Description
Many practitioners and scholars argue that the monitoring of ceasefires improves conflict parties’ compliance with their ceasefire commitments. This follows the wider rational institutionalist view that monitoring mechanisms increase the costs of noncompliance, and so incentivize actors to avoid such costs. However, in many cases, ceasefire non-compliance still occurs despite the presence of monitors. While some of this non-compliance is motivated by interests exogenous to the monitors, this paper theorizes that, under certain conditions, and contrary to the dominant arguments in the literature, the presence and engagement of ceasefire monitors can lead to ceasefire noncompliance by conflict actors. I theorize the mechanisms by which ceasefire noncompliance occurs because of monitors, and illustrate their operation through examples from cases from South Sudan and Ukraine.
