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Mediation in International Conflicts
KYLE BEARDSLEY and NATHAN DANNEMAN
Abstract
Scholars of international conflict mediation have made strides in the last two
decades in understanding when mediation occurs and when it is successful. The
rationalist framework has allowed theorists to sharpen and expand on early insights,
and research using quantitative methods continues to be an important part of the
field. Gaining a sense of when disputants might use mediation disingenuously and
expanding the scope and comparability of data sets on mediation will push both the
study and practice of mediation onto useful new ground.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most common forms of conflict management is mediation, which
is the consensual, nonviolent, and nonbinding involvement of a third party
in conflict management and resolution processes. A widely cited definition
of mediation states that it is “a reactive process of conflict management
whereby parties seek the assistance of, or accept an offer of help from, an
individual, group, or organization to change their behavior, settle their
conflict, or resolve their problem without resorting to physical force or
invoking the authority of the law” (Bercovitch & Houston, 1996, p. 13). This
essay provides a brief overview of the state of research on international
mediation, with an emphasis on those studies that have used the quantitative analysis of cross-national data to explore hypotheses developed
within rational frameworks. As such, we by no means attempt to provide
an exhaustive characterization of the work on mediation, and, indeed, we
barely scratch the surface of even just the specific literature that does use
statistical approaches to test theories embedded in a rational framework.
For a more thorough overview of mediation research, see Greig and Diehl
(2012) and Bercovitch and Houston (1996).
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Jacob Bercovitch is widely considered the principal pioneer of the quantitative study of international mediation. His prolific work with a number of
coauthors frequently used a contingency approach to try to understand when
mediation is most effective in bringing about peace (see, e.g., Bercovitch &
Gartner, 2006). In a similar vein, we briefly discuss foundational studies that
have addressed how the context in which mediation occurs and the substance
of the mediation effort shape its efficacy.
In terms of context, the predominant framework in the conflict resolution
literature has centered on the concept of ripeness. According to the ripeness
framework, conflict proceeds in stages, some of which are more amenable
to resolution than others. Many scholars have found that those periods
of conflict associated with a mutually hurting stalemate are especially
amenable to, or ripe for, successful conflict management by third parties.
This has translated into similar expectations that mediation will be more
effective in various phases of conflict, and especially when the disputants
reach a point in which they perceive further conflict as futile. Empirically,
Greig (2001) finds that mediation is more likely to contribute to the long-term
success when it occurs late in the lifetime of a rivalry and when the previous
stalemates in the rivalry accumulate.
In terms of substance, we can disaggregate mediation into separate styles
that the third parties might use. In considering how mediation can affect
the conflictual interactions between disputants, it is useful to distinguish
between mediation with and without leverage. Mediation with leverage
functions by providing either positive incentives for agreement or negative
incentives for fighting, thereby expanding the set of mutually acceptable
alternatives. Mediators can additionally use security guarantees or threats
of future punishment to increase the expected costs of future noncompliance
and thus reduce the incentives to renege. Some existing work finds that
heavy-handed mediation tactics fare best in resolving international disputes
or in enabling formal agreements to be reached. Smith and Stam (2003), for
example, in constructing a theoretical model of mediation and peacekeeping,
posit that altering the material costs and benefits of the combatants is the
only means by which third parties can effectively increase the prospects of
peaceful settlement.
Other studies find more merit in lighter forms of mediation that do not
rely on leverage. Without leverage, mediators are primarily tasked with
enabling the actors to find a single agreement within the set of alternatives
that are mutually preferable to conflict. Mediators might do this through
making proposals that bridge an actor’s interests, reduce the costs of an
agreement, logroll issues, expand the pie, address compensation between
Mediation in International Conflicts
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the actors, or help them save face. The key is that the mediator is able to
allow the actors to achieve some agreement that is mutually acceptable
without actually changing the incentives to find a resolution. The third party
does not introduce external incentives for peace and instead focuses on
bringing together and integrating the existing political incentives in play to
reach a deal. Rauchhaus (2006) finds that lighter forms of mediation actually
tend to perform better than heavy-handed involvement. Others such as
Beardsley (2011) and Beardsley, Quinn, Biswas, and Wilkenfeld (2006) find
that the relative merit of mediation with or without leverage depends on
what the ultimate outcome objectives are—mediation with leverage tends
to do well to produce formal agreements, while mediation without leverage
tends to do better in fostering more long-term reductions in hostilities.
Separate from the discussion about mediation styles has been debate about
how the partiality of the third party to the disputants affects conflict management and resolution. The conventional wisdom, as expressed in accounts by
many practitioners and journalists, is that mediation is most effective when
there is an unbiased mediator who is perceived as gaining equal benefit
independent of which of the sides prevails in a conflict. Others have argued
that neutrality is not a necessary condition for mediation success, and that
biased mediators may be useful because of their additional motivations
in the resolution of the conflict. According to this logic, third parties with
strong preferences for the outcome will be more credible in threatening
sticks, which require sacrifice on the part of the sanctioning party or offer
aid. Favretto (2009) has shown formally that biased third parties can more
credibly threaten intransigent parties with intervention and entice them to
move toward settlement. Svensson (2007) demonstrates that third parties
that are biased toward governments in civil wars can assuage postconflict
security fears. In a related argument, Svensson (2009) has shown that biased
mediators have more incentives to get the terms right and fewer incentives
to just encourage a quick fix that is likely to prove fragile.
