The Credible Commitment Problem in the Third-Party Mediation of the Mindanao Peace Process, 1975–2014

Negotiated settlements of civil wars are challenging since incompatibilities take a long time to resolve. Many scholars have approached this puzzle by identifying information asymmetry and commitment problems as critical deterrents to resolution. Similarly, this article argues that third-party mediation could improve or worsen the parties’ credible commitment problems, as illustrated in the Mindanao peace process mediation that spanned almost four decades. Following a contingency framework in analyzing third-party mediation, this article analyzes existing reports, statements, and peace process agreements using a process tracing methodology. The article argues that the success of a peace process could be attributed to how mediation resolves the parties’ credible commitment problems, which are evident in three aspects of the peace process: getting the parties to negotiate, the use of mediator leverage, and the promise of third-party monitoring and enforcement.

Bloody, Intense, and Durable

A growing number of scholars argues that we are witnessing a resurgenceof religion in world politics, accompanied by an increasein religiously inspired conflict. Empirical studies demonstrate thatreligious conflicts are more violent, more intense, more durable, andmore difficult to resolve through negotiated settlements than theirsecular counterparts. In this paper, we argue that these conclusionsare unreliable, because they fail to provide convincing criteria forseparating religious conflicts from non-religious ones. Our mainconcern is with the categorization problem. What characteristics orfactors make a conflict party, conflict issue, or identity religious, andwhat characteristics or factors frame a conflict party, conflict issue,or identity as non-religious? A basic assumption behind much of thisresearch is the contested idea that religion is a universal phenomenonembodied in various forms such as Islam and Christianity. The majorityof scholars simply assume a sharp division between religion andthe secular without problematizing or justifying such a distinction. Inthis article, we argue that religious conflict is an ideologically chargedconcept, and that the study of the religion-conflict nexus reinforcesthe neoliberal status quo and current systems of power.

The effectiveness of mediation and peacekeeping for ending conflict

Mediation and peacekeeping are commonly used tools to manage conflict. To what extent are they complementary and effective instruments for ending violent conflicts? Generally, they are seen as distinct tools: mediation aims to facilitate negotiated settlements, while the goal of peacekeeping is to prevent agreements from collapsing. However, peacekeeping and mediation regularly occur simultaneously. Arguably, peacekeeping operations rely on continuing political processes, while peacekeepers create a context favorable for mediation and provide a valuable source of independent information. Using a variety of model specifications, including selection models, empirical evidence supports that (a) mediation rather than peacekeeping is key to halting hostilities, (b) mediation and peacekeeping are largely complementary, but (c) this complementarity is conditional: in the post-Cold War period, transformative peacekeeping boosted the effectiveness of mediation to halt civil wars. There is no evidence that peacekeeping on its own matters for ending conflict. Finally, counterfactual analysis shows the substantial impact of mediation and peacekeeping on the frequency of conflict.

Causal Pathways of Rebel Defection from Negotiated Settlements: A Theory of Strategic Alliances

While it is widely accepted that negotiated settlements are prone to breakdown, our understanding of the processes through which signatories defect lacks precision. A growing qualitative literature recognizes the potential for rebel group fluidity, yet the conflict field’s converging reliance on dyadic data obscures pathways of defection that result in splintering or merger in quantitative studies. An in-depth case study of a failed peace process in Uganda—which is misclassified in the extant data—helps to illustrate the ways in which excluded groups can lower the opportunity cost of defection for splintering factions, resulting in a strategic alliance. I test the generalizability of this argument against the full sample of rebel parties to settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa (1975–2015) using a large-N qualitative analysis of causal process observations (CPOs). The aggregated results provide strong evidence that the defection-by-alliance pathway is much more prevalent than previously recognized, accounting for more than one-third of all defections in the sample. Where settlements create shared incentives for stakeholders inside and outside the peace process to spoil, rebel elites appear more willing to bear the costs of an alliance with a rival, rather than surrendering under adverse conditions.

International Cooperation and Negotiated Settlements for Transnational Bribery: A Study of the Odebrecht Case

Transnational regulation of bribery involves several increasingly complex forms of cooperation among enforcement authorities. International investigative cooperation allows a foreign authority to assist another on criminal and/or civil investigations, through requests of mutual legal assistance, rogatory letters, as well as joint investigative teams. Sanction-based cooperation helps different authorities to transfer or extradite persons and recover proceeds of corruption to the victims. More recently, there has been a rise in cooperation in negotiated settlements with the accused. Settlement cooperation may entail joint resolutions or the coordination of settlement clauses. This paper focuses on how these three modes of cooperation intersect in cases with successive negotiated settlements. We use the Odebrecht case settlements to unpack the relation between investigative, sanction-based, and settlement cooperation in three case studies: the joint resolutions between the company and Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States, as well as two local agreements with the Dominican Republic and with Peru. We evidence how these modes of cooperation can reinforce or undermine one another. Beyond illustrating different cooperation dynamics, we also explore the role of sequencing. The existence of a previous joint resolution affects the developments of the subsequent agreements, but in different ways from those previously mapped by the literature.

Please Help Us (or Don’t): External Interventions and Negotiated Settlements in Civil Conflicts

How do different types of external intervention affect the likelihood of a negotiated settlement in civil conflicts? Drawing on the negotiation literature, which shows that the nature of the parties’ “best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA)” influences the bargaining process between them, we argue different types of intervention affect governments’ and rebel groups’ BATNAs in different ways. This, in turn, affects the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. To test this argument, we address the fact that interventions are nonrandom, and that characteristics of civil conflicts that lead to different types of intervention also influence the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. We therefore use a two-stage statistical model. The first stage predicts the likelihood of different types of intervention, and drawing on those results, the second stage analyzes the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. The results provide insights into how different types of intervention affect civil conflict outcomes.

Shaking Hands with the Internal Enemy: Democracy and Civil Conflict Settlement

How does regime type affect the likelihood of negotiated settlements that end civil conflicts? A limited number of previous studies have offered divergent theories and mixed findings about whether democracy is an asset or a liability. I draw these disparate findings together and present a novel theory on why leaders under fully democratic and autocratic regimes may have a particularly difficult time in peacemaking, and how leaders in anocratic (hybrid) regimes are more likely to be successful in reaching negotiated settlements. Thus, I hypothesize that the relationship between regime type and the likelihood of conflict-resolution is inverted U-shaped. I test this hypothesis using data on all internal conflicts between 1946 and 2014, and find empirical support. The findings suggest that even if anocracies are more prone to the outbreak of civil wars as has been proposed by previous studies, they are also better at settling these conflicts.

Negotiating Sacred Grounds? Resolving Islamist Armed Conflicts

Under what conditions can Islamist armed conflicts be resolved through peace negotiations? Armed conflicts involving Islamist groups have emerged as one of the most pressing challenges on the global agenda for peace and security. But the track record of conflict resolution in these settings is not encouraging. While armed conflicts have generally decreased in the post-Cold War period, as many prolonged civil wars were resolved through negotiated settlements, this has not been true to the same extent for this sub-category of conflicts. Yet, we know surprisingly little about why this is the case. The purpose of this thematic issue is to address this gap. Each contributor tackles a different angle of the overarching research problem.