Introduction

The Third-Party Interventions in Intrastate Disputes (TPI-Intrastate Disputes) Project is a scholarly effort to compile and analyze data related to interventions by third-party actors - including states, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - in intrastate disputes during the 20th century and beyond.  This project, along with a similar project to study third-party interventions in interstate disputes, originated in the summer of 1997 when Dr. William J. Dixon was awarded a small research grant by the University of Arizona.

During the summer of 1997, Mark Mullenbach (then a research assistant at the University of Arizona) and Bill Dixon developed a preliminary conceptual framework of third-party intervention in interstate and intrastate disputes.  The conceptual framework included two categories of interventions: (1) intermediary (non-partisan) interventions; and (2) participatory (partisan) interventions.  Intermediary interventions refer to those interventions in which a third-party actor gets involved in a dispute in a neutral or non-partisan manner (e.g. fact-finding, mediation, election monitoring, peacekeeping, etc.).  Participatory interventions refer to those interventions in which a third-party actor gets involved in a dispute in a partisan manner (e.g. condemnation, economic sanctions, military sanctions, threat to use military force, mobilization of military force, use of military force, etc.).  In 1998, Bill Dixon was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to compile data on third party interventions in interstate disputes.  Mark Mullenbach and Renato Corbetta, as well as Greg Dixon, Derrick Frazier, and Robert Stewart Ingersoll, assisted Bill Dixon on the project between 1998 and 2002.  

Meanwhile, Mark Mullenbach was the recipient of a NSF grant (SES-9905857) and a Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship from the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1999-2000 to compile and analyze data on third-party interventions in intrastate disputes for his dissertation.  Mark Mullenbach completed his dissertation, Third-Party Interventions in Intrastate Disputes in the 20th Century, in December 2001.  In the summer of 2004, Mark Mullenbach was the recipient of a summer research stipend from the University Research Council (URC) at the University of Central Arkansas to compile and analyze data on third-party election monitoring and the management of intrastate disputes.