The Relative Capabilities, Third Party Interventions and the Outcome of Civil Wars

Though the role of the third party intervention in the civil war has been widely investigated, the effect of the relative capability on the intervention and on the outcome of civil war is overlooked. In this paper, I attempt to address these relationships by introducing asymmetric model of civil war. The empirical tests suggest that the third party interventions are more likely to be observed when the combatants are in need. More detailed, interventions for the rebel group are more likely to happen when the rebel group is very strong and very weak like a U shaped relationship while interventions for the government are less likely as the government becomes strong. When the effect of the intervention on the outcome of the civil war conditional on the relative capability is taken into account, the rebel biased intervention has a negative effect on the rebel’s victory whereas the government biased intervention has a positive relationship with the government’s victory.