At of the end of 2005, Asia had the highest number of active civil war dyads. The number of active dyads in other regions was either low or declining. Africa, in particular, experienced a sharp drop in the number of active dyads from 2001 to 2005. Civil wars in Asia also last longer than wars in other regions. With a high number of warring dyads fighting in long wars, the expectation would be that the region would be the focus of third‐party conflict management, but this is not the case. In this article, we use an original data set to take a closer look at this gap in expectations by focusing on third‐party efforts in Southeast Asia between 1993 and 2004. Bilateral talks were the most common form of third‐party engagement, but mediation has been the most likely form to lead to agreements between warring parties. We conclude the article with a discussion of the policy implications of this research.

The conditions under which negotiation or mediation are chosen in international conflict have been little studied. Previous research has tended to focus on the motivations and rational calculations of the states involved. Scant attention has been given to examining the effect of the context on this choice. In this article, we present a framework for studying the contextual conditions under which negotiation or mediation are likely to take place. Employing an original data set, we find that negotiation tends to be used when conflicts are relatively simple, of a low intensity, and when both parties are relatively equal in power. Mediation, on the other band, tends to be used in disputes characterized by high complexity, high intensity, long duration, unequal and fractionated parties, and where the willingness of the parties to settle peacefully is in doubt.

The ever:increasing number of international conflicts, their complexity, intractability, and their costs, demands that the world focus more attention on preventive diplomacy. Mediation is a key component of preventive diplomacy. This article analyzes data on international conflict management from 1945 to 1990, and examines the factors that contributed to the success or failure of mediation.