The timing of third-party intervention in social conflict

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the equilibrium outcome of social conflict between factions is strategically altered by third-party intervention. We consider an intervening third party that commits financial support to one of two contending factions for reducing its cost in conflict. Within the framework of three-player sequential-move games, we investigate the questions as follows. What is the optimal intervention intensity in terms of the third party’s financial support? Is there a first-mover advantage in conflict when there is third-party intervention? Fighting against all odds, will the unsupported faction have a chance to prevail when its opponent receives third-party support? What is the optimal timing of third-party intervention? The analysis in the paper has implications for the conditions under which the strategic intervention of a third party may or may not break a conflict between factions.

Keywords:

• Conflict
• Sequential game
• Third-party intervention
• First-mover advantage

JEL Codes:

• D72
• D74

Acknowledgements

We thank Binyam Solomon, the editor, and two anonymous referees for insightful comments and valuable suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 2013 Canadian Economic Association Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Canada. We thank Atin Basuchoudhary, Ugurhan Berkok, Roger Congleton, Hanna Halaburda, Anthony Heyes, Arye Hillman, Pinghan Liang, Scott Moser, John Patty, Marc Rieger, Charles Rowley, Shane Sanders, Mei Wang, and Ronald Wintrobe for their helpful comments. All remaining errors are ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ See, e.g. Regan (1996, 1998, 2002), Werner (2000), Regan and Aydin (2006), Rowlands and Carment (2006), Azam and Thelen (2010), and Bandyopadhyay, Sandler, and Younas (2011).

² See, e.g. Morgenthau (1967), Bull (1984), Betts (1994), Blechman (1995), Carment and James (1995), Dowty and Loescher (1996), Amegashie and Kutsoati (2007), Amegashie (2010), and Chang, Sanders, and Walia (2010).

³ See, e.g. Gershenson and Grossman (2000), Azam and Mesnard (2003), Collier and Hoeffler (2004), Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2007), Collier, Hoeffler, and Rohner (2009), and Vahabi (2010).

⁴ Congleton, Hillman, and Konrad (2008) present a systematic review of contributions on rent seeking in the past several decades. The authors discuss different formats of contests including those with an optimal choice of timing in a sequential-move game.

⁵ A classic example is the Communism movements provoked by the former Soviet Union. For instances, (i) in 1921 the former Soviet Union coined the Chinese Communist Party which later rebelled and defeated the then-central government of China; (ii) after the World War II, the former Soviet Union trained Kim II-Sung, sent him to rule North Korea, and then supported him to initiate the Korea War.

⁶ The third-party intervention is not effective if it fails to support its favorite faction. One failed scenario is that the third party cannot successfully provoke the collective action of the disorganized favorite faction. Another failure occurs when the favorite faction is already smitten before the third party gives a hand.

⁷ For instance, Gaddafi-ruled Libya supported Mahdi to rebel against Sudan government in 1976, backgrounded by historical territory disputes between the two countries. Similarly, during the 1st Congo war against Congolian dictator Mobutu in 1996, Rwanda and Uganda supported the repellants for the sake of ethnic disputes.

⁸ For recent surveys on the economics of peacekeeping, see the special issue of Defence and Peace Economics (2006, Issue 5), Solomon (2007), and Bove and Smith (2011).

⁹ See detailed discussions in Chang, Potter, and Sanders (2007a) and Chang and Sanders (2009).

¹⁰ For a detailed proof of this result, see Chang, Potter, and Sanders (2007a). The analytical framework of two-party conflict in the present analysis is fundamentally identical to the standard models of rent-seeking contests with independent private valuations of the contest prize. See, e.g. Nti (1999) and Morgan (2003). Under this simplification, one could consider B₁ as the difference of the values of stakes the third party put onto the two contending groups. This is also consistent with the assumption that the third party is a biased intervener.

¹¹ Effort or combative input by each of the contending parties can broadly be defined as gun, weapon, or armament in military conflict, rent-seeking effort in contest, or expenditure in litigation.

¹² The value of θ is assumed to be positive but is less than one, which implies that the third party’s intervention investment I is subject to diminishing returns (Chang, Potter, and Sanders 2007b).

¹³ We omit the discussions over the 3–1–2 game because we wish to keep the same sequence for the two fighting factions.

¹⁴ These international troops included Iraqi Kurd repellants. However, after the second Gulf War, it was Shi-Ah Iraqis rather than Kurds who dominated the new Iraqi government. Hence, we still suggest a 3–2–1 game.

¹⁵ Vahabi (2006, 2009) systematically examines the role of destructive power in affecting conflict over the ‘rules of the game’ or ‘institutions.’ Specifically, the author shows that capacities to destroy and produce constitute a key element in generating and maintaining institutions. Attempting to incorporate the endogeneity of destruction into the conflict literature, Chang and Luo (2013) discusses implications of endogenous destruction for contending parties in making their optimal choices between negotiating a settlement and fighting a war.