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jour nal of

peace
R

UN intervention and the duration


of international crises

E S E A R C H

Journal of Peace Research


49(2) 335349
The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343311431599
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Kyle Beardsley
Department of Political Science, Emory University
Abstract
This article examines the effect of UN actions on the duration of international crises. Four different types of action
assurance, diplomatic engagement, military involvement, and intimidation and three different outcomes
compromise, victory, and stalemate are considered. After building on the existing literature to develop expectations of how a third party like the UN shapes crisis trajectories, hypotheses are tested using the International Crisis
Behavior (ICB) data and a new events dataset on UN activity. Results from competing-risks models reveal that UN
military involvement does well to decrease the risk of one side achieving victory, and diplomatic engagement
increases the ability of the belligerents to reach a compromise in the long run. Moreover, diplomatic engagement
accompanied by military involvement substantially hastens the pace of stalemate outcomes. Both tactics, however,
have some trade-offs. Military involvement can decrease the sense of urgency for compromise; diplomatic engagement can be used for insincere motives and increase the risk of one-sided victory over time. UN actions of assurance and simple intimidation have considerable shortcomings as crisis management vehicles.
Keywords
conflict resolution, event history, International Crisis Behavior, matching, United Nations

Introduction
The literature on the relationship between the UN and
conflict predominantly has focused on its role as peacekeeper. While much is known quantitatively about the
effects of peacekeeping and peacebuilding (Collier,
Chauvet & Hegre, 2008; Doyle & Sambanis, 2000,
2006; Greig & Diehl, 2005; Fortna, 2003, 2004a,b; Gilligan & Sergenti, 2006), less is known about how the
UN performs as a conflict manager or peacemaker.1 This
article explores the UNs impact on the duration of crises
and posits that different types of UN action have disparate effects on the timing of crisis abatement.
The existing literature presents competing expectations of what types of third-party tactics are most effective in conflict management and resolution. While
some work expects only heavy-handed tactics to have the
1

Diehl, Reifschneider & Hensel (1996) do consider a broad range of


UN activities, but the outcome processes assessed deal with various
aspects of the stability of peace. DeRouen (2003) also considers
UN involvement in crisis termination.

potential to shape the bargaining environment (Betts,


1994; Smith & Stam, 2003), others find that lighter
forms of involvement such as mediation can do quite
well (Beardsley et al., 2006; Regan & Stam, 2000;
Rauchhaus, 2006; Wilkenfeld et al., 2005).2 Still
others expect that third parties can disrupt more natural
resolution processes or otherwise create perverse incentives, especially when involved in military deployments
(Greig & Diehl, 2005; Kuperman, 2008; Luttwak,
1999; Rauchhaus, 2009; Werner & Yuen, 2005). In assessing what these earlier studies mean for the expected effects
of UN intervention, this article uses a new events dataset
that disaggregates UN activity during international crises.
The data are able to capture not only how UN intervention shapes the trajectory of crises but also how different
tactics of involvement stack up against each other.
Corresponding author:
kyle.beardsley@emory.edu
2

See Favretto (2009) and Svensson (2007) for studies that consider
the different benefits of lighter and heavy-handed mediation.

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As part of this exploration, this study distinguishes


between the ways for a crisis to end. Early ends of crises
in compromise fit the profile of an ideal outcome from
the standpoint of peace advocacy. Early terminations
in victory, however, typically indicate a dereliction of
effective conflict management. Distinguishing between
the different types of outcome is important from both
policy and normative standpoints, as decreasing crisis
duration is not always a worthwhile objective, especially
since one way for a crisis to end quickly is for one side to
win a complete victory through bloodshed. This article
unfolds by first providing a theoretical framework of the
various ways for conflict to terminate and then discussing
the UNs role within that framework. Testable hypotheses are derived and tested empirically.

Conflict processes and duration


Before forming expectations about the UNs ability to
shape the duration of crisis, we must first have a sense
of why a state of conflict might exist and how it ends.
This article considers conflict as part of a bargaining process in which two or more actors are in dispute over some
good or issue. Using force has two different purposes in
the bargaining context: it can demonstrate capability and
resolve, and it can physically remove vulnerabilities. Each
of these is taken up in turn.
Actors will often resort to violence when either they
have underestimated what their opponent would be willing to accept or their opponent has underestimated
them. The act of engaging in conflict reveals capability
and the resolve to bear costs, which allows the expectations of the actors to converge on the set of alternatives
that are mutually satisfactory (Slantchev, 2003, 2004;
Smith & Stam, 2003; Filson & Werner, 2002). The
demonstration of capability and resolve is not only
meant for the eyes of the foreign policymakers of the
opponent. Leaders may refuse to concede not because
they cannot identify areas of overlapping agreement but
because domestic audiences might punish them for making concessions (Debs & Goemans, 2010; Goemans,
2000, 2009; Chiozza & Goemans, 2004; Tarar &
Leventoglu, 2009; Tarar, 2006; Trager & Vavreck,
2011). To the foreign policymakers in such situations,
the set of possible settlements that are mutually preferable to conflict may be empty. The use of force in such
cases can thus be driven by a leaders domestic constraints or serve as a means to demonstrate to an opponents domestic audiences that any concessions their
leader makes are, in fact, prudent. In either case, force
will be applied until the costs of conflict for either side

become greater than the costs of backing down and


potentially losing political capital.
Aside from allowing an opponent to realize the merits
of concession, force is also used to resolve vulnerabilities
to commitment problems. In cases where actors cannot
credibly commit to abiding by an agreement even if it
were found to be mutually preferable to conflict, settlement will be avoided and fighting will occur until credible commitment becomes possible (Reiter, 2009). One
source of a credible commitment problem is the potential for an actors capabilities and thus bargaining
power to rapidly improve, which would leave the rising
actor dissatisfied with the settlement at hand and
increase its incentives to push for a better deal in the
future (Powell, 2004, 2006). To avoid having to concede
more in the future, the other actor would prefer to damage the rising actors capabilities through war and stunt
its potential growth so that whatever is agreeable today
will also be agreeable in the future. Another source of a
credible commitment problem relates to the concepts
of the security dilemma and mistrust (Kydd, 2005),
where conflict may persist because of uncertainty about
whether an opponent will exploit cooperation for strategic advantage. The use of force in such a situation would
be aimed at going on the offensive to sufficiently damage
the opponents own offensive capabilities or to seize positions that can more easily be defended. Finally, credible
commitment problems can arise from spoiler groups that
either are not part of the conflict bargaining or would
benefit from ongoing hostilities (Stedman, 1997; Kydd
& Walter, 2002; Lake & Rothchild, 1996). Violence
in this case would be intended to eliminate the threat
that such groups pose or to increase the incentives of the
target actor to self-police affiliated groups.
Against this backdrop of why hostilities typically occur,
I focus on three distinct ways for crises to end. First, crises
can end when the actors identify a new distribution of the
goods or issues in question that is mutually preferable to
conflict and credibly commit to that via some sort of compromise settlement. Second, actors might stick to the original status quo when they come to realize that the status
quo is actually preferable, even if begrudgingly so, to escalating the hostilities. Third, crises will end when one side
has defeated the other after complete bargaining failure,
ultimately leaving little question about relative capabilities
and minimizing commitment problems.3 I term these

