Third-Party State Domestic Politics and

Conflict Management During Interventions

into Civil Conflicts∗

Christopher Linebarger, The University of Texas at El Paso

Andrew J. Enterline, University of North Texas
Steven R. Liebel, Colorado State University–Pueblo

Objective. When do third-party states engaged in military support of civil war governments
resort to conflict management, such as negotiation or mediation, with rebels? Current research
underemphasizes the role of third-party state domestic conditions as precipitating the resort to
conflict management. To do so, we formulate two explanations linking third-party state domestic
politics to conflict management with rebels: (1) gambling for resurrection, in which a weak third-
party state leader eschews conflict management in the pursuit of a victory that will rehabilitate
his or her political survival; and (2) cutting losses, in which a weak third-party leader resorts to
conflict management to reduce the domestic political costs associated with continued fighting.
Method. We identify a sample of 32 civil conflicts during the 1960–2004 period in which a
third-party state deploys troops to defend a central government against a rebellion. We code the
timing of negotiation and mediation offers between the third-party and the rebels. We then rely
on third-party state economic conditions as a barometer of the political survival that shapes the
third-party’s resort to conflict management. Results. A logit analysis supports the cutting losses
expectation that third-party states seek conflict management when political survival at home is
at risk. Conclusion. The analysis underscores the necessity of incorporating the domestic politics
of third-party states in studies of interventions into civil wars and conflict management attempts
therein.

The central governments of states experiencing civil war frequently seek out and receive
support from third-party states in the form of diplomatic, economic, and military aid. In
some cases, these third-party states become deeply engaged in defending central govern-
ments from overthrow, dispatching military personnel to train, support, and even fight
alongside the government. Although military victory is publicly pursued by third-party
benefactors, these states sometimes sanction conflict management with rebels, including
efforts at negotiation and mediation. Anecdotal cases suggest that third-party political
leaders are sensitive to domestic politics when deciding to sanction conflict management.
For example, during the Vietnam War, Presidents Johnson and Nixon escalated hostilities
to avoid the appearance of failure when they were politically insecure in 1964 and 1972,
respectively (Downs and Rocke, 1994; Levite, Jentleson, and Berman, 1992). For both
leaders, negotiations occurred only after the insecurity of their positions was resolved.

∗
Direct correspondence to Christopher Linebarger, National Security Studies Institute, The University of
Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University, Kelly Hall 219, El Paso, Texas 79968 cdlinebarger@utep.edu. All data
and replication files are available from the corresponding author upon request. Online appendix available at:
clinebarger.weebly.com. The authors thank the participants of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Peace Science
Society in Oxford, MS, and Christina Schatzman for advice on economic indicators.
SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 99, Number 2, June 2018

C 2017 by the Southwestern Social Science Association
DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12426
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 745
In the following article, we focus on this shift by third-party benefactors from war fighting
to conflict management during military interventions into civil conflicts. In doing so, we
investigate the following question: When do third-party states engaged in military support of
civil war governments resort to conflict management, such as negotiation or mediation, with
rebels? To answer this question, we draw on political economic models of foreign policy
anchored to the domestic political survival of state leaders to examine the role of third-party
domestic politics in decisions to resort to the tools of conflict management.
To date, scholarly literature on third-party state intervention into civil conflicts places
little emphasis on third-party domestic politics as a key factor in conflict management.
Rather, this research emphasizes other third-party-related effects, such as international
rivalry between third parties, proxy war, and defense by third parties of ethnic kin (Balch-
Lindsay and Enterline, 2000; Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, and Joyce, 2008; Saideman, 2002).
Moreover, third-party conflict management is traced primarily to conflict-specific condi-
tions, such as duration and intensity of civil conflicts, shifts of fortune on the battlefield,
and the number and distribution of international actors engaged in a conflict (Cunning-
ham, 2010; Greig, 2014; Greig and Regan, 2008; Mason and Fett, 1996; Regan, 2000a,
2002). However, domestic conditions figure centrally in the study of foreign policy (Bueno
de Mesquita, et al. 2003). For instance, domestic political events and international con-
flicts are entwined, manifesting in rally effects, diversionary war, and domestic political
risk or partisanship (James and Oneal, 1991; Fordham, 2002; Koch and Sullivan, 2010;
Meernik and Waterman, 1996). Additionally, extant research links conflict casualties re-
sulting from interventions abroad with American public opinion and domestic political
risk taking (Baum and Groeling, 2009; Berinsky, 2009; Eichenberg, Stoll, and Lebo, 2006;
Gelpi, Reifler, and Feaver, 2007; Regan and Henderson, 2002). Collectively, this research
underscores the key role of domestic politics in strategic decisions by third parties engaged
in foreign policy.
Briefly, we formulate the following explanations linking third-party state domestic pol-
itics, and specifically weak political survival resulting from poor economic conditions, to
negotiation or mediation with rebels: (1) “gambling for resurrection,” in which a weak
third-party state leader eschews conflict management in the pursuit of a victory that will
rehabilitate its political survival; and (2) “cutting losses,” in which a weak third-party
leader resorts to conflict management to reduce the domestic political costs associated with
continued fighting thereby bolstering the leader’s political survival. We undertake an em-
pirical analysis of 32 third-party interventions with military personnel in support of civil
war governments for the period 1960–2004. Our results suggest support for the “cutting
losses” argument, with third-party states resorting to conflict management when domestic
economic conditions are poor.
The remainder of our inquiry is structured as follows. First, we consider extant research
on the role of third-party states in civil conflicts and the resort to conflict management,
followed by the formulation of our theoretical expectations. In turn, we formulate a
research design anchored to the aforementioned 32 interventions by third-party states in
defense of central governments during the 1960–2004 period. Thereafter, we employ logit
analysis to test our expectations. Relying on our empirical estimates, we then simulate the
likelihood of negotiation in two contemporary cases: Russian intervention in Syria and
American intervention in Iraq. We conclude with a discussion of the broader implications
of third-party domestic politics for the study of foreign civil wars.
746 Social Science Quarterly
Literature Review

