Conditions of Successful Third-Party Intervention in Intrastate Conflicts

Abstract

Since the end of the cold war, foreign policy makers appear to be devoting increasing amounts of energy to containing intrastate conflicts. They are doing so, moreover, with little guidance from the social science community. This article uses data on all third-party interventions into intrastate conflicts since 1944 to assess historical patterns of intervention strategies and their relative success rates. Building on this, it uses a logit analysis to develop prescriptive outlines for future intervention attempts. The results demonstrate that it is the characteristics of the intervention strategy rather than the characteristics of the conflict that largely determine the success of the intervention.