un intervention and the duration of international crises

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UN intervention and the durationof international crises

Kyle Beardsley

Department of Political Science, Emory University

AbstractThis article examines the effect of UN actions on the duration of international crises. Four different types of action assurance, diplomatic engagement, military involvement, and intimidation and three different outcomes compromise, victory, and stalemate are considered. After building on the existing literature to develop expecta-tions of how a third party like the UN shapes crisis trajectories, hypotheses are tested using the International CrisisBehavior (ICB) data and a new events dataset on UN activity. Results from competing-risks models reveal that UNmilitary involvement does well to decrease the risk of one side achieving victory, and diplomatic engagementincreases the ability of the belligerents to reach a compromise in the long run. Moreover, diplomatic engagementaccompanied by military involvement substantially hastens the pace of stalemate outcomes. Both tactics, however,have some trade-offs. Military involvement can decrease the sense of urgency for compromise; diplomatic engage-ment can be used for insincere motives and increase the risk of one-sided victory over time. UN actions of assur-ance and simple intimidation have considerable shortcomings as crisis management vehicles.

Keywords

conflict resolution, event history, International Crisis Behavior, matching, United Nations

Introduction

The literature on the relationship between the UN andconflict predominantly has focused on its role as peace-keeper. While much is known quantitatively about theeffects of peacekeeping and peacebuilding (Collier,Chauvet & Hegre, 2008; Doyle & Sambanis, 2000,2006; Greig & Diehl, 2005; Fortna, 2003, 2004a,b; Gil-ligan & Sergenti, 2006), less is known about how theUN performs as a conflict manager or peacemaker.1 Thisarticle explores the UNs impact on the duration of crises

and posits that different types of UN action have dispa-rate effects on the timing of crisis abatement.

The existing literature presents competing expecta-tions of what types of third-party tactics are most effec-tive in conflict management and resolution. Whilesome work expects only heavy-handed tactics to have the

potential to shape the bargaining environment (Betts,1994; Smith & Stam, 2003), others find that lighterforms of involvement such as mediation can do quitewell (Beardsley et al., 2006; Regan & Stam, 2000;Rauchhaus, 2006; Wilkenfeld et al., 2005).2 Stillothers expect that third parties can disrupt more naturalresolution processes or otherwise create perverse incen-tives, especially when involved in military deployments(Greig & Diehl, 2005; Kuperman, 2008; Luttwak,1999; Rauchhaus, 2009; Werner & Yuen, 2005). In asses-sing what these earlier studies mean for the expected effectsof UN intervention, this article uses a new events datasetthat disaggregates UN activity during international crises.The data are able to capture not only how UN interven-tion shapes the trajectory of crises but also how differenttactics of involvement stack up against each other.

1 Diehl, Reifschneider & Hensel (1996) do consider a broad range ofUN activities, but the outcome processes assessed deal with variousaspects of the stability of peace. DeRouen (2003) also considersUN involvement in crisis termination.

Corresponding author:[email protected]

2 See Favretto (2009) and Svensson (2007) for studies that considerthe different benefits of lighter and heavy-handed mediation.

Journal of Peace Research49(2) 335349 The Author(s) 2012Reprints and permission:sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

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As part of this exploration, this study distinguishesbetween the ways for a crisis to end. Early ends of crisesin compromise fit the profile of an ideal outcome fromthe standpoint of peace advocacy. Early terminationsin victory, however, typically indicate a dereliction ofeffective conflict management. Distinguishing between

the different types of outcome is important from bothpolicy and normative standpoints, as decreasing crisisduration is not always a worthwhile objective, especiallysince one way for a crisis to end quickly is for one side towin a complete victory through bloodshed. This articleunfolds by first providing a theoretical framework of thevarious ways for conflict to terminate and then discussingthe UNs role within that framework. Testable hypoth-eses are derived and tested empirically.

Conflict processes and duration

Before forming expectations about the UNs ability toshape the duration of crisis, we must first have a senseof why a state of conflict might exist and how it ends.This article considers conflict as part of a bargaining pro-cess in which two or more actors are in dispute over somegood or issue. Using force has two different purposes inthe bargaining context: it can demonstrate capability andresolve, and it can physically remove vulnerabilities. Eachof these is taken up in turn.

Actors will often resort to violence when either theyhave underestimated what their opponent would be will-ing to accept or their opponent has underestimatedthem. The act of engaging in conflict reveals capabilityand the resolve to bear costs, which allows the expecta-tions of the actors to converge on the set of alternativesthat are mutually satisfactory (Slantchev, 2003, 2004;Smith & Stam, 2003; Filson & Werner, 2002). Thedemonstration of capability and resolve is not onlymeant for the eyes of the foreign policymakers of theopponent. Leaders may refuse to concede not becausethey cannot identify areas of overlapping agreement butbecause domestic audiences might punish them for mak-

ing concessions (Debs & Goemans, 2010; Goemans,2000, 2009; Chiozza & Goemans, 2004; Tarar &Leventoglu, 2009; Tarar, 2006; Trager & Vavreck,2011). To the foreign policymakers in such situations,the set of possible settlements that are mutually prefer-able to conflict may be empty. The use of force in suchcases can thus be driven by a leaders domestic con-straints or serve as a means to demonstrate to an oppo-nents domestic audiences that any concessions theirleader makes are, in fact, prudent. In either case, forcewill be applied until the costs of conflict for either side

become greater than the costs of backing down andpotentially losing political capital.

Aside from allowing an opponent to realize the meritsof concession, force is also used to resolve vulnerabilitiesto commitment problems. In cases where actors cannotcredibly commit to abiding by an agreement even if it

were found to be mutually preferable to conflict, settle-ment will be avoided and fighting will occur until cred-ible commitment becomes possible (Reiter, 2009). Onesource of a credible commitment problem is the poten-tial for an actors capabilities and thus bargainingpower to rapidly improve, which would leave the risingactor dissatisfied with the settlement at hand andincrease its incentives to push for a better deal in thefuture (Powell, 2004, 2006). To avoid having to concedemore in the future, the other actor would prefer to dam-age the rising actors capabilities through war and stunt

its potential growth so that whatever is agreeable todaywill also be agreeable in the future. Another source of acredible commitment problem relates to the conceptsof the security dilemma and mistrust (Kydd, 2005),where conflict may persist because of uncertainty aboutwhether an opponent will exploit cooperation for strate-gic advantage. The use of force in such a situation wouldbe aimed at going on the offensive to sufficiently damagethe opponents own offensive capabilities or to seize posi-tions that can more easily be defended. Finally, crediblecommitment problems can arise from spoiler groups thateither are not part of the conflict bargaining or wouldbenefit from ongoing hostilities (Stedman, 1997; Kydd& Walter, 2002; Lake & Rothchild, 1996). Violencein this case would be intended to eliminate the threatthat such groups pose or to increase the incentives of thetarget actor to self-police affiliated groups.

