The Mercurial Commitment
Revisiting the Unintended Consequences of Military Humanitarian Intervention and Anti-Atrocity Norms
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9977050 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hiroto Sawada (0000-0002-7552-0399, Princeton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8833 • E-ISSN: 1468-2478 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/isq/sqae023 |
| OpenAlex | W4393179882 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 55 |
The debate on whether military humanitarian intervention and anti-atrocity norms, such as the responsibility to protect, cause perverse incentives, and provocative violence by a rebel group, has yet to reach a consensus. Specifically, existing theories are unable to fully explain why “emboldened” rebel groups provoke the government in some cases but not others. This paper reconciles this unresolved debate by arguing that it is not anti-atrocity norms but the temporary feasibility of humanitarian intervention that induces the potential rebel group to actually provoke the government. The inherent temporariness of the feasibility of large-scale intervention causes a commitment problem: An expectation of a temporary intervention shifts the balance of power toward a potential rebel and opens a quickly closing window of opportunity. A three-player game shows that, among other findings, a higher probability of humanitarian intervention alleviates the potential rebel’s incentive to fight, implying that the criticism of anti-atrocity norms is a “false charge.” The model also (i) explains why weaker groups can rebel in the shadow of external intervention and (ii) presents a novel implication that lowering the intervention cost can exacerbate the adverse incentive when a domestic commitment problem caused by the consolidation of government power is not severe
Criminology · Human rights · Humanitarian intervention · Intervention (counseling · Political science · Psychiatry · Unintended consequences · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Psychology
The Mediation Dilemma
Constructing International Security
Democracies at War
CHAPTER Five Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict
Did the R2P Foster Violence in Libya
The hazards of thinking about moral hazard
Economic Shocks and Civil War
Third Party Intervention and Strategic Militarization
Is there a parliamentary peace? Parliamentary veto power and military interventions from Kosovo to Daesh
Humanitarian Military Interventions
The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and the Structural Problems of Preventive Humanitarian Intervention
What Happened to the Responsibility to Rebuild
Military Mobilization and Commitment Problems
Shocks, Commitment, and the Risk of Civil War
The Myth of Entangling Alliances
The Permanence of Inconsistency
A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing Nato's Libya Campaign
The security dilemma and ethnic conflict
Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq
Committing to Peace
The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics
Strange Bedfellows
An Economic Theory of War
Do Major-Power Interventions Encourage the Onset of Civil Conflict? A Structural Analysis
Target Concessions in the Shadow of Intervention
The Unforeseen Consequences of Extended Deterrence
Inducing Deterrence through Moral Hazard in Alliance Contracts
Tracking Underreported Financial Flows
Less Is More? Shifting Power and Third-Party Military Assistance
The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention
Peaceful Uncertainty
Third-Party Intervention and the Escalation of State-Minority Conflicts1
Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention
Assisting Uncertainty
Only Here to Help? Bargaining and the Perverse Incentives of International Institutions
Where Do Third Parties Intervene? Third Parties’ Domestic Institutions and Military Interventions in Civil Conflicts1
To Concede or to Resist? The Restraining Effect of Military Alliances
Penalizing Atrocities
Ethnic Bargaining in the Shadow of Third-Party Intervention
The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement
War as a Commitment Problem
How International Actors Help Enforce Domestic Deals
Bargaining Failures and Civil War
Rationalist Approaches to Conflict Prevention and Resolution
The Road to Hell? Third‐Party Intervention to Prevent Atrocities
Persistent Fighting and Shifting Power
Commitment Problems in Alliance Formation
On the limits of moral hazard
Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others
The Inefficient Use of Power
The Principle of Convergence in Wartime Negotiations
Should Peacemakers Take Sides? Major Power Mediation, Coercion, and Bias
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |