the article with a discussion of the policy implications of this research.     

The Great Disconnect: Global Governance and Localised Conflict in the Cases of India and the EU

Academic scholarship displays a curious disconnect between two trends, connecting peace and governance issues. At the same time when conflicts tended to shift inwards (from inter-state to civil wars), global governance approaches seemed to decentre the management of peace and conflict outwards (from the nation state to international forums). This paper investigates this disjuncture by examining the European Union and India's governance strategies in different conflict contexts. It studies whether their strategies operate close to the global governance model and/or whether they are able to connect with and effectively support local peace initiatives in conflict-ridden areas.