Dispute or Mediator? : The Selection and Effectiveness of Conflict Management in Civil Wars

Przegląd Strategiczny, 2017 The literature on conflict management offers two explanations of why the effectiveness of third parties to settle militarized disputes differs. The structural research tradition focuses on conflict characteristics, while the individualist approaches highlight the background, skills and power of a mediator, as well as the mediation strategy. This article reconciles these two approaches, and examines especially the effectiveness of mediation strategies. Accounting for the selection of mediation and the success of mediation attempts, we use the CWM 1945–2004 dataset. The analysis demonstrates that mediators who were able to pursue a determined strategy face a higher chance of success