Foreign Intervention and Political Violence: Examining the Local Causes of Conflict

Abstract

During a civil war intervention, understanding the importance of local-level grievances and interactions is crucial for making policy choices that lead to successful outcomes. However, policymakers often disregard the role of local factors in influencing violence, as making sense of their complexity poses a significant challenge. This dissertation proposes an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that captures the complex interactions between civilians and militants during a conflict, demonstrating their aggregate effects on militant strength and the likelihood of violence. The model is then used to simulate the introduction of different diplomatic, economic, and military intervention strategies to the conflict setting, capturing their effects on violence outcomes. These simulations demonstrate how the arrangement of local grievances and affiliations between civilians and militants can have significant and often unexpected impacts on broader conflict outcomes, possibly reducing the success of foreign intervention. The dissertation builds on these findings by performing explorations of conflict intervention cases in Somalia in 1992, Afghanistan in 2001, and Libya in 2011, examining the role that grievances played in each of these wars and the limited attempts made by foreign interveners to address them. It concludes that intervention may struggle to mitigate violence that stems from local grievances, and may even exacerbate fighting. The best hope for improving conflict outcomes if and when an intervention occurs is through support for traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, which are better equipped to tackle complex underlying grievances at the local level.Doctor of Philosoph