A Crowded Stage: Liabilities and Benefits of Multiparty Mediation

In today's environment, the international response to conflict often entails multiple mediators as well as other third-party actors such as peacekeeping forces, development agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and lone operators. Such a profusion of actors has often made peacemaking efforts messy, difficult, and at times chaotic. The vicious nature of internal conflicts, however, and the high costs for the international community of failing to prevent or end war make it critical to understand these multiple third-party interventions. The principal question is: do these multiparty mediations help or hurt the cause of peace? If the answer to that question is that a multiplicity of third parties can hurt a peace process, does the solution lie in stopping multiple third-party attempts at peacemaking? On the other hand, if the answer is that multiparty mediation can help, are there ways of increasing the chances that it will?     

Deciding to Intervene: An Analysis of International and Domestic Influences on United States Interventions in Intrastate Disputes

Although the United States has been the most prolific intervener in the international system since the end of World War II, there has been little consensus among scholars regarding the motivations of U.S. interventions in domestic political disputes abroad. In addition, scholars do not agree on the relative effects of international factors and domestic factors on intervention decisions by the U.S. Previous research on the motivations of U.S. interventions has occurred within at least two distinctive “streams” of literature: (1) studies of state interventions; and (2) studies of the use of military force by the U.S. Hypotheses regarding U.S. interventions in intrastate disputes are derived from the previous literature, and the hypotheses are tested using recently-compiled data on intrastate disputes and U.S. interventions in intrastate disputes occurring between 1945 and 2002. The results suggest a combination of international factors, including geographic proximity and ideological linkage, significantly influence the decisions of the U.S. to intervene in intrastate disputes. The results also suggest international factors are generally more important than domestic factors, and the effects of both domestic factors and international factors on U.S. intervention decisions may differ depending on the specific type of intervention and the time period.     

Networked Cooperation: How the European Union Mobilizes Peacekeeping Forces to Project Power Abroad

Abstract

How does the European Union (EU) recruit troops and police to serve in EU peacekeeping missions? This article suggests that pivotal EU member states and EU officials make strategic use of the social and institutional networks within which they are embedded to bargain reluctant states into providing these forces. These networks offer information on deployment preferences, facilitate side-payments and issue-linkages, and provide for credible commitments. EU operations are consequently not necessarily dependent on intra-EU preference convergence—as is often suggested in the existing literature. Rather, EU force recruitment hinges on highly proactive EU actors, which use social and institutional ties to negotiate fellow states into serving in an EU missions.     

Why Some States Participate in UN Peace Missions While Others Do Not: An Analysis of Civil-Military Relations and Its Effects on Latin America's Contributions to Peacekeeping Operations

Why do some states deploy troops to support UN missions while others do not? Although short from war, peacekeeping entails a military dimension of foreign policy in which uniformed personnel is deployed to accomplish diplomatic and political means. As such, decisions to commit troops to UN operations must have the implicit support of the armed forces in order to take place. Yet, military backing for peacekeeping participation is not universal; some military institutions are more willing to join such missions than others. This article accounts for variations in terms of peacekeeping commitments by focusing on security doctrines and the degree of integration between military and foreign policy roles. It hypothesizes that countries with externally oriented doctrines and integrated foreign and defense policies are more likely to commit troops to the UN than countries with national security doctrines and segregated military and foreign policy roles. Using evidence from the Latin American region, the paper suggests that the decision to engage in UN operations is the result of doctrinal policies and bureaucratic infighting.     

Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting Internal Conflict

We know, most notably through Ted Gurr's research, that ethnic discrimination can lead to ethnopolitical rebellion–intrastate conflict. I seek to discover what impact, if any, gender inequality has on intrastate conflict. Although democratic peace scholars and others highlight the role of peaceful domestic behavior in predicting state behavior, many scholars have argued that a domestic environment of inequality and violence—structural and cultural violence—results in a greater likelihood of violence at the state and the international level. This project contributes to this line of inquiry and further tests the grievance theory of intrastate conflict by examining the norms of violence that facilitate a call to arms. And in many ways, I provide an alternative explanation for the significance of some of the typical economic measures—the greed theory—based on the link between discrimination, inequality, and violence. I test whether states characterized by higher levels of gender inequality are more likely to experience intrastate conflict. Ultimately, the basic link between gender inequality and intrastate conflict is confirmed—states characterized by gender inequality are more likely to experience intrastate conflict, 1960–2001.     

