Mediating Civil War Settlements and the Duration of Peace

In this article, we examine the impact of international mediation attempts during civil war on the duration of peace once the war has ended. We include several aspects of the mediation attempt in our theoretical framework and our empirical tests, but we also control for other characteristics of the conflict and the country. While studies often find that decisive victories lead to a more durable peace, we expect that different types of mediation attempts have a distinct impact on the duration of peace after a civil war. In empirical tests on civil wars from 1945-1995 with Cox and Weibull event history models, we find the presence of mediation leads to a longer peace, while mediated agreements and superpower mediation attempts shorten the peace. In addition, several characteristics of both country and previous conflict impact how long the peace will last.