Understanding Bargaining Behavior during Civil War: How Third-party Enforcement Affects Groups’ Bargaining Offers

This paper provides a new approach to studying the behavior of groups engaged in civil war termination bargaining by focusing on the commitment problem. Extending the basic Rubinstein bargaining model, the model presented here has the added feature of a reneging option for the stronger group after an agreement is reached. This leads to the prediction that when groups expect the absence of an enforcement mechanism, the stronger group makes a larger concession, while the weaker group makes a more demanding offer, than would be expected according to the relative power dynamic between groups. On the other hand, when groups expect that a third-party peace operator will enforce an agreement, groups’ offers more closely reflect their relative power situation. To illustrate the causal process of groups’ bargaining behavior, five bargaining attempts during Sierra Leone’s civil wars from 1991 to 2002 are examined.