A more specific debate exists about whether impartial or biased third
parties can better reveal information credibly to the disputants. While
Kydd (2003), Savun (2008), and Smith and Stam (2003) have found that
moderately biased mediators are likely to be advantaged in escaping the
cheap-talk problem where the disputants do not believe a third party that
calls for compromise, Kydd (2006) and Rauchhaus (2006) argue that there
are conditions in which impartiality helps the third party better convey
information. Beber (2012) also argues and finds that biased third parties
are less effective mediators. It is also important to note that, although there
are disagreements over whether being biased toward a particular adversary
affords the mediator greater informational potential, a general tenor of
consensus has emerged that being biased toward peace inhibits the third
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
party from providing credible information. When mediators desire peace
above all else, the actors will dismiss the mediator’s pleas to make a deal as
cheap talk meant only to reach an agreement, without the interests of the
combatants in mind.
The above studies help us better understand the conditions in which mediation is likely to succeed. Other research has examined whether mediation can
increase the prospects for peace compared to the alternatives of ongoing conflict or negotiations. The findings from this literature are somewhat mixed.
Many works have found that mediation is able to improve the prospect of
at least a short-term agreement, but this is not a consistent finding across
all studies of mediation, as some other work has found that ceasefires after
mediation are either no more durable or are actually shorter lived than uninterrupted conflict bargaining [see the discussion in Beardsley (2011)]. The
discussion that follows sheds light on why existing studies may be finding
different results.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
The disparity in the findings can be partly explained by the difficulty in examining the impact of mediation when it is not randomly assigned to cases. The
set of crises that experience mediation is likely to be very different, in terms
of the ex ante likelihood of mediation success, than the set of crises that did
not experience mediation or experienced mediation of another type. If actors
only prefer mediation to negotiations when the barriers to successful resolution are high, then mediation is predisposed to higher failure rates and will
appear to have less positive impact than it really does. This would be a form
of endogeneity bias. Scott Sigmund Gartner has shown that it is crucially
important to distinguish between selection effects—the part of the relationship between mediation and peaceful outcomes that can be explained by the
types of cases that experience mediation—and process effects—the part of
the relationship that is actually attributable to the involvement of the third
party (Gartner, 2011; Gartner & Bercovitch, 2006). Indeed, Beber (2012) finds
that accounting for selection effects can affect the observed efficacy of mediator bias. Increasingly scholars have studied the selection processes behind
mediation incidence and, in so doing, allow us to better understand the baseline against which we should compare mediation outcomes (e.g., Greig, 2005;
Greig & Regan, 2008; Melin, 2011). These studies also help us understand
and address the related problem of selection bias, which is likely to plague
analyses of data sets that only include mediated cases.
The emphasis on distinguishing process from selection effects has required
theoretical frameworks to move beyond notions of ripeness. Early conceptions of the idea of ripeness were somewhat vague as to whether “ripeness”
Mediation in International Conflicts
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is a cause or an effect of mediation. Studies often did not untangle whether
mediation can contribute to a conflict being ripe for settlement, or whether
mediation is simply more likely to occur during ripe periods, or both. In other
words, it is tempting to conflate being ripe for resolution with being ripe
for mediation. This issue is not merely semantic; if mediation and ripeness
are endogenous to each other, then it becomes difficult to assess the effects
of mediation on conflict outcomes independent of the level of ripeness that
existed prior to mediation onset.
To reduce this confusion, it is useful to start with a firmer understanding
about what is happening when conflict occurs and then to bring mediation
into that story in such a way that the causal arrows are clear. This is increasingly done by starting with an understanding of conflict as bargaining failure
and then explaining how mediation shapes the potential for bargaining to
fail. Bargaining models of war have been used to show how uncertainty,
audience costs for concessions, and commitment problems can lead to conflict bargaining failure. Seen from a rationalist perspective, mediation must
alter one or more of these dynamics to affect the prospects for peace.
Recent studies have examined how third parties can ameliorate each type
of bargaining failure. One such area of research comes from the literature
on bias mentioned earlier, which explores whether third parties could help
disputants resolve uncertainty by relaying information between disputants
and/or by providing outside information. Kydd (2003, 2006) and Rauchhaus (2006) show formally that mediators can credibly convey some signals
depending on their levels of partiality. Savun (2008) empirically shows that
biased mediators tend to fare better in reducing uncertainty and facilitating
an agreement in support of Kydd (2003).
If uncertainty causes there to be no settlements that both sides prefer to continued conflict, then another way that third parties can help resolve conflict is
through manipulating the relative benefits of conflict and peace. That is, third
parties can use inducements to incentivize the disputants to find more alternatives preferable to ongoing conflict. Favretto (2009) takes up this question
by examining how a third party’s proposal power and threat of intervention
affect what bargain is struck. She finds that biased third parties can more
credibly claim that they will intervene on the side of their protégé, thus convincing the other side that it would be better to settle than to continue in
disagreement.
Mediation can additionally provide political cover when disputants face
high domestic audience costs for unpopular, though potentially prudent,
concessions. The need to “save face” can refer to similar situations in
which a leader encounters costs from backing down and needs to concede
without losing support at home. Within the bargaining framework, effective
provision of political cover entails that leaders would face fewer costs
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
for conceding and would then be able to find more alternatives mutually
preferable to conflict. Even though the potential to blame a third party
for concessions is weaker for mediation than arbitration, mediators can
additionally provide the needed domestic political cover through informing
the domestic audiences about the merits of the concessions. By receiving
inside information about a peace process, the third parties will be more
informed than the domestic audiences and can signal to them—for example,
by supporting a proposed peace plan—that any resulting concessions are in
the interest of both parties. Beardsley and Lo (2014) have shown empirically
that mediation can improve the ability for challengers to make minor
concessions when doing so is likely to be politically costly.