Common Security and Defence Policy peace operations in the Western Balkans: impact and lessons learned

Abstract

Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions have increased substantially in number, functions and geographic spread since their inception in 2003. Despite their expansion in numbers and scope, especially in the Western Balkans, few systematic assessments of the contributions that CSDP missions make to peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts have been undertaken to date. This article addresses that lacuna by assessing the contributions CSDP missions have made in recent years to peacekeeping and peacebuilding in the Western Balkans. It explores whether CSDP missions in that region: make an intrinsic contribution to peacekeeping and peacebuilding in those countries or merely profit (or take credit) from the initial groundwork laid by United Nations (UN) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) missions; are adequately coordinated within the European Union (EU) and between the EU and other international organisations, including NATO; are sufficiently embedded or effectively linked to other EU instruments, such as the Stability and Association Process to the Western Balkans; and engender adequate elite or public support or ‘ownership’ in these countries.     

A Silver-Lining: President Johnson and the U.N. Peacekeeping Budget Crisis of 1964-19651

Despite the revival of UN peacekeeping after the Cold War, many questions regarding peacekeeping operations remain unanswered. Some of the most complex questions involve the extent to which peacekeeping should be applied, who should pay, and with what privileges, if any. These questions are not new, but also surfaced during the 1960 UN budget crisis ever peacekeeping between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Johnson decided to uphold Kennedy's promise to apply Article 19 and deprive a state of its General Assembly vote if it did not pay its assessed peacekeeping dues. In the end, however, Johnson retreated on Article 19 in the face of Soviet refusal to pay anything toward peacekeeping. The crisis subsided along with a missed opportunity to deal more conclusively with some of the questions surrounding peacekeeping.     

A Silver-Lining: President Johnson and the U.N. Peacekeeping Budget Crisis of 1964–1965 1

Despite the revival of UN peacekeeping after the Cold War, many questions regarding peacekeeping operations remain unanswered. Some of the most complex questions involve the extent to which peacekeeping should be applied, who should pay, and with what privileges, if any. These questions are not new, but also surfaced during the 1960 UN budget crisis ever peacekeeping between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Johnson decided to uphold Kennedy’s promise to apply Article 19 and deprive a state of its General Assembly vote if it did not pay its assessed peacekeeping dues. In the end, however, Johnson retreated on Article 19 in the face of Soviet refusal to pay anything toward peacekeeping. The crisis subsided along with a missed opportunity to deal more conclusively with some of the questions surrounding peacekeeping.     

Damned If You Do,Damned If You Don't: Performative Power and the Strategy of Conventional and Nuclear Defusing

This article seeks to initiate a new round of strategic intellectual innovation in an era when threats posed by non-state terrorist organizations and their state supporters do not resemble Cold War threats. Based on an interpretative sociological reading of the concepts of power, security, and rationality, it argues that a “damned if you do, damned if you don't” dilemma is to the post-Cold War era what the danger of surprise attack or unintended nuclear war was to the Cold War: the defining structural threat of international politics. The dilemma leaves states confronting asymmetrical warfare with the choice of reacting with force to a terrorist act or practicing appeasement. Neither approach, however, can achieve the goal of putting an end to terrorism. Deterrence sustains the dilemma by providing a rationale for why force should be used and why self-restraint is irrational. This article proposes a third option, defusing, which may be accomplished by denial (preventing provocateurs from dragging states into the use of force) and restructuration (transforming the structure and rules of the situation). Defusing relies on “performative power”—the capacity to project a dramatic and credible performance on the world stage and to decouple social actors, their audiences, and their most deeply held strategic beliefs. The force of the argument is illustrated by examples from the global “war on terror,” the 2006 Lebanon War, the 2008–09 operation “Cast Lead” in Gaza, and the Iranian nuclear crisis.     