Against this backdrop of why hostilities typically occur,I focus on three distinct ways for crises to end. First, crisescan end when the actors identify a new distribution of thegoods or issues in question that is mutually preferable toconflict and credibly commit to that via some sort of com-promise settlement. Second, actors might stick to the orig-

inal status quo when they come to realize that the statusquo is actually preferable, even if begrudgingly so, to esca-lating the hostilities. Third, crises will end when one sidehas defeated the other after complete bargaining failure,ultimately leaving little question about relative capabilitiesand minimizing commitment problems.3 I term these

3 On the role of total victory and regime change in resolving crediblecommitment problems, see Reiter (2009) and Lo, Hashimoto &Reiter (2008).

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three different outcomes compromise, stalemate, andvictory, respectively.

Of these three types of ways for crises and conflicts toend, compromise is the most direct indicator of bargain-ing success. Resolution of information problems, audienceconstraints, and commitment problems can lead to anoutcome of compromise and establish a new status quo.In contrast, complete victory indicates a complete inability

to reach an arrangement that is preferable to conflict, asactors largely circumvent the bargaining process and reachan end through coercion. Stalemate is a more ambiguousoutcome because in some cases it may indicate relativebargaining success, as when the actors come to realize thatthe status quo is clearly preferable to fighting. In manyother cases, stalemate indicates continual dissatisfactionwith the status quo, but the actors temporarily stop fight-ing for the sole reason that prosecuting the dispute in thepresent has become undesirable. We can now turn toexpectations about how the UN shapes the rates at whichcrisis actors reach these outcomes.

UN intervention

Types of involvementTo form expectations about what effect the UN can haveon crisis duration, we must first get a sense of what typesof action the UN might take. The UN has a number ofmeans available for managing conflict. For the purposeof limiting the scope of activities, this article focuses onthose activities that involve Security Council or GeneralAssembly resolutions or substantive action by the

Secretary-General. I consider two dimensions of UNinvolvement, which produce four distinct types of UNactions. The first dimension relates to the intendedmechanism of that action as defined by whether theUN is trying to facilitate a negotiated bargain within theexisting set of possible agreements that are mutually pre-ferable to conflict or to increase the costs of conflict andthereby expand the set of possible agreements. When athird party attempts to expand the set of existing settle-ments through such actions as threatening punishments,shaming or militarily enforcing its will, we can say that the

third party is using leverage to make a settlement possible.Intheabsenceofleverage,thethirdpartyistryingtoresolvetheinformation, audience constraint or commitment problemsthrough such actions as fact-finding, mediating,and provid-ingsecurity guarantees. Thesecond dimensionrelates to thesubstance of the involvement, in terms of whether itinvolves what Diehl, Reifschneider & Hensel (1996) termoperational deployment the authorization or implementa-

tion of a monitoring, peacekeeping or emergency militaryforce. This dimension is important to consider since it sepa-rates out types of action in which considerable resourceshave actually been invested from other actions that areeitherrelatively cheap to carry out or that only hold the promise offutureresource investment. In combining these twodimen-sions, four distinct types of UN actions emerge, as seen inTable I.

Starting with the lower row of Table I, the actionsgrouped as diplomatic engagement include thoseinstances of good offices, fact-finding or mediation thatare typically executed by the Secretary-General, special

representatives or ad hoc commissions. The focus ofsuch involvement typically involves improving theinformation environment among the sides such thatthey can more quickly come to understand each othersreservation values and reach a resolution. Diplomaticengagement might also be used as a means for theactors to receive political cover or save face, in thatdomestic audiences can cue off of a mediator to updateexpectations about the prudence of concessions(Beardsley, 2010). The other group of actions thatdoes not include operational deployment is called inti-

midate.

4

These involve instances where the UN callsfor the sides to comply, condemns illegal behavior,threatens force or levies sanctions. The hope is to makethe belligerents perceive that ongoing hostility will bemet by some sort of negative response by the interna-tional community. The intimidating actions can beexplicit, as in direct condemnation, specific threats or

4 This terminology only pertains to the intent of the UN and notwhether the recipient actors are actually intimidated.

Table I. Typology of UN activity

Leverage

No Yes

Operational deployment Yes Assurance Military involvement

No Diplomatic engagement Intimidate

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sanctions. The intimidations can also be implicit, aswhen the UN calls on states to comply with their obli-gations but leaves the consequences of compliance fail-ure open-ended. Such calls for action could imply thatthe non-compliant actors will be called out and shamed,and they can also sometimes be taken to imply that

punitive action will meet such non-compliance.5

Turning to the top row, assurance involves the UNtrying to allow the disputants to feel more comfortablewith a peaceful bargain, through such activity as sendingan observer group or promising a peacekeeping force.Typically, this activity is most necessary when there areimportant commitment problems and security dilem-mas that make the actors reluctant to reach an outcomethey would otherwise prefer to ongoing conflict.Finally, military involvement pertains to when missionsare used to combat further aggression, through the

deployment of UN peacekeeping forces or the author-ization of non-UN multinational military forces. Thisis the most direct way that the UN can increase the per-ceived costs of ongoing conflict by the actors. Like theassurance function, it is also frequently intended to pro-tect the actors from future defections while any settle-ments are implemented.

UN involvement and the pace of conflict bargainingReturning to the discussion above about the differencesbetween crises that end in compromise, stalemate, and

victory, UN involvement should have different effectson the rate at which such outcomes are reached. Theexisting literature provides some conflicting expecta-tions about the relative effectiveness of the differenttypes of third-party involvement. The empirical analy-sis, which distinguishes between UN interventiontypes, is thus useful in adjudicating among these poten-tially competing claims.