On the role of total victory and regime change in resolving credible


commitment problems, see Reiter (2009) and Lo, Hashimoto &
Reiter (2008).

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Table I. Typology of UN activity


Leverage

Operational deployment

Yes
No

three different outcomes compromise, stalemate, and


victory, respectively.
Of these three types of ways for crises and conflicts to
end, compromise is the most direct indicator of bargaining success. Resolution of information problems, audience
constraints, and commitment problems can lead to an
outcome of compromise and establish a new status quo.
In contrast, complete victory indicates a complete inability
to reach an arrangement that is preferable to conflict, as
actors largely circumvent the bargaining process and reach
an end through coercion. Stalemate is a more ambiguous
outcome because in some cases it may indicate relative
bargaining success, as when the actors come to realize that
the status quo is clearly preferable to fighting. In many
other cases, stalemate indicates continual dissatisfaction
with the status quo, but the actors temporarily stop fighting for the sole reason that prosecuting the dispute in the
present has become undesirable. We can now turn to
expectations about how the UN shapes the rates at which
crisis actors reach these outcomes.

UN intervention
Types of involvement
To form expectations about what effect the UN can have
on crisis duration, we must first get a sense of what types
of action the UN might take. The UN has a number of
means available for managing conflict. For the purpose
of limiting the scope of activities, this article focuses on
those activities that involve Security Council or General
Assembly resolutions or substantive action by the
Secretary-General. I consider two dimensions of UN
involvement, which produce four distinct types of UN
actions. The first dimension relates to the intended
mechanism of that action as defined by whether the
UN is trying to facilitate a negotiated bargain within the
existing set of possible agreements that are mutually preferable to conflict or to increase the costs of conflict and
thereby expand the set of possible agreements. When a
third party attempts to expand the set of existing settlements through such actions as threatening punishments,
shaming or militarily enforcing its will, we can say that the

No

Yes

Assurance
Diplomatic engagement

Military involvement
Intimidate

third party is using leverage to make a settlement possible. In


the absence of leverage, the third party is trying to resolve the
information, audience constraint or commitment problems
through such actions as fact-finding, mediating, and providing security guarantees. The second dimension relates to the
substance of the involvement, in terms of whether it
involves what Diehl, Reifschneider & Hensel (1996) term
operational deployment the authorization or implementation of a monitoring, peacekeeping or emergency military
force. This dimension is important to consider since it separates out types of action in which considerable resources
have actually been invested from other actions that are either
relatively cheap to carry out or that only hold the promise of
future resource investment. In combining these two dimensions, four distinct types of UN actions emerge, as seen in
Table I.
Starting with the lower row of Table I, the actions
grouped as diplomatic engagement include those
instances of good offices, fact-finding or mediation that
are typically executed by the Secretary-General, special
representatives or ad hoc commissions. The focus of
such involvement typically involves improving the
information environment among the sides such that
they can more quickly come to understand each others
reservation values and reach a resolution. Diplomatic
engagement might also be used as a means for the
actors to receive political cover or save face, in that
domestic audiences can cue off of a mediator to update
expectations about the prudence of concessions
(Beardsley, 2010). The other group of actions that
does not include operational deployment is called intimidate.4 These involve instances where the UN calls
for the sides to comply, condemns illegal behavior,
threatens force or levies sanctions. The hope is to make
the belligerents perceive that ongoing hostility will be
met by some sort of negative response by the international community. The intimidating actions can be
explicit, as in direct condemnation, specific threats or

This terminology only pertains to the intent of the UN and not


whether the recipient actors are actually intimidated.

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sanctions. The intimidations can also be implicit, as


when the UN calls on states to comply with their obligations but leaves the consequences of compliance failure open-ended. Such calls for action could imply that
the non-compliant actors will be called out and shamed,
and they can also sometimes be taken to imply that
punitive action will meet such non-compliance.5
Turning to the top row, assurance involves the UN
trying to allow the disputants to feel more comfortable
with a peaceful bargain, through such activity as sending
an observer group or promising a peacekeeping force.
Typically, this activity is most necessary when there are
important commitment problems and security dilemmas that make the actors reluctant to reach an outcome
they would otherwise prefer to ongoing conflict.
Finally, military involvement pertains to when missions
are used to combat further aggression, through the
deployment of UN peacekeeping forces or the authorization of non-UN multinational military forces. This
is the most direct way that the UN can increase the perceived costs of ongoing conflict by the actors. Like the
assurance function, it is also frequently intended to protect the actors from future defections while any settlements are implemented.