The study of the relationship between domestic political support for policy officials and
foreign policy is extensive. One emphasis in this large body of research concerns the long-
standing inquiry into the “rally effect,” whereby American presidents gain public support
during episodes of force abroad. Evidence in favor of such rallies is decidedly mixed (Oneal
and Bryan, 1995). For example, Baker and Oneal (2001) find that the rally effect in favor of
the president depends upon media portrayals, Chatagnier (2012) argues that rallies depend
on the level of ambient trust in government, and Oneal and Bryan (1995) find that the av-
erage size of the rally effect is decidedly small during the period 1950–1985. Along similar
lines, evidence for the diversionary theory of war, which proposes that political leaders start
crises in foreign policy to distract from domestic political and economic conditions at home,
is also mixed and contingent on a variety of intervening factors (DeRouen, 2000; Fordham,
2002; Meernik and Waterman, 1996; Mitchell and Moore, 2002; Ostrom and Job, 1986).
Research also examines the relationship between civil conflict processes and domestic
events in a third-party intervener (Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson, 1995; James and Oneal,
1991). Although rally effects may provide an initial motivation for a military intervention,
the maintenance of public support over time is difficult. As the costs in terms of blood
and treasure increase over the course of the intervention, it becomes more likely that the
public, the media, and partisan elites, particularly within democracies, begin to question
the utility of the intervention. Information on these costs then becomes deeply involved
in questions of democratic accountability (Berinsky, 2009; Gartner, Segura, and Barratt,
2004; Groeling and Baum, 2008; Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, 2006; Koch, 2009; Koch and
Sullivan, 2010). In fact, these domestic forces often lead democracies to be increasingly
likely to abandon a war effort the longer it endures (Bennett and Stam, 1998). Although
autocracies might occasionally remain committed to a war effort that a democracy would
otherwise cease supporting (Goemans, 2000), it is necessary to note that autocracies are
frequently subject to the same concerns, with leaders finding that domestic support is a
diminishing resource. They may even initiate diversionary uses of force in the same manner
as democracies (Kisangani and Pickering, 2007; Pickering and Kisangani, 2010; Weeks,
2008).
Additional research suggests that as political leaders find their domestic support ebbing,
they are faced with an incentive to “gamble for resurrection,” or the incentive to double
down on a military intervention in the hope that they can seize victory from the jaws of
defeat (Downs and Rocke, 1994). The “surge” of American military forces in Iraq in 2007
is an example of such, whereby U.S. President George W. Bush significantly increased
deployments to Iraq in the face of an insurgency that had already cost his party control
of the Congress. Yet, at the same time, some states may simply try to avoid the continued
domestic costs associated with a foreign intervention, as was arguably the case for the Soviet
Union during its experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
This emphasis on the ways in which states terminate their interventions naturally leads
to a focus on conflict management, and the manner in which third parties to a civil conflict
negotiate an end to hostilities. Civil conflicts are notable for their intractable nature, a trait
arising from the fact that combatants must coexist once hostilities end. Yet, prolonged civil
conflict engenders issues of credible commitment such that successful conflict management
may only take place after the combatants have descended into a mutually hurting stalemate
(Walter, 1997; Zartman, 1989).
From this point of departure, research examines the relationship between the timing
of conflict management and the duration of conflict; specifically, several studies find that
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 747
cumulative offers to mediate are associated with an increased likelihood of success in
future mediation (Regan and Stam, 2000; Greig, 2005; Greig and Regan, 2008). However,
offers to engage in conflict management, particularly those emanating from a third-party,
are intimately tied to domestic politics. Indeed, Regan (2000b) shows that American
decisionmakers change their intervention strategies depending upon their domestic political
risks and that these risks are, in turn, influenced by the level of attention the public pays
to a particular conflict. Thus, intervention choices and conflict management strategies
are substitutable. Policymakers are able to achieve their goals using a variety of different
strategies, with such choices often selected such that the leader avoids domestic trouble
(Clark and Reed, 2005).
In our theory, therefore, we draw on the logic linking the domestic politics of third-
party states with policy choices during interventions into civil conflicts. Much of the prior
work tends to focus on publics within democracies, or even upon the American context
exclusively, and we wish to expand the exploration of this linkage. Specifically, we examine
the role of domestic politics—largely in terms of fluctuations in economic conditions at
home—in decisions by third-party states, both democratic and nondemocratic, to resort
to conflict management during interventions in support of civil war governments. In the
following section, we develop a theoretical argument tying domestic economic performance
in third-party intervening states and the resort to conflict management.