The literature is most developed with regard to howthird parties can affect the potential for some sort ofcompromise settlement. Favretto (2009) formallyargues that heavily biased third parties and honest bro-

kers will be most effective in helping disputants resolvetheir bargains the former are able to credibly signal awillingness to enforce peace and the latter are able tofacilitate the exchange of information. One of the

expectations that then emerges is that impartial diplo-matic engagement, such as that by the Secretary Gen-eral or a special envoy, can have the potential toeffectively manage conflict toward compromise. Anumber of empirical studies have also shown that dip-lomatic engagement in the form of mediation can

improve the ability for the actors to either reach a newarrangement or to back down from military hostilities.Beardsley (2008, 2011), Beardsley et al. (2006), Regan& Stam (2000), Wilkenfeld et al. (2005), and Walter(2002) have shown that mediation can improve theability for disputants to reach a negotiated settlement.Rauchhaus (2006) shows that third parties who uselight mediation can improve the ability of actors tode-escalate, and coercive intervention has no significanteffect. The first hypothesis that we can test is that dip-lomatic engagement will tend to hasten the path

toward compromise.

Efficacious bargaining hypothesis:The time until compro-

mise will be shorter after the UN has become involved

in diplomatic engagement.

The literature, however, is not unified in thisexpectation. Smith & Stam (2003) argue that third-party use of mediation alone will struggle to impactthe ability of disputants to converge on a mutuallyacceptable bargain because third parties are generallyunable to credibly convey new information to thesides, especially when a third party like the UN hasa strong preference for peace. The problem of cheaptalk is likely to particularly apply to UN involvementin diplomatic engagement or intimidation. Beardsley& Schmidt (forthcoming) find that UN action ismore strongly driven by a desire to uphold the orga-nizational mission established in its founding Charter namely, to promote peace and stability than it is bymore parochial interests of the permanent-five membersof the Security Council. This means that UN media-tion, especially when carried out by the Secretary-

General or his representatives, has a strong tendencyto value peace as an end in itself with less concern forthe ultimate distribution of the outcome. That is, UNdiplomatic engagement tends to be heavily biasedtoward peace. While extant mediation studies, includ-ing Kydd (2003, 2006), Smith & Stam (2003), andRauchhaus (2006), disagree over whether bias towarda particular side is good or bad for mediation efficacy,a consensus does emerge from this work positing thatthird parties that are biased toward peace will struggleto do anything more than offer cheap talk. From this

5 I leave to future research an assessment on how much the ambiguityof the threat matters in determining further compliance. It is worthnoting that various actors might choose to interpret the implicitthreats in UN resolutions differently, as for example in the US andFrench interpretations of UNSC Resolution 1441 and thejustification for the 2003 Iraq war.




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perspective, the UN is not well suited to succeed indiplomatic engagement or in simple calls for peace.

Smith & Stam (2003) further argue that the only wayfor third parties to help the combatants reach an agreementis through using leverage in the form of peacekeeping toinflate conflict costs. Other empirical studies confirm that

the use of peacekeeping and security guarantees can helpresolve critical barriers to successful bargaining such ascommitment problems and related security dilemmas(Doyle & Sambanis, 2000, 2006; Fortna, 2004a,b; Gilli-gan & Sergenti, 2006; Walter, 2002). Such studies are thusconsistent with a view that military involvement tends todo well in bringing combatants to a stable settlement.6

They could also be used to form expectations regarding theassurance function of the UN if observers and promises ofpeacekeeping can provide sufficient protection againstcommitment problems. Mattes & Savun (2009) have

found that the mere provision of peacekeeping provisionsin a civil war peace agreement can solidify peace. Schultz(2010) has also found that the presence of monitors cango a long way toward assuring combatants.

One expectation from these arguments would thus bethat greater use of military involvement and assurances canlead to faster compromises or stalemates. Disputantswill bemore willing to compromise or settle on the status quowhen they feel less vulnerable to exploitation. Related,UN intervention via military involvement and assurancescan delay the achievement of victory by a side, as whencombatants become less willing to push forward infull combat because the costs of conflict have beenraised. This would result when strong military invol-vement or buffering prevents a side from winning amilitary campaign, as for example when the UNSCmobilized forces in 1950 to keep North Korea fromdefeating South Korea. Just as operational deploy-ments can reduce the risk that actors will be seriouslyexploited after the conflict is over, they can also pre-vent one side from making substantial gains and pre-vent victory during a crisis.

Reduced vulnerability hypothesis:The time until compro-

mise and stalemate will be shorter and the time until vic-

tory will be longer after the UN has engaged in military

involvement or assurance.

Other scholarship has pointed to more direct down-sides to third-party diplomatic engagement. One line

of argument relates to what Richmond (1998) haslabeled as devious objectives of disputants who usepeace processes insincerely to stall. The logic is that dis-putants can sometimes take advantage of lulls in hostili-ties while a third party is actively involved to rearm orregroup so that they can initiate a more successful mili-

tary campaign in the future. Greig (2001) and Beardsley(2009) find some empirical confirmation that this phe-nomenon exists. Toft (2009) also argues that third-party guarantees have limited ability to prevent conflictrecurrence because they typically fail to address the prob-lem of stalling tactics.

When disputants have such insincere incentives tostall, they would best be able to take advantage of diplo-matic engagement because such activity is likely to createthe space in which such rearming could occur while notinvolving monitoring or peacekeeping that would pre-

vent the disputants from succeeding. By its nature, stal-ling can most directly lead to the avoidance of peacefuloutcomes such as compromise or stalemate. On the flipside of this logic, in the long run stalling can also reducethe time to victory when the stalling actor uses the lull inhostilities effectively to catch an opponent by surprisewith its more effective fighting capabilities.

Insincere motives hypothesis:The time until compromise

and stalemate will be longer and the time until victory

will be shorter after the UN has become involved in dip-

lomatic engagement.

There is also a potential downside to the feeling ofsafety that military involvement and assurance can pro-vide. Intrusive third-party involvement in some casesmight interrupt the ability for the protagonists to reacha mutually acceptable bargain (Luttwak, 1999). Comba-tants learn from each other in crisis, and early outsideintervention can cut that learning process short. Earlythird-party involvement in crises can prevent the dispu-tants from learning about each others capabilities orabout each others potential to exploit cooperation. Suchpremature intervention might not only contribute to a

more fragile peace after a conflict has ended, as Werner& Yuen (2005) have found, but it might also lead to lon-ger times until compromise.

