IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hic/wpaper/312.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Third-party diplomacy

Author

Listed:
  • Björn Gehrmann

    (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and German Foreign Office)

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Refugee Crisis in 2015, the political resolution of armed conflicts has gained in importance and urgency at the international level. The German government is a case in point. In this period, it increased its financial commitment to preventing, managing and ending civil wars, including through third-party diplomacy, by a factor of five. However, practical efforts in conflict resolution have been held back, among other things, by an incomplete understanding of the nature of armed conflict, including the lack of a concise theoretical model and an indiscriminate use of the terms “third-party” and “mediation”. Based on a simple contest theory model, this paper presents three generic options for a political resolution of armed conflicts through the involvement of a third party: mediation, persuasion and imposition. This proposition relies on ten insights: (1) Third-party diplomacy is defined as the involvement of equidistant (impartial) and outcome-indifferent (neutral) third parties in the resolution of armed conflict. (2) Warfare - regardless of legal and moral concerns and despite the human suffering it entails - can be an individually profitable strategy for achieving political, economic, group or individual goals. (3) Given a party’s willingness to fight, its ability to fight, measured by its perceived probability of combat success (i.e. the ratio of military capabilities), determines the likelihood of an outbreak of war. (4) Peace is the result of a learning effect of the parties in the course of war and can be interpreted as a stationary equilibrium of military capabilities. (5) A negotiated transition from war to peace is only feasible in a quarter of all conceivable military configurations (endogenous peace). In such cases, conflict parties can contract a mediator to enable an endogenous settlement (mediation). (6) The scenario of a “mutually hurting stalemate”, postulated in the mediation literature as the main metric for conflict “ripeness”, corresponds to only 2.7% of all conceivable military configurations. Endogenous settlements are more likely in situations of one-sided and two-sided weakness (each approx. 11%). (7) In the remaining three quarters of all conceivable military configurations, at least one of the parties to the conflict has no interest in a peaceful settlement. In such cases, third parties may self-appoint as peacemakers (exogenous peace). (8) Through the targeted generation and provision of confidential information, a third party can influence the calculus of the parties to a conflict and create conditions for a peaceful settlement (persuasion). (9) Through credible threats of or imposition of sanctions, or through credible threats of or use of military force, third parties can influence the warring parties' calculus in such a way that they become willing to negotiate (imposition). (10) Market-based third-party diplomacy (mediation) and hierarchy- based third-party diplomacy (persuasion and imposition) are mutually exclusive. Third parties with sufficient (military) capabilities to persuade or impose have a commitment problem that prevents them from successfully competing in the market for mediation mandates.