Theory

Our expectations are grounded in the domestic politics of government accountability and
its relationship to policy choices regarding national security (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al.,
2003; Croco, 2011; Goemans, 2000; Chiozza and Goemans, 2011; Weeks, 2008). The
most prominent argument in this line is that of the selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita
et al., 2003), which proposes that political leaders seeking to retain power must distribute
goods to their winning coalition, with such goods including the national security and vic-
tory in war. Indeed, the “gambling for resurrection” argument proposes that a government’s
constituents have an abiding interest in ensuring competent decisions in this area. Unfor-
tunately, citizen demands for accountability are complicated by principal-agent problems
arising from the fact that they lack crucial information on foreign policy decisions. Govern-
ments and citizens thus face different incentives: citizens wish for governments to accede
to their wishes, but lack the information to hold leaders accountable, whereas governments
are able to pursue policies under conditions of limited accountability. Democracies attempt
to solve this conflict of interests with institutional mechanisms such as elections, while less
democratic system leaders face more violent forms of accountability, such as coups d’ etat
(Downs and Rocke, 1994).
Two major implications arise from this logic. First, because citizens lack information
on the advisability of international conflict, they must attempt to judge its character by
how outcomes play out on the battlefield. Second, leaders facing imminent removal from
office have nothing to lose by escalating or extending the conflict on the chance that such
a strategy will produce victory, convincing the citizenry of their competence. In other
words, the political leader gambles for resurrection, hoping to snatch victory from the jaws
of defeat (Downs and Rocke, 1994:363–64). Several insights about international conflict
have been derived from this logic of gambling for resurrection. Croco (2011), for example,
finds that domestic constituencies will punish leaders culpable for initiating a war and then
proceeding to lose it, yet they will forego such punishment for nonculpable leaders who
come into power mid-conflict.
748 Social Science Quarterly
Thus, it is governmental insecurity that partly explains patterns of war and peace. Insecure
leaders at risk of being turned out of office are more likely to double-down in warfare, or
gamble for resurrection (Chiozza and Goemans, 2011). This approach modifies some of
the most prominent explanations for war. The bargaining model of war (e.g., Slantchev,
2003), for example, contends that so long as war is costly there is always a settlement that
efficiently divides the issue under dispute. Yet, as the gambling logic elucidates, leaders
are sometimes able to derive positive utility from conflict (Goemans, 2000; Chiozza and
Goemans, 2011).
With respect to the subject at hand, Levite, Jentleson, and Berman (1992) argue that the
public’s impatience and its demand for competence is a defining characteristic of third-party
interventions. Because domestic politics and performance in war are so closely connected,
leaders of third-party states face significant incentives to gamble for resurrection. Indeed,
throughout the literature it is commonly noted that attempts at negotiation are just as dan-
gerous to the tenure of incumbent governments as actual defeat in war. Negotiations signal
to the citizenry that the original decision to intervene was a poor one. Therefore, citizens
will punish governments not only for their own actions, but also in the hope that future
decisionmakers will be deterred from similar kinds of behavior (Downs and Rocke, 1994).
Political leaders in third-party states, therefore, must be concerned by the appearance
of incompetence, deteriorating economic conditions at home, the continuing pursuit of
foreign policies at odds with the values of the citizenry, or disruptions in the supply of public
goods. Weakly performing governments are unlikely to bargain with insurgents because
doing so would be an admission of defeat and perhaps reflect upon the advisability of the
original decision in favor of intervention. Collectively, the resort to conflict management
would signal the death knell in terms of political survival under political conditions already
fraught with peril. From this discussion, we hypothesize as follows:
Hypothesis 1: Gambling for Resurrection. The weaker the third-party state political leader is
domestically, the less likely the third party is to resort to conflict management.
The logic of gambling for resurrection contrasts significantly from the conventional
wisdom on negotiation. Ordinarily, scholars characterize negotiations specifically, and
conflict management generally, as part of a bargaining process (e.g., Fearon, 1995). Within
this framework, wars and other conflicts occur due to uncertainty over the expected utility
of fighting over a contentious issue. In turn, uncertainty generates a problem in which
neither side is able to credibly commit to peace. This commitment problem creates an
incentive whereby it is in the interests of the belligerent parties to initiate conflict and to
continue fighting (Walter, 2002).
Following the onset of conflict, the tides of battle shift the benefits and the costs of war in
