Transnational Dynamics of Civil War Peace Processes

This Ph.D. thesis is about the pathways through which civil war actors find a peaceful solution to their long-standing armed conflict and the role that the transnational linkages, which rebel groups form with various state and non-state actors, play during different stages of peace processes. The thesis explains how rebel groups’ transnational linkages affect the probability of peace settlements and the probability of peace settlement implementation in internal armed conflicts. Building on the pillars of the non-cooperative bargaining theory, most specifically on the bargaining with the outside option principle, the thesis conceptualizes the transnational linkages as constituting an outside option for rebels in their pathways towards reaching their political aims. As such, it argues that the ability of rebel groups to have another option to rely upon outside the main bargaining setting with their government, would pull the government side in towards making a peace settlement and implementing the peace settlement. However, since they have another option to rely upon, the rebels would only make and stay in the peace process bargaining if the payoffs of the peace settlement or the settlement implementation exceed the payoffs of their outside option. The thesis argues that while the transnational linkages would have a positive effect on the probability of peace settlement, on the contrary, they would have a negative effect on the probability of peace settlement implementation. The difference lies in what these two stages represent for rebels. Despite this background, the three separate Ph.D. papers by looking at different transnational linkages and by bringing both qualitative and quantitative evidence, test different parts of this theoretical proposition. The first paper looks at the impact of diaspora populations on conflict settlements, the second paper at the influence of permissive regional and global conditions on the implementation of peace settlements, and the third paper evaluates the influence of transborder ethnic kin groups on the civil war actors’ willingness to make a peace settlement.