Strategies,capabilities, and demands: Explaining outcomes in violent intrastate nationalist conflicts

The study of nationalist and ethnic conflict has undergone considerable growth since the end of the Cold War. Much of the effort has been focused on ascertaining the nature and origins of such conflicts, and less on their process and termination. Those studies that do focus on conflict termination have generally done so using case‐study or idiosyncratic methods. Hence, we do not yet have much large‐N or statistical evidence that might suggest broad trends in how such conflicts end, or even much experience in measuring the relevant concepts in a manner conducive to such methods. This paper will address these questions by introducing a theoretical framework that seeks to explain the outcomes of violent intrastate nationalist conflicts. It will discuss measurement issues for relevant independent variables, and present data for a group of 75 violent, intrastate nationalist conflicts from 1945–1996. This data will then be used to test propositions derived from the model. The aim is to provide a useful building block for the study of the process and outcome of conflicts which political scientists now recognize to be some of the most important for the coming century.     

Withering consent,but mutual dependency: UN peace operations and African assertiveness

Consent has always been a cornerstone of UN peacekeeping. However, consent in peace operations is often elusive, as recent events in a number of African countries, where the heads of state have explicitly requested the departure or the downsizing of UN missions, have demonstrated. This paper uses evidence from Côte d'Ivoire and Chad to explore the game of conflicting priorities and mutual dependency that underlines UN peacekeeping missions' relations with African host states. It argues that such a dynamic renders consent ambiguous and volatile. African leaders maximise possible benefits that they can obtain from a UN mission, while minimising the potential menace that ‘liberal peace’-style peace-building may pose to their rule. Withdrawal of consent may be facilitated when alternative ‘resources of extraversion’ become available, such as those provided by natural goods or by emerging commercial players. The current situation poses a difficult dilemma to the UN, balancing between keeping peacekeeping missions on the ground with limited or no consent, or leaving and risking breaking its implicit engagements with the civilian population.     

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers: Understanding Variation

While the literature on peacekeeping has mostly focused on whether peacekeeping actually keeps the peace, few studies have systematically addressed the question of what explains variations in unintended consequences of peacekeeping, such as sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA). This study presents the Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers data, a new dataset covering the 36 international peacekeeping missions by the UN, NATO, ECOWAS, and the African Union, active in the years 1999–2010. Using this dataset, it also presents the first statistical study that explores the issue of what can account for variations in reported SEA across peacekeeping operations. The systematic analysis of this data indicates that SEA was more frequently reported in situations with lower levels of battle-related deaths, in larger operations, in more recent operations, the less developed the country hosting the mission, and in operations where the conflict involved high levels of sexual violence. Our discussion and conclusion highlights data restrictions and identifies key challenges for future research.     

Why Do Peace Negotiations Succeed or Fail? Legal Commitment,Transparency, and Inclusion during Peace Negotiations in Colombia (2012–2016) and Turkey (2012–2015)

This article examines the ways in which the negotiation framework—i.e., the legal guarantees, information management mechanism, and degree of inclusivity in peace negotiations—shapes the likelihood of concluding a peace agreement. Codifying the peace negotiations in law, publicizing information about the content of negotiations, and including mediators and civil society actors in peace talks is likely to increase a government's short‐term costs. However, doing so alleviates the adversaries' information asymmetry and commitment problems, sets guidelines to insure the process against exogenous shocks, and increases the number of actors taking part in conflict management. Comparing the recent peace negotiations to end intrastate wars in Colombia and Turkey, this article argues that a legalized, public, and inclusive framework made a peace agreement possible in Colombia, while the lack of such a framework caused Turkey's peace talks to fail.     

Microlevel Dynamics of Violence: Explaining Variation in Violence among Rural Districts during Northern Ireland's Troubles

Violence varies in intensity across intrastate political conflicts. This study suggests that interactions between local state agents and nonstate radicals affect the intensity of violence. When contention develops in a community and nonstate actors radicalize, whether or not some local state agents deviate from their institutional role as providers of law and order to support radicals is a crucial feature that explains how some communities experience more violence than others. This argument explains the different trajectories of violence in two neighboring rural districts during the 1971–76 period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The major implication of the study is that these interactions affect not only the intensity of violence in particular communities but also the breadth, length, and end of violence in the overall intrastate conflict.     