In terms of assuaging commitment problems, third parties can help ameliorate postconflict vulnerabilities that intrastate conflict actors typically face
by agreeing to monitor and enforce the implementation phase of agreements.
Svensson (2007) finds that mediators can often prove essential to helping
reduce the vulnerabilities that governments face in making concessions to
rebel groups. Kydd (2006) examines when mediators can credibly convey
information about whether each disputant plans on upholding a peace
agreement. His work on mediation and mistrust, to some extent, bridges
the divide between uncertainty and commitment-driven conflict, in that
actors are uncertain whether a commitment problem holds. Kydd shows
that a third party can convey information about the trustworthiness of each
disputant to the other under some circumstances.
While the recent literature has identified how a mediator might attenuate
bargaining problems, this does not mean that mediators are always effective
in doing so. A number of studies have identified hindrances to third-party
effectiveness. One concern is over whether mediators can be expected to perform the basic function of providing information and reducing uncertainty.
Smith and Stam (2003) raise the concern of cheap talk, in which many mediators are so concerned with peace that they cannot credibly convey information that would be used to convince a belligerent to back down. More
fundamentally, Fey and Ramsay (2010) argue that it is not likely that mediators will even have access to information that the disputants do not already
have in the first place.
Beardsley (2011) has identified a trade-off between short- and long-term
efficacy. The general logic of this trade-off is that mediation can positively
influence the three bargaining barriers considered above in the short run
while worsening them in the long run. In the short run, mediators can facilitate the ability for the combatants to recognize mutually preferable agreements, give political cover for concessions, provide incentives that expand
the set of mutually preferable alternatives, and offer postconflict security
guarantees. Relevant to the long run, the involvement of an intermediary
Mediation in International Conflicts
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can introduce artificial incentives for peace that do not persist, interfere with
the ability for the actors to fully understand each other, and enable the belligerents to stall in hopes of gaining bargaining advantage during the peace
process. The inclusion of an external peacemaker is thus often a necessary
ingredient for short-term progress, but intermediaries can also make future
conflict more likely and more difficult to resolve. So, while disputants typically seek mediation as a means to reduce their immediate barriers to efficient
bargaining, they do so at the risk of decreasing the durability of any peaceful
arrangements that are reached.
Returning to the discussion of mediation styles, the dilemma is not simply
a matter of whether mediation should be employed or not but also a matter
of how much involvement third parties should have when they do mediate. Beardsley (2011) finds that third-party leverage exaggerates the trade-off
between short- and long-term efficacy because intrusive involvement is best
able to shape the short-term incentives for peace and least able to facilitate
durable self-enforcing settlements. When intermediaries rely on carrots and
sticks to bring about a peaceful outcome, they will tend to be especially successful in realizing short-term abatements of hostilities, but whatever peace
results will be quite fragile. In the midst of substantial leverage, especially
when the leverage is used to level the playing field and create an artificial
stalemate, the disputants’ level of satisfaction with their terms of peace will
be even more prone to falter as third parties disengage themselves from the
peace processes over time. In addition, heavy-handed third parties are more
likely to interrupt the ability of the actors to learn from each other. Without
leverage, third parties will be less able to help the disputants reach settlements in the short run, but when they do, the peace will be more likely to
endure.
It is worth noting that the trade-off between the short-term and long-term
effects of mediation provides an additional explanation for why the existing
literature does not always agree on the efficacy of mediation. When success
is defined with respect to short-run outcomes, mediation appears to perform rather well; when success connotes a more long-term effect, mediation
appears to be of limited use.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The above discussion indicates that the literature on mediation is growing
and rich. It sets the stage for the positive accumulation of knowledge in future
studies. In the remainder of this essay, we identify two research questions that
merit specific attention in the future.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
INSINCERE NEGOTIATIONS
First, we need to understand when disputants are likely to engage in mediation in bad faith. Disputants may have incentives to bargain insincerely—that
is, to bargain in order to gain power and then return to conflict, with no intention of settling. A limited amount of literature has examined these “devious”
disputants. Richmond (1998) coined the term devious disputants to refer to
those that undertake bargaining with their adversaries with no intention of
striking a bargain. Richmond delineates a bundle of assets that often accompany instances of mediation that disputants may attempt to attain in spite of
having no desire to settle. Mediation, aside from offering a chance at settling
a dispute, allows disputants to regroup, reorganize, search out allies, gain
recognition and legitimacy for their side, save face, and defer making costly
concessions.
Understanding the dynamics that drive disputants to bargain in bad faith
is crucial if the international community is to effectively utilize its limited
conflict resolution resources. This area of research can be broken into three
related efforts: the identification of devious disputants, the prediction of the
likelihood that any particular disputant will use mediation for devious purposes, and the careful contemplation of how mediators can attempt to resolve
conflicts while limiting the extent to which they can be taken advantage of
by devious bargainers.
The systematic study of devious bargainers must begin with efforts to identify the pool of past bargainers who employed mediation in bad faith. This
task is nontrivial because devious disputants have strong incentives to hide
their intentions both during and after mediation episodes, and because failed
mediation efforts may appear very similar to instances of mediation in which
disputants employed nonserious bargaining. A careful study of past mediation efforts incorporating a close examination of actions made away from
the bargaining table will likely have to commence before these actors can be
studied in depth.
