Which combinations of international interventions are sufficient for sustainable peace and the effective management of violence against civilians? Recent research in the civil war literature has focused on how and when external actors intervene and what influence these interventions might have on conflict termination or peacebuilding success. What is still missing, however, is a systematic analysis of the interaction between different types of intervention and their consequences for civilian population and the establishment of post-conflict peace. This paper aims at filling this research gap by performing a set-theoretic analysis on the influence of four types of third-party interventions on the management of violence against civilians: sanctions and sieges, diplomatic interventions and mediation, development aid, and peacekeeping operations. The universe of cases consists of 115 peacebuilding episodes after armed conflicts and civil wars that ended between 1989 and 2012. With the results of a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) it will be possible to reveal the dynamics and dependencies existing between various forms of third-party interventions. And if, as the results demonstrate, externally driven interventions are more powerful – in both stabilizing post-conflict peace and preventing atrocities against civilians – when operating conjoined, then the policy implications are quite important. While one combination of interventions is effective in managing violence against civilians, another combination has quite the opposite effect. Thus, the paper adds to the current debate by depicting causal patterns of international conflict resolution and the conjunctural effects of international interventions for the protection of civilians.
