What are the effects of foreign interventions in ending civil conflicts, especially when multiple different intervention types are deployed in a given dispute? Research to date has studied the role of third parties exclusively focusing on a single intervention type at the expense of others. The current project breaks with that tradition by proposing an integrative framework that incorporates various intervention types—military, economic, and diplomatic studies—employed in one conflict.
More specifically, it begins with an interdependence model in which earlier external involvements in a conflict inform subsequent ones, demonstrating that interventions used within a civil war are interrelated with one another. Next, using mathematical models, it generates interventionary patterns in which foreign involvements are sequenced according to their chronological orders, integrating multiple intervention types. Finally, it develops an extended form of bargaining model that accounts for how each interventionary pattern influences civil wars by shifting the power distribution as it also reveals private information in regard to the real capacities of warring parties. Most importantly, the new bargaining framework incorporates the asymmetrical aspects of civil wars, enabling to assess how interventions impact conflict outcomes based on the party they are targeted.
Ultimately, the project concludes that external interventions in any form, regardless of its target, end up with increasing opposition’s capacity while undermining incumbent, including, most conspicuously, any state-sided military assistance. The findings overall highlight the asymmetrical implications of foreign interventions in civil wars and the importance of concerted efforts in terminating these conflicts—a result that is undergirded by the incorporation of multiple interventions into the analysis
