Panel 54: Coding External Interventions in Quantitative Methods – How and What is Included
Panel organiser: Ricardo Sousa (Lisbon Univ. Institute, Portugal)
Contact: ricardorps2000@yahoo.com
| There are varied definitions of intervention in the literature, two symbolic ones are: a) external intervention has “an engagement [by one or more party or governments by force or not] in the domestic affairs of a state intended to change (or to preserve) the structure of power authority within it” (MacFarlane 2002, 13), which could favour either the government or other groups; and b) external agency interventions, as defined by Eldabawi (1999: 4) as multilateral [or unilateral] and essentially neutral mode of interventions that is aimed at promoting or facilitating peaceful resolution of conflicts, based on an explicit set of criteria that both parties to the conflict regard as providing an acceptable framework for initiating a process for resolving the conflict. Within this framework not only agency but form are essential to understand the dynamics underlying the processes. The typology of Regan and Aysegul (2006) of external intervention classifies them into: political/diplomatic (for instance bilateral negotiations, non-binding third-party settlement - good offices, mediation, inquiry, and conciliation, and binding third-party settlement - adjudication and arbitration); economic (grants, loans, equipment or expertise, relieving of past obligations, credits, and sanctions); military (troops, naval support, equipment or aid, intelligence or advisors, air support, or sanctions); and humanitarian (takes into account the support to countries normally in the areas of food security or health). Elbadawi and Sambanis (2000) used the Regan database to analyse the effects of external interventions on civil war duration. Within this current stream of literature the questioning of the more broader conceptual underpining in the construction of the databases and the values and rights with which information is generated is rarely analysed. The intention of this panel is to analyze this stream of reseach, for instance constrasting the previous two symbolic definitions or the typology identified, and understand what do the database coding mean, in terms of what is included, how and what is left out in the process. |