Third-Party Intervention and the Civil War Process

Abstract

What effect do third parties have on the evolution of civil wars? The authors argue that intervention by third parties is central to the civil war process, a process that is characterized by the duration of hostilities and the type of outcome. The authors examine empirically the effect of third-party intervention into civil wars during the period 1816—1997, using the event history framework of competing risks. From the perspective of competing risks, as a civil war endures, it is at risk of experiencing a transition to one of three civil war outcomes in our sample: military victory by the government, military victory by the opposition group, and negotiated settlement. The competing risks approach provides considerably better leverage on the dynamic qualities of civil wars and, in particular, the influence of interventions by third parties. The analysis suggests that third-party interventions can be decisive in the evolution of civil wars and that third-party interventions have a different effect on the duration than different civil war outcomes. The results show that third-party intervention decreases the time until the supported group achieves military victory. Furthermore, third-party interventions, on both the government and opposition sides, increase the time until a negotiated settlement.

What Do We Know about Civil War Outcomes?

“…A majority of the quantitative literature has considered a dichotomous civil war outcome dependent variable, distinguishing between wars that end in negotiated settlements and wars that end in a military victory for one side or the other (for example, Walter ; Svensson ). A handful of studies disaggregate the latter category to distinguish between rebel and government military victory (for example, DeRouen and Sobek ; Balch‐Lindsay, Enterline, and Joyce ; Cunningham, Skrede Gleditsch, and Salehyan ; Toft ). An alternative, more common in the counterinsurgency literature, is to assume the incumbent government's primary goal is to remain in power and code civil war outcomes according to whether the government survived the rebel challenge (for example, Lyall and Wilson ).…”

Unrecognized States: A Theory of Self-Determination and Foreign Influence

“…Nonetheless, unrecognized statehood has been a recurring phenomenon since WWII, with half a dozen current unrecognized states having existed for more than 20 years. 4 Much of the existing literature treats unrecognized statehood as either a transient phenomenon or simply as a failure to reach recognized statehood. In contrast, we argue that unrecognized statehood is an important outcome in its own right, and one that is potentially extremely stable over time.…”

“…Instability in the border region and the diversion of military resources to monitor the de facto border are costly, as is maintenance of economic sanctions against the unrecognized state. In Azerbaijan, where an oil boom sent GDP 4 Abkhazia, Ngorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Somaliland, South Ossetia, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. 5 See Zacher (2001) on the norm of territorial integrity.…”

Every Story Has a Beginning, Middle, and an End (But Not Always in That Order): Predicting Duration Dynamics in a Unified Framework

“…In the long run we can therefore observe multiple peace and armed conflict spells with varying durations [Kreutz, 2010]. Especially, empirical efforts to identify the causes of recurring and enduring conflict typically investigate the phases of peace (i.e., survival of peace until conflict breaks out) and the phases of conflict (survival of conflict until peace resumes) as if the two phases were unrelated, isolated episodes [Collier et al, 2004, Walter, 2004, Hegre and Sambanis, 2006, Quinn et al, 2007, Balch-Lindsay et al, 2008. We challenge this literature by arguing that peace and armed conflict durations are interdependent processes that require detailed theoretical and empirical attention [Reed, 2000, Wagner, 2000, Filson and Werner, 2002, Wucherpfennig, 2011] 1946195019541958196219661970197419781982198619901994 Our main contribution is to introduce the notion of "triadic duration" interdependence between the durations of pre-conflict peace, conflict, and post-conflict peace and provide an empirical estimation framework to tackle this interdependence.…”

“…In the sense that one can interpret any binary time-series cross-sectional models as an application of survival analysis [Beck et al, 1998, Carter andSignorino, 2010], survival analysis is arguably the single most predominant mode of analysis in conflict research. Scholars of international and civil conflict have utilized the technique of survival analysis to study the duration of conflict (i.e., conflict termination) [e.g., Balch-Lindsay et al, 2008, Bennett and Stam, 1998, 1996, Bueno de Mesquita et al, 2004, Cunningham et al, 2009, Fearon, 2004, Glassmyer and Sambanis, 2008, Goemans, 2000, Krustev, 2006, Langlois and Langlois, 2009, Ramsay, 2008, Regan and Stam, 2000, Shannon et al, 2010, Slantchev, 2004, Stanley and Sawyer, 2009] and the durability of peace after and/or before conflict (i.e., conflict onset and recurrence) [e.g., Fortna, 2003, Gibler and Tir, 2010, Glassmyer and Sambanis, 2008, Grieco, 2001, Lo et al, 2008, Quackenbush and Venteicher, 2008, Senese and Quackenbush, 2003, Tir, 2003, Werner, 1999, Werner and Yuen, 2005.…”