Related to the discussion about the potential dangersof early intervention, the UN can create perverse incen-tives by threatening to come to the aid of a vulnerablebelligerent. Kuperman (2008) has argued that third-party intervention can increase the aggressiveness of theprotected actors and make them less willing to makeprudent concessions. Rauchhaus (2009) modifies thisargument and suggests that third parties often face a

6 These studies, however, focus on how the military involvement andassurance roles played by third parties can increase the durability ofpeace after conflict and not whether they improve the ease andpace of settlement.

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commitment dilemma such that a strong commitmentto defend an actor will increase that actors belligerencewhile a weak commitment will increase the potentialfor deterrence failure.7 Even though Kuperman andRauchhaus focus on humanitarian intervention, a similarlogic might apply to any potential UN operational

deployment. Betts (1994) similarly argues that limitedinterventions such as those that tend to result from mul-tilateral institutional bodies should be avoided becausethey tend to block the ability for the disputants to actu-ally resolve their conflict while trying to keep the sidesfrom inflicting too much damage on each other. To theextent that the UN makes the actors feel safe, particularlywhen the UN intervenes to protect weaker parties thatwould otherwise yield ground to a stronger party, it isespecially prone to diminishing the incentives of theactors to move toward compromises and costly conces-

sions. In this regard, Greig & Diehl (2005) argue anddemonstrate that the presence of peacekeeping decreasesthe incentive for the more secure combatants to earnestlyengage in negotiation efforts to end the state of conflict.

As another perverse incentive, even promises of futurepeacekeeping can detract from immediate peacemakinggoals. Such promises might create a limited window forbelligerents strongly resistant to the status quo to makeas many gains as possible before peacekeepers deploy andhinder further challenges. In these ways, the potential existsfor interventions of assurance or military involvement toactually lengthen the time until peaceful settlements.

Premature intervention hypothesis: The time until com-

promise will be longer after the UN has engaged in mil-

itary involvement or assurance.

Turning to a final observable expectation, we mustconsider the unintended impact that the UN can haveon crisis duration through purely procedural effects.UN action might temporarily lengthen the timing ofcompromise simply because peace processes take time,especially in a multilateral setting. Time is needed to set

up meetings and to organize the logistics of monitors orpeacekeepers. For example, major hostilities in the YomKippur War ceased at the end of October 1973, but theGeneva Conference that commenced the disengagementagreements did not occur until late December and thefirst partial disengagement plan was not reached untilJanuary 1974, and all the while the Egyptian Third

Army was surrounded by Israeli forces. This potentialto temporarily lengthen the time to a peaceful settlementapplies specifically to diplomatic engagement, assurance,and military involvement. Simple intimidation does notoften take any procedural time, as it typically involvessinge resolutions targeted at the actors. Note that it is

possible for UN involvement to still improve the peace-making environment even when a temporary proceduraleffect is in play. After an initial lengthening of the peaceprocess, the mechanisms proposed above specific todiplomatic engagement, military involvement, and assur-ance, to the extent that they actually help the actors iden-tify and reach a negotiated settlement, can take over andproduce shorter times until compromise.

Procedural hypothesis:The time until compromise will be

initially longer after the UN has become involved in dip-

lomatic engagement, military involvement or assurance.

Note that none of the above hypotheses have touchedon the role of intimidation from the UN. We shouldnot expect much of an effect on the time until any ofthe outcomes. As discussed above, the UN tends tobe biased toward peace, making any pleas or admoni-tions for peace easy to dismiss as cheap talk. Moreover,the absence of committed resources prevents simpleintimidation from having other effects, for good or forill, on the disputant incentives.

Research design and data

All the hypotheses relate to expectations over the durationof a crisis situation. This requires an event history, or dura-tion, analysis. Using time-varying covariates, I employcompeting-risk models, so that we can look at the timeuntil a crisis ends in compromise, victory or stalemate.A dyad of states becomes at risk for crisis termination atthe start of a crisis and observation ends upon crisis termi-nation. Similar to the analysis in Balch-Lindsay, Enterline& Joyce (2008), the unit of observation is the crisis-day.

Since the data use a discrete-time structure, the modelsare estimated using multinomial logit regression.8 Acubic polynomial of elapsed time is also included inorder to account for duration dependence (Carter &Signorino, 2010).

The definition of international crises comes from theInternational Crisis Behavior (ICB) data (Brecher &

7 Also see earlier work by Snyder (1984), who considers how third-party commitments can prove precarious in affecting the incentivesof the combatants.

8 A Hausman test does not reject the null of independence of irrelevantalternatives, which means that the assumption of conditionalindependence of the various outcomes can be maintained.




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Wilkenfeld, 2000). In these data, an international crisisexists when three criteria are true. First, the actors mustperceive a threat to some basic value such as security orinfluence. Second, there must be some finite time for theactors to address the threat. Third, the actors must perceivethat there is some risk of the escalation of military hostili-

ties. The set of ICB crisis dyads comes from Hewitt (2003),and I have updated this list until 2002.9 The minor dyadsthat are part of the Korean War and Gulf War areexcluded, and the intra-war crises that are part of greaterwars are aggregated together into single crises. I use ICBversion 9 for information about crisis and disputant charac-teristics and only consider those crises since 1946.

The analysis uses original data for information regardingUN involvement events, collected with Holger Schmidt.This dataset, UNIEvents, contains events-level informa-tion on UN activity during ICB crises. The existing ICB

data only include one observation per crisis, which limitsthe ability to assess how third-party involvement like thatof the UN changes the trajectory of belligerent behaviorwithin each crisis. With the events data, time-varying cov-ariates can be incorporated. Events constitute any UNactivity that attempts to shape the trajectory of the disputeand that includes a UNSC resolution, a General Assemblyresolution or substantive action from the Secretary-General. The data identify 50 different types of action thatthe UN might take to manage a crisis situation, and theunit of observation in our new dataset is the event, suchthat we often have multiple observations per crisis.