one direction or another and the belligerents update their respective utilities for continued
fighting. So long as the probability of victory remains high, and so long as the benefits
are sufficient, each side will decide to remain at war. The possibility of a peaceful solution
only occurs if this utility calculation is altered; that is to say, once it becomes clear that
the utility of fighting has been miscalculated or else the conflict has stretched in duration
beyond a faction’s ability to pay the costs. The challenge for any given faction, then, is to
delay that moment and avoid a premature settlement in which unfavorable concessions
might be extracted (Slantchev, 2003).
Unfortunately, absent a military victory, these kinds of calculations may considerably
lengthen a conflict, even if it becomes clear that neither of the belligerents are able to achieve
victory. This condition, referred to as a mutually hurting stalemate, is widely considered to
be a necessary condition for conflict management. Even if the belligerents lack trust in one
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 749
another, their stalemated conflict is “ripe” for resolution by a third party (Zartman, 1989).
International organizations and third parties may credibly commit to peacefully ending
the conflict through negotiation, mediation, and the deployment of peacekeepers in a way
that guarantees the peace (Regan, 2000a).
Despite the fact that the bargaining logic is a well-known formulation, foreign military
intervention in a civil conflict designed to support a central government is a special case
that is little explored. Rebel movements in such cases face considerable asymmetries. Their
military power is generally far less than that of the incumbent government, and this condi-
tion is only exacerbated by the presence of foreign troops. Rebel incentives, therefore, are to
pursue unconventional strategies of war, refusing to engage the government or the foreign
power on their own military terms. Unconventional warfare of this type is designed to in-
crease the duration of a conflict beyond a third party’s patience and ability to pay the costs.
This is particularly true given that foreign powers rarely have vital interests at stake, whereas
the rebels are in a fight for their very existence (Liebel and Enterline, 2014; Mason and Fett,
1996). Thus, if a rebel movement is able to withstand the onslaught of foreign-supported
central government, then the foreign state may attempt to cut its losses given that few of its
vital interests are at stake (Liebel and Enterline, 2014). This asymmetry of interests was co-
gently captured by former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “The conventional
army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose” (Kissinger, 1969:214).
Failing to win in the face of an asymmetry of interests has important consequences for
the domestic politics of the foreign military power. Research suggests that the costs of
protracted conflict seriously influence public opinion and erode the support for public
officials in democratic countries, increasing the likelihood that members of a government’s
support base will defect to the opposition (Gartner, Segura, and Barratt, 2004). Even
autocratic leaders must at times face the possibility that serious losses in war undermine
their credibility with supporters and impair their ability to deliver public goods (Goemans,
2000; Weeks, 2008).
History is replete with examples of leader turnover occurring because foreign warfare
has impaired the provision of public goods. Combined with heightened inflation brought
about by increased spending during conflict (Fordham, 2003), and subsequent weaknesses
in public support for public officials (Bellucci and Lewis-Beck, 2011), politicians face
stark choices as war continues. During the Vietnam War, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson
found that spending for his domestic priorities—including “Great Society” programs such
as Medicare—were crowded out by the expanding war in Southeast Asia. More recently,
President George W. Bush faced a similar conundrum when the travails of the Iraq War
complicated his efforts to reform the Social Security program in 2005. In both cases,
successors to the presidency, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama, came to power promising
a renewed commitment to the provision of public goods.
In sum, third-party interventions are often characterized as “wars of choice” by third-
party publics, but are of great interest to incumbent officials. Therefore, the value of
continued intervention is highly sensitive to shifts in domestic support (Haass, 2009).
From this discussion, we would therefore expect that, contrary to the gambling for resur-
rection perspective, the politically weakest and most vulnerable third-party governments
should pursue strategies that would facilitate disengagement from the civil conflict. These
governments are highly vulnerable to defection by constituents and control extremely
fragile governing coalitions. As such, weak third-party state leaders are motivated to “cut
losses” by way of resorting to conflict management. Given this logic, we posit the following
hypothesis:
750 Social Science Quarterly
Hypothesis 2: Cutting Losses. The weaker the third-party state political leader is domestically,
the more likely the third party is to resort to conflict management.

