Stabilizing Civil Wars without Peacekeeping: Evidence from South Asia

Peacekeeping is helpful in resolving civil wars, but many conflicts have little chance of peacekeeping operations or other international peace-building interventions. Examination of relationships between armed groups and governments in much of post-colonial South Asia demonstrates how internal wars stabilize without meaningful international involvement. Two key factors, the government’s political space for bargaining and the relative power of armed groups, help to explain when it is possible to reach either stable cooperation between states and armed groups or negotiated settlements.