UN involvement and the pace of conflict bargaining


Returning to the discussion above about the differences
between crises that end in compromise, stalemate, and
victory, UN involvement should have different effects
on the rate at which such outcomes are reached. The
existing literature provides some conflicting expectations about the relative effectiveness of the different
types of third-party involvement. The empirical analysis, which distinguishes between UN intervention
types, is thus useful in adjudicating among these potentially competing claims.
The literature is most developed with regard to how
third parties can affect the potential for some sort of
compromise settlement. Favretto (2009) formally
argues that heavily biased third parties and honest brokers will be most effective in helping disputants resolve
their bargains the former are able to credibly signal a
willingness to enforce peace and the latter are able to
facilitate the exchange of information. One of the
5

I leave to future research an assessment on how much the ambiguity


of the threat matters in determining further compliance. It is worth
noting that various actors might choose to interpret the implicit
threats in UN resolutions differently, as for example in the US and
French interpretations of UNSC Resolution 1441 and the
justification for the 2003 Iraq war.

expectations that then emerges is that impartial diplomatic engagement, such as that by the Secretary General or a special envoy, can have the potential to
effectively manage conflict toward compromise. A
number of empirical studies have also shown that diplomatic engagement in the form of mediation can
improve the ability for the actors to either reach a new
arrangement or to back down from military hostilities.
Beardsley (2008, 2011), Beardsley et al. (2006), Regan
& Stam (2000), Wilkenfeld et al. (2005), and Walter
(2002) have shown that mediation can improve the
ability for disputants to reach a negotiated settlement.
Rauchhaus (2006) shows that third parties who use
light mediation can improve the ability of actors to
de-escalate, and coercive intervention has no significant
effect. The first hypothesis that we can test is that diplomatic engagement will tend to hasten the path
toward compromise.
Efficacious bargaining hypothesis: The time until compromise will be shorter after the UN has become involved
in diplomatic engagement.

The literature, however, is not unified in this


expectation. Smith & Stam (2003) argue that thirdparty use of mediation alone will struggle to impact
the ability of disputants to converge on a mutually
acceptable bargain because third parties are generally
unable to credibly convey new information to the
sides, especially when a third party like the UN has
a strong preference for peace. The problem of cheap
talk is likely to particularly apply to UN involvement
in diplomatic engagement or intimidation. Beardsley
& Schmidt (forthcoming) find that UN action is
more strongly driven by a desire to uphold the organizational mission established in its founding Charter
namely, to promote peace and stability than it is by
more parochial interests of the permanent-five members
of the Security Council. This means that UN mediation, especially when carried out by the SecretaryGeneral or his representatives, has a strong tendency
to value peace as an end in itself with less concern for
the ultimate distribution of the outcome. That is, UN
diplomatic engagement tends to be heavily biased
toward peace. While extant mediation studies, including Kydd (2003, 2006), Smith & Stam (2003), and
Rauchhaus (2006), disagree over whether bias toward
a particular side is good or bad for mediation efficacy,
a consensus does emerge from this work positing that
third parties that are biased toward peace will struggle
to do anything more than offer cheap talk. From this

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perspective, the UN is not well suited to succeed in


diplomatic engagement or in simple calls for peace.
Smith & Stam (2003) further argue that the only way
for third parties to help the combatants reach an agreement
is through using leverage in the form of peacekeeping to
inflate conflict costs. Other empirical studies confirm that
the use of peacekeeping and security guarantees can help
resolve critical barriers to successful bargaining such as
commitment problems and related security dilemmas
(Doyle & Sambanis, 2000, 2006; Fortna, 2004a,b; Gilligan & Sergenti, 2006; Walter, 2002). Such studies are thus
consistent with a view that military involvement tends to
do well in bringing combatants to a stable settlement.6
They could also be used to form expectations regarding the
assurance function of the UN if observers and promises of
peacekeeping can provide sufficient protection against
commitment problems. Mattes & Savun (2009) have
found that the mere provision of peacekeeping provisions
in a civil war peace agreement can solidify peace. Schultz
(2010) has also found that the presence of monitors can
go a long way toward assuring combatants.
One expectation from these arguments would thus be
that greater use of military involvement and assurances can
lead to faster compromises or stalemates. Disputants will be
more willing to compromise or settle on the status quo
when they feel less vulnerable to exploitation. Related,
UN intervention via military involvement and assurances
can delay the achievement of victory by a side, as when
combatants become less willing to push forward in
full combat because the costs of conflict have been
raised. This would result when strong military involvement or buffering prevents a side from winning a
military campaign, as for example when the UNSC
mobilized forces in 1950 to keep North Korea from
defeating South Korea. Just as operational deployments can reduce the risk that actors will be seriously
exploited after the conflict is over, they can also prevent one side from making substantial gains and prevent victory during a crisis.
Reduced vulnerability hypothesis: The time until compromise and stalemate will be shorter and the time until victory will be longer after the UN has engaged in military
involvement or assurance.

Other scholarship has pointed to more direct downsides to third-party diplomatic engagement. One line
6
These studies, however, focus on how the military involvement and
assurance roles played by third parties can increase the durability of
peace after conflict and not whether they improve the ease and
pace of settlement.

of argument relates to what Richmond (1998) has


labeled as devious objectives of disputants who use
peace processes insincerely to stall. The logic is that disputants can sometimes take advantage of lulls in hostilities while a third party is actively involved to rearm or
regroup so that they can initiate a more successful military campaign in the future. Greig (2001) and Beardsley
(2009) find some empirical confirmation that this phenomenon exists. Toft (2009) also argues that thirdparty guarantees have limited ability to prevent conflict
recurrence because they typically fail to address the problem of stalling tactics.
When disputants have such insincere incentives to
stall, they would best be able to take advantage of diplomatic engagement because such activity is likely to create
the space in which such rearming could occur while not
involving monitoring or peacekeeping that would prevent the disputants from succeeding. By its nature, stalling can most directly lead to the avoidance of peaceful
outcomes such as compromise or stalemate. On the flip
side of this logic, in the long run stalling can also reduce
the time to victory when the stalling actor uses the lull in
hostilities effectively to catch an opponent by surprise
with its more effective fighting capabilities.
Insincere motives hypothesis: The time until compromise
and stalemate will be longer and the time until victory
will be shorter after the UN has become involved in diplomatic engagement.