Research Design

To construct our sample of third-party state interventions and their defense of civil
war governments, we rely on the standard definition of armed civil conflict; that is, one
in which an organized rebel group, or groups, fight against a state central government
resulting in 25 or more annual battle deaths (Themn´er and Wallensteen, 2012). Because
it is possible for civil conflicts to involve multiple rebel groups, and for third parties to
only intervene against a subset of these groups, we make use of data with dyadic qualities,
pairing organized rebel groups with the state governments against whom they fight. Such
dyadic data are contained in the Non-State Actor (NSA) data (Cunningham, Gleditsch,
and Salehyan, 2009; Cunningham, 2013). The NSA data facilitate the identification of
conflicts in which third parties intervene on behalf of the government, to focus on those
cases in which the third party contributes troops to the intervention, and to further exclude
those cases in which assistance is merely alleged. We identify 32 cases in the NSA data in
which third-party states intervene against specific rebel groups during the period 1960–
2004. The sample of cases is reported in the Appendix in Table 12. The sample of 32
interventions reflects 178 intervention years.

Dependent Variables

We operationalize two manifestations of conflict management: negotiation and media-

tion. Negotiation is defined as “the process of combining divergent viewpoints to produce
a common agreement” (Zartman, 2008:14). We follow in this reasoning by identify-
ing instances of negotiation offers in which the third party intends to produce a com-
mon agreement on the outcome of the conflict. We rely on several sources to generate
such new data as our theory requires, including the Civil War Mediation (CWM) data
(DeRouen, Bercovitch, and Pospieszna, 2011), the narratives contained in the NSA data,
the UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia (UCDP, 2012), and information contained in the Liebel
and Enterline (2014) study of negotiations with insurgents. Based on this information,
we operationalize the binary variable Negotiation Offer, which we code a value of “1” in
those intervention years in which the third-party state offers to negotiate with insurgents
and “0” otherwise. Within the 1960–2009 interval Negotiation Offer is coded “1” in 32
observations, representing 17 percent of the intervention years.
We operationalize instances of mediation similarly. Zartman (2008:155) defines media-
tion as “a form of third party intervention . . . not based on the direct use of force . . . its
purpose is to bring the conflict to a settlement that is acceptable to both sides and consistent
with the third party interests.” We therefore follow Bercovitch (2004), Zartman (2008),
and Liebel and Enterline (2014) and create the variable Mediation Offer, reflecting inter-
vention years in which the third party offers to mediate between rebellious and governing
factions in a civil war. This variable is coded “1” when this occurs, and “0” otherwise. There
are 26 separate offers of mediation in the data. Within the 1960–2004 interval, Mediation
Offer is coded “1” in 26 observations, representing 15 percent of the intervention years.
Each conflict management attempt in our data is listed in the Appendix.
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 751
Independent Variables

Domestic Political Weakness. To operationalize third-party state domestic political

weakness, we rely on those conditions that are often argued to coincide with said weakness.
Research suggests that inflation rates are intimately related to executive political popularity
(Bellucci and Lewis-Beck, 2011). Indeed, economic deterioration, as measured by increases
in inflation rates, is directly related to not only decreases in the political popularity of elected
leaders (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000), but to their potential removal from office given
economic voting (Lewis-Beck, 1990). Much of the literature on the diversionary use of
force also makes the argument that economic factors are causally entwined with decisions
to use force. As domestic economic growth slows or inflation rises, political executives may
become tempted to use force abroad (Meernik and Waterman, 1996; Ostrom and Job,
1986). Therefore, we operationalize the variable Inflationt by relying on the World Bank’s
World Development Indictors measure of “Inflation, consumer prices (annual percent).” If
the estimated coefficient on Inflationt is positive, then we can conclude that the leader of
the third-party state is less secure politically and more likely to pursue conflict management,
thus supporting Hypothesis 2. Alternatively, if the coefficient is negative, then the inverse
is true and Hypotheses 1 is supported. Further discussion and justification of this variable
can be found in the Appendix.

Controls. We specify a set of control variables that are selected according to the logic of
the bargaining model of war (e.g., Walter, 2009), in which the timing of conflict manage-
ment is governed by conditions that render a conflict “ripe for resolution” (Zartman, 1989).
First, research demonstrates that the complexity of the conflict directly affects the timing of
conflict management. Cunningham (2010) shows that as third parties in civil war prolifer-
ate, competing agendas are introduced into the conflict. Each party with a separate agenda
then becomes akin to a veto player, and is able to delay bargaining in the hope of securing
satisfaction of the party’s own agenda. In this way, third-party states might deliberately sab-
otage conflict management and thus make Negotiation Offer or Mediation Offer less likely.
To control for these possibilities, we operationalize the variable Number of Third Parties,
which identifies the frequency of the number of states that have committed troops to the
government in a given civil war. This variable is extracted from the Non-State Actor (NSA)
data, which provide information on the number and identity of third-party interveners.
Second, a similar logic applies the fragmentation of the rebel movements. Pearlman
and Cunningham (2012) show that disjointed insurgencies directly affect the evolution
of the conflict process. As rebel movements fragment, governments are able to pursue a
“divide and conquer” strategy with respect to their negotiations. States and third parties
might select a rebel movement that they perceive as “moderate” and open negotiations
with said movement. This strategy has the effect of isolating the more radical members
of the insurgency, and allowing a government to claim a kind of victory. To account for
this process, we operationalize the variable Fragmented Rebels, which we code “1” in those
civil wars in which the third-party intervener faces more than one rebel movement and
“0” otherwise. This variable is obtained from the PRIO/UCDP Armed Conflict Dataset
(Themn´er and Wallensteen, 2012).
Third, the institutional and political environment of the third party has important
implications for the inclination to engage in conflict management during an intervention.
If a third-party leader anticipates a regular transition to an elected successor and a peaceful
retirement, then policies may be pursued relatively free from the concern that policy failure
will result in a loss of life or limb. On the other hand, if leaders fear a violent transition
752 Social Science Quarterly
TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics

