External Supporters and Negotiated Settlement: Political Bargaining in Solving Governmental Incompatibility

Abstract

External supporters have heterogeneous preferences over civil war outcomes depending on the issues at stake. In this article, the bargaining model and empirical study show that such preferences of external supporters need to be considered not only when analyzing the causes of support but also when analyzing how they affect a conflict. By adding an external supporter to a traditional conflict bargaining model as a strategic actor who receives a payoff from the political division, this article investigates how the preferences of external supporters influence the likelihood of a peace agreement in civil wars over a government. I demonstrate that a peace agreement is more likely to happen when the external supporters of the government side are not satisfied with the current political status quo of the supported state. The empirical analysis of political civil wars from 1976 to 2009 supports the implications of the bargaining model.