Determinants of Third Parties’ Intervention and Alignment Choices in Ongoing Conflicts, 1946–2001

Abstract

The decision to intervene in ongoing conflicts is one of the most difficult foreign policy choices states often face. Yet, studies of third parties' joining behavior have been rare and limited in several respects. First, they have explored only a subset of all interventions-military interventions. Second, they have concentrated on security-based determinants of intervention-power and alliance considerations-while underplaying other possible motivations behind the decision to intervene. Third, they have explored intervention and alignment choices as separate issues. This paper proposes a model of joining behavior that includes both security considerations and homophilous network ties as determinants of third parties' intervention and alignment choices. The model is tested on military and nonmilitary interventions data from Corbetta and Dixon (2005) for the 1946-2001 period. The results from a boolean logit estimation indicate that (1) the intervention decision is the result of both security-driven, pragmatic considerations and homophily between joiners and disputants; and (2) opposition to a party in a conflict is as important as a third party's social proximity to the side being supported.

Cooperative and Antagonistic Networks: Multidimensional Affinity and Intervention in Ongoing Conflicts, 1946-20011

“…Third parties may be more interested in assisting friends than in opposing enemies. Both implications deserve investigation as they clash with common wisdom about interstate conflict and third-party states' alignment choices, which indicate that joiners are equally concerned with containing their enemies as they are with helping their friends (Corbetta 2010). The existence of antagonistic and cooperative networks of intervention indicates that we find the fault lines of the diffusion of conflict in the social space at the core-rather than at the margins-of clusters of states.…”

When and Whom to Join: The Expansion of Ongoing Violent Interstate Conflicts

“…We use a triadic approach to examine third-party joining in ongoing MIDs. 87 Some extant research only includes third parties that actually joined a MID in their sample, which is problematic because it excludes important information about third parties that could have joined a MID but chose not to. 88 Since a third party is continually updating its decision about whether to join or remain neutral as a dispute persists, a decision not to join at one point in time does not preclude joining in the future.…”

“…65 Corbetta also found that autocracies join other autocracies. 66 In terms of autocratic third parties, we expect the risk of joining an autocratic initiator to be higher than the risk of joining an autocratic target. While autocratic regimes might be less sensitive to some types of costs (such as electoral costs) associated with joining one of the initial belligerents and ending up on the losing side, they also face costs such as regime survival.…”

Sweden’s Libya decision: A case of humanitarian intervention

“…Thus, the Swedish decision making was characterized by an element of chance. This can be related to insights from the 'opportunity and willingness approach' to state decisions to intervene (Most and Starr, 1980;Siverson and Starr, 1990;Starr, 2005;Corbetta, 2010). According to this approach, even if an actor is willing to join a military operation, it may not have the opportunity to do so, as it lacks the necessary military capabilities.…”