Overcoming Obstacles to Peace: The Contribution of Mediation to Short-Lived Conflict Settlements

Abstract

We argue that a factor widely seen as facilitating cooperation in an international dispute, mediation, is also a sign that a resulting agreement is likely to be short-lived. Mediators get the tough cases, disputes that are most likely to result in short-lived settlementsFa selection effect. At the same time, mediation helps to resolve a conflict's underlying issues, making mediated settlements more likely to lastFa process effect. We develop a theory that captures these opposing forcesFfocusing on the conditional effect of mediation on nonstate actorsFand taking into account critical aspects of the disputants, conflict, conflict management processes and settlement. Using hazard analysis, Heckman two-stage probit and logistic regression, we statistically analyze over 1,400 settlements drawn from the just released International Conflict Management 2000 data set and also conduct a quantitative case study of mediation tools used in the former Yugoslavia. All analyses find strong support for the opposing effects of mediation; mediated agreements are more likely to be short-lived, unless they involve nonstate actors. This study advances our understanding of selection effects and the factors that lead to short-lived settlements, and provides policy makers and potential mediators a way to establish realistic expectations about the durability of dispute settlements.

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

“…First, we consider conflict intensity, since higher conflict costs raises the incumbent's willingness to accept mediation and settlement (see Clayton, 2013;Gartner and Bercovitch, 2006). Our intensity measure is a dummy variable indicating if a conflict crosses the 1,000 deaths per year threshold (see Lacina and Gleditsch, 2005).…”

The importance of conflict characteristics for the diffusion of international mediation

“…I suggest that one such a heuristic could be based on the similarity of characteristics across crises. We know, for instance, that particularly the more difficult, i.e., more violent and salient disputes attract mediation (Gartner & Bercovitch, 2006). While this is a domestic or unit-level factor, common levels of violence or issue salience constitute a trans-crisis informational tie between conflicts that may be linked to a learning and emulation process of the relevant actors.…”

“…Hence, ethnic crises and those lasting for a long time may indeed be more difficult to settle, thus signaling that these are the hard cases, which are most in need for mediation (Gartner & Bercovitch, 2006).…”

“…While it is thus not only crucial to capture these dependencies between crises from an empirical perspective (as, in fact, the belligerents do hardly vary across these crises and, hence, mediation might diffuse more easily), Gartner & Bercovitch (2006) or Bercovitch,…”

The UN at the peacemaking–peacebuilding nexus

“…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.…”