There is also a potential downside to the feeling of


safety that military involvement and assurance can provide. Intrusive third-party involvement in some cases
might interrupt the ability for the protagonists to reach
a mutually acceptable bargain (Luttwak, 1999). Combatants learn from each other in crisis, and early outside
intervention can cut that learning process short. Early
third-party involvement in crises can prevent the disputants from learning about each others capabilities or
about each others potential to exploit cooperation. Such
premature intervention might not only contribute to a
more fragile peace after a conflict has ended, as Werner
& Yuen (2005) have found, but it might also lead to longer times until compromise.
Related to the discussion about the potential dangers
of early intervention, the UN can create perverse incentives by threatening to come to the aid of a vulnerable
belligerent. Kuperman (2008) has argued that thirdparty intervention can increase the aggressiveness of the
protected actors and make them less willing to make
prudent concessions. Rauchhaus (2009) modifies this
argument and suggests that third parties often face a

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commitment dilemma such that a strong commitment


to defend an actor will increase that actors belligerence
while a weak commitment will increase the potential
for deterrence failure.7 Even though Kuperman and
Rauchhaus focus on humanitarian intervention, a similar
logic might apply to any potential UN operational
deployment. Betts (1994) similarly argues that limited
interventions such as those that tend to result from multilateral institutional bodies should be avoided because
they tend to block the ability for the disputants to actually resolve their conflict while trying to keep the sides
from inflicting too much damage on each other. To the
extent that the UN makes the actors feel safe, particularly
when the UN intervenes to protect weaker parties that
would otherwise yield ground to a stronger party, it is
especially prone to diminishing the incentives of the
actors to move toward compromises and costly concessions. In this regard, Greig & Diehl (2005) argue and
demonstrate that the presence of peacekeeping decreases
the incentive for the more secure combatants to earnestly
engage in negotiation efforts to end the state of conflict.
As another perverse incentive, even promises of future
peacekeeping can detract from immediate peacemaking
goals. Such promises might create a limited window for
belligerents strongly resistant to the status quo to make
as many gains as possible before peacekeepers deploy and
hinder further challenges. In these ways, the potential exists
for interventions of assurance or military involvement to
actually lengthen the time until peaceful settlements.
Premature intervention hypothesis: The time until compromise will be longer after the UN has engaged in military involvement or assurance.

Army was surrounded by Israeli forces. This potential


to temporarily lengthen the time to a peaceful settlement
applies specifically to diplomatic engagement, assurance,
and military involvement. Simple intimidation does not
often take any procedural time, as it typically involves
singe resolutions targeted at the actors. Note that it is
possible for UN involvement to still improve the peacemaking environment even when a temporary procedural
effect is in play. After an initial lengthening of the peace
process, the mechanisms proposed above specific to
diplomatic engagement, military involvement, and assurance, to the extent that they actually help the actors identify and reach a negotiated settlement, can take over and
produce shorter times until compromise.
Procedural hypothesis: The time until compromise will be
initially longer after the UN has become involved in diplomatic engagement, military involvement or assurance.

Note that none of the above hypotheses have touched


on the role of intimidation from the UN. We should
not expect much of an effect on the time until any of
the outcomes. As discussed above, the UN tends to
be biased toward peace, making any pleas or admonitions for peace easy to dismiss as cheap talk. Moreover,
the absence of committed resources prevents simple
intimidation from having other effects, for good or for
ill, on the disputant incentives.

Research design and data

Turning to a final observable expectation, we must


consider the unintended impact that the UN can have
on crisis duration through purely procedural effects.
UN action might temporarily lengthen the timing of
compromise simply because peace processes take time,
especially in a multilateral setting. Time is needed to set
up meetings and to organize the logistics of monitors or
peacekeepers. For example, major hostilities in the Yom
Kippur War ceased at the end of October 1973, but the
Geneva Conference that commenced the disengagement
agreements did not occur until late December and the
first partial disengagement plan was not reached until
January 1974, and all the while the Egyptian Third

All the hypotheses relate to expectations over the duration


of a crisis situation. This requires an event history, or duration, analysis. Using time-varying covariates, I employ
competing-risk models, so that we can look at the time
until a crisis ends in compromise, victory or stalemate.
A dyad of states becomes at risk for crisis termination at
the start of a crisis and observation ends upon crisis termination. Similar to the analysis in Balch-Lindsay, Enterline
& Joyce (2008), the unit of observation is the crisis-day.
Since the data use a discrete-time structure, the models
are estimated using multinomial logit regression.8 A
cubic polynomial of elapsed time is also included in
order to account for duration dependence (Carter &
Signorino, 2010).
The definition of international crises comes from the
International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data (Brecher &

Also see earlier work by Snyder (1984), who considers how thirdparty commitments can prove precarious in affecting the incentives
of the combatants.

A Hausman test does not reject the null of independence of irrelevant


alternatives, which means that the assumption of conditional
independence of the various outcomes can be maintained.

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Wilkenfeld, 2000). In these data, an international crisis


exists when three criteria are true. First, the actors must
perceive a threat to some basic value such as security or
influence. Second, there must be some finite time for the
actors to address the threat. Third, the actors must perceive
that there is some risk of the escalation of military hostilities. The set of ICB crisis dyads comes from Hewitt (2003),
and I have updated this list until 2002.9 The minor dyads
that are part of the Korean War and Gulf War are
excluded, and the intra-war crises that are part of greater
wars are aggregated together into single crises. I use ICB
version 9 for information about crisis and disputant characteristics and only consider those crises since 1946.
The analysis uses original data for information regarding
UN involvement events, collected with Holger Schmidt.
This dataset, UNIEvents, contains events-level information on UN activity during ICB crises. The existing ICB
data only include one observation per crisis, which limits
the ability to assess how third-party involvement like that
of the UN changes the trajectory of belligerent behavior
within each crisis. With the events data, time-varying covariates can be incorporated. Events constitute any UN
activity that attempts to shape the trajectory of the dispute
and that includes a UNSC resolution, a General Assembly
resolution or substantive action from the SecretaryGeneral. The data identify 50 different types of action that
the UN might take to manage a crisis situation, and the
unit of observation in our new dataset is the event, such
that we often have multiple observations per crisis.
I have adapted the UNIEvents data for the purposes
of the analysis. For tractability, I aggregate the types of
UN involvement into the four categories previewed
above. The first, military involvement, includes the
authorization and deployment of multinational forces, the
use of force by UN-authorized missions, and the deployment, expansion, and strengthening of UN peacekeeping
missions. While multinational forces such as those used in
the first Gulf War, Haiti (1994), and East Timor
(INTERFET), are not UN missions per se, I include them
as part of UN involvement because their mandates come
directly from UNSC resolutions. In order to separate out
missions that are meant to affect the balance of forces and
costs of conflict from missions that are primarily observational, UN peacekeeping is defined as any mission that is
under the Department of Peacekeeping Operations
(DPKO) but that is not limited to observer, monitoring
or political functions. Military involvement occurred in
five percent of the 275 crises in the data.

