Curbing Enthusiasm? Democratic Third Parties & Commitment to Civil War Governments

Abstract

ABSTRACTDemocracies are capable of committing exceptional resources toward interventions on behalf of governments threatened by civil war. Yet, the security benefits obtained from interventions are often indirect, decisive outcomes remain elusive, and fatalities of military personnel salient to the public. These qualities of intervention can lead a democratic publics to pressure political leaders to end to an intervention. To avoid these political costs while still pursuing foreign policy goals, democratic policymakers may respond by altering their intervention strategy by shifting from the deployment of combat personnel to less politically costly modes of support. To explore the possibility of this shift, we rely on the External Support Project–Primary Warring Party Dataset to operationalize commitment during instances of third-party support of civil war governments for the period 1975–2009. The analysis suggests that democracies engaged in intervention build commitment over time. However, we find that democracies are reluctant to commit combat troops to an intervention and, if they do, are unlikely to maintain this commitment. Instead, democratic third parties resort to other forms of support. In general, the analysis demonstrates the key role of third-party domestic politics in interventions into civil wars.