The Logic of Ceasefires in Civil War

Ceasefires play a role in almost all civil war peace processes. Yet existing studies undertheorize the ways in which different logics drive the design of ceasefire agreements, and the effect this has on violence suspension. Building on bargaining theory and existing ceasefire literature, we identify different bargaining problems conflict parties face over the course of a conflict, and three classes of ceasefire design they use to address these problems. We argue that the effect of ceasefires is driven both by these underlying logics and by the provisions they contain. Building on the PA-X data to capture the provisions included within all written civil war ceasefires between 1990 and 2019, and using Uppsala Conflict Data Program georeferenced event data, we estimate models of ceasefire survival, with conflict deaths as the main measure of whether a ceasefire remains in place. We find that definitive ceasefires (i.e., agreements with demobilization and incompatibility provisions), followed by preliminary ceasefires (i.e., agreements with compliance mechanisms), are associated with longer periods of violence suspension than cessation of hostilities agreements that lack such provisions. We discuss the implications of our results for conflict parties and third parties seeking to facilitate the transition from war to peace.

Negotiating Peace with Your Enemy: The Problem of Costly Concessions

Why do some parties fail to settle conflict, even after long periods of fighting? Bargaining theory explains this through imperfect information, commitment problems, war entrepreneurs, and indivisible stakes. Integrating insights from social psychology into bargaining theory, this article proposes an additional bargaining obstacle. Conflict party members not only care about their in-group's welfare, but also want to avoid rewarding their opponent through concessions. A mutually acceptable agreement always contains concessions, yet when concessions are unpopular with key constituents, they are costly for leaders to make. This may result in a situation where leaders would prefer to settle but still decide to continue the war. Modifying a standard bargaining setup to account for this dilemma, the article demonstrates the difficulties of settling a conflict when out-group preferences are salient. It shows how events that increase the saliency of out-group preferences, such as major ceasefire violations, lead to a drop in public support for negotiations. The problem of costly concessions renders the search for a mutually acceptable agreement a delicate balancing act, particularly if constituents are isolated from the costs of war and political competitors mobilize around unpopular concessions.

Articulating bargaining theories: movement, chance, and necessity as descriptive principles

The Nash Demand Game (NDG) has been one of the first models (Nash in Econometrica 21(1):128–140, 1953. 10.2307/1906951) that has tried to describe the process of negotiation, competition, and cooperation. This model has had enormous repercussions and has leveraged basic and applied research on bargaining processes. Therefore, we wonder whether it is possible to articulate extensive and multiple developments into a single unifying framework. The Viability Theory has this inclusive approach. Thus, we investigate the NDG under this point of view, and, carrying out this work, we find that the answer is not only affirmative but that we also advance in characterising viable NDGs. In particular, we found foundations describe the distributive Bargaining Theory: the principle of movement and the principle of chance and necessity. Finally, this initial work has many interesting perspectives. The probably most important idea is to integrate developments of the Bargaining Theory and thus capture the complexity of the real world in an articulated way.