Assurance is the second category and is defined as the


authorization and deployment of observer missions, the
authorization and deployment of humanitarian missions,
the authorization of peacekeeping missions, and peacebuilding activities. Observer missions include both civilian
missions and military observer or monitoring missions
under the DPKO. Note also that peacekeeping authorization is included as part of an assurance action since it is
only the promise of a security guarantee. Peacekeeping
deployment is part of military involvement when it occurs
during a crisis since the data here only pertain to activity
during crises, all peacekeeping deployments in these data
are therefore considered military involvement actions.
Seven percent of the crises experienced assurance.
The third type of UN action is diplomatic engagement, which includes the dispatch of a special representative, the dispatch of a fact-finding mission, the offer of
mediation, and the provision of mediation. These are
cases where the UN is actively involved in seeking resolution without using tangible leverage. Both offers and
the provision of mediation are included because offers
of mediation typically imply that the Secretary-General
or Special Representative of the Secretary-General are
engaging in consultations with at least one of the sides
in dispute. Fourteen percent of the crises in the data
experienced diplomatic engagement by the UN.
Finally, intimidation is coded as having occurred
when the UNSC or General Assembly issues a clear call
for actors in crisis to adopt a course of action, condemns
the crisis actors for their behavior, threatens sanctions or
military involvement, or implements sanctions. Each of
these actions offers some indication of the UNs desire
for the crisis actors to heed the UNs will but does not
involve operational deployment. Twenty-four percent
of the crises experienced some form of intimidation.
With these categories of involvement so defined, they
enter into the analysis in two ways. First, I include as
independent variables counts of the number of actions
of each of the four types that the UN undertakes.
Through the course of a crisis, these variables count how
much the UN has been involved in these ways up to the
point of observation. Since authorizations and deployments typically but not always go hand in hand, the
count variables only increase by 1 at the point of an
authorization when it also is followed by deployment.10
Second, I include a measure of duration since the last

10

Specifically, the data are updated until ICB Crisis 437.

Since authorization of peacekeeping is counted as assurance while


deployment is counted as military involvement, both actions do affect
the respective count variables.

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instance of UN involvement of a particular type in order


to see how the impact of UN involvement changes as
time passes. One issue that arises when measuring duration as a simple count of the number of elapsed days is
that the value of 0 may indicate that intervention
occurred on a particular day or it might indicate that
there has not been any intervention yet. To address this
issue, I construct a variable that measures duration similarly to how one might measure the dosage of a particular
drug remaining in a subjects system. On the day of a
UN action, this measure is equal to 1, and then experiences exponential decay with a scaling factor equal to the
mean crisis length.11 Higher values of this measure thus
indicate more recent interventions, while lower values
indicate less recent interventions. I also include the
square of this measure, as doing so allows the UN activities to have different effects over the course of their
involvement. Including these variables also allows for the
relaxing of the restrictive proportional hazards assumption in the Cox model.12
A model as described above produces estimates of the
individual effects of each involvement type while holding
constant other types of involvement. It is worth exploring whether there are some interactive effects where
involvement of a certain type might have a different
effect depending on what else the UN is doing. Specifically, it is important to see the effects of diplomatic
engagement and intimidation the types of involvement that do not involve observational deployment
when military involvement is used as well. If one of the
shortcomings of both diplomatic engagement and intimidation is that they face a serious cheap talk problem
because the UN tends to be biased toward peace, then
it is expected that they can more directly affect the
incentives of the disputants when there is actually a significant contribution of resources in accompaniment.
Models are thus estimated with the counts and durations of diplomatic engagement and intimidation
included only when military involvement has previously occurred or is concurrent.

UN involvement does not occur at random and


could be conditioned on the relative difficulty of resolution. To address this problem while not introducing
issues related to model dependence, I follow Gilligan
& Sergenti (2006) and use matching methods so that
we can see how crises that experienced UN involvement
differ in trajectory from crises that did not but that are
similar with regard to a number of factors that shape
their ex ante ease or difficulty of settlement.13 Specifically, coarsened exact matching is used to balance the
data with respect to the following confounding variables (Iacus, King & Porro, 2012).14 These variables are
all expected to affect the durations and outcomes of
crises because they relate to the underlying levels of
intractability in the disputes.15
A dichotomous variable of whether both sides of the
crisis experienced violence at the onset of their crises is
included as a direct measure of conflict severity. Since
this measure picks up activity at crisis onset, it does not
raise concerns related to the sequence of violence and
UN involvement. Another potentially confounding
variable is the contiguity between the dyadic actors,
where contiguity is considered as true if the states share
a border or are separated by less than 450 km of water.
Contiguous states simultaneously have greater access to
information about each other but at the same time face
more of a credible commitment problem, since noncontiguous states can simply withdraw with less fear
of surprise attack during disarmament. The next variable used in the matching captures the response times
that the actors had in their crises. When actors take a
while to respond to a crisis trigger, this is an indication
that they are willing to be more patient in moving
toward resolution. When the actors respond immediately, it is clear that the situation is of utmost priority
and will likely progress quickly. From the ICB data, I
record the maximum amount of time that either actor
used to respond to its crisis trigger. For the coarsening,
response times that are less than a week are separated
13

The measure is thus et/c, where t is the time since previous UN


action of a particular type and c is the mean crisis length.
12
See Box-Steffensmeier, Reiter & Zorn (2003). Although similar,
this is not exactly the same as interacting the involvement variable
with a function of event time, as doing so would conflate information
about timing and duration. For instance, a high value on a simple
interaction with event time may indicate that the UN has been
involved for a while, or it might indicate that the UN simply intervened late in the conflict. Calculating duration as a decay process
allows for the separation of these different scenarios.
11

With minor exceptions, the results are similar to those obtained


when the confounding variables are simply included as control variables.
14
The matching is only able to balance the sample with respect to
any UN involvement vs. non-involvement and is not able to further
balance based on the type of involvement. The approach taken here is
still useful for testing the hypotheses because the inferences are made
with the reference category being no UN involvement, but future
analyses can provide refined comparative assessments by more fully
accounting for the different circumstances in which each involvement
type is more or less likely.
15
Beardsley & Schmidt (forthcoming) demonstrate that similar
factors also influence whether and how the UN becomes involved.

