Asymmetric Information and Third-Party Intervention in Civil Wars

Abstract

Some empirical studies have found that third-party intervention could worsen civil conflicts. However, exactly why this might be the case is not clear. This paper builds a model to explain how a third-party’s expected intervention in a conflict could worsen the conflict. I study a two-period model of conflict (contest) with two combatants and a third party who is an ally of one of the combatants. The third party is fully informed about the type of her ally but not about the type of her ally’s enemy. There is a signaling game with one receiver (i.e., the third party) and two senders (i.e., the two combatants in the conflict). If the third party will not intervene in a big way, then there exists a unique perfect Bayesian separating equilibrium in which the third party’s expected intervention worsens the conflict by energizing her ally’s enemy wherein he (i.e., the enemy) exerts more effort than he would in the absence of third-party intervention; this increases aggregate effort in the conflict. Therefore, if the third party will not intervene in a big way, then it might be better not to intervene at all. The third party ignores the signals of his ally, although he (i.e., the ally) is fully informed about the enemy's type. Finally, if expected intervention worsens conflicts, then empirical work may overstate any positive effect of actual intervention on conflicts.