International mediation in low intensity conflicts

Abstract

Purpose Success and failure in mediation are widely understood to determine whether a state will receive positive or negative reputation outcomes from undertaking a mediation role in an international conflict. Research from mediation in domestic settings contradicts this view, finding that peer mediators in school and community settings received positive mediator outcomes from undertaking their role, even when they failed to facilitate an agreement between disputants. This paper aims to test this assumption and argues that mediation success and failure are only weakly correlated with observable reputation outcomes for mediating states and proposes an alternative explanatory framework. Design/methodology/approach The hypothesis was inductively generated through a comparative analysis of single-state mediation attempts selected from the Uppsala Conflict Database Project MILC data set. The cases selected were South Africa’s mediation attempts in Côte d’Ivoire from 2004 to 2005 and Comoros from 2003 to 2004, and Mexico’s mediation attempts in Colombia (National Liberation Army) in 2004 and Guatemala (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity) between 1994 and 1996. To contextualise the findings and develop the explanatory framework, South African mediation attempts in Burundi and the DRC are discussed in the closing sections of the paper. Findings This paper finds that mediation success and failure are only weakly correlated with mediator outcomes. Mediator outcomes are explained by the activity level of the mediating state in providing mediation services; the positive intention of the mediator to assist in resolving the conflict; the scale of the conflict mediated; the severity of spill over effects from the conflict in question; the regional importance of the conflict; the proximity of the government which a mediating state looks to develop relations with to the conflict; the importance of the mediation attempt within the peace process; the level of contestation of the mediation attempt, meaning the extent to which mediation attempts are themselves sites of regional or global international power politics; and the success or failure of the mediation attempt. Originality/value An explanatory framework for state mediator outcomes in which the outcome of a mediation attempt for the third-party state is not determined solely, or even primarily, by mediation success or failure bridges mediation research applying to international and domestic issue areas and provides additional information for policy makers regarding the costs and benefits of committing their state to processes of mediation in conflicts with low probabilities of resolution. This is particularly important for state policy makers, given that mediation is successful on average in only one out of every three attempts.