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343

from those that are longer. I also match on whether


the crises are part of a protracted conflict and whether
there is an ethnic dimension to the conflict, as both
are observable indicators of intractability. Finally, I
match on how many crisis actors there are in the
overall crises, which should additionally capture how
difficult the crises are to resolve ex ante. For the coarsening of this variable, I distinguish between crises that
have just one or two crisis actors and multilateral crises
with more.
After the data are balanced using the coarsened exact
matching, the multinomial logit models are run. Since
the response times and number of crisis actors were coarsened and thus not exactly balanced across the cases with
and without UN involvement, they are also included as
control variables. I also include information regarding
the time from the start of the crisis until the first instance
of UN involvement because timing can have an important effect on the ability to influence crisis trajectory
(Regan & Stam, 2000). The same problem as that
related to measuring involvement duration arises, in that
a value of 0 when there has not yet been any involvement
should not be the same value as when there is immediate
UN involvement. In this regard, I construct a timing
variable that also ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 being immediate involvement and 0 being no involvement. In
between are the involvements that were not immediate
and are calculated by exponential decay with a scaling
factor equal to the mean crisis length. I also include the
square of this measure to allow for curvilinear effects of
timing. To go along with these timing variables, I
include a dummy variable of whether the UN is involved
at all. This allows for movement from 0 to 1 in the count
variables to be distinguished from the mere occurrence of
any UN actions that brings into play these timing variables. Two additional control variables are included to
rule out other alternative explanations. First, I control for
whether or not one of the sides of the crisis dyad is a permanent member of the UN Security Council (P-5)
because Beardsley & Schmidt (forthcoming) have shown
that P-5 involvement can substantially decrease UN
involvement in international crises. Second, I control for
whether or not regional security organizations were
involved in the crisis, since regional involvement can
be a substitute for UN involvement.

Results and discussion


Tables II and III present the findings of the multinomial
logit models using the data that have been weighted
using coarsened exact matching, with each column

pertaining to the different ways crises can end.16 Model


1 includes all the different types of involvement and
Model 2 focuses on the impact of diplomatic engagement when military involvement is also present.17 For
Model 2, analogous variables for other types of involvement are included as well, so that the comparison in both
models is to no UN involvement. An additional model
of the effect of intimidation when military involvement
has occurred could not be estimated because too few
events with this combination also experienced stalemate.
The values reported are the coefficients interpreted
as average treatment effects along with the standard
errors. The coefficients reported in Table II only have
limited utility in portraying the UNs effects on crisis
duration because of the inclusion of the quadratic terms
and the fact that an increase in the count variables implies
a resetting of the duration variables. Linear-combination
calculations are used to assess how increases in the counts
and durations affect the hazard rates together. The five
panels in Figure 1 depict the substantive findings as relative risks associated with an increase by 1 in the count of
each type of UN action, as well as different time periods
following such an increase.18 The relative risks are calculated as the ratio between the change in probability of a
particular outcome and the baseline probability.19 The
icons are placed at the average values, and the lines are the
part of the 90% confidence interval that reach toward 0,
which helps to gauge whether a relative risk is statistically
significant or not.
A number of findings emerge from the results, suggesting that there are substantial trade-offs associated
with various types of UN involvement. The following
discussion proceeds by taking up each type of intervention in turn. UN interventions that comprise military
involvement activities such as peacekeeping has the most
positive effect, from the standpoint of peace advocacy,
on the timing of victory. In the short and medium runs,

16

The L1 statistics from Iacus, King & Porro (2012) indicate a


moderate amount of imbalance before the matching, with a global
L1 statistic of 0.46, on a scale from 0 to 1. The two highest
univariate L1 statistics pertain to the number of crisis actors (0.17)
and the response time (0.13).
17
A model with all the different types of involvement and their
interactions is unwieldy because involvement is captured by both
the number of involvements and a quadratic function of duration;
all the interactions would place tremendous demands on the data.
18
These effects were calculated after performing the appropriate
transformations from the durations in days to the 0-to-1 measures
of recentness.
19
When multiplied by 100, these give the percentage increase or
decrease in the risk of each outcome occurring.

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journal of PEACE RESEARCH 49(2)

344
Table II. Multinomial logit models of crisis outcomes after coarsened exact matching

Model 1: Separate types


Compromise
Count of assurance
Duration of assurance
(Duration of assurance)^2
Count of diplomatic engagement
Duration of diplomatic engagement
(Duration of diplomatic engagement)^2
Count of military involvement
Duration of military involvement
(Duration of military involvement)^2
Count of intimidation
Duration of intimidation
(Duration of intimidation)^2
Any UN involvement
Haste of UN involvement
(Haste of UN involvement)^2
Contiguity
Protracted conflict
Violent trigger
Maximum response time
Ethnic conflict
Number of crisis actors
P-5 crisis actor
Regional organization
Elapsed time
(Elapsed time)^2
(Elapsed time)^3
Constant
N

Victory

0.221 (0.365)
25.09** (5.046)
24.98** (4.945)
2.056** (0.528)
7.564* (3.928)
9.903** (4.101)
0.493 (0.720)
7.639 (7.502)
10.99 (7.125)
0.0810 (0.109)
4.369 (4.843)
4.680 (4.933)
3.108 (3.743)
9.201 (9.903)
6.235 (6.916)
0.504* (0.264)
0.0625 (0.395)
0.927* (0.494)
0.0173** (0.00687)
0.289 (0.300)
0.396** (0.0938)
0.685** (0.253)
0.0107 (0.325)
0.0131** (0.00375)
2.00e-05** (8.05e-06)
9.34e-09** (4.70e-09)
4.573** (0.695)
73,211

1.347* (0.716)
24.09* (12.79)
24.89** (12.45)
0.657 (1.098)
13.29** (5.664)
13.83** (6.053)
0.708 (0.501)
9.169 (10.83)
14.49 (11.93)
0.0790 (0.236)
17.10** (7.469)
16.75** (7.264)
0.917 (4.419)
7.357 (15.16)
5.708 (11.26)
1.277** (0.634)
0.507 (0.608)
0.0577 (0.568)
0.0114* (0.00605)
0.0705 (0.513)
0.671* (0.346)
0.0414 (0.553)
0.689 (0.557)
0.00702 (0.00620)
7.37e-06 (8.81e-06)
2.78e-09 (3.09e-09)
6.469** (1.140)
73,211

