Dynamics of civil war under the threat of third-party intervention

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1606885 (Table of Contents)

The legitimacy of a third-party intervention into a civil conflict derives from the recent re-conceptualization of state sovereignty. However, practical implications of third-party intervention still need to be studied. This thesis focuses on �moral hazard�as one of the most significant practical implication of the third-party intervention. Moral hazard occurs when a rebel group perceives the intervention as an insurance and escalates the violence within the conflict in order to get international attraction and external intervention so that it ends up being successful. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the dynamics of a civil conflict between a government and region elite, who demands a higher share from the resources in dispute and start a rebellion, changes when there is a third-party who could intervene in behalf of the region elite if the government uses brutal violence in order to suppress rebellion, by using a three-player extensive game model. The unique equilibrium derived from the model suggests, along with some other implications, ability of the region elite to manipulate the government in order to change the level of violence within the conflict. By that ability, the model indicates, humanitarian intervention is open to possibility of moral hazard since the region elite can escalate the violence in order to attract intervention whenever the expected payoff from the intervention is high enough.