Agreement without Peace? International Mediation and Time Inconsistency Problems

Abstract

Mediation has competing short-and long-term A cursory glance at the diplomatic realm of international politics would suggest that mediation is an important element in the resolution of international conflict. Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded for successful efforts, and national leaders offer their services with considerable fanfare. Seasoned diplomats have contributed numerous essays and books on the subject. Yet mediation is rarely given much attention in the general literatures on international conflict. How, if at all, does mediation influence the powerful forces of international politics that lead states to clash?This article addresses competing views and findings of international mediation as a useful conflict management vehicle. Through a novel theoretical framework that specifies how mediation interacts with the crisis bargaining environment, it argues that mediation does well to secure short-term peace but leaves much to be desired in the long run. Mediators can facilitate information exchange, use leverage to increase the perceived costs of conflict, and promise enforcement. Since mediators generally do not remain involved after a crisis, such temporary effects, however, tend to weaken as the actors' bargaining positions change and the mediator's involvement wanes over time. More importantly, mediators often Kyle Beardsley is assistant professor of political science, Emory University, 317 Tarbutton Hall, Atlanta, GA 30322 (kyle.beardsley@ emory.edu).I am indebted to Dan Reiter, Cliff Carrubba, Jeff Staton, Eric Reinhardt, Kristian Gleditsch, David Lake, Branislav Slantchev, Barbara Walter, David Meyer, Holger Schmidt, participants of the PIPES workshop at the University of Chicago, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussion. I am especially appreciative of Nigel Lo's assistance in coding the data.1 It might be argued that the changing contextual environment after crisis termination makes it difficult to observe mediation's downstream consequences. However, the use of time-varying covariates in the empirical analysis enables one to sort out the effect of mediation from the effects of changing contexts. promote settlements that are not self-enforcing. Mediators thus not only struggle to curtail time inconsistency problems-when today's agreements become unsatisfactory tomorrow-they may actually exacerbate them by increasing the probability that short-term arrangements will not be viable in the future.Empirical findings using dyadic data of all international crises from 1918 to 2001 confirm that intermediaries can create artificial incentives which shape shortterm arrangements that are not viable in the absence of constant third-party influence. Mediation is positively associated with short-term peace agreements but not with the prevention of crisis recurrence. Event history models that account for nonproportional hazard rates and self-selection of mediation reveal that the ability for mediation to assuage postconflict relations diminishes over time until it actually makes crises more...

Relative rebel strength and the onset and outcome of civil war mediation

“…Belligerents can struggle to credibility communicate peaceful intentions, in particular regarding commitment to agreements (Fearon, 1995;Walter, 1997). When the incentives for cooperation are expected to change over time, it is challenging for the potential beneficiary to guarantee that they will not renege in the future (Beardsley, 2008). The incentives that each actor may have to later renege on any agreement can, in the same way as they can lead to the onset of conflict, also prevent the resolution of war (Beardsley et al, 2006;Wilkenfeld et al, 2005).…”

Will we see helping hands? Predicting civil war mediation and likely success

“…The creation of a peace settlement does not always imply an end to violence, nor does it guarantee that a conflict will not reoccur. Recent research has suggested that even though mediation can help actors identify acceptable outcomes, the artificial incentives created by mediation often result in less durable agreements than bilateral settlements (Beardsley, 2008;. Still, to reach a peace settlement is a notable step towards peace and conflict resolution, and a significant achievement for a third-party mediator (see Bercovitch, 2007;DeRouen, Bercovitch & Pospieszna, 2011;Jackson, 2000;Touval & Zartman, 1985), so we see this as a valid indicator for at least one dimension of mediation success.…”

“…A great deal of research has focused on developing propositions on when mediation is most likely as well as when it can help decrease the risk of further violence or escalation (Beardsley, 2008(Beardsley, , 2009(Beardsley, , 2010Regan, 2010;Svensson, 2007Svensson, , 2009). However, most research on mediation so far has exclusively evaluated hypotheses on mediation on observed (insample) data, and not considered to what extent existing research provides us with a basis for predicting the likelihood or outcome of mediation out-of-sample.…”

The UN at the peacemaking–peacebuilding nexus

“…Existing studies that have considered how third-party conflict management can affect the duration of peace after conflict indicate that heavy-handed involvement might do well in producing immediate results but can also weaken the ability for the disputants to reach a self-enforcing peace (Beardsley 2008(Beardsley , 2011aBetts 2001;Kuperman 2001;Luttwak 2001;Rauchhaus 2009;Werner and Yuen 2005). Related, Greig and Diehl (2005) posit that peacekeepers decrease the incentives for disputants to fully settle their grievances.…”

“…Extant studies that have assessed how third-party involvement during conflict affects the duration of peace have focused primarily on mediation (Beardsley 2008(Beardsley , 2011aGartner and Bercovitch 2006). Diehl, Reifschneider and Hensel (1996) is a notable study that has considered whether UN involvement of various types during crises can increase post-crisis stability, but their results are for the most part indeterminate and are specific to the interstate context.…”