Anchoring the Peace: Civil Society Actors in Peace Accords and Durable Peace

Is peace more likely to prevail when the peace accord includes civil society actors such as religious groups, women's organizations, and human rights groups? This is the first statistical study that explores this issue. The article develops key claims in previous research regarding the role of civil society actors and durable peace, and proposes a set of hypotheses that focus on legitimacy in this process. The hypotheses are examined by employing unique data on the inclusion of civil society actors in all peace agreements in the post–Cold War period. The statistical analysis shows that inclusion of civil society actors in the peace settlement increases the durability of peace. The results further demonstrate that peace accords with involvement from civil society actors and political parties in combination are more likely to see peace prevail. The findings also suggest that inclusion of civil society has a particularly profound effect on the prospects for overall peace in nondemocratic societies.     

Dismantling the Oil Wars Myth

This article argues that, contrary to the assumptions of international relations scholars, policymakers, and the general public, states do not engage in oil wars. A twofold strategy is employed to support this assertion. First, the article scrutinizes the logical underpinnings of oil war claims, arguing that proponents have underestimated the obstacles to seizing and exploiting foreign resources and, consequently, exaggerated the likelihood of oil wars. Second, the article examines four conflicts that are commonly identified as international oil wars: Japan's attack on the Dutch East Indies in World War II, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Iran--Iraq War, and the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay. It finds that the desire to control additional oil resources was not the fundamental cause of aggression in any of these conflicts. In the latter two cases, aggression was unconnected to oil interests. In the former, states fought for their survival, not for an oil prize.     

Reevaluating Peacekeeping Effectiveness: Does Gender Neutrality Inhibit Progress?

Since the adoption of UNSCR 1325, more female peacekeepers are participating in peacekeeping missions than ever before. Nevertheless, the current literature on peacekeeping effectiveness is largely gender neutral, discounting the unique role female peacekeepers may play in peacekeeping operations. This article addresses this missing piece in the literature by assessing how female peacekeepers and locals view the role of women in peacekeeping operations. Using interviews and focus groups conducted with peacekeepers in the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and original surveys conducted in Liberian communities, it finds that there is an “access gap” that prevents female peacekeepers from fully contributing to the mission’s operations and therefore prevents the peacekeeping mission from reaching its full potential. The findings have broader implications for how to improve peacekeeping missions’ effectiveness moving forward.     

What peacekeeping leaves behind: evaluating the effects of multi-dimensional peace operations in Africa

Peacekeeping today has become ever more complex reaching deep into conflict affected societies aiming to facilitate social, economic and political transformative processes in order to establish sustainable peace. However, most quantitative studies evaluate mission effectiveness only in terms of conflict abatement. This leaves a substantial assessment gap. Therefore this study explores the effects of multi-dimensional peacekeeping by using 12 governance indicators. The article finds that its ambitious goals have largely not been fulfilled. Although there are measureable effects on national security and political participation, in other areas such as personal safety, human development or public management the impact is minimal or non-existent. In order to explain variation across cases and indicators we are testing four intervening variables: the type of peacekeeping mission, the amount of resources allocated, the relative size of civilian and police units per missions and the relationship between personal safety and governance indicators.     

China views the revised US-Japan Defense Guidelines: popping the cork?

This paper considers whether an alliance can have a reassuranceeffect on a third-party. It uses hypotheses derived from balance-of-powerrealism and a revised version of balance-of-threat theory calledbalance-of-malevolence theory. Using the revised 1997 US–JapanDefense Guidelines as a primary case, Chinese reactions arefound to provide greater support for balance-of-malevolencetheory. Side-evidence from Japan's decision in the early 1990sto begin deploying troops overseas to participate in humanitarianand UN peacekeeping operations, and its dispatch of naval shipsto the Indian Ocean in the wake of 9-11, confirm the centralityof Chinese concerns about Japan's disposition as a militarypower and the reassurance value of the US alliance and other‘containment frameworks’ such as UN peacekeeping.This also suggests that the demonstration effect of benign overseasdeployments can be effective in overcoming negative attributionsabout a state's disposition as a military power.