Luqman Saeed (RHUL) “Political and Economic Consequences of Humanitarian Military Interventions Abstract” – PhD Seminar

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of humanitarian military interventions (HMIs) on conflict termination, conflict escalation, economic output and democratic performance using panel data on 144 countries covering time-period of 1960-2018. Scholars are divided over whether HMIs are an effective means of enforcing peace and establishing economic and political stabilities. This contribution is empirical, and it exploits a new database on HMIs in post second world war period developed by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. The results from multivariate analyses suggest that biased HMIs have deteriorating impact on conflict whereas neutral interventions have positive impact on conflict termination. In particular, interventions which are biased against rebels, tend to escalate conflict. Neutral interventions have no significant negative impact on output whereas HMIs biased against governments and rebels lead to around 9 -8 percent decrease in per capita output. Finally, neutral and against governments HMIs lead to increase in democracy score. These results are consistent in both contemporaneous and long-run decaying modes and also in IV regressions.