1.THE UNITED NATIONS AND CONFLICT MEDIATION
Until 1990, most armed conflicts were decided on the battlefield while only very few of them ended in negotiations. Since then, the number and also the effectiveness of peaceful conflict resolution efforts have increased significantly: today, about half of the armed conflicts are solved at the negotiating table (Sisk, 2001: 1; see also Figure 1 in the Appendix). The United Nations is an important player in international conflict mediation. With the termination of the Cold War and the reinvigoration of the organization’s capacities, the UN has expanded its activities in preventing and containing conflicts.
However, the organization’s efforts in mediation have so far been more of a trial and error undertaking than a strategic approach. No systematic study exists on the attributes of the UN that lead to successful mediation outcomes. Neither the UN itself nor the scientific literature offers large-scale professional research on the decisive factors for UN mediation success. But bearing in mind that one third of all mediation efforts are conducted by international organizations, of which the majority are done by the UN (Bercovitch and Schneider, 2000:
156, 159)1, it is essential to have a systematic overview of the assets that the organization brings to mediation efforts in order to focus on the strengths and tackle the flaws.
1 According to Fretter (2002: 103), the UN initiated 615 mediation attempts from 1945 to 1995, with 201 in the years 1986 to 1995.
2.RESEARCH QUESTION AND MAIN ARGUMENT
The puzzle I am trying to solve is: What makes the UN a successful mediator? The organization is neither an important international power player like the United States, it does not have a standing army behind it, as a huge intergovernmental organization it does not have the flexibility of a nation state and it is notoriously under-funded (or so it is said). Yet, there must be something.
The objective of this research endeavor is to propose a theoretical framework which explains success and failure of UN mediation and to test it empirically. The main argument is that impartiality, leverage and status are the decisive factors for successful UN mediation. These three factors and their interrelationship take the shape of a triangle: the ‘UN Peacemaking Triangle’. The model predicts that all three factors are necessary to produce a positive outcome – if only one of the factors is missing, success is out of reach.
3.RATIONALE BEHIND THE ARGUMENTATION
According to the model, the three causal factors, which are at the heart of this analysis, determine success in various ways. The analysis aims at unravelling the complex mechanisms and interrelationships.
The model suggests that impartiality and credibility are important prerequisites for success because mediation can only be effective when the UN is either perceived as being unbiased and fair and when the organization has gained the trust of the parties through its noble intentions. Impartiality, neutrality and the notion of not being affiliated with any state or other authority in the international system are the fundamental principles and main assets of the UN. And yet impartiality is not an objective condition in mediation and the UN can be perceived by one party as supporting the other side. If that is the case, the outcome can still be successful if the UN is accepted as an ‘honest broker’ with good intentions of solving the dispute. What matters in that case are the UN’s apparent motives, its fairness and justice.
Leverage – the ability of the mediator to put pressure on the conflict parties – is the second factor in the model. The rationale is that the UN mediator has to make the parties give up their rigid positions and get them to agree on mutually satisfactory terms. This requires material or
immaterial pressure which can be exerted as promises and rewards or threats and punishment (positive or negative incentives). Material incentives of the UN are its resources in the form of aid programs and the implementation of peace accords; immaterial incentives are the pressure of the international community and the Security Council. A UN-specific form of leverage is the role of the organization as ‘mediator of last resort’: if previous mediation attempts have failed and/or no other actor is prepared to become active as a mediator, the disputants will realize that a UN mediation is their last chance for peace and will ultimately be more cooperative and prepared to make concessions.
The third factor to be tested for its relevance for mediation success is the UN’s unique status.
The reasoning behind it is that the UN’s scope and depth make it the largest and influential international organization and give it a generally distinct standing in world politics. The UN’s assets in terms of status are its great degree of legitimacy, its special image and reputation, its experience and technical expertise and, most importantly, the role of the Secretary-General.
When the Secretary-General is personally committed to the peace process and brings his integrity and competencies to play, he gives additional weight to the mediation effort.
If the model is confirmed by the analysis, failure is unlikely when the organization uses all these qualities and attributes strategically in a mediation effort. Instead of treating these three factors as individual conditions, the model of the Peacemaking Triangle captures their combined effect. It predicts that only impartiality backed by leverage and complemented with status can yield satisfactory results.
4.METHOD OF ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
To obtain the data for the analysis, I conducted interviews with UN officials who were personally involved in the respective negotiations. The majority of these interviews were done as personal interviews during an internship at the UN in New York at the beginning of 2006, two were done as telephone interviews. For the data analysis, I used an extended version of Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Ragin, 1987) which was formulated by Lasse Cronqvist (2003a, 2005) who also developed the software program TOSMANA to assist in the analysis (Cronqvist 2003b, 2006).
The results essentially indicate that leverage is a necessary and sufficient condition for UN mediation success, whereas impartiality and status are negligible in their explanatory power.
Thus, the model of the Peacemaking Triangle is rejected. Not a specific combination of factors but only the presence or absence of the UN’s ability to effectively exert pressure on the disputants explains the outcome.
Although the model was not supported by the analysis, the results still contribute decisively to the existing literature on mediation. The general assessment in the literature that leverage is a key factor for explaining mediation success is confirmed by the analysis. But at the same time the results disprove those who state that “United Nation mediation is hampered considerably by lack of resources” and that “[T]he United Nations can offer no promises, nor make any threats” (Bercovitch, 1995: 14).
5.STRUCTURE
This thesis is structured as follows: Part 2 reviews the relevant literature and evaluates how the model fills a gap in mediation analysis. In part 3, I present the theoretical framework for my analysis by introducing the three causal factors and listing the indicators used for the measurement. Part 4 portrays the research strategy: it explains the rationale behind the case selection and the control variables, describes the process of the data collection and presents the analysis. The results and a fair assessment of their quality close part 4. Part 5 concludes.