Stalemate
0.943 (3.445)
5.744 (35.33)
6.803 (30.67)
1.973 (2.862)
1.796 (4.755)
0.968 (4.872)
0.0949 (0.843)
13.90 (19.16)
15.57 (19.40)
0.274 (0.586)
5.495 (12.87)
6.211 (12.03)
6.492* (3.811)
20.04 (12.39)
13.60 (9.669)
0.655 (0.445)
1.090** (0.460)
1.707** (0.403)
0.0184** (0.00611)
1.206** (0.514)
0.388 (0.238)
0.148 (0.403)
1.041** (0.385)
0.00273 (0.00281)
1.91e-06 (2.44e-06)
5.01e-10 (3.94e-10)
4.997** (0.789)
73,211

*p < .1, **p < .05 in a two-tailed test.

military involvement substantially lengthens the time


until victory and thereby reduces the risk that the crisis
actors will fall victim to massive losses. The trade-off here
is that military involvement also lengthens the time until
compromise. While this fits the mold of a procedural
effect in which military involvement simply takes time
to put in place, the fact that it still does not have a significant shortening effect at six months indicates that military
involvement tends to shape the incentives such that at
least one of the sides feels prematurely protected from the
sting of battle and thus less eager to settle.
We see the potential for perverse incentives more clearly
in relation to assurance. Actions of assurance appear to
have a counterproductive effect on the pace of peacemaking. In the short run, they speed up the time until victory
and delay the ability for crises to end in stalemate. In the
long run, they lengthen the time until compromise. Two
downsides to intervention appear to be at work here. In the
short run, assurances such as the promise of peacekeeping

will potentially give the belligerents a deadline in which


they will feel enticed to make as many gains as possible
before the peacekeepers help lock in the status quo. This
helps explain why the risk of victory is so high after the initial offer of assurances but then falls and does not have a
statistically significant effect after a month. The fall in the
propensity for compromise is consistent with the expectation that assurances and military involvement can create an
artificial sense of security that reduces the incentives to
make any progress at the bargaining table. Assurances, like
military involvements, tend to lock in periods of simmering hostilities that neither progress toward agreement nor
risk falling into total war.
UN activity that involves diplomatic engagement produces trade-offs that are the inverse of military involvement. While military involvement tends to delay both
victory and compromise, diplomatic engagement tends
to hasten both types of outcome in the long run. That
diplomatic engagement increases the propensity for

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345

Table III. Multinomial logit models of crisis outcomes after coarsened exact matching
Model 2: Interaction of types
Compromise
Count of diplomatic engagement
after military inv.
Duration of diplomatic engagement
after military inv.
(Duration of diplomatic engagement
after military inv.)^2
Count of other UN involvement
Duration of other UN involvement
(Duration of other UN involvement)^2
Any UN involvement
Haste of UN involvement
(Haste of UN involvement)^2
Contiguity
Protracted conflict
Violent trigger
Maximum response time
Ethnic conflict
Number of crisis actors
P-5 crisis actor
Regional organization
Elapsed time
(Elapsed time)^2
(Elapsed time)^3
Constant
N

Victory

Stalemate

0.907** (0.309)

0.290 (0.437)

1.506** (0.408)

2.931 (7.133)

15.24* (8.136)

39.22** (9.010)

4.056 (7.498)

17.77** (8.387)

42.82** (9.575)

0.124 (0.0929)
4.005 (3.726)
3.369 (3.839)
2.155 (4.527)
8.430 (12.37)
6.086 (8.404)
0.545** (0.253)
0.0706 (0.381)
0.971* (0.504)
0.0159** (0.00666)
0.365 (0.311)
0.378** (0.0953)
0.618** (0.240)
0.0374 (0.333)
0.0127** (0.00371)
1.79e-05** (6.91e-06)
7.68e-09** (3.71e-09)
4.482** (0.667)
73,211

0.157 (0.107)
10.37 (7.492)
10.39 (7.565)
2.657 (5.304)
5.556 (18.85)
2.789 (14.02)
1.067 (0.678)
0.456 (0.559)
0.0231 (0.499)
0.00472** (0.00179)
0.246 (0.474)
0.675** (0.232)
0.115 (0.480)
0.760 (0.538)
0.00713 (0.00514)
6.52e-06 (5.87e-06)
1.66e-09 (1.66e-09)
6.327** (0.994)
73,211

0.574** (0.250)
32.36** (13.54)
32.37** (13.71)
4.364 (4.174)
5.830 (14.40)
2.873 (10.36)
0.675 (0.440)
1.168** (0.467)
1.660** (0.385)
0.0196** (0.00655)
1.165** (0.448)
0.402* (0.228)
0.122 (0.402)
1.076** (0.367)
0.00250 (0.00260)
1.57e-06 (2.03e-06)
5.22e-10 (3.58e-10)
4.971** (0.794)
73,211

*p < .1, **p < .05 in a two-tailed test.

compromise after three months and victory after two


months is consistent with both the expectation that third
parties such as the UN can help reduce uncertainty
and provide political cover and the expectation that some
disputants might use peace processes for insincere
motives. The results are consistent with the notion that
sincere types can use UN involvement to help them
identify and reach difficult compromises while insincere
types can use the UN involvement to stall until the time
is right to re-engage and push for a more full victory.
The remaining type of UN action, intimidation, does
not have much of an effect on the timing of crisis outcomes. The only effect is that, in the long run, intimidation increases the likelihood of victory. One explanation
is that when intimidation attempts do provide more than
just cheap talk, it is when they actually signal that the
UN is not willing or able to take more concrete steps
toward peacemaking. So, when the UN has urged
restraint and then months go by without resolution,
actors with relatively strong strategic positions might feel
undeterred by international involvement and then go
ahead and push for a decisive victory.