The second, and perhaps most difficult, research question to address
regarding devious disputants is, what factors make disputants more likely
to bargain in bad faith? Stated differently, are there observable characteristics
of disputants, the disputes in which they are embroiled, their past conflict
resolution history, or the third parties they are willing to utilize that are
predictive of a disputant’s intention to bargain in bad faith? However, as
mentioned earlier, identifying correlates of deviousness is likely to prove
challenging, as disputants intending to bargain in bad faith must generate
the outward appearance of desiring to settle their conflicts in order for their
ruse to work.
Mediation in International Conflicts
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One potentially fruitful avenue by which to explore this question is to focus
on the factors that make stalling for time most attractive to disputants. What
particular domestic political or military circumstances make stalling for time
the most useful for disputants? Perhaps the need to shift attention to other
policy problems, such as economic shocks or flare-ups within other conflictual relationships increases the utility of stalling. On the military side, the
expectation of the completion of new technologies, such as nuclear weapons,
or the ability to monitor enemy terrain may make devious bargaining an
attractive option.
Finally, the theoretical literature needs to grapple with how, and indeed
whether, to engage in conflict mediation in light of the potential for disputants to use it to further their efforts at coercive bargaining. Are there
specific strategies or tactics that mediators can employ to limit the possibility
of being used by one disputant to the other’s detriment? Perhaps different
mediation styles make the use of devious bargaining more or less tenable,
or different mediator characteristics, such as bias? What steps can mediators
take to differentiate periods of hard bargaining over high-stake issues from
insincere bargaining aimed at stalling for time?
INTRASTATE MEDIATION
A second topic for future inquiry is to assess when theories of mediation can
apply to all types of conflict, both interstate and intrastate, and when we need
theories that can specifically explain interstate conflict or intrastate conflict.
While most of the literature on mediation in general has focused on interstate
conflict, recent studies have considered how mediation plays out specifically
in civil wars (e.g., Gartner, 2011; Greig & Regan, 2008; Svensson, 2007, 2009).
Melin and Svensson (2009) notably assess the differences between mediation in interstate and intrastate conflicts. The existing studies demonstrate
the importance of having new data sets on mediation in intrastate conflicts,
but more work remains to be done.
More work on mediation in intrastate conflict is warranted because most
of the armed conflicts in the modern era have an intrastate component. The
broader literatures on international peace and security are also increasingly
geared toward violence within states, and it is important for the insights
gleaned from those general literatures to be incorporated into our understanding of mediation. At the same time, it is important to recognize that
many conflicts do not fall into an easy classification of being either interstate or intrastate. Many conflicts include elements of both. For example, the
recent wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan began as interstate conflicts and
then became civil wars with foreign involvement. We also need to understand how the efficacy of mediation can be optimized in such contexts.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
The most important need in addressing this research agenda is for better
theory that incorporates the state of the art of understanding from the
broader literatures on the onset and termination of intrastate armed conflict.
While the studies discussed earlier which consider mediation in a rational
bargaining framework have contributed to our understanding, there may
be a limitation since the bargaining framework has mostly been developed
in the context of interstate conflict. Although much can be learned from our
current understanding of interstate conflict, scholars trying to understand
mediation in intrastate conflicts would also do well to draw more from other
literature, such as those on domestic political institutions, ethnic politics,
rebel recruitment, and protest movements. In doing so, we can learn more
about how mediation might take on unique roles in conflicts with intrastate
dimensions.
In terms of testing the novel expectations that will arise from this agenda,
new data sets such as the Mediating Intrastate Crises (Quinn, Wilkenfeld,
Eralp, Asal, & McLauchlin, 2013), Civil War Mediation (DeRouen, Bercovitch,
& Pospieszna, 2011), Managing Intrastate Low-Intensity Conflict (Melander,
Möller, & Öberg, 2009), and Diplomatic Interventions and Civil Wars (Regan,
Frank, & Aydin, 2009) projects have improved on the crucial ability to test
hypotheses about mediation in conflicts with intrastate components. What is
missing from these new data sets, however, is the ability to directly compare
how mediation fares in interstate, intrastate, and mixed conflicts. While some
studies such as Melin and Svensson (2009) have used separate interstate and
intrastate data to make such comparisons, unless we have common data
sets with both interstate and intrastate events, questions will always remain
about whether any observed differences are the result of differences in the
actual true relationships or in the techniques used to collect the data. Ideally,
we would have information on mediation events in all types of armed
conflicts, such as those in the UCDP (Uppsala Conflict Data Program) armed
conflict data. Such a data set could then help us understand how mediation
in conflicts with intrastate components differs from those without them.
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KYLE BEARDSLEY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kyle Beardsley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego,
in 2006. In a number of academic journals, he has published on topics
that include mediation, peacekeeping, nuclear proliferation, international
crisis, intrastate conflict, and research methodology. His book The Mediation
Dilemma was published by Cornell University Press in 2011.
Website: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/∼kbeards/
Book info: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=
80140100199150
NATHAN DANNEMAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nathan Danneman is a PhD candidate at Emory University. His work, published and in progress, includes the formal and quantitative study of conflict
negotiations, as well as human rights. His dissertation examines the conditions in which actors are able to exploit peace processes for devious objectives
Mediation in International Conflicts
13
and how mediators can help increase the credibility of good-faith negotiations.
Website: http://www.nathandanneman.com/
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Public Opinion and International Conflict (Political Science), Adam J.
Berinsky
Misinformation and How to Correct It (Psychology), John Cook et al.
Cultural Differences in Emotions (Psychology), Jozefien De Leersnyder et al.