I have adapted the UNIEvents data for the purposesof the analysis. For tractability, I aggregate the types ofUN involvement into the four categories previewedabove. The first, military involvement, includes theauthorization and deployment of multinational forces, theuse of force by UN-authorized missions, and the deploy-ment, expansion, and strengthening of UN peacekeepingmissions. While multinational forces such as those used inthe first Gulf War, Haiti (1994), and East Timor(INTERFET), are not UN missions per se, I include themas part of UN involvement because their mandates come

directly from UNSC resolutions. In order to separate outmissions that are meant to affect the balance of forces andcosts of conflict from missions that are primarily observa-tional, UN peacekeeping is defined as any mission that isunder the Department of Peacekeeping Operations(DPKO) but that is not limited to observer, monitoringor political functions. Military involvement occurred infive percent of the 275 crises in the data.

Assurance is the second category and is defined as theauthorization and deployment of observer missions, theauthorization and deployment of humanitarian missions,the authorization of peacekeeping missions, and peace-building activities. Observer missions include both civilianmissions and military observer or monitoring missions

under the DPKO. Note also that peacekeeping authoriza-tion is included as part of an assurance action since it isonly the promise of a security guarantee. Peacekeepingdeployment is part of military involvement when it occursduring a crisis since the data here only pertain to activityduring crises, all peacekeeping deployments in these dataare therefore considered military involvement actions.Seven percent of the crises experienced assurance.

The third type of UN action is diplomatic engage-ment, which includes the dispatch of a special represen-tative, the dispatch of a fact-finding mission, the offer of

mediation, and the provision of mediation. These arecases where the UN is actively involved in seeking reso-lution without using tangible leverage. Both offers andthe provision of mediation are included because offersof mediation typically imply that the Secretary-Generalor Special Representative of the Secretary-General areengaging in consultations with at least one of the sidesin dispute. Fourteen percent of the crises in the dataexperienced diplomatic engagement by the UN.

Finally, intimidation is coded as having occurredwhen the UNSC or General Assembly issues a clear callfor actors in crisis to adopt a course of action, condemnsthe crisis actors for their behavior, threatens sanctions ormilitary involvement, or implements sanctions. Each ofthese actions offers some indication of the UNs desirefor the crisis actors to heed the UNs will but does notinvolve operational deployment. Twenty-four percentof the crises experienced some form of intimidation.

With these categories of involvement so defined, theyenter into the analysis in two ways. First, I include asindependent variables counts of the number of actionsof each of the four types that the UN undertakes.Through the course of a crisis, these variables count how

much the UN has been involved in these ways up to thepoint of observation. Since authorizations and deploy-ments typically but not always go hand in hand, thecount variables only increase by 1 at the point of anauthorization when it also is followed by deployment.10

Second, I include a measure of duration since the last

9 Specifically, the data are updated until ICB Crisis 437.

10 Since authorization of peacekeeping is counted as assurance whiledeployment is counted as military involvement, both actions do affectthe respective count variables.

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instance of UN involvement of a particular type in orderto see how the impact of UN involvement changes astime passes. One issue that arises when measuring dura-tion as a simple count of the number of elapsed days isthat the value of 0 may indicate that interventionoccurred on a particular day or it might indicate that

there has not been any intervention yet. To address thisissue, I construct a variable that measures duration simi-larly to how one might measure the dosage of a particulardrug remaining in a subjects system. On the day of aUN action, this measure is equal to 1, and then experi-ences exponential decay with a scaling factor equal to themean crisis length.11 Higher values of this measure thusindicate more recent interventions, while lower valuesindicate less recent interventions. I also include thesquare of this measure, as doing so allows the UN activ-ities to have different effects over the course of their

involvement. Including these variables also allows for therelaxing of the restrictive proportional hazards assump-tion in the Cox model.12

A model as described above produces estimates of theindividual effects of each involvement type while holdingconstant other types of involvement. It is worth explor-ing whether there are some interactive effects whereinvolvement of a certain type might have a differenteffect depending on what else the UN is doing. Specif-ically, it is important to see the effects of diplomaticengagement and intimidation the types of involve-ment that do not involve observational deployment when military involvement is used as well. If one of theshortcomings of both diplomatic engagement and inti-midation is that they face a serious cheap talk problembecause the UN tends to be biased toward peace, thenit is expected that they can more directly affect theincentives of the disputants when there is actually a sig-nificant contribution of resources in accompaniment.Models are thus estimated with the counts and dura-tions of diplomatic engagement and intimidationincluded only when military involvement has previ-ously occurred or is concurrent.

UN involvement does not occur at random andcould be conditioned on the relative difficulty of resolu-tion. To address this problem while not introducingissues related to model dependence, I follow Gilligan& Sergenti (2006) and use matching methods so thatwe can see how crises that experienced UN involvement

differ in trajectory from crises that did not but that aresimilar with regard to a number of factors that shapetheir ex ante ease or difficulty of settlement.13 Specifi-cally, coarsened exact matching is used to balance thedata with respect to the following confounding vari-ables (Iacus, King & Porro, 2012).14 These variables areall expected to affect the durations and outcomes ofcrises because they relate to the underlying levels ofintractability in the disputes.15

A dichotomous variable of whether both sides of thecrisis experienced violence at the onset of their crises is

included as a direct measure of conflict severity. Sincethis measure picks up activity at crisis onset, it does notraise concerns related to the sequence of violence andUN involvement. Another potentially confoundingvariable is the contiguity between the dyadic actors,where contiguity is considered as true if the states sharea border or are separated by less than 450 km of water.Contiguous states simultaneously have greater access toinformation about each other but at the same time facemore of a credible commitment problem, since non-contiguous states can simply withdraw with less fearof surprise attack during disarmament. The next vari-able used in the matching captures the response timesthat the actors had in their crises. When actors take awhile to respond to a crisis trigger, this is an indicationthat they are willing to be more patient in movingtoward resolution. When the actors respond immedi-ately, it is clear that the situation is of utmost priorityand will likely progress quickly. From the ICB data, Irecord the maximum amount of time that either actorused to respond to its crisis trigger. For the coarsening,response times that are less than a week are separated

11 The measure is thus et/c, where tis the time since previous UNaction of a particular type and cis the mean crisis length.12 See Box-Steffensmeier, Reiter & Zorn (2003). Although similar,this is not exactly the same as interacting the involvement variablewith a function of event time, as doing so would conflate informationabout timing and duration. For instance, a high value on a simpleinteraction with event time may indicate that the UN has beeninvolved for a while, or it might indicate that the UN simply inter-vened late in the conflict. Calculating duration as a decay processallows for the separation of these different scenarios.

