Please Help Us (or Don’t): External Interventions and Negotiated Settlements in Civil Conflicts

• Author: Amy Skoll,Heather Elko McKibben
• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022002720950417
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Please Help Us

(or Don’t): External

Interventions and

Negotiated Settlements

in Civil Conflicts

Heather Elko McKibben

1

, and Amy Skoll

1

Abstract

How do different types of external intervention affect the likelihood of a negotiated

settlement in civil conflicts? Drawing on the negotiation literature, which shows that

the nature of the parties’ “best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA)”

influences the bargaining process between them, we argue different types of inter-

vention affect governments’ and rebel groups’ BATNAs in different ways. This, in

turn, affects the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. To test this argument, we

address the fact that interventions are nonrandom, and that characteristics of civil

conflicts that lead to different types of intervention also influence the likelihood of a

negotiated settlement. We therefore use a two-stage statistical model. The first

stage predicts the likelihood of different types of intervention, and drawing on those

results, the second stage analyzes the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. The

results provide insights into how different types of intervention affect civil conflict

outcomes.

Keywords

civil wars, conflict resolution, negotiation, bargaining

1

University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Heather Elko McKibben, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.

Email: hemckibben@ucdavis.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(2-3) 480-505

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002720950417

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Since the end of Wold War II, civil wars have increasingly become

“internationalized.” Parties external to the conflict often intervene on behalf of the

government or rebel group, and these interventions can aff ect the course of the

conflict in multiple ways. Such interventions could take on several different forms.

Third parties can engage in what we refer to as “hard” military intervention in the

form of the provision of troops and weapons or “soft” military intervention in the

form of funding, intelligence, training, or sanctuary. Third parties could also place

economic sanctions on the government or, in contrast, increase foreign aid to it.

Given the prevalence and significance of these interventions, it is important to ask:

what effects will different types of interv ention have on the outcome of a civil

conflict?

Much work has been dedicated to studying interventions in civil conflicts, but

their effects are debated. Some studies argue that interventions tip the balance on the

battlefield, thus helping to end a civil conflict and decrease its duration (e.g., Lick-

lider 1995; Escriba-Folch 2010; Lektzian and Regan 2016). Other studies, however,

have shown that interventions increa se conflict severity as well as lengthe n the

duration of the conflict (Elbadawi and Sambanis 2000; Regan 2002; Cunningham

2006; Lacina 2006; Heger and Salehyan 2007). More nuanced studies have shown

that the influence interventions have on the length of a civil conflict depends, in part,

on who receives the intervention (rebel group or government) (e.g., Balch-Lindsay

and Enterline 2000; Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, and Joyce 2008), and that some types

of interventions are likely to help bring about negotiated settlements while others are

likely to bring about military victory (e.g., Mason, Weingarten, and Fett 1999;

Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, and Joyce 2008; Brandt et al. 2008).

Weighing in on this debate, disaggregating interventions into different types, and

highlighting a new causal mechanism, we argue that interventions inf luence the

warring parties’ percept ions of their ability to perf orm in a continuation of the

conflict—i.e. their perceptions of their “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”

(their “BATNA”). Different types of interventions affect the government and rebel

groups’ BATNAs, and thus the likelihood they will reach a negotiated settlement, in

different ways. Highlighting the role they play in influencing the warring parties’

BATNAs, we argue that hard military interventions for the rebel group and soft

interventions for the government should increase the likelihood of a negotiated

settlement. In contrast, hard military interventions for the government, soft inter-

ventions for the rebel group, economic sanctions ag ainst the government, and a

significant increase in foreign aid to the government should decrease the likelihood

of a negotiated settlement.

In testing this argument, we empirically address two issues that previous litera-

ture on external intervention has tended to overlook: (1) the fact that external

intervention is nonrandom, creating a selection issue that needs to be addressed;

and (2) the fact that there are multiple types of external intervention that could occur

in a particular civil conflict that are potentially correlated, making it difficult to parse

out the independent effects of different forms of external intervention on conflict

McKibben and Skoll 481