Variable Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Negotiation Offer 0.17 0.38 0.00 1.00

Mediation Offer 0.15 0.35 0.00 1.00
Inflationt 26.6 62.04 −9.78 373.82
Number of Third Parties 0.89 0.31 0.69 1.79
Fragmented Insurgency 0.12 0.33 0.00 1.00
Leader Tenure 0.95 0.46 0.00 1.51
Time to Intervention 0.54 0.44 0.00 1.49

or coup, then they must shape policies to avoid such consequences (Downs and Rocke,
1994; Chiozza and Goemans, 2011; Goemans, 2000). To control for these effects, we
operationalize the variable Leader Tenure, which counts the number of years in office for
each third-party state leader in each intervention year. Leader Tenure is derived from the
Achigos data set on political leaders (Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza, 2009).
Last, we specify a variable called Time to Intervention, which counts the number of
years between the onset of civil war and the onset of the third party’s intervention. This
variable accounts for the fact that civil wars grow increasingly difficult to “win” as they
persist (Brandt et al., 2008). The longer a conflict persists with no side achieving victory,
the more likely a hurting stalemate is to occur, thus increasing the likelihood that conflict
management attempts will be made. Table 1 reports the descriptive statistics of each of the
variables in our model. All variables that are frequencies are transformed with the natural
log.

Analysis

Hypothesis Tests

To test our hypotheses, we estimate logit models with robust standard errors clustered
by third-party intervention. To account for temporal dependence in the data, we include
a count of years between each Negotiation Offer or Mediation as well as three cubic splines.
Robustness tests and model diagnostics are found in the Appendix. Table 2 reports the
results of the logit estimations. Models 1 and 2 report the results for the analysis of
negotiation and mediation, respectively. Several patterns are immediately apparent in Table
2. In particular, the coefficient for Inflationt, our main variable of theoretical interest, is
statistically discernable from zero and positively signed in both models, thereby indicating
support for the cutting losses hypothesis (Hypothesis 2). The story suggested by these
findings is that third-party state political leaders retreat into the loss-cutting logic of
divorcing themselves from involvement in conflicts in which the benefits of continued
involvement are unclear, but the costs are direct and politically palpable.
With respect to the control variables, Number of Third Parties is significant, and weakly
so, only in Model 2. This suggests that negotiations and mediations differ in important
ways, with third parties more likely to offer mediation when they participate in more
complex interventions featuring a multitude of actors. By contrast, the variable Fragmented
Insurgency is significant for Model 1, and proportionally large with respect to the other
coefficients. This finding sheds some important insight upon the conflict management
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 753
TABLE 2
Third-Party State Negotiation and Mediation Offers (Logit Models)

Variable Negotiation (Model 1) Mediation (Model 2)

Inflationt 0.01∗∗ 0.01∗∗

(0.00) (0.00)
Number of Third Parties 1.19 1.64+
(0.95) (0.86)
Fragmented Rebels 3.22∗∗∗ 0.26
(0.54) (0.75)
Leader Tenure 0.78 1.05∗
(0.74) (0.49)
Time to Intervention −1.99∗∗ −1.22
(0.71) (0.86)
Time Between Negotiation/Mediation Offers 0.07 0.62
(0.50) (0.48)
Spline 1 0.00 0.01∗∗
(0.01) (0.00)
Spline 2 0.01 0.07∗
(0.05) (0.03)
Spline 3 −0.01 −0.04∗∗
(0.03) (0.01)
Constant −3.68∗ −4.63∗∗∗
(1.46) (1.31)
N 178 178
χ2 84.98 142.6
Log-Likelihood −45.43 −56.05
NOTE: Coefficients with robust standard errors in parentheses; significance levels are two-tailed (ࢩࢩࢩ p <
0.001, ࢩࢩ p < 0.01, ࢩ p < 0.05, +p < 0.1).

literature. Typically, insurgencies containing a large number of rebel movements reflect

environments that are difficult for conflict management. However, as per our expectations
on this variable, third-party leaders are better able to pick and choose their negotiating
partners when faced with a multiplicity of possible negotiating partners.
Turing to the performance of Leader Tenure, this variable is significant and positive only
in Model 2. This indicates that as a leader’s time in office increases, he or she becomes
more receptive to international mediation. This makes a good deal of sense, as leaders often
make use of mediation as a politically palatable form of conflict management the longer the
leader is in office and presumably more secure politically. The introduction of international
mediators into a conflict allows the third-party leader to avoid some of the blame casting by
domestic constituencies that might otherwise prevent negotiation (Beardsley, 2011). This
finding is therefore grounds for considerable optimism—international mediation efforts
are a tractable policy option that may be exercised by the international community, and
they have shown themselves to be quite effective in bringing conflicts to at least a short-term
resolution (Beardsley, 2008).
The variable Time to Intervention is negative and significant in Model 1 only. As conflicts
persist prior to third-party intervention, negotiation become less likely. Although the
processes behind this finding are not explored in this article, it lends support to the
proposition that third parties become involved only in difficult conflicts. Indeed, Gent
(2008) argues that third parties intervene “when it counts”; that is to say, when their
favored side in civil war is at risk of defeat and their efforts are likely to have a decisive
impact on the conflict’s outcome.
754 Social Science Quarterly
FIGURE 1
Inflation and Negotiation Offer