Empathy Gaps between Helpers and Help-Seekers: Implications for Cooperation (Psychology), Vanessa K. Bohns and Francis J. Flynn
Interdependence, Development, and Interstate Conflict (Political Science),
Erik Gartzke
Reconciliation and Peace-Making: Insights from Studies on Nonhuman
Animals (Anthropology), Sonja E. Koski
Political Psychology and International Conflict (Political Science), Rose
McDermott
War and Social Movements (Political Science), Sidney Tarrow
-
Mediation in International Conflicts
KYLE BEARDSLEY and NATHAN DANNEMAN
Abstract
Scholars of international conflict mediation have made strides in the last two
decades in understanding when mediation occurs and when it is successful. The
rationalist framework has allowed theorists to sharpen and expand on early insights,
and research using quantitative methods continues to be an important part of the
field. Gaining a sense of when disputants might use mediation disingenuously and
expanding the scope and comparability of data sets on mediation will push both the
study and practice of mediation onto useful new ground.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most common forms of conflict management is mediation, which
is the consensual, nonviolent, and nonbinding involvement of a third party
in conflict management and resolution processes. A widely cited definition
of mediation states that it is “a reactive process of conflict management
whereby parties seek the assistance of, or accept an offer of help from, an
individual, group, or organization to change their behavior, settle their
conflict, or resolve their problem without resorting to physical force or
invoking the authority of the law” (Bercovitch & Houston, 1996, p. 13). This
essay provides a brief overview of the state of research on international
mediation, with an emphasis on those studies that have used the quantitative analysis of cross-national data to explore hypotheses developed
within rational frameworks. As such, we by no means attempt to provide
an exhaustive characterization of the work on mediation, and, indeed, we
barely scratch the surface of even just the specific literature that does use
statistical approaches to test theories embedded in a rational framework.
For a more thorough overview of mediation research, see Greig and Diehl
(2012) and Bercovitch and Houston (1996).
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Jacob Bercovitch is widely considered the principal pioneer of the quantitative study of international mediation. His prolific work with a number of
coauthors frequently used a contingency approach to try to understand when
mediation is most effective in bringing about peace (see, e.g., Bercovitch &
Gartner, 2006). In a similar vein, we briefly discuss foundational studies that
have addressed how the context in which mediation occurs and the substance
of the mediation effort shape its efficacy.
In terms of context, the predominant framework in the conflict resolution
literature has centered on the concept of ripeness. According to the ripeness
framework, conflict proceeds in stages, some of which are more amenable
to resolution than others. Many scholars have found that those periods
of conflict associated with a mutually hurting stalemate are especially
amenable to, or ripe for, successful conflict management by third parties.
This has translated into similar expectations that mediation will be more
effective in various phases of conflict, and especially when the disputants
reach a point in which they perceive further conflict as futile. Empirically,
Greig (2001) finds that mediation is more likely to contribute to the long-term
success when it occurs late in the lifetime of a rivalry and when the previous
stalemates in the rivalry accumulate.
In terms of substance, we can disaggregate mediation into separate styles
that the third parties might use. In considering how mediation can affect
the conflictual interactions between disputants, it is useful to distinguish
between mediation with and without leverage. Mediation with leverage
functions by providing either positive incentives for agreement or negative
incentives for fighting, thereby expanding the set of mutually acceptable
alternatives. Mediators can additionally use security guarantees or threats
of future punishment to increase the expected costs of future noncompliance
and thus reduce the incentives to renege. Some existing work finds that
heavy-handed mediation tactics fare best in resolving international disputes
or in enabling formal agreements to be reached. Smith and Stam (2003), for
example, in constructing a theoretical model of mediation and peacekeeping,
posit that altering the material costs and benefits of the combatants is the
only means by which third parties can effectively increase the prospects of
peaceful settlement.
Other studies find more merit in lighter forms of mediation that do not
rely on leverage. Without leverage, mediators are primarily tasked with
enabling the actors to find a single agreement within the set of alternatives
that are mutually preferable to conflict. Mediators might do this through
making proposals that bridge an actor’s interests, reduce the costs of an
agreement, logroll issues, expand the pie, address compensation between
Mediation in International Conflicts
3
the actors, or help them save face. The key is that the mediator is able to
allow the actors to achieve some agreement that is mutually acceptable
without actually changing the incentives to find a resolution. The third party
does not introduce external incentives for peace and instead focuses on
bringing together and integrating the existing political incentives in play to
reach a deal. Rauchhaus (2006) finds that lighter forms of mediation actually
tend to perform better than heavy-handed involvement. Others such as
Beardsley (2011) and Beardsley, Quinn, Biswas, and Wilkenfeld (2006) find
that the relative merit of mediation with or without leverage depends on
what the ultimate outcome objectives are—mediation with leverage tends
to do well to produce formal agreements, while mediation without leverage
tends to do better in fostering more long-term reductions in hostilities.
Separate from the discussion about mediation styles has been debate about
how the partiality of the third party to the disputants affects conflict management and resolution. The conventional wisdom, as expressed in accounts by
many practitioners and journalists, is that mediation is most effective when
there is an unbiased mediator who is perceived as gaining equal benefit
independent of which of the sides prevails in a conflict. Others have argued
that neutrality is not a necessary condition for mediation success, and that
biased mediators may be useful because of their additional motivations
in the resolution of the conflict. According to this logic, third parties with
strong preferences for the outcome will be more credible in threatening
sticks, which require sacrifice on the part of the sanctioning party or offer
aid. Favretto (2009) has shown formally that biased third parties can more
credibly threaten intransigent parties with intervention and entice them to
move toward settlement. Svensson (2007) demonstrates that third parties
that are biased toward governments in civil wars can assuage postconflict
security fears. In a related argument, Svensson (2009) has shown that biased
mediators have more incentives to get the terms right and fewer incentives
to just encourage a quick fix that is likely to prove fragile.
