Regional Organizations as Mediators in African Intrastate Conflicts : A Quantitative Study on the Role of Leverage in Intrastate Conflict Mediation Processes

Sammanfattning

The notion of mediation has been a central part of the literature on conflict resolution for centuries. Thanks to the contributions of many scholars before, several keys to successfully mastering the art of mediation have been established. One such key is that of leverage, which several scholars attest to being positively associated with mediation success. The importance of leverage raises the question of which types of mediators possess it, and which do not. The nature of regional organizations grants them with the possession of several components associated with leverage. The main claim of this thesis is that the leverage possessed by regional organizations increases the likelihood of mitigating the hurdles of mediation and subsequently the likelihood of mediation success. This claim is tested quantitatively, using data from African intrastate conflicts. The results of the logistic regressions conducted in order to test the claims show some support for the claim, albeit cautious such due to some ambiguity of the findings.