Dissertation

Ceasefires as bargaining instruments in intrastate conflicts: ceasefire objectives and their effects on peace negotiations

Conceptualizing ceasefires as bargaining instruments challenges established ideas about the processes that lead up to conflict settlement, and about war re-emergence, with important implications for our understanding of war and peace.

Author: Valerie Sticher
Date: 11 May 2021
Links: Full text in Scholarly Publications Leiden University

All conflict settlements involve a ceasefire, but not all ceasefires help settle conflicts. Despite the multifaceted – and often critical – role of ceasefires in intrastate conflicts, we know surprisingly little about them. In particular, we lack a systematic understanding of how state and non-state actors use ceasefires as part of a larger military or political process. This thesis seeks to shed light on the use of ceasefires as bargaining instruments and on how they shape the trajectory of a conflict. It investigates when and why conflict party leaders use what types of ceasefires, and how this affects progress in peace negotiations.

The thesis consists of four parts. Part one introduces the analytical framework that guides the theory building and discusses the literature and research design. Part two investigates when, how and why battlefield dynamics affect progress towards a negotiated conflict settlement. Part three shows how, over the course of a bargaining process, the strategic goal of conflict party leaders evolves, and how this evolving goal drives the design of a ceasefire. Part four summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for our understanding of ceasefires as an integral part of the transition from war to peace.

The theoretical and empirical contributions of this thesis demonstrate how, far from interrupting the bargaining process, ceasefires can fulfill important bargaining functions that shift over the course of a conflict.