TABLE 3
Substantive Impact of Covariates, Negotiation Offer (−1SD to +1SD)

Variable %࢞

Fragmented Rebels 901.45

Leader Tenure 118.05
Inflationt 105.82
Number of Third Parties 71.12
Time to Intervention −78.42

With respect to our own findings, third parties that intervene late on behalf of a gov-
ernment have not yet experienced the costs of war and therefore face fewer incentives
for conflict management. Governments in civil war may also face considerable exhaus-
tion and attrition over time, but a sudden infusion of support can decisively change their
utility calculations, encouraging in the government and their third-party supporters the
notion that negotiations are unnecessary. On the other hand, Time to Intervention is in-
significant in Model 2, suggesting that third parties may offer to allow outside mediation
irrespective of the amount of time that has passed between conflict onset and military
intervention.
We now turn to exploring the substantive effects of our variable of interest, Inflationt.
Figure 1 reports the impact of Inflationt on the predicted probability of a Negotiation
Offer. The cutting losses logic is clearly reflected, as Inflationt varies from its minimum
to its maximum, the probability of a negotiation offer rises from a predicted probability
of approximately 0.1 to nearly 0.6. A similar impact is visible in Figure 2, showing the
probabilities for the odds of a Mediation Offer.
Additionally, Figure 1 clearly shows the clustering of Inflationt to the left—most third-
party interveners in our sample do not experience extreme values, or high inflation. Given
this clustering, in Tables 3 and 4 we present a set of more realistic conditions for assessing
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 755
FIGURE 2
Inflation and Mediation Offer

TABLE 4
Substantive Impact of Covariates, Mediation Offer (−1SD to +1SD)

Variable %࢞

Leader Tenure 135.09

Number of Third Parties 134.10
Inflationt 96.34
Fragmented Rebels 57.41
Time to Intervention −59.30

the substantive impact of the variable of interest. To build the tables, we calculate the
percentage change in the predicted probabilities of Negotiation Offer and Mediation Offer
by allowing the variable of interest to range from −1 to +1 standard deviation while holding
the other covariates at their means or modes. As can be seen in the tables, the effect of
Inflationt is relatively modest, with Rebel Fragmentation and Leader Tenure predominating
as predictors of Negotiation Offer and Mediation Offer.

Simulations of Contemporary Cases

Here, we discuss implications of our models by using them to simulate a contemporary

case, that of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. By fall 2015, events in the Middle East brought
renewed attention to the implications of third-party intervention into civil conflicts. For
the first time since the 1980s, Russia undertook intervention beyond the boundaries of the
former Soviet Union by executing airstrikes and deploying ground troops in Syria. These
actions were undertaken to support traditional Russian allies in the Syrian government
against a persistent insurgency. This deployment shocked Western commentators and
seemed to herald a renewed period of Russian military involvement in world affairs. At
the same time, American special forces, as well as air power, returned to the Iraqi conflict
756 Social Science Quarterly
to coordinate airstrikes in support of the Iraqi government in its conflict with the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The contemporary Middle East, then, furnishes cases to which we may employ our
empirical analysis to forecast negotiation and mediation offers. Our theory predicts that
the respective leaders of the intervening states, Russia and the United States, will offer
negotiations with rebels in their respective zones of intervention depending upon their
domestic political strength. If our results hold, then we would expect that Russia will be
more likely to offer negotiations to rebel forces owing to the weakness of the domestic
economy. To execute the simulation, we set the independent variables specified in our logit
model of Negotiation Offer (Table 2, Model 1) to values that represent close approxi-
mations of the Syrian and Iraqi scenarios. We then calculate the predicted probability of
negotiation offers given these parameters. Our reasoning for the simulation parameters is as
follows:
r Inflationt. We obtain the values of inflation in Russia and the United States from the
2015 OECD figures https://data.oecd.org/price/inflation-cpi.htm. Russia, facing
sanctions and capital flight in the wake of events in Ukraine, experienced inflation
of 15.5 percent. The United States, by contrast, continued to experience a moderate
recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, and experienced inflation of 2.7 percent.
r Number of Third Parties. This variable is set to its minimum for the case of the United
States in Iraq, as it is the only power undertaking major military operations in favor
of the government there. Other third parties that are involved have done so either in
pursuit of aims separate from the government, or in a less direct manner. By contrast,
the variable is set to its maximum for Russia’s intervention in Syria, a conflict with
multisided international intervention.
r Fragmented Rebels. Given the highly fractionalized nature of the Syrian civil war, this
variable is set to a value of “1.” By contrast, the Iraqi government currently faces one
significant rebel group—ISIS—and so this value for the Iraq simulation is set to 0.
r Leader Tenure. The reintroduction of American forces to Iraq began seven years into
President Barack Obama’s term in office, whereas the introduction of Russians into
Syria began 15 years into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tenure. As such, we
set Leader Tenure at its mean to represent Obama, and its maximum to represent
Putin.
r Time to Intervention. Russian intervention occurred some four years after the onset
of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, and American reentry to Iraq occurred four years
after the formal withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Therefore, this variable is set to its
mean.
Table 5 reports the respective parameter values, as well as the odds of third-party Nego-
tiation Offer in each case.
The simulation reports that the odds that Putin will negotiate with rebel factions in Syria
are quite high (0.78), whereas the odds of Obama pursuing a similar course in Iraq are very
low (0.04). Results such as these accord nicely with our model—Syria is geographically
removed from critical areas of Russia security, so Putin faces a major asymmetry of interests.
In line with our theory, we would expect him to begin negotiations with “moderate” Syrian
rebels in the face of deteriorating economic conditions at home. The threat such conditions
pose to domestic political priorities may indeed prove to be too much to justify continued
involvement in Syria. Were Russia to follow this course, we might expect to see a negotiated
settlement in which Syrian government and opposition forces reach an arrangement that
is minimally acceptable to all sides and leaves the government in place.
Third-Party Politics and Conflict Management 757
TABLE 5
Simulated Odds of Negotiation Offer by Presidents Putin in Syria and Obama in Iraq

