Enforcement Credibility and Frequency of Negotiations in Civil Wars

Abstract

This article explores the effect of enforcement credibility on the number of negotiations during civil war peace processes. While the use of negotiations during civil wars has increased since the Cold War, there has been a lack of attention to the obstacles faced by conflict parties once negotiations begin. We argue that conflict resolution should be evaluated as a stepwise process, in which factors that increase prospects for agreement enforcement may impact the onset or frequency of negotiations differently. We rely on the international cooperation literature which addresses the relationship between bargaining and enforcement problems. As enforcement becomes more credible, parties engage in bargaining more rigorously in order to make sure the distributive terms are satisfactory. We argue that while the presence of third-party mediators and a negotiating partner with a strong internal support base might increase the likelihood of agreement enforcement, they may also make conflict parties more careful when drafting the agreement, since the cost of revising or breaking the agreement also rises with enforcement credibility. We test the effect of third parties and internal support on the number of negotiations using a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. We find that the presence of mediators and the presence of a rebel group with a strong support base increase the frequency of negotiations. We also find that factors such as rebel territorial control and Cold War have distinct effects on negotiation onset and not on negotiation frequency, emphasizing the importance of evaluating con