Resolving Civil Wars before They Start: The UN Security Council and Conflict Prevention in Self-Determination Disputes

Abstract

A large literature has demonstrated that international action can promote the resolution of civil wars. However, international actors do not wait until violence starts to seek to manage conflicts. This article considers the ways in which the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reduces the propensity for self-determination movements to escalate to civil war, through actions that directly pertain to the disputing actors or that indirectly shape actor incentives. It examines the relationship between the content of UNSC resolutions in all self-determination disputes from 1960 to 2005 and the onset of armed conflict in the disputes. The study finds that diplomatic actions that directly address disputes reduce the likelihood of armed conflict, and that military force and sanctions have more indirect preventive effects.Over the last several decades, international actorsoften working through international organizations such as the United Nations (UN)have focused increasing attention on managing violent intrastate conflict. This trend accelerated after the end of the Cold War, as efforts at the UN and other international bodies were then not stymied by superpower competition. Former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for Peace (1992) emphasizes four areas of action that the international community could and should undertake to promote peace: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict peace building. A large body of literature has examined the effect of the latter three types of action, and many of the conclusions reached have been optimistic. Studies have concluded that the UN can be effective at building peace, 1 that peacekeeping works, 2 that mediation can help facilitate settlement 3 and that legal dispute resolution is especially effective. 4 While this literature has advanced academic understanding of the effect of international actions and has had implications for policy makers seeking to resolve violent conflicts, there is still a substantial gap in our understanding of international efforts to prevent violent intrastate conflicts. Virtually all existing work focuses on managing or resolving ongoing violent conflicts.

Where, when, and how does the UN work to prevent civil war in self-determination disputes?

“…In both our main analyses and robustness checks, diplomacy is a central activity, suggesting that the UN’s rhetorical focus on ‘preventive diplomacy’ extends beyond mere words. The prominence of diplomacy is important; in other work we show that UNSC resolutions authorizing diplomatic action directly pertinent to SD disputes reduce the likelihood of civil war (Beardsley, Cunningham & White, 2017). By contrast, the UN rarely uses sanctions in SD disputes.…”

“…The UN, then, has a range of tools it can use to seek to prevent violence, and recent work suggests that some of these can be effective at preventing intrastate disputes from escalating to high levels of violence, including among disputes with no history of significant violence (Beardsley, Cunningham & White, 2017). However, the UN does not act in all disputes, and in the disputes it does get involved in, it uses various combinations of preventive tools.…”

Violence without Borders: The Internationalization of Crime and Conflict

“…A third party can fill this void; peacekeeping forces can be viewed as a means to constrain the parties to commit to a cease-fire. The incipient empirical literature suggests that diplomacy that addresses disputes early on reduces the likelihood of armed conflict (Beardsley, Cunningham, and White 2017). Membership in international clubs that have coercive capacity and the means to enforce decisions can prevent conflict by increasing the costs of escalation, thereby providing incentives for settlement and reducing bargaining failures (Karreth and Tir 2013).…”

From Revolution to Resolution: Exploring Third‐Party Mediation in Nonviolent Uprisings

“…Exceptions to this general trajectory exist and include work on mediation in ethnic conflicts, 4 and UN mediation and other forms of conflict management efforts in the context of self-determination disputes within countries. 5 Yet, so far, no studies have systematically examined the broader set of nonviolent uprisings and the variations in terms of which of these that are mediated, and which that are not. 6 Nonviolent protest movements have been prevalent around the world, and their outcomes have shaped the trajectory of democratic governance in several countries.…”