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Political Fragility and the Timing of Conflict Mediation

Beckerman, Carly

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Abstract

In recent years, much of the public discourse regarding conflict in the Middle East has pondered the possibility of military intervention, but far less attention has been paid to the optimal mechanisms for conflict mediation. There remains considerable confusion in the study of conflict resolution about how to locate the right time, or ‘ripe moment’ for this type of third-party involvement. This is a crucial area of policy relevant research. When attempting to model ripeness, most of the literature has relied on expected utility models of decision-making and found that crucial but nebulous factors that are important in the MENA region, such as conflicting parties’ psychology, religious and political beliefs, as well as grievances compounded over time, cannot easily be incorporated into the framework. This paper offers a plausibility probe to highlight the potential of an augmented approach. Using Poliheuristic (PH) Theory that reflects the non-compensatory nature of political risk, it creates a litmus test for third-party mediation based not on what conflicting parties aim to achieve, but what outcomes and processes they must avoid. The result is a relatively simple identification of ‘bad’ timing, as well as theory-informed mechanisms designed to help practitioners generate better conditions for mediation. This probe contributes to our understanding of the relationship between political fragility and conflict in the MENA region by indicating how political fragility might be conceptualized as a process that can be mapped and perhaps interrupted.

Citation

Beckerman, C. (2022). Political Fragility and the Timing of Conflict Mediation. Social Sciences, 11(2), Article 76. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11020076

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 8, 2022
Online Publication Date Feb 15, 2022
Publication Date 2022-02
Deposit Date Feb 23, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Social Sciences
Publisher MDPI
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 11
Issue 2
Article Number 76
DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11020076

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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