Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth. 2018. Incentivizing Peace: How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries (New York: Oxford University Press)

Excerpt

Civil war is distressingly common. Violent intrastate conflicts such as those currently raging in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Libya produce thousands of casualties, millions of refugees and internally displaced persons, lead to economic devastation, and can spread across borders and create security problems for countries far away. International actors recognize the costs of these conflicts, and international organizations (IOs) such as the United Nations send mediators to facilitate negotiation, deploy peacekeepers, and authorize sanctions and military interventions in an effort to resolve these wars. A large body of literature on international conflict management suggests that actions such as peacekeeping (e.g. Fortna 2008; Hultman et al. 2013, 2014) and mediation (e.g. Beber 2012; Bercovitch and Gartner 2008) can help parties reach negotiated settlements to end civil wars and reduce violence in ongoing conflicts. Indeed, the empirical literature on conflict management suggests that there would be more, deadlier, civil wars in the absence of international action. …