13 With minor exceptions, the results are similar to those obtainedwhen the confounding variables are simply included as control variables.14 The matching is only able to balance the sample with respect toany UN involvement vs. non-involvement and is not able to furtherbalance based on the type of involvement. The approach taken here isstill useful for testing the hypotheses because the inferences are madewith the reference category being no UN involvement, but futureanalyses can provide refined comparative assessments by more fullyaccounting for the different circumstances in which each involvementtype is more or less likely.15 Beardsley & Schmidt (forthcoming) demonstrate that similarfactors also influence whether and how the UN becomes involved.




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from those that are longer. I also match on whetherthe crises are part of a protracted conflict and whetherthere is an ethnic dimension to the conflict, as bothare observable indicators of intractability. Finally, Imatch on how many crisis actors there are in theoverall crises, which should additionally capture how

difficult the crises are to resolve ex ante. For the coar-sening of this variable, I distinguish between crises thathave just one or two crisis actors and multilateral criseswith more.

After the data are balanced using the coarsened exactmatching, the multinomial logit models are run. Sincethe response times and number of crisis actors were coar-sened and thus not exactly balanced across the cases withand without UN involvement, they are also included ascontrol variables. I also include information regardingthe time from the start of the crisis until the first instance

of UN involvement because timing can have an impor-tant effect on the ability to influence crisis trajectory(Regan & Stam, 2000). The same problem as thatrelated to measuring involvement duration arises, in thata value of 0 when there has not yet been any involvementshould not be the same value as when there is immediateUN involvement. In this regard, I construct a timingvariable that also ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 being imme-diate involvement and 0 being no involvement. Inbetween are the involvements that were not immediateand are calculated by exponential decay with a scalingfactor equal to the mean crisis length. I also include thesquare of this measure to allow for curvilinear effects oftiming. To go along with these timing variables, Iinclude a dummy variable of whether the UN is involvedat all. This allows for movement from 0 to 1 in the countvariables to be distinguished from the mere occurrence ofany UN actions that brings into play these timing vari-ables. Two additional control variables are included torule out other alternative explanations. First, I control forwhether or not one of the sides of the crisis dyad is a per-manent member of the UN Security Council (P-5)because Beardsley & Schmidt (forthcoming) have shown

that P-5 involvement can substantially decrease UNinvolvement in international crises. Second, I control forwhether or not regional security organizations wereinvolved in the crisis, since regional involvement canbe a substitute for UN involvement.

Results and discussion

Tables II and III present the findings of the multinomiallogit models using the data that have been weightedusing coarsened exact matching, with each column

pertaining to the different ways crises can end.16 Model1 includes all the different types of involvement andModel 2 focuses on the impact of diplomatic engage-ment when military involvement is also present.17 ForModel 2, analogous variables for other types of involve-ment are included as well, so that the comparison in both

models is to no UN involvement. An additional modelof the effect of intimidation when military involvementhas occurred could not be estimated because too fewevents with this combination also experienced stalemate.

The values reported are the coefficients interpretedas average treatment effects along with the standarderrors. The coefficients reported in Table II only havelimited utility in portraying the UNs effects on crisisduration because of the inclusion of the quadratic termsand the fact that an increase in the count variables impliesa resetting of the duration variables. Linear-combination

calculations are used to assess how increases in the countsand durations affect the hazard rates together. The fivepanels in Figure 1 depict the substantive findings as rela-tive risks associated with an increase by 1 in the count ofeach type of UN action, as well as different time periodsfollowing such an increase.18 The relative risks are calcu-lated as the ratio between the change in probability of aparticular outcome and the baseline probability.19 Theicons are placed at the average values, and the lines are thepart of the 90% confidence interval that reach toward 0,which helps to gauge whether a relative risk is statisticallysignificant or not.

A number of findings emerge from the results, sug-gesting that there are substantial trade-offs associatedwith various types of UN involvement. The followingdiscussion proceeds by taking up each type of interven-tion in turn. UN interventions that comprise militaryinvolvement activities such as peacekeeping has the mostpositive effect, from the standpoint of peace advocacy,on the timing of victory. In the short and medium runs,

16 The L1 statistics from Iacus, King & Porro (2012) indicate a

moderate amount of imbalance before the matching, with a globalL1 statistic of 0.46, on a scale from 0 to 1. The two highestunivariate L1 statistics pertain to the number of crisis actors (0.17)and the response time (0.13).17 A model with all the different types of involvement and theirinteractions is unwieldy because involvement is captured by boththe number of involvements and a quadratic function of duration;all the interactions would place tremendous demands on the data.18 These effects were calculated after performing the appropriatetransformations from the durations in days to the 0-to-1 measuresof recentness.19 When multiplied by 100, these give the percentage increase ordecrease in the risk of each outcome occurring.

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military involvement substantially lengthens the timeuntil victory and thereby reduces the risk that the crisisactors will fall victim to massive losses. The trade-off hereis that military involvement also lengthens the time untilcompromise. While this fits the mold of a proceduraleffect in which military involvement simply takes timeto put in place, the fact that it still does not have a signif-icant shortening effect at six months indicates that military

involvement tends to shape the incentives such that atleast one of the sides feels prematurely protected from thesting of battle and thus less eager to settle.

We see the potential for perverse incentives more clearlyin relation to assurance. Actions of assurance appear tohave a counterproductive effect on the pace of peacemak-ing. In the short run, they speed up the time until victoryand delay the ability for crises to end in stalemate. In thelong run, they lengthen the time until compromise. Twodownsides to intervention appear to be at work here. In theshort run, assurances such as the promise of peacekeeping

will potentially give the belligerents a deadline in whichthey will feel enticed to make as many gains as possiblebefore the peacekeepers help lock in the status quo. Thishelps explain why the risk of victory is so high after the ini-tial offer of assurances but then falls and does not have astatistically significant effect after a month. The fall in thepropensity for compromise is consistent with the expecta-tion that assurances and military involvement can create an

artificial sense of security that reduces the incentives tomake any progress at the bargaining table. Assurances, likemilitary involvements, tend to lock in periods of simmer-ing hostilities that neither progress toward agreement norrisk falling into total war.

