Violence During Civil War Negotiations

• In Event: Advances in Conflict Processes

Abstract

How do negotiation dynamics during a civil war influence the use of violence during a negotiation? During negotiation attempts to end a civil war, violence often occurs. What explains when this violence will happen? We argue that two specific negotiation dynamics are likely to influence the outbreak of violence. One is the actors involved in the civil war and the negotiations and their differing incentives over the outcome of negotiations. Specifically, in addition to spoiler groups, groups tied to external actors who are not part of the peace process are more likely to engage in violence. The second are the dynamics of the negotiations themselves. When groups still feel the need to demonstrate their ability to continue fighting, violence is more likely to happen during a negotiation. Empirically, this is likely to occur in early negotiation attempts as well as protracted negotiation attempts.
We test these empirical expectations on a novel dataset that collects all negotiation attempts between warring parties from 1990-2016 for civil wars that occurred in Africa and Asia. This data includes variables on the actors involved in the negotiations, the number of past negotiations, and a whole host of variables about the negotiations. We use a variety of event data sets to measure the use of violence during a negotiation attempt. Preliminary analysis demonstrates support for our theories. Looking at both the negotiation -month and actor-negotiation-month as units of analysis, we find support for our arguments.

Authors

• Brian Lai, University of Iowa

• Stephen C. Nemeth, Oklahoma State University