Crises and Negotiations in Mutual Interventions

Why do states that simultaneously support rebel groups in each other’s intrastate conflicts enter negotiations to resolve such mutual interventions? This is an important question, as negotiations between interveners typically lead to negotiated settlements, which in turn tend to make their intrastate conflicts far less deadly. We argue that international crises make negotiations more likely. Crises raise the costs of intervention and often lead potential mediators to put pressure on states to negotiate. Using new monthly data on mutual interventions in Africa, the article shows that crises are indeed significantly associated with the likelihood that negotiations will occur. This finding is robust to using fixed effects and matching. The article contributes to the literature by investigating a widespread though little-studied type of conflict, as well as by studying the impact of state leaders’ crisis perception using a quantitative research design, which helps overcome a methodological limitation seen in previous studies.

Journal article