External Support Termination : Associations with Cooperative Diplomatic Engagement

Sammanfattning

The thesis is a statistical analysis investigating the association between cooperative diplomatic engagement and external-support breadth and termination in instances of external support competition: when external support is simultaneously given to different sides engaged in intra-state conflict. It employs a variety of theoretical concepts whereby the expectation of external-support breadth reduction and category-specific termination under diplomatic engagement is made (the two hypotheses): all under the assumption that external support competition is costly. The shadow of the future and information exchange under frequent and enduring interaction render cooperation attractive and feasible, yet the war constraint renders cooperation to reduce mutual costs lower-bounded. At the same time, fear of escalation makes continually increased external-support competition undesirable. The theoretical expectations arose in service of the research question: How, if at all, is diplomatic engagement between external support competitors associated with external support termination? The findings suggest that cooperative diplomatic engagement is associated with reductions in external-support breadth between external-support competitors, and that when such contractions occur in tandem with increased diplomacy, more escalatory and overt support categories tend to terminate. The association is substantive and statistically significant throughout different measurements and models. The associations are most clear for prolonged competitions.