Healing Stalemates: The Role of Ceasefires in Ripening Conflict

Abstract

Ceasefires are often associated with inhibiting conflict ripeness because they remove the immediate costs of conflict and the pressure on conflicting parties to negotiate. Yet, in many intrastate conflicts, ceasefires have proven instrumental in reviving or enabling peace talks. This article provides an analytical framework to systematically assess the impact of ceasefires on conflict ripeness and identify key factors that condition their effects. Enriching ripeness theory with insights from the related bargaining theory of war and ceasefire research, this article identifies three key milestones in the transition from war to negotiated settlement—ripeness for negotiations, for concessions and for settlement—and the conditions that help conflicting parties reach these milestones. It demonstrates how and why ceasefires have the potential to foster ripeness at all three stages, whereas ceasefire violations threaten to undermine the ripening process, particularly after the onset of negotiations. The analysis suggests that temporal limits to ceasefires in the first two ripeness stages increase the probability that ceasefires contribute to ripening, while in the third stage, it is better that parties agree on an indefinite ceasefire or link it to the progress of negotiations in order to enable movement towards settlement. External enforcement of a ceasefire can pose a significant impediment to conflict ripeness.