Stephen E. Gent

Armed intervention and civilian victimization in intrastate conflicts

Research has begun to examine the relationship between changes in the conflict environment and levels of civilian victimization. We extend this work by examining the effect of external armed intervention on the decisions of governments and insurgent organizations to victimize civilians during civil wars. We theorize that changes in the balance of power in an intrastate conflict influence combatant strategies of violence. As a conflict actor weakens relative to its adversary, it employs increasingly violent tactics toward the civilian population as a means of reshaping the strategic landscape to its benefit. The reason for this is twofold. First, declining capabilities increase resource needs at the moment that extractive capacity is in decline. Second, declining capabilities inhibit control and policing, making less violent means of defection deterrence more difficult. As both resource extraction difficulties and internal threats increase, actors’ incentives for violence against the population increase. To the extent that biased military interventions shift the balance of power between conflict actors, we argue that they alter actor incentives to victimize civilians. Specifically, intervention should reduce the level of violence employed by the supported faction and increase the level employed by the opposed faction. We test these arguments using data on civilian casualties and armed intervention in intrastate conflicts from 1989 to 2005. Our results support our expectations, suggesting that interventions shift the power balance and affect the levels of violence employed by combatants.

Strange Bedfellows: The Strategic Dynamics of Major Power Military Interventions

Intuition suggests that major powers should be more likely to pursue joint military intervention when their preferences are most similar, but empirically, joint interventions are least likely in these cases. The solution to this puzzle lies in the strategic interaction between interveners. When states agree over policy, they face a free rider problem. A state is more willing to join an intervention as its preferences with the initial intervener diverge because doing so allows it to affect policy outcomes. To test the theory, a statistical model derived from the theoretical model is used to estimate the factors that affect the decisions of major powers to intervene in civil conflicts.

Decision Control and the Pursuit of Binding Conflict Management: Choosing the Ties that Bind

International relations scholars have garnered a good deal of evidence indicating that binding arbitration and adjudication are highly effective means for brokering agreements and ending conflict. However, binding third-party conflict management is rarely pursued to resolve interstate disputes over contentious issues like territorial or maritime control. While states value the effectiveness of binding procedures, they are reluctant to give up the decision control necessary to submit to arbitration or adjudication. The authors identify three factors that influence the willingness of states to give up decision control: issue salience, availability of outside options, and history of negotiations. An analysis of attempts to settle territorial, maritime, and river claims reveals that disputants are less likely to use binding conflict management when they have a greater need to maintain decision control.

The Effectiveness of International Arbitration and Adjudication: Getting Into a Bind

Scholars and policymakers argue that the bias of a third party affects its ability to resolve conflicts. In an investigation of international territorial claims, however, we find that the conflict management technique is much more important for ending disputes than a third party’s level of bias. Binding third-party mechanisms (arbitration and adjudication) more effectively end territorial claims than other conflict management techniques because they provide legality, increased reputation costs, and domestic political cover. The characteristics of the third party, on the other hand, have no effect on the success of a settlement attempt. Bias plays only an indirect role in conflict resolution, as territorial rivals generally turn to unbiased intermediaries to broker binding negotiations. We conclude that impartial third-party conflict management does not directly lead to successful negotiations. Rather, disputants favor unbiased third parties to broker the types of talks most likely to end international disputes.

Bias and the Effectiveness of Third Party Conflict Management Mechanisms

To uncover the relationship between bias and effective conflict resolution, we explore the bias of third parties and the techniques they employ in the diplomatic management of river, maritime, and territorial claims. We find that bias increases the likelihood that a third party will engage in unobtrusive techniques like good offices and decreases its propensity to pursue involved mechanisms like arbitration. Additionally, bias is inversely related to the range of issues addressed at a settlement attempt. As such, unbiased third parties are more effective because they are used for the management techniques that have the most potential to resolve conflicts.

Relative Rebel Strength and Power Sharing in Intrastate Conflicts

According to bargaining theory, one would expect that governments in intrastate conflicts will only be willing to concede to power sharing agreements when they face relatively strong rebel groups. Previous empirical studies have not found support for this hypothesis because they have not operationalized the capability of civil war combatants in relative terms. I show that once one uses a relative measure of capability, one finds that power sharing is more likely as the strength of a rebel group increases. Additionally, the analysis indicates that the relationship between rebel strength and power sharing is stronger for political power sharing than for territorial or military power sharing.

Scapegoating strategically: Reselection, strategic interaction, and the diversionary theory of war

Proponents of the diversionary theory of war have often argued that domestic reselection incentives induce office-seeking leaders to pursue aggressive foreign policies. To examine the relationship between strategic interaction and diversionary incentives, this article develops a two-state, two-sided incomplete information deterrence model with domestic reselection. According to the model, reselection mechanisms increase a leaders propensity to pursue aggressive foreign policies. Diversionary incentives in attacking states lead to an increase in war outcomes, while diversionary incentives in defending states may or may not increase the probability of war. The model also predicts that there will be nonmonotonic relationships between economic performance and war and between regime type and diversionary behavior, which may explain the discrepancies among many empirical tests of diversionary theory.

The reputation trap of NGO accountability

In this paper we examine the role of reputation in the behavior of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Can the pursuit and maintenance of a reputation cause NGOs to change their behavior in meaningful ways ?O r are the norms and institutions that motivate and govern NGOs the sole drivers of behavior? To answer these questions, we focus on the relationship between NGOs and their donors. Our theoretical model reveals that reputation can be a key piece of information in the decision to fund the activities of a non-governmental organization. Indeed, reputation can become so important to the survival of the NGO that it interferes with the long-term policy goals of the organization. The resulting short-term NGO behavior is often misconstrued as incompetent or ine! cient, but it is actually motivated by the structural constraints of the relationship with donors. We illustrate this strategic dynamic here with a focus on three types of NGO activity: international crisis mediation, ameliorating poverty ,a nd water improvement.

External Threats and Military Intervention: The United States and the Caribbean Basin

Domestic political instability provides an incentive for external military intervention by raising the opportunity costs of nonintervention. When deciding to intervene in response to instability within its sphere of influence, a regional hegemon considers the anticipated actions of other potential interveners. In particular, a hegemon has an incentive to intervene preemptively to forestall future interventions by rival powers. Given this, military intervention will be more likely when another power provides an external threat to a hegemon’s sphere of influence. A historical examination of U.S. intervention policy and behavior in the Caribbean Basin supports the theory.

Bargaining power and the arbitration and adjudication of territorial claims1

To examine the political factors that influence the use of legal mechanisms to resolve territorial disputes, we model the decision to pursue arbitration and adjudication as part of a bargaining process in the shadow of war. We find that arbitration and adjudication can help prevent bargaining breakdown, but states only pursue and comply with such measures when the expected ruling reflects the balance of power between them. To test the theory, we examine compliance with arbitral and adjudicated rulings on territorial claims. In line with our expectations, states are less likely to comply when the stronger disputant is asked to make greater concessions. We conclude that power politics constrains the conditions under which legal mechanisms can be used to successfully manage contentious claims over territory.