Abstract
Mediation and peacekeeping are commonly used tools to manage conflict. To what extent are they complementary and effective instruments for ending violent conflicts? Generally, they are seen as distinct tools: mediation aims to facilitate negotiated settlements, while the goal of peacekeeping is to prevent agreements from collapsing. However, peacekeeping and mediation regularly occur simultaneously. Arguably, peacekeeping operations rely on continuing political processes, while peacekeepers create a context favorable for mediation and provide a valuable source of independent information. Using a variety of model specifications, including selection models, empirical evidence supports that (a) mediation rather than peacekeeping is key to halting hostilities, (b) mediation and peacekeeping are largely complementary, but (c) this complementarity is conditional: in the post-Cold War period, transformative peacekeeping boosted the effectiveness of mediation to halt civil wars. There is no evidence that peacekeeping on its own matters for ending conflict. Finally, counterfactual analysis shows the substantial impact of mediation and peacekeeping on the frequency of conflict.
Highlights
Are mediation and peacekeeping effective conflict management tools? To what extent are they complementary in ending armed conflict in the sense of stopping the fighting? Regardless of widespread skepticism, there is growing evidence that peacekeeping and mediation can be effective.[1]
When in 2018 the United Nations marked 70 years of peacekeeping, it deployed 110,000 personnel serving in 14 peacekeeping missions
We evaluate the separate and conditional effects of mediation and peacekeeping on conflict termination using binary time-series crosssectional (BTSCS) models with ‘conflict year’ as the unit of analysis.[15]
Summary
Are mediation and peacekeeping effective conflict management tools? To what extent are they complementary in ending armed conflict in the sense of stopping the fighting? Regardless of widespread skepticism, there is growing evidence that peacekeeping and mediation can be effective.[1]. This makes it meaningful to inquire into their relative contribution to halting actual fighting. Despite both methods being regularly used simultaneously, research has rarely evaluated any joint or conditional effects.[4] So far, the key contribution has been provided by Greig & Diehl (2005), who outline contrasting expectations on how peacekeeping could influence the likelihood and success of mediation. Existing evaluations of the relative contribution of peacekeeping and mediation use a range of measures: (1) whether (Greig & Diehl, 2005) or how quickly (Kathman & Benson, 2019) a negotiated settlement is reached, (2) the reduction of battle-deaths during conflict (Beardsley, Cunningham & White, 2019; Bredikova, 2019), or (3) hostilities following a peace agreement (Joshi & Quinn, 2015; DeRouen & Chowdhury, 2018). Using subnational data on intrastate conflict in sub-Saharan Africa, Ruggeri, Dorussen & Gizelis (2017) provide evidence that the presence of peacekeepers shortens conflict episodes locally
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