A more specific debate exists about whether impartial or biased third
parties can better reveal information credibly to the disputants. While
Kydd (2003), Savun (2008), and Smith and Stam (2003) have found that
moderately biased mediators are likely to be advantaged in escaping the
cheap-talk problem where the disputants do not believe a third party that
calls for compromise, Kydd (2006) and Rauchhaus (2006) argue that there
are conditions in which impartiality helps the third party better convey
information. Beber (2012) also argues and finds that biased third parties
are less effective mediators. It is also important to note that, although there
are disagreements over whether being biased toward a particular adversary
affords the mediator greater informational potential, a general tenor of
consensus has emerged that being biased toward peace inhibits the third
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
party from providing credible information. When mediators desire peace
above all else, the actors will dismiss the mediator’s pleas to make a deal as
cheap talk meant only to reach an agreement, without the interests of the
combatants in mind.
The above studies help us better understand the conditions in which mediation is likely to succeed. Other research has examined whether mediation can
increase the prospects for peace compared to the alternatives of ongoing conflict or negotiations. The findings from this literature are somewhat mixed.
Many works have found that mediation is able to improve the prospect of
at least a short-term agreement, but this is not a consistent finding across
all studies of mediation, as some other work has found that ceasefires after
mediation are either no more durable or are actually shorter lived than uninterrupted conflict bargaining [see the discussion in Beardsley (2011)]. The
discussion that follows sheds light on why existing studies may be finding
different results.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
The disparity in the findings can be partly explained by the difficulty in examining the impact of mediation when it is not randomly assigned to cases. The
set of crises that experience mediation is likely to be very different, in terms
of the ex ante likelihood of mediation success, than the set of crises that did
not experience mediation or experienced mediation of another type. If actors
only prefer mediation to negotiations when the barriers to successful resolution are high, then mediation is predisposed to higher failure rates and will
appear to have less positive impact than it really does. This would be a form
of endogeneity bias. Scott Sigmund Gartner has shown that it is crucially
important to distinguish between selection effects—the part of the relationship between mediation and peaceful outcomes that can be explained by the
types of cases that experience mediation—and process effects—the part of
the relationship that is actually attributable to the involvement of the third
party (Gartner, 2011; Gartner & Bercovitch, 2006). Indeed, Beber (2012) finds
that accounting for selection effects can affect the observed efficacy of mediator bias. Increasingly scholars have studied the selection processes behind
mediation incidence and, in so doing, allow us to better understand the baseline against which we should compare mediation outcomes (e.g., Greig, 2005;
Greig & Regan, 2008; Melin, 2011). These studies also help us understand
and address the related problem of selection bias, which is likely to plague
analyses of data sets that only include mediated cases.
The emphasis on distinguishing process from selection effects has required
theoretical frameworks to move beyond notions of ripeness. Early conceptions of the idea of ripeness were somewhat vague as to whether “ripeness”
Mediation in International Conflicts
5
is a cause or an effect of mediation. Studies often did not untangle whether
mediation can contribute to a conflict being ripe for settlement, or whether
mediation is simply more likely to occur during ripe periods, or both. In other
words, it is tempting to conflate being ripe for resolution with being ripe
for mediation. This issue is not merely semantic; if mediation and ripeness
are endogenous to each other, then it becomes difficult to assess the effects
of mediation on conflict outcomes independent of the level of ripeness that
existed prior to mediation onset.
To reduce this confusion, it is useful to start with a firmer understanding
about what is happening when conflict occurs and then to bring mediation
into that story in such a way that the causal arrows are clear. This is increasingly done by starting with an understanding of conflict as bargaining failure
and then explaining how mediation shapes the potential for bargaining to
fail. Bargaining models of war have been used to show how uncertainty,
audience costs for concessions, and commitment problems can lead to conflict bargaining failure. Seen from a rationalist perspective, mediation must
alter one or more of these dynamics to affect the prospects for peace.
Recent studies have examined how third parties can ameliorate each type
of bargaining failure. One such area of research comes from the literature
on bias mentioned earlier, which explores whether third parties could help
disputants resolve uncertainty by relaying information between disputants
and/or by providing outside information. Kydd (2003, 2006) and Rauchhaus (2006) show formally that mediators can credibly convey some signals
depending on their levels of partiality. Savun (2008) empirically shows that
biased mediators tend to fare better in reducing uncertainty and facilitating
an agreement in support of Kydd (2003).
If uncertainty causes there to be no settlements that both sides prefer to continued conflict, then another way that third parties can help resolve conflict is
through manipulating the relative benefits of conflict and peace. That is, third
parties can use inducements to incentivize the disputants to find more alternatives preferable to ongoing conflict. Favretto (2009) takes up this question
by examining how a third party’s proposal power and threat of intervention
affect what bargain is struck. She finds that biased third parties can more
credibly claim that they will intervene on the side of their protégé, thus convincing the other side that it would be better to settle than to continue in
disagreement.