UN activity that involves diplomatic engagement pro-duces trade-offs that are the inverse of military involve-ment. While military involvement tends to delay bothvictory and compromise, diplomatic engagement tendsto hasten both types of outcome in the long run. Thatdiplomatic engagement increases the propensity for

Table II. Multinomial logit models of crisis outcomes after coarsened exact matching

Model 1: Separate types

Compromise Victory Stalemate

Count of assurance 0.221 (0.365) 1.347* (0.716) 0.943 (3.445)

Duration of assurance

25.09** (5.046)

24.09* (12.79) 5.744 (35.33)(Duration of assurance)^2 24.98** (4.945) 24.89** (12.45) 6.803 (30.67)Count of diplomatic engagement 2.056** (0.528) 0.657 (1.098) 1.973 (2.862)Duration of diplomatic engagement 7.564* (3.928) 13.29** (5.664) 1.796 (4.755)(Duration of diplomatic engagement)^2 9.903** (4.101) 13.83** (6.053) 0.968 (4.872)Count of military involvement 0.493 (0.720) 0.708 (0.501) 0.0949 (0.843)Duration of military involvement 7.639 (7.502) 9.169 (10.83) 13.90 (19.16)(Duration of military involvement)^2 10.99 (7.125) 14.49 (11.93) 15.57 (19.40)Count of intimidation 0.0810 (0.109) 0.0790 (0.236) 0.274 (0.586)Duration of intimidation 4.369 (4.843) 17.10** (7.469) 5.495 (12.87)(Duration of intimidation)^2 4.680 (4.933) 16.75** (7.264) 6.211 (12.03)

Any UN involvement 3.108 (3.743) 0.917 (4.419) 6.492* (3.811)Haste of UN involvement 9.201 (9.903) 7.357 (15.16) 20.04 (12.39)

(Haste of UN involvement)^2

6.235 (6.916) 5.708 (11.26) 13.60 (9.669)Contiguity 0.504* (0.264) 1.277** (0.634) 0.655 (0.445)Protracted conflict 0.0625 (0.395) 0.507 (0.608) 1.090** (0.460)Violent trigger 0.927* (0.494) 0.0577 (0.568) 1.707** (0.403)Maximum response time 0.0173** (0.00687) 0.0114* (0.00605) 0.0184** (0.00611)Ethnic conflict 0.289 (0.300) 0.0705 (0.513) 1.206** (0.514)Number of crisis actors 0.396** (0.0938) 0.671* (0.346) 0.388 (0.238)P-5 crisis actor 0.685** (0.253) 0.0414 (0.553) 0.148 (0.403)Regional organization 0.0107 (0.325) 0.689 (0.557) 1.041** (0.385)Elapsed time 0.0131** (0.00375) 0.00702 (0.00620) 0.00273 (0.00281)(Elapsed time)^2 2.00e-05** (8.05e-06) 7.37e-06 (8.81e-06) 1.91e-06 (2.44e-06)(Elapsed time)^3 9.34e-09** (4.70e-09) 2.78e-09 (3.09e-09) 5.01e-10 (3.94e-10)Constant 4.573** (0.695) 6.469** (1.140) 4.997** (0.789)

N 73,211 73,211 73,211*p< .1, **p< .05 in a two-tailed test.




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compromise after three months and victory after twomonths is consistent with both the expectation that thirdparties such as the UN can help reduce uncertaintyand provide political cover and the expectation that somedisputants might use peace processes for insinceremotives. The results are consistent with the notion thatsincere types can use UN involvement to help themidentify and reach difficult compromises while insinceretypes can use the UN involvement to stall until the timeis right to re-engage and push for a more full victory.

The remaining type of UN action, intimidation, does

not have much of an effect on the timing of crisis out-comes. The only effect is that, in the long run, intimida-tion increases the likelihood of victory. One explanationis that when intimidation attempts do provide more thanjust cheap talk, it is when they actually signal that theUN is not willing or able to take more concrete stepstoward peacemaking. So, when the UN has urgedrestraint and then months go by without resolution,actors with relatively strong strategic positions might feelundeterred by international involvement and then goahead and push for a decisive victory.

Another way to see these effects is through counterfac-tual predictions. The 2002 Kaluchak crisis betweenIndia and Pakistan did not include any of the UN invol-vement considered here and ended in stalemate after 186days. If we set the control variables to the same values asthis crisis, we can then ask how the trajectory of the crisismight have been different had the UN become involvedin various capacities at, say, six days into the crisis. Toform such expectations, I use the Clarify software (King,Tomz & Wittenberg, 2000) and generate the predictedprobabilities of each type of outcome at six days, 36 days,

and 186 days.Starting with the impact of military involvement, the

decline in daily risk of victory is quite pronounced as itfalls from 0.18% to 0.003% immediately after deploy-ment and from 0.14% to 0.004% 30 days later. Thedecline in ability to compromise is also quite substantialduring UN military involvement, as it falls from 0.49%to 0.04% immediately after involvement and from0.33% to 0.04% 30 days later. Turning to diplomaticengagement, the likelihood of compromise increases sub-stantially after 180 days when the UN becomes involved

Table III. Multinomial logit models of crisis outcomes after coarsened exact matching

Model 2: Interaction of types


Count of diplomatic engagement

after military inv.

0.907** (0.309) 0.290 (0.437) 1.506** (0.408)

Duration of diplomatic engagementafter military inv.