Suggested Citation

  • Björn Gehrmann, 2019. "Third-party diplomacy," HiCN Working Papers 312, Households in Conflict Network.
    • Handle: RePEc:hic:wpaper:312
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/HiCN-WP-312.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    2. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1995. "Theorizing about conflict," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 165-189, Elsevier.
    3. Pınar Akpınar, 2016. "The limits of mediation in the Arab Spring: the case of Syria," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(12), pages 2288-2303, December.
    4. Williamson, Oliver E, 1973. "Markets and Hierarchies: Some Elementary Considerations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 316-325, May.
    5. Robert Powell, 2004. "Bargaining and Learning While Fighting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(2), pages 344-361, April.
    6. Johannes Hörner & Massimo Morelli & Francesco Squintani, 2015. "Mediation and Peace," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 82(4), pages 1483-1501.
    7. Philippe Aghion & Alberto Alesina & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Endogenous Political Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 565-611.
    8. Dominic Rohner, 2018. "Success Factors for Peace Treaties: A Review of Theory and Evidence," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 18.08, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    9. Kydd,Andrew H., 2015. "International Relations Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107027350.
    10. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Laughren, Kevin & Sheremeta, Roman, 2020. "War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 998-1013.
    11. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Shields, Timothy W., 2014. "When parity promotes peace: Resolving conflict between asymmetric agents," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 96-108.
    12. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    13. Powell, Robert, 2006. "War as a Commitment Problem," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 169-203, January.
    14. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    15. Foster Joshua, 2018. "Wars of Attrition with Endogenously Determined Budget Constraints," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 18(2), pages 1-10, July.
    16. Avinash Dixit, 2009. "Governance Institutions and Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 5-24, March.
    17. Walter, Barbara F., 1997. "The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(3), pages 335-364, July.
    18. Kydd,Andrew H., 2015. "International Relations Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107694231.
    19. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "The Logic of Political Violence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1411-1445.
    20. Goltsman, Maria & Hörner, Johannes & Pavlov, Gregory & Squintani, Francesco, 2009. "Mediation, arbitration and negotiation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1397-1420, July.
    21. Hirshleifer,Jack, 2001. "The Dark Side of the Force," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521009171.
    22. Powell, Robert, 2017. "Taking Sides in Wars of Attrition," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 111(2), pages 219-236, May.
    23. Adam Meirowitz & Massimo Morelli & Kristopher W. Ramsay & Francesco Squintani, 2019. "Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(1), pages 378-418.
    24. Johannes Hörner & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2011. "A war of attrition with endogenous effort levels," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 47(1), pages 1-27, May.
    25. Kyle C. Beardsley & David M. Quinn & Bidisha Biswas & Jonathan Wilkenfeld, 2006. "Mediation Style and Crisis Outcomes," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(1), pages 58-86, February.
    26. Kim, Jin Yeub, 2017. "Interim third-party selection in bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 645-665.
    27. Robert Powell, 2012. "Persistent Fighting and Shifting Power," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 620-637, July.
    28. Jack Hirshleifer, 1999. "The bioeconomic causes of war," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(7-8), pages 457-466.
    29. Matthew O. Jackson & Massimo Morelli, 2007. "Political Bias and War," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1353-1373, September.
      • Jackson, Matthew O. & Morelli, Massimo, "undated". "Political bias and war," Working Papers 1247, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    30. Patrick M. Regan, 1996. "Conditions of Successful Third-Party Intervention in Intrastate Conflicts," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 40(2), pages 336-359, June.
    31. Jack Hirshleifer, 1989. "Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: Ratio vs. difference models of relative success," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 101-112, November.
    32. Debraj Ray & Joan Esteban, 2017. "Conflict and Development," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 263-293, September.
    33. Li, Cheng, 2017. "A model of Bayesian persuasion with transfers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 93-95.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gehrmann, Björn, 2019. "Krieg, Frieden und Mediation - eine wettkampftheoretische Perspektive [War, Peace and Mediation - a Contest Theory Perspective]," MPRA Paper 93645, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Laughren, Kevin & Sheremeta, Roman, 2020. "War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 998-1013.
    3. Dominic Rohner, 2018. "Success Factors for Peace Treaties: A Review of Theory and Evidence," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 18.08, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    4. Coyne,Christopher J., 2020. "Defense, Peace, and War Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108724036.
    5. Desiree A. Desierto, 2018. "Formal models of the political resource curse," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 225-259, August.
    6. Eisenkopf, Gerald, 2018. "The long-run effects of communication as a conflict resolution mechanism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 121-136.
    7. Gries, Thomas & Haake, Claus-Jochen, 2016. "An Economic Theory of 'Destabilization War' '- Compromise for Peace versus Conventional, Guerilla, or Terrorist Warfare," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145617, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. M. Christian Lehmann, 2020. "Aiding refugees, aiding peace?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(5), pages 1687-1704, September.
    9. Thomas Gries & Claus-Jochen Haake, 2016. "An Economic Theory of 'Destabilization War'," Working Papers CIE 95, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    10. Lopez-Uribe, Maria del Pilar & Castells-Quintana, David & McDermott, Thomas K. J., 2017. "Geography, institutions and development: a review ofthe long-run impacts of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65147, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, January.
    12. Hausken, Kjell, 2006. "Jack Hirshleifer: A Nobel Prize left unbestowed," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 251-276, June.
    13. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 2021. "Self-enforcing peace agreements that preserve the status quo," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 148-178.
    14. Herbst, Luisa & Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2017. "Balance of power and the propensity of conflict," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 168-184.
    15. Jin Yeub Kim, 2022. "Neutral public good mechanisms," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-16, April.
    16. Deck, Cary & Sheremeta, Roman M., 2019. "The tug-of-war in the laboratory," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    17. Roman Sheremeta, 2018. "Experimental Research on Contests," Working Papers 18-07, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    18. Rusch, Hannes, 2023. "The logic of human intergroup conflict:," Research Memorandum 014, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    19. Vincenzo Bove & Ron Smith, 2011. "The Economics of Peacekeeping," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Rubin, Jared & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Shields, Timothy W., 2015. "Commitment problems in conflict resolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 33-45.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hic:wpaper:312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tilman Brück or the person in charge or the person in charge or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hicn.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.