Mediation can additionally provide political cover when disputants face
high domestic audience costs for unpopular, though potentially prudent,
concessions. The need to “save face” can refer to similar situations in
which a leader encounters costs from backing down and needs to concede
without losing support at home. Within the bargaining framework, effective
provision of political cover entails that leaders would face fewer costs
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
for conceding and would then be able to find more alternatives mutually
preferable to conflict. Even though the potential to blame a third party
for concessions is weaker for mediation than arbitration, mediators can
additionally provide the needed domestic political cover through informing
the domestic audiences about the merits of the concessions. By receiving
inside information about a peace process, the third parties will be more
informed than the domestic audiences and can signal to them—for example,
by supporting a proposed peace plan—that any resulting concessions are in
the interest of both parties. Beardsley and Lo (2014) have shown empirically
that mediation can improve the ability for challengers to make minor
concessions when doing so is likely to be politically costly.
In terms of assuaging commitment problems, third parties can help ameliorate postconflict vulnerabilities that intrastate conflict actors typically face
by agreeing to monitor and enforce the implementation phase of agreements.
Svensson (2007) finds that mediators can often prove essential to helping
reduce the vulnerabilities that governments face in making concessions to
rebel groups. Kydd (2006) examines when mediators can credibly convey
information about whether each disputant plans on upholding a peace
agreement. His work on mediation and mistrust, to some extent, bridges
the divide between uncertainty and commitment-driven conflict, in that
actors are uncertain whether a commitment problem holds. Kydd shows
that a third party can convey information about the trustworthiness of each
disputant to the other under some circumstances.
While the recent literature has identified how a mediator might attenuate
bargaining problems, this does not mean that mediators are always effective
in doing so. A number of studies have identified hindrances to third-party
effectiveness. One concern is over whether mediators can be expected to perform the basic function of providing information and reducing uncertainty.
Smith and Stam (2003) raise the concern of cheap talk, in which many mediators are so concerned with peace that they cannot credibly convey information that would be used to convince a belligerent to back down. More
fundamentally, Fey and Ramsay (2010) argue that it is not likely that mediators will even have access to information that the disputants do not already
have in the first place.
Beardsley (2011) has identified a trade-off between short- and long-term
efficacy. The general logic of this trade-off is that mediation can positively
influence the three bargaining barriers considered above in the short run
while worsening them in the long run. In the short run, mediators can facilitate the ability for the combatants to recognize mutually preferable agreements, give political cover for concessions, provide incentives that expand
the set of mutually preferable alternatives, and offer postconflict security
guarantees. Relevant to the long run, the involvement of an intermediary
Mediation in International Conflicts
7
can introduce artificial incentives for peace that do not persist, interfere with
the ability for the actors to fully understand each other, and enable the belligerents to stall in hopes of gaining bargaining advantage during the peace
process. The inclusion of an external peacemaker is thus often a necessary
ingredient for short-term progress, but intermediaries can also make future
conflict more likely and more difficult to resolve. So, while disputants typically seek mediation as a means to reduce their immediate barriers to efficient
bargaining, they do so at the risk of decreasing the durability of any peaceful
arrangements that are reached.
Returning to the discussion of mediation styles, the dilemma is not simply
a matter of whether mediation should be employed or not but also a matter
of how much involvement third parties should have when they do mediate. Beardsley (2011) finds that third-party leverage exaggerates the trade-off
between short- and long-term efficacy because intrusive involvement is best
able to shape the short-term incentives for peace and least able to facilitate
durable self-enforcing settlements. When intermediaries rely on carrots and
sticks to bring about a peaceful outcome, they will tend to be especially successful in realizing short-term abatements of hostilities, but whatever peace
results will be quite fragile. In the midst of substantial leverage, especially
when the leverage is used to level the playing field and create an artificial
stalemate, the disputants’ level of satisfaction with their terms of peace will
be even more prone to falter as third parties disengage themselves from the
peace processes over time. In addition, heavy-handed third parties are more
likely to interrupt the ability of the actors to learn from each other. Without
leverage, third parties will be less able to help the disputants reach settlements in the short run, but when they do, the peace will be more likely to
endure.
It is worth noting that the trade-off between the short-term and long-term
effects of mediation provides an additional explanation for why the existing
literature does not always agree on the efficacy of mediation. When success
is defined with respect to short-run outcomes, mediation appears to perform rather well; when success connotes a more long-term effect, mediation
appears to be of limited use.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The above discussion indicates that the literature on mediation is growing
and rich. It sets the stage for the positive accumulation of knowledge in future
studies. In the remainder of this essay, we identify two research questions that
merit specific attention in the future.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
INSINCERE NEGOTIATIONS
First, we need to understand when disputants are likely to engage in mediation in bad faith. Disputants may have incentives to bargain insincerely—that
is, to bargain in order to gain power and then return to conflict, with no intention of settling. A limited amount of literature has examined these “devious”
disputants. Richmond (1998) coined the term devious disputants to refer to
those that undertake bargaining with their adversaries with no intention of
striking a bargain. Richmond delineates a bundle of assets that often accompany instances of mediation that disputants may attempt to attain in spite of
having no desire to settle. Mediation, aside from offering a chance at settling
a dispute, allows disputants to regroup, reorganize, search out allies, gain
recognition and legitimacy for their side, save face, and defer making costly
concessions.
Understanding the dynamics that drive disputants to bargain in bad faith
is crucial if the international community is to effectively utilize its limited
conflict resolution resources. This area of research can be broken into three
related efforts: the identification of devious disputants, the prediction of the
likelihood that any particular disputant will use mediation for devious purposes, and the careful contemplation of how mediators can attempt to resolve
conflicts while limiting the extent to which they can be taken advantage of
by devious bargainers.
The systematic study of devious bargainers must begin with efforts to identify the pool of past bargainers who employed mediation in bad faith. This
task is nontrivial because devious disputants have strong incentives to hide
their intentions both during and after mediation episodes, and because failed
mediation efforts may appear very similar to instances of mediation in which
disputants employed nonserious bargaining. A careful study of past mediation efforts incorporating a close examination of actions made away from
the bargaining table will likely have to commence before these actors can be
studied in depth.
