Effects and Modes of Effects of Humanitarian Military Interventions

Previous research on humanitarian military interventions has focused on conceptual, normative and ethical issues. The few compa­rative studies on effects are mostly limited to a small number of cases, specific interveners or regions, or they combine humanitarian military interventions with other missions. Supported by the German Foundation for Peace Research, PRIF compiled a dataset on all huma­­nitarian military interventions since 1945 . Based on these data, the project examines the effects and modes of effects of humanitarian military interventions.

It uses a multi-method design and, first, estimates the average effect of huma­­nitarian military interventions on the duration and the intensity of violent conflicts. For this purpose, it quanti­tatively compares the cases of violent intrastate conflict in which an intervention took place with a group of similar control cases without a humanitarian military intervention. The insights gained from this promise to make an important contribution to the widely debated question of whether – altogether – humanitarian military interventions do more harm than good.

Second, the project investigates the conditions under which huma­­nitarian military inter­ventions are associated with an end or decrease in violence or with an esca­lation or prolongation of armed conflict. Here it employs a method of systematic qualitative comparison. The results can provide important impulses to the debate on the conditions that influence such missions’ prospect of success.

The quantitative and qualitative comparisons ascertain what happened during and after an intervention. Comple­­mentary case studies examine the causal process that brings about the observed trends of violence in the target country. These case studies examine how well causal assump­tions based on the intervention stand up to rival expla­­nations. This is the third goal.