This paper investigates strategic forum selection approaches and compliance with interstate dispute resolution settlements. Research shows that (a) management design features, like decision control and international organizations, affect compliance, (b) states strategically select among bilateral and third-party fora, and (c) anticipated settlement outcomes and enforcement inform pre-negotiation stages. A skeptical perspective suggests that states only select management approaches when they are confident in their ability to fully cooperate. Using Issue Correlates of War data, I test an endogenous model of forum selection and compliance. Statistical analysis finds that states strategically select management approaches in two cases: state-led mediation and ad hoc arbitration. Closer analysis suggests that, rather than tempering the promotion of mediation's and arbitration's pacifying benefits, conflict management scholarship should investigate more comparisons across dispute resolution approaches. This project's multidimensional framework reveals that mediation and arbitration share similar foundations that logically link their selection and inclination toward compliance.
This project investigates states' strategies in the management of contentious interstate disputes asking why disputants select a particular approach, or forum, to serve as the stage for negotiations. The conflict bargaining process reveals incentives to reach peaceful solutions to war, but peace may be elusive due to bilateral bargaining problems (Fearon 1995;Schelling 1960). In general, third parties provide a useful service in interstate conflict management. However, not all third parties equally benefit the bargaining process. Recent research especially points to the efficacy of legal dispute resolution, such as arbitration and adjudication. The robustness of these results over different types of conflicts and disputants provides a clear prescription for substantive dispute resolution: If states are sincere about peacefully resolving conflicts, then the best way to achieve that -in terms of probability of reaching a settlement and ensuring compliance -is to submit to legal management fora.Despite the strength of this prescription, states rarely submit to legal dispute resolution. A majority of the time states, instead, negotiate bilaterally. Alternatively, they turn to one of the other, useful, but less effective forms of third party management, such as mediation. Drawing on these observations, the specific puzzle this dissertation addresses is why states avoid the types of conflict management that have been demonstrated empirically to be highly effective at resolving conflicts.In response to this puzzle, this dissertation defines a conflict management forum as as a venue for the substantive settlement of interstate conflicts, which is characterized by three different features: transparency, decision control, and expectations about 2 distributional outcomes. This definition then serves as the basis for two formal bargaining models that explain forum selection in interstate conflict management. Empirical implications from these models were tested through a set of three laboratory experiments conducted at the University of Iowa.Through this series of theoretical models and experimental analyses, this project suggests that states select management fora that best balance their capabilities and interests. The features of a conflict management forum, which include decision control, transparency, and distributional biases, directly affect the outcome and longterm viability of negotiated settlements. States' ability to manipulate these features is an important part of the conflict bargaining process. In conclusion, the dissertation provides three answers to the motivating puzzle: States select management fora in order to balance power asymmetries and to enhance commitment to settlement, to identify focal points for settlement negotiations, and to break stalemates that could lead to violent breakdowns.Abstract Approved: ________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ________________________________________________
No abstract
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.