Confronting ethnic conflict: The role of third parties in managing Africa's internal wars (Burundi, Sudan, South Africa, Somali)

The purpose of this dissertation is to critically assess the role of external intervention in managing selected ethnic conflicts in Africa. Given the pervasive threat of ethnic conflict and the growing incidence of internal wars spilling across borders, understanding the impact of third party intervention on conflict prevention, durable peaceful governance and amicable social relations becomes a critical exercise for any scholar of conflict management.; I have identified significant variation in the effects of interventions on ethnic conflicts in Africa: the goal of my research is to determine the causes of the variation and to consider the conditions necessary for successful intervention. The present analysis bridges the Comparative Politics and International Relations fields to examine when and why intervention succeeds and when it fails in an effort to develop a response-oriented framework that considers how the international response system can be redesigned so as to prevent and manage violent conflict. In other words, what conditions must be present in order for third party intervention to succeed?; To address this question, I use both theoretical research and empirical analysis to define intervention in a post cold war context; to engage in a comparative case study to identify factors that seem to explain why intervention is successful in some instances and not in others; and thirdly, to develop a guideline of conditions that should be present in order for intervention to work in the long-term.; In the comparative analysis, I focus on four cases in detail: the Somali crisis from 1988 to the present, the Burundi conflict from 1995 to the present, the protracted conflict in Sudan from 1983 to the present, and the 1994 KwaZulu-Natal civil conflict in South Africa. I have selected these cases because their varying outcomes and different types of third party involvement suggest that insights can be gained into the conditions that determine successful third party intervention.; This study compares the efforts of international, regional, and subregional multilateral organizations to manage ethnic conflict in these cases and argues that while there is an inherent merit to strengthening national and regional capabilities, the critical component of a successful third party intervention strategy is the participation of regional and subregional actors.