Mediation in the shadow of an audience: How third parties use secrecy and agenda-setting to broker settlements
| Author | Shawn L. Ramirez |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0951629817729227 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Mediation in the shadow of an
audience: How third parties
use secrecy and
agenda-setting to broker
settlements
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2018, Vol. 30(1) 119–146
©The Author(s) 2017
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DOI:10.1177/0951629817729227
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Shawn L. Ramirez
Emory University, USA
Abstract
How does mediation work? Uncertainty is one of the main rationalist explanations for war. When
a leader faces domestic pressure and mediation involves secrecy and agenda-setting, mediation
by a third party in crisis bargaining can reduce the risk of war by reducing uncertainty and locking
in concessions. As a result, mediation improves the prospects for peace at the price of costlier
settlements, and should talks fail, the leader and her audience are more likely to win in any ensuing
war. The theory holds implications for mediation, audience costs, and democracies in showing that
an enemy with no audience costs can demonstrate resolve credibly in mediation. The argument
is also closely related to the delegation literature, in showing that when a principal faces external
pressure, she can reduce her risk of worse outcomes by delegating to an uninformed agent who,
with considerable discretion, can extract credible information from an adversary.
Keywords
mediation, delegation, leaders, audience costs, crisis bargaining
1. Introduction
In December 1991, North and South Korea appeared to reach a conclusive end to four
decades of hostility: they joined the United Nations, renounced the use of armed force,
and signed a mutual pledge to never develop nuclear weapons. However, the situation
took a sudden turn for the worse. Between May 1993 and June 1994, North Korea
successfully tested a midrange missile, cruise missiles capable of sinking ships within
a 100-mile range, and expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspec-
tors, signaling their intentions to divert fuel from their power program to create nuclear
Corresponding author:
Shawn L. Ramirez, Emory University, 1555 Dickey Drive NE, 327 Tarbutton Hall, Atlanta, GA 30312, USA.
Email: slramirez@emory.edu
120 Journal of Theoretical Politics 30(1)
weapons. With the US’s nuclear umbrella and deterrent capabilities in jeopardy, Clin-
ton increased troops in South Korea and threatened economic sanctions. In response,
Kim Il Sung threatened to ‘turn Seoul into a sea of flames.’1Seeing war as increasingly
likely,the US began to consider air strikes to destroy North Korea’s nuclear reactor, even
knowing this might provoke a North Korean invasion of the South.
Whilst deliberating in the White House Cabinet room, Clinton received a phone call.
Former President Jimmy Carter had independently begun a mediation, and was notify-
ing them that Kim agreed to freeze the nuclear program: ‘there’d be no reprocessing,
no separation of plutonium, and we could go back to the negotiating table.’ (PBS.org,
2003c). Within months, mediation produced a breakthrough pact: beyond halting the
nuclear program, North Korea would dismantle its nuclear complex and allow inter-
national inspections of two secret military sites. In exchange, they would receive oil
and light-water reactors that were less threatening and facilitated increased international
monitoring. How did mediation halt this collision course to war?
This exemplifies a situation often encountered by leaders faced with a foreign enemy.
First, war would be costly for both sides: even if the US destroyed the nuclear com-
plex, the subsequent loss of civilian and military lives on the Korean peninsula would
be tragic.2For North Korea, the conditions were poor even absent war with an econ-
omy on the verge of collapse, food and fuel shortages, and declining support from Soviet
and Chinese allies. Surely, some concession could act as a countermand to quash North
Korean nuclear aims, but uncertainty about North Korean resolve and Clinton’s domestic
pressure makes this complicated. Was North Korea strongly resolved and willing to risk
war to become a nuclear power, or less resolved and willing to relinquish its aims for a
token concession? In an ideal setting, Clinton might answer this by making some token
offer, and use Kim’s response to gauge whether raising that offer would be necessary.
But raising that offer in the face of enemy resistance would invite sanctioning for weak,
incompetent leadership. These three factors – a costly war, uncertainty, and domestic pol-
itics – put leaders in the proverbial ‘tight spot’ in crises: uncertainty makes it necessary
to probe for acceptable bargains, but domestic politics turns any guessing game into a
political endgame.
This article shows that mediation with secrecy and agenda-setting can help a leader in
this situation through two mechanisms. First, a mediator can lock in concessions that all
parties accept where a leader negotiating independently would risk war. This is because
while a leader’s domestic pressure forces a trade-off that makes her accept some risk
of war, a mediator can issue proposals solely based on what improves the prospects for
peace. Second, a mediator can reduce uncertainty by making a small screening offer that
only an enemy with lowresolve will accept. This allows the leader to infer that any enemy
remaining in mediation must havehigher resolve, thereby warranting greater concessions
that the leader’s audience permits.
As a result, leaders obtain peace with a greater probability when wars are more costly,
the enemy is likely to have high resolve, and the problem of uncertainty is not as large.
Further, when the problems caused by uncertainty are large, such that knowledge of the
enemy’s resolve would make a significant difference, mediation can reduce that uncer-
tainty by winnowing away low-resolve types. Thus, mediation brings two main benefits
at the cost of a higher settlement. Mediation reduces the ex ante probability of war, and if
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