The second, and perhaps most difficult, research question to address
regarding devious disputants is, what factors make disputants more likely
to bargain in bad faith? Stated differently, are there observable characteristics
of disputants, the disputes in which they are embroiled, their past conflict
resolution history, or the third parties they are willing to utilize that are
predictive of a disputant’s intention to bargain in bad faith? However, as
mentioned earlier, identifying correlates of deviousness is likely to prove
challenging, as disputants intending to bargain in bad faith must generate
the outward appearance of desiring to settle their conflicts in order for their
ruse to work.
Mediation in International Conflicts
9
One potentially fruitful avenue by which to explore this question is to focus
on the factors that make stalling for time most attractive to disputants. What
particular domestic political or military circumstances make stalling for time
the most useful for disputants? Perhaps the need to shift attention to other
policy problems, such as economic shocks or flare-ups within other conflictual relationships increases the utility of stalling. On the military side, the
expectation of the completion of new technologies, such as nuclear weapons,
or the ability to monitor enemy terrain may make devious bargaining an
attractive option.
Finally, the theoretical literature needs to grapple with how, and indeed
whether, to engage in conflict mediation in light of the potential for disputants to use it to further their efforts at coercive bargaining. Are there
specific strategies or tactics that mediators can employ to limit the possibility
of being used by one disputant to the other’s detriment? Perhaps different
mediation styles make the use of devious bargaining more or less tenable,
or different mediator characteristics, such as bias? What steps can mediators
take to differentiate periods of hard bargaining over high-stake issues from
insincere bargaining aimed at stalling for time?
INTRASTATE MEDIATION
A second topic for future inquiry is to assess when theories of mediation can
apply to all types of conflict, both interstate and intrastate, and when we need
theories that can specifically explain interstate conflict or intrastate conflict.
While most of the literature on mediation in general has focused on interstate
conflict, recent studies have considered how mediation plays out specifically
in civil wars (e.g., Gartner, 2011; Greig & Regan, 2008; Svensson, 2007, 2009).
Melin and Svensson (2009) notably assess the differences between mediation in interstate and intrastate conflicts. The existing studies demonstrate
the importance of having new data sets on mediation in intrastate conflicts,
but more work remains to be done.
More work on mediation in intrastate conflict is warranted because most
of the armed conflicts in the modern era have an intrastate component. The
broader literatures on international peace and security are also increasingly
geared toward violence within states, and it is important for the insights
gleaned from those general literatures to be incorporated into our understanding of mediation. At the same time, it is important to recognize that
many conflicts do not fall into an easy classification of being either interstate or intrastate. Many conflicts include elements of both. For example, the
recent wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan began as interstate conflicts and
then became civil wars with foreign involvement. We also need to understand how the efficacy of mediation can be optimized in such contexts.
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
The most important need in addressing this research agenda is for better
theory that incorporates the state of the art of understanding from the
broader literatures on the onset and termination of intrastate armed conflict.
While the studies discussed earlier which consider mediation in a rational
bargaining framework have contributed to our understanding, there may
be a limitation since the bargaining framework has mostly been developed
in the context of interstate conflict. Although much can be learned from our
current understanding of interstate conflict, scholars trying to understand
mediation in intrastate conflicts would also do well to draw more from other
literature, such as those on domestic political institutions, ethnic politics,
rebel recruitment, and protest movements. In doing so, we can learn more
about how mediation might take on unique roles in conflicts with intrastate
dimensions.
In terms of testing the novel expectations that will arise from this agenda,
new data sets such as the Mediating Intrastate Crises (Quinn, Wilkenfeld,
Eralp, Asal, & McLauchlin, 2013), Civil War Mediation (DeRouen, Bercovitch,
& Pospieszna, 2011), Managing Intrastate Low-Intensity Conflict (Melander,
Möller, & Öberg, 2009), and Diplomatic Interventions and Civil Wars (Regan,
Frank, & Aydin, 2009) projects have improved on the crucial ability to test
hypotheses about mediation in conflicts with intrastate components. What is
missing from these new data sets, however, is the ability to directly compare
how mediation fares in interstate, intrastate, and mixed conflicts. While some
studies such as Melin and Svensson (2009) have used separate interstate and
intrastate data to make such comparisons, unless we have common data
sets with both interstate and intrastate events, questions will always remain
about whether any observed differences are the result of differences in the
actual true relationships or in the techniques used to collect the data. Ideally,
we would have information on mediation events in all types of armed
conflicts, such as those in the UCDP (Uppsala Conflict Data Program) armed
conflict data. Such a data set could then help us understand how mediation
in conflicts with intrastate components differs from those without them.
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KYLE BEARDSLEY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kyle Beardsley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego,
in 2006. In a number of academic journals, he has published on topics
that include mediation, peacekeeping, nuclear proliferation, international
crisis, intrastate conflict, and research methodology. His book The Mediation
Dilemma was published by Cornell University Press in 2011.
Website: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/∼kbeards/
Book info: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=
80140100199150
NATHAN DANNEMAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nathan Danneman is a PhD candidate at Emory University. His work, published and in progress, includes the formal and quantitative study of conflict
negotiations, as well as human rights. His dissertation examines the conditions in which actors are able to exploit peace processes for devious objectives
Mediation in International Conflicts
13
and how mediators can help increase the credibility of good-faith negotiations.
Website: http://www.nathandanneman.com/
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