External Interventions in Post-Cold War Africa, 1989–2010

Abstract

The study of external interventions in conflict management is critical and has implications for international relations and conflict theory. Quantitative studies of the relationship between external interventions and civil war have been prone to some conceptual limitations (understudied lower-intensity periods) and data limitations (unavailability of event battle death data). This article presents a new external interventions data set covering the period between 1989 and 2010 for Africa, building on the Regan et al. (2009) data set, which covers the period between 1945 and 1999. Novel features of this new data set are: the recoding of the overlap period; a broader range of categories of intervention, including UN and non-UN missions; and wider temporal scope, by extending the period of analysis to 2010, by lowering the civil war threshold to 25 battle deaths, and by starting the conflict period from the date of the first battle death in each civil war (based on UCDP GED version-1.5-2011). The advantages of the data set are illustrated with an analysis of the different effects interventions have on high- and low-intensity conflict periods.