A Supply Side Theory of Mediation1

Abstract

We develop and test a theory of the supply side of third party conflict management. Building on an existing formal model of mediation (Kydd 2003), we consider several factors that increase the pool of potential neutral mediators and the frequency of mediators' efforts to manage interstate conflicts. First, we argue that democratic mediators face greater audience costs for deception in the conflict management process because the media in democratic states is more likely to uncover attempts by democratic mediators to provide false information. Second, we argue that information in the global mediation marketplace becomes more accurate as the international system becomes more democratic because there is a wider network of vigilant free presses, which increases the costs of deception for potential mediators. Third, as disputants' ties to international organizations increase, this also raises the costs that mediators incur for dishonesty in the conflict management process because these institutions provide more frequent and accurate information about the disputants' capabilities and resolve. Empirical analyses of data on contentious issues provide support for our theory, with third party conflict management occurring more frequently if a potential mediator is a democracy, and as the average global democracy level and the number of shared IO memberships between disputants rises. We also find that powerful states serve as mediators more often, and that trade ties, alliances, issue salience, and distance influence third party decisions to mediate. 1 While mediation has been studied extensively in international politics, few scholars have examined the supply side of mediation, leaving us with underdeveloped answers to several important research questions. How many potential mediators exist in a given situation? When do potential mediators choose to offer their services to conflicting parties? What are the characteristics of potential mediators that make them more likely to intervene? How do supply side mediation factors influence the likelihood of successful mediation efforts? Bercovitch and Schneider (2000, 146) emphasize this weakness of the mediation literature: "Unfortunately, we do not know the reasons why certain actors become more active in the mediation market, nor whether features such as impartiality are an important asset in a mediator's inventory of attributes." Examining the supply side of mediation more carefully is important because the set of mediation cases observed empirically may not be random if mediators and disputants are strategic in their choices for mediation offers and acceptance of third party involvement (Greig, 2005;Terris and Maoz 2005). This strategic process on the supply side creates linkages between decisions by third parties to mediate and the success of those mediation attempts.Our paper focuses on one question stemming from this supply side puzzle that emerges from two discordant claims in recent research: mediators are more attractive to disputants when they appear impa...

The importance of conflict characteristics for the diffusion of international mediation

“…Put differently, geographically contiguous crises are disproportionately influenced by the same dynamics (Kathman, 2010;. This mirrors Crescenzi et al (2011) who demonstrate that distance is associated with the occurrence of conflict management. Hence, the geographic clustering of international mediation strongly suggests that its likelihood in one conflict is not only determined by factors of that individual conflict (i.e., unit-specific effects pertaining to the crisis in question), but that other, neighboring crises also influence the likelihood of whether we see mediation or not, i.e., there are trans-crisis influences (see also Buhaug & Gleditsch, 2008).…”

Barriers to Coordination? Examining the Impact of Culture on International Mediation Occurrence and Effectiveness

“…however, that a biased mediator may find it more difficult to be mutually accepted by the belligerents in the first place (Crescenzi et al, 2011). In other words, conditional on the cultural ties between the belligerents, it may well be that third parties' culture affects mediation not as expected in our unconditional hypothesis above.…”

“…Hence, after dropping cases that experienced military interventions or bilateral conflict management, the final data include information about attempts to manage or settle each ICOW claim through peaceful third-party mediations. The first dependent variable, Mediation Occurrence, receives the value of 1 if a potential mediator actually intervened in a specific year for a dyad-claim and 0 otherwise; the second dependent variable, Mediation Outcome, is coded 1 if mediation led at least to an agreement between the belligerents in a year under study and 0 otherwise (see also Crescenzi et al, 2011Crescenzi et al, , p. 1081 Various studies in the literature on international mediation indicate that there may be problems of selection bias. The decision to mediate is itself a strategic consideration and, thus, there are many underlying factors that are likely to influence both the decision to mediate and mediation effectiveness (Böhmelt, 2010;Crescenzi et al, 2011;Gartner, 2011;Gartner and Bercovitch, 2006 …”

“…The advantages of the ICOW data are twofold: first, we can compare cases across various issues of contention; and second, our analysis is not limited to situations that become militarised at some point, thus addressing to some extent the problem of selection bias. We use 'the potential mediator for each year of a dyadic claim as the unit of analysis' (Crescenzi et al, 2011(Crescenzi et al, , p. 1081. Specifically, after focusing on the ongoing years of a dispute claim between a challenger and a target (i.e.…”

“…the belligerents), there is a new observation for every potential third-party state that may intervene in a given year. A potential mediator is defined as any state from the same conflict region or a major power as classified by the Correlates of War Project (Crescenzi et al, 2011(Crescenzi et al, , p. 1081. As Crescenzi et al (2011) point out, all states could in principle be considered potential mediators, although this choice would bias the dependent variable's values towards 0.…”