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Existing research provides no systematic insights into if and how mediation impedes battle-related deaths. Therefore, this article presents a temporally disaggregated analysis and assesses the effect of mediation on monthly fatal violence. The article predicts that adversaries evaluate opponents' trustworthiness from both fighting and negotiation behavior. It argues that reducing fighting intensity during negotiations is a sign of cooperation, which can be negotiated by mediators to build trust. Over the course of mediation, the content of negotiations provides information about how genuinely a conflict party is interested in conflict resolution. Only if mediation achieves negotiation of core incompatibilities will conflict parties be willing to reduce fighting intensity. Under these conditions, information revealed in a mediation process can build trust and substantively reduce violence. An empirical analysis of all African conflicts between 1993 and 2007 supports this prediction and shows that on average mediation is followed by substantive and lasting reductions in fatal violence, if mediation discusses the conflict's main incompatibility. In contrast, mediation on other topics is associated with a small, fleeting reduction in violence. Data of battle-related fatalities in Syria during negotiations as well as qualitative evidence further support the theoretical mechanism and the model prediction. The study concludes that mediation can reduce conflict intensity substantively, if it achieves exchange between conflict parties on the main conflict issues.

Existing research provides no systematic insights into if and how mediation impedes battle-related deaths. Therefore, this article presents a temporally disaggregated analysis and assesses the effect of mediation on monthly fatal violence. The article predicts that adversaries evaluate opponents' trustworthiness from both fighting and negotiation behavior. It argues that reducing fighting intensity during negotiations is a sign of cooperation, which can be negotiated by mediators to build trust. Over the course of mediation, the content of negotiations provides information about how genuinely a conflict party is interested in conflict resolution. Only if mediation achieves negotiation of core incompatibilities will conflict parties be willing to reduce fighting intensity. Under these conditions, information revealed in a mediation process can build trust and substantively reduce violence. An empirical analysis of all African conflicts between 1993 and 2007 supports this prediction and shows that on average mediation is followed by substantive and lasting reductions in fatal violence, if mediation discusses the conflict's main incompatibility. In contrast, mediation on other topics is associated with a small, fleeting reduction in violence. Data of battle-related fatalities in Syria during negotiations as well as qualitative evidence further support the theoretical mechanism and the model prediction. The study concludes that mediation can reduce conflict intensity substantively, if it achieves exchange between conflict parties on the main conflict issues.

Research on mediation has shown that mediation can be an effective conflict management tool to contain intrastate conflicts, prevent escalation of low intensity conflicts, and foster de-escalation. But can ripe moments for conflict prevention effectively be anticipated? This article argues that the short-term conflict history provides a good predictor of the probability of mediation onset in low-intensity conflicts. It builds on an expected utility theory of mediation and states that conflict intensity is a primary indicator of whether a window of opportunity for mediation exists. Thereby, the article asserts that the direction of the effect is conditional on the respective probability of victory of each conflict party. The theory postulates that high conflict intensity only increases the probability of mediation onset when neither side is likely to prevail militarily. If one of the conflict parties has a high chance of a military success, then it will not regard conflict intensity as costly, since it can expect to impose these costs on its opponent. Under these circumstances the conflict parties will not be willing to engage in mediation. The article presents empirical support for this proposition. It uses temporally disaggregated data of low-intensity African conflicts from 1993 to 2004 and demonstrates that the theoretically motivated model predicts mediation onset with high accuracy. The results show that conflict dynamics are highly relevant covariates in predicting mediation. This selection process should be considered when the impact of mediation is evaluated.

Does conflict change who desires to emigrate? Surprisingly, we still lack globally comparable empirical evidence on whether the types of individuals who want to leave their country differ between peaceful and conflict-affected locations. In this paper, we address this gap. We analyze unique survey data with global coverage to assess whether individual-level determinants of international permanent emigration aspirations differ during intrastate armed conflict compared to peaceful times and regions. We argue that armed conflict acts as an equalizer that attenuates the effect which individual economic and demographic variables have on international permanent emigration aspirations in peaceful contexts. As a result, aspirations to relocate permanently to another country increase among those demographic groups which are less inclined to move in peaceful situations. Our results indicate that variables related to a longer-term economic cost-benefit analysis, such as income or age, significantly lose importance for international permanent emigration aspirations in conflict situations. This demographic-specific effect explains an overall increase in emigration aspirations during conflicts. On average, we find no evidence that conflict increases the aspirations of all respondents to permanently move to another country. In contrast to income and age, the effects of demographic variables such as gender, household composition, or marital status are not significantly different across contexts.

Mediation is widely used to settle armed conflict and interstate crises. However, the debate over the most appropriate and effective mediation strategy is still ongoing. In particular, manipulative mediation is controversial, with some research indicating that heavy-handed mediation may buy short-term peace at the expense of an instable long-term situation. This paper re-evaluates these claims. We discuss how existing theoretical arguments either do not imply long-term instability or implicitly make unrealistic assumptions to explain possible long-term problems of manipulative strategies. We re-examine published empirical evidence for problematic long-term effects of manipulative mediation in interstate crises. We demonstrate statistically that this evidence actually implies a different conclusion and instead supports our theoretical argument: manipulative mediation is associated with substantively greater stability compared to unmediated cases, although this effect weakens and becomes statistically insignificant after several years. Interestingly, non-manipulative mediation appears to be uncorrelated with post-crisis stability, based on our analysis.

Many observers contend that wartime civilian victimization is an instrument of political leaders to achieve a particular goal. This article examines whether retaliation for similar acts by the other side, the developments on the battlefield, or the behavior of international actors accounts for the ups and downs of this so-called one-sided violence. Using information from the Konstanz One-Sided Violence Event Dataset and other sources, we evaluate the empirical relevance of these complementary models statistically. Time series analyses of the weekly number of killed and harmed Muslims (Bosniacs) and Serbs during the Bosnian civil war support the military and the massacre logic. We show that the Serbian side decreased one-sided violence following a territorial conquest, but that its one-sided violence was not a reciprocal response to the Bosniac targeting of civilians. Conversely, the Bosniac side resorted to violence during times of increasing Serbian atrocities and when the fighting was particularly intense. The analysis reveals that most international interventions did not reduce the carnage, but that the Serbs responded to Russian moves. (International Interactions/FUB)

Abstract
Refugee response has become an important topic in economic-development policy, but the majority of macro-level analyses do not find an association between country income level and refugee numbers. We argue that the apparent lack of association stems from using the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' count of refugees as the dependent variable in these analyses. Refugee counts reflect processes that take place in countries of arrival. In contrast, the decision to seek asylum may be more closely linked to conditions, including income, in countries of origin. Drawing on the 'migration-hump' concept from economic migration, we model counts of refugees and asylum seekers from conflict-affected countries for the same time period and find that differences in the level of gross domestic product (GDP) predict new asylum applications but not new refugee numbers. We outline reasons for this statistical finding, and discuss theoretical and practical consequences for our understanding of the relationship between country income and asylum-seeking.