Incentivizing Peace

How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth

Presents a novel approach by examining civil wars from the perspective of their development
Includes easily accessible statistical analyses based on systematic examinations of over 260 violent domestic conflicts that have taken place all over the world since World War II
Provides supplemental case evidence from Indonesia, Ivory Coast, and Syria to further demonstrate the validity and nuances of the theoretical argument

Incentivizing Peace

How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth

Description

Civil wars are among the most difficult problems in world politics. While mediation, intervention, and peacekeeping have produced some positive results in helping to end civil wars, they fall short in preventing them in the first place. In Incentivizing Peace, Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth show that considering civil wars from a developmental perspective presents opportunities to prevent the escalation of nascent armed conflicts into full-scale civil wars. The authors demonstrate that highly-structured intergovernmental organizations (IGOs such as the World Bank, IMF, or regional development banks) are particularly well-positioned to engage in civil war prevention. When such IGOs have been actively engaged in nations on the edge, their potent economic tools have helped to steer rebel-government interactions away from escalation and toward peaceful settlement. Incentivizing Peace provides enlightening case evidence that IGO participation is a key to better predicting, and thus preventing, the outbreak of civil war.

Incentivizing Peace

How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth

Incentivizing Peace

How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth

Author Information

Jaroslav Tir, Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Johannes Karreth, Assistant Professor of Political Scienc, University at Albany, State University of New York

Jaroslav Tir is Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of over two dozen scholarly studies on domestic and international armed conflicts, conflict management, territorial disputes, environmental security and cooperation, and rally around the flag dynamics. He is also a recipient of National Science Foundation and Fulbright grants.

Johannes Karreth is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. His research focuses on international organizations, military interventions, and political violence. Additional scholarly work includes analyses of how voters respond to changes in the landscape of political parties and immigration.

Incentivizing Peace

How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth

Reviews and Awards

"Th[is] book significantly advance[s] our understanding of the determinants of peace in conflict-affected countries." - Susanna P.Campbell, American University, Perspectives on Politics

"The book, through sophisticated research, clearly demonstrates that conflict escalation can be prevented if a country is connected to HSIGOs." - Erich P. Schellhammer, Royal Roads University, The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies

Incentivizing Peace

How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth

From Our Blog

The international community struggles to end civil wars. How can international organizations help?

Violent armed conflicts elsewhere in the world have equally devastating consequences. Despite these dramatic developments, the international community faces a massive challenge of how to respond to emerging political violence in a decisive and effective manner.

Posted on April 22, 2018

Read the blog post