Another way to see these effects is through counterfactual predictions. The 2002 Kaluchak crisis between
India and Pakistan did not include any of the UN involvement considered here and ended in stalemate after 186
days. If we set the control variables to the same values as
this crisis, we can then ask how the trajectory of the crisis
might have been different had the UN become involved
in various capacities at, say, six days into the crisis. To
form such expectations, I use the Clarify software (King,
Tomz & Wittenberg, 2000) and generate the predicted
probabilities of each type of outcome at six days, 36 days,
and 186 days.
Starting with the impact of military involvement, the
decline in daily risk of victory is quite pronounced as it
falls from 0.18% to 0.003% immediately after deployment and from 0.14% to 0.004% 30 days later. The
decline in ability to compromise is also quite substantial
during UN military involvement, as it falls from 0.49%
to 0.04% immediately after involvement and from
0.33% to 0.04% 30 days later. Turning to diplomatic
engagement, the likelihood of compromise increases substantially after 180 days when the UN becomes involved

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journal of PEACE RESEARCH 49(2)

346
A

Relative risks

Relative risks

6
4
3
2
1

6
5
4
3
2
1

1
0

7 30 60 90 180 0

Compromise

7 30 60 90 180 0

7 30 60 90 180

Victory

7 30 60 90 180 0

Compromise

Stalemate

C
8
7

Relative risks

Relative risks

6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1
7 30 60 90 180 0

Compromise

7 30 60 90 180 0

7 30 60 90 180

17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1

7 30 60 90 180 0

Compromise

Stalemate

Victory

Time since military involvement

Relative risks

15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1

Victory

7 30 60 90 180

Stalemate

Time since diplomatic engagement

Time since assurance

7 30 60 90 180 0

7 30 60 90 180 0

Victory

7 30 60 90 180

Stalemate

Time since intimidation

7 30 60 90 180 0

7 30 60 90 180 0

Compromise

Victory

7 30 60 90 180

Stalemate

Time since diplomatic engagement


with military involvement

Figure 1. Relative risks of crisis terminations associated with UN involvement durations.

in this capacity from 0.08% to 0.61% but so does the


likelihood of victory from 0.06% to 0.27%. To quantify other notable effects, we see that assurance decreases
the predicted probability of compromise after six months
from 0.08% to 0.002%, and intimidation increases the
predicted probability of victory after six months from
0.06% to 0.72%. In hindsight, diplomatic engagement

could have been prudent in this case although not necessarily practical because of Indias general resistance to
outside interference. The predicted probability of one
side achieving a substantial victory after diplomatic
engagement was still rather small this is true in a
hypothetical sense from the probabilities recovered in
this exercise and it is more importantly true in a practical

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Beardsley

347

sense when considering how costly it would have been


for either India or Pakistan to achieve major military victory over each other in 2002 and it would have been
worth seeing if diplomatic engagement could have
encouraged compromise instead of the stalemate that
eventually resulted.
Turning to Model 2 in Table III, we observe the effect
of diplomatic engagement while military involvement
was introduced earlier in the crisis. When accompanied
by the commitment of military resources, diplomatic
engagement no longer is associated with a greater propensity for one-sided victory, presumably in part because
the military deployment helps prevent disputants from
exploiting vulnerabilities while they stall. More dramatically, we observe that in the long run diplomatic engagement substantially increases the opportunity for crises to
end by stalemate the relative risk is greater than 146 at
six months after involvement. This suggests that while
the military deployment still impedes substantial progress toward compromise, diplomatic engagement can at
least help the actors end the crisis and abide by the status
quo that the UN peacekeeping forces entrench. Strong
UN action that is needed to prevent a complete collapse
in negotiations appears to benefit from subsequent diplomatic engagement that can help the crisis at least move
to some form of conclusion, even if only a stalemate.

Implications and conclusions


The UN can have a number of effects on the duration of
international crises, depending on the type of involvement. The different relationships for the various types
of UN activity demonstrate the importance of disaggregating interventions. Hence, we see direct advantages of
using a dataset like that of UNIEvents. Further studies
might disaggregate the activity further to pull out the
varying effects of, say, traditional peacekeeping versus
multidimensional peacekeeping.
Consistent with the existing literature, there are real
benefits but also real risks to UN involvement in international crises. Corroborating Betts (1994) and Greig &
Diehl (2005), it appears that UN military involvement
prevents both victory and compromise from occurring.
This is good news when a crisis is prone to degenerate
into massive hostilities but bad news when a crisis would
likely progress toward a peaceful settlement in the
absence of such strong involvement.
Diplomatic engagements also exhibit a trade-off as
they accelerate both compromise and victory over time.
In the long run, disputants that are sincere in their use
of the peace process to resolve their bargains more

efficiently can benefit from UN assistance in facilitating


communication and signaling to domestic audiences that
compromise is prudent. At the same time, disputants that
are insincere can use the peace process to increase their
prospects of victory. That being said, UN involvement
in diplomatic engagement can be quite prudent when the
disputants have provided signals regarding their sincerity
and when the probability of victory is likely to remain at
low levels even when stalling does occur.
Mere actions of assurance and intimidation appear to
have more downside than upside assurances tend to
delay compromise and stalemate while both assurance
and intimidation can hasten victory. Like military involvement, assurances can over time remove the incentives
for the disputants to make progress on resolving their
disputes. Unlike military deployments, mere assurances
tend to produce a perverse short-term effect in which the
promise of peacekeeping or monitoring to come could
encourage the sides to take swift aggressive action before
the peacekeepers hinder any further changes in the status
quo. Actions of intimidation when followed by lengthy
crises can indicate that the international community is
not going to take more substantive action to help prevent
one side from gaining a substantial upper hand.
Aside from building on existing studies, the research
has two overarching implications. First, we should not
dismiss the UN as irrelevant when it comes to shaping
the dynamics of conflict bargaining. UN military involvement in particular has a profound effect on preventing
the sides from achieving victory. When given enough
time, diplomatic engagement can have rather strong
effects in encouraging compromise, as well as in helping
crises end in stalemate when UN military involvement has
reduced progress toward full resolution. Second, once we
recognize that the UN can strongly shape crisis durations,
there is a call for caution in prescribing hasty UN action.
Military involvement can delay incentives to compromise,
diplomatic engagement and intimidation can increase the
potential for victory in the long run, and assurance can
do both. UN involvement is not without side effects, and
the decision to become involved must be made with eyes
wide open to both the benefits and risks.

Replication data
The dataset and do-files for the empirical analysis in this
article can be found at http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Holger Schmidt, Victor Asal, Birger
Heldt, and the participants of the Folke Bernadotte

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journal of PEACE RESEARCH 49(2)

348

Academy Working Group on Conflict Prevention for


invaluable comments.

Funding
Funding for the coding of the UNIEvents data was provided by the Folke Bernadotte Academy.

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KYLE BEARDSLEY, b. 1979, PhD in Political Science
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