2.931 (7.133) 15.24* (8.136) 39.22** (9.010)

(Duration of diplomatic engagementafter military inv.)^2

4.056 (7.498) 17.77** (8.387) 42.82** (9.575)

Count of other UN involvement 0.124 (0.0929) 0.157 (0.107) 0.574** (0.250)Duration of other UN involvement 4.005 (3.726) 10.37 (7.492) 32.36** (13.54)(Duration of other UN involvement) 2 3.369 (3.839) 10.39 (7.565) 32.37** (13.71)

Any UN involvement 2.155 (4.527) 2.657 (5.304) 4.364 (4.174)Haste of UN involvement 8.430 (12.37) 5.556 (18.85) 5.830 (14.40)(Haste of UN involvement)^2 6.086 (8.404) 2.789 (14.02) 2.873 (10.36)Contiguity 0.545** (0.253) 1.067 (0.678) 0.675 (0.440)Protracted conflict 0.0706 (0.381) 0.456 (0.559) 1.168** (0.467)

Violent trigger

0.971* (0.504) 0.0231 (0.499) 1.660** (0.385)Maximum response time 0.0159** (0.00666) 0.00472** (0.00179) 0.0196** (0.00655)Ethnic conflict 0.365 (0.311) 0.246 (0.474) 1.165** (0.448)Number of crisis actors 0.378** (0.0953) 0.675** (0.232) 0.402* (0.228)P-5 crisis actor 0.618** (0.240) 0.115 (0.480) 0.122 (0.402)Regional organization 0.0374 (0.333) 0.760 (0.538) 1.076** (0.367)Elapsed time 0.0127** (0.00371) 0.00713 (0.00514) 0.00250 (0.00260)(Elapsed time)^2 1.79e-05** (6.91e-06) 6.52e-06 (5.87e-06) 1.57e-06 (2.03e-06)(Elapsed time)^3 7.68e-09** (3.71e-09) 1.66e-09 (1.66e-09) 5.22e-10 (3.58e-10)Constant 4.482** (0.667) 6.327** (0.994) 4.971** (0.794)N 73,211 73,211 73,211

*p< .1, **p< .05 in a two-tailed test.

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in this capacity from 0.08% to 0.61% but so does thelikelihood of victory from 0.06% to 0.27%. To quan-tify other notable effects, we see that assurance decreasesthe predicted probability of compromise after six monthsfrom 0.08% to 0.002%, and intimidation increases thepredicted probability of victory after six months from0.06% to 0.72%. In hindsight, diplomatic engagement

could have been prudent in this case although not neces-sarily practical because of Indias general resistance tooutside interference. The predicted probability of oneside achieving a substantial victory after diplomaticengagement was still rather small this is true in ahypothetical sense from the probabilities recovered inthis exercise and it is more importantly true in a practical

E

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Figure 1. Relative risks of crisis terminations associated with UN involvement durations.




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sense when considering how costly it would have beenfor either India or Pakistan to achieve major military vic-tory over each other in 2002 and it would have beenworth seeing if diplomatic engagement could haveencouraged compromise instead of the stalemate thateventually resulted.

Turning to Model 2 in Table III, we observe the effectof diplomatic engagement while military involvementwas introduced earlier in the crisis. When accompaniedby the commitment of military resources, diplomaticengagement no longer is associated with a greater pro-pensity for one-sided victory, presumably in part becausethe military deployment helps prevent disputants fromexploiting vulnerabilities while they stall. More dramati-cally, we observe that in the long run diplomatic engage-ment substantially increases the opportunity for crises toend by stalemate the relative risk is greater than 146 at

six months after involvement. This suggests that whilethe military deployment still impedes substantial prog-ress toward compromise, diplomatic engagement can atleast help the actors end the crisis and abide by the statusquo that the UN peacekeeping forces entrench. StrongUN action that is needed to prevent a complete collapsein negotiations appears to benefit from subsequent dip-lomatic engagement that can help the crisis at least moveto some form of conclusion, even if only a stalemate.

Implications and conclusions

The UN can have a number of effects on the duration ofinternational crises, depending on the type of involve-ment. The different relationships for the various typesof UN activity demonstrate the importance of disaggre-gating interventions. Hence, we see direct advantages ofusing a dataset like that of UNIEvents. Further studiesmight disaggregate the activity further to pull out thevarying effects of, say, traditional peacekeeping versusmultidimensional peacekeeping.

Consistent with the existing literature, there are realbenefits but also real risks to UN involvement in interna-

tional crises. Corroborating Betts (1994) and Greig &Diehl (2005), it appears that UN military involvementprevents both victory and compromise from occurring.This is good news when a crisis is prone to degenerateinto massive hostilities but bad news when a crisis wouldlikely progress toward a peaceful settlement in theabsence of such strong involvement.

Diplomatic engagements also exhibit a trade-off asthey accelerate both compromise and victory over time.In the long run, disputants that are sincere in their useof the peace process to resolve their bargains more

efficiently can benefit from UN assistance in facilitatingcommunication and signaling to domestic audiences thatcompromise is prudent. At the same time, disputants thatare insincere can use the peace process to increase theirprospects of victory. That being said, UN involvementin diplomatic engagement can be quite prudent when the

disputants have provided signals regarding their sincerityand when the probability of victory is likely to remain atlow levels even when stalling does occur.

Mere actions of assurance and intimidation appear tohave more downside than upside assurances tend todelay compromise and stalemate while both assuranceand intimidation can hasten victory. Like military invol-vement, assurances can over time remove the incentivesfor the disputants to make progress on resolving theirdisputes. Unlike military deployments, mere assurancestend to produce a perverse short-term effect in which the

promise of peacekeeping or monitoring to come couldencourage the sides to take swift aggressive action beforethe peacekeepers hinder any further changes in the statusquo. Actions of intimidation when followed by lengthycrises can indicate that the international community isnot going to take more substantive action to help preventone side from gaining a substantial upper hand.

Aside from building on existing studies, the researchhas two overarching implications. First, we should notdismiss the UN as irrelevant when it comes to shapingthe dynamics of conflict bargaining. UN military invol-vement in particular has a profound effect on preventingthe sides from achieving victory. When given enoughtime, diplomatic engagement can have rather strongeffects in encouraging compromise, as well as in helpingcrises end in stalemate when UN military involvement hasreduced progress toward full resolution. Second, once werecognize that the UN can strongly shape crisis durations,there is a call for caution in prescribing hasty UN action.Military involvement can delay incentives to compromise,diplomatic engagement and intimidation can increase thepotential for victory in the long run, and assurance cando both. UN involvement is not without side effects, and

the decision to become involved must be made with eyeswide open to both the benefits and risks.

Replication data

The dataset and do-files for the empirical analysis in thisarticle can be found at http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Holger Schmidt, Victor Asal, BirgerHeldt, and the participants of the Folke Bernadotte

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Academy Working Group on Conflict Prevention forinvaluable comments.

Funding

Funding for the coding of the UNIEvents data was pro-

vided by the Folke Bernadotte Academy.

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un intervention and the duration of international crises

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