Variable Putin in Syria Obama in Iraq

Inflationt 15.5 2.7

Fragmented Rebels 1.00 0.00
Leader Tenure 1.51 0.95
Number of Third Parties 0.69 1.80
Time to Intervention 0.55 0.55
Odds of Negotiation 0.78 0.04

In contrast to the Syrian scenario, the simulation suggests that President Barak Obama
is unlikely to offer negotiations to ISIS in Iraq. The relatively clear nature of the conflict,
with fewer rebel factions, and also President Obama’s domestic political strength, enables
him to continue to wage the conflict for the foreseeable future. To the extent that present
conditions persist, it is unlikely that this scenario will experience much change. It should
be noted, however, that these simulated scenarios do not address events that are exogenous
to the model, including the ISIS bombing of a Metrojet airliner on October 31, 2015, and
the Turkish shoot-down of a Russian fighter plane on November 24, 2015. These incidents
likely shift the Russian decision calculus in the direction of continued involvement in Syria.
Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that the initial Russian involvement in Syria con-
sisted largely of a military campaign designed to defend its allies in the Syrian government,
and this necessitated an armed campaign against the “moderate” Syrian opposition, includ-
ing those forces armed and trained by the United States. In the language of our model, then,
the dispute with ISIS represents a separate conflict, one in which armed conflict began after
the start of the Russian intervention. If ISIS is assumed to be a rational actor, then it can
be reasoned that its strategy is designed to provoke the Russians into a confrontation and
the creation of a new conflict dyad. Although this speculation is interesting, our theory is
not designed to assess the relationship between terrorism and third-party interventionism;
doing so awaits future research.

Conclusion

The role of third-party state domestic political conditions and their influence on the
resort to conflict management is generally underemphasized in the study of interventions
into civil wars. Rather, negotiation and mediation are typically characterized as the result
of a strategic process that is highly dependent on contextual variables, such as the intensity
of the conflict, the relative strength of the warring parties, and so on. In this article, we
formulate contending expectations in which third-party state leaders engaged in military
interventions to support civil war governments either gamble for resurrection, or attempt
to cut their political losses. Our statistical empirical analysis of 32 cases of intervention
during the period 1960–2004 indicates that the logic of cutting losses prevails.
Our findings also stimulate additional avenues for future research. Our basic theoretical
story suggests a strategic interaction and feedback process between domestic political
opinion and civil conflict processes. For example, the Viet Cong rebels of Southeast Asia
mounted an offensive during the Tet holidays of 1968. Though this offensive largely failed
in its tactical goals, it was a strategic success in that it demonstrated to the American
758 Social Science Quarterly
public significant resolve. Shortly thereafter, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson was forced to
withdraw from his own reelection campaign. Given this example, it seems clear that rebels
are capable of carrying out actions designed to influence domestic politics in third-party
states and, in turn, the policy choices of these states. Future research might examine the
nexus between the ebb and flow of combat, the political process in third-party states, and
conflict management.
To conclude, we find that a deeper understanding of third-party domestic politics is
necessary to arrive at a more complete picture of civil war intervention and conflict
management. Third parties grow increasingly unable to act in the face of a deteriorating
political climate, and the analysis reported herein suggests that this support is an important
part of understanding the conflict management puzzle.

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