International Studies Quarterly
Mutually Hurting or Mutually Beneficial Stalemates? Alternative Logics Shaping Conflict Outcomes
2026-07-25
Scores of intrastate conflicts end without military victory or formal peace agreement, yet civil war scholarship lacks a mechanism to explain how these non-decisive outcomes emerge, recur, and endure. Existing “win, lose, or draw” rationalist bargaining frameworks treat settlements as the default outcome when neither party prevails militarily, assuming impasse reliably produces the ripe moment Zartman describes. Yet as conflict systems grow more complex, negotiated settlements continue to decline. This theory note introduces mutually beneficial stalemates—an equilibrium in which conflict parties calculate that maintaining the status quo yields higher returns than renewed fighting or settlements that risk commitment failures—as a mechanism to explain how non-decisive outcomes evolve and are sustained. Where Zartman’s mutually hurting stalemate describes a painful impasse generating pressure toward settlement, the mutually beneficial stalemate explains how parties distribute some benefits of peace—limited or no violence, selective cooperation, and hybrid governance arrangements—without the risks of formal resolution. I develop a logic of joint conflict avoidance that shows how parties protect existing gains and preserve organizations against the risks posed by both escalation and resolution. I extend the framework to multi-actor conflicts, where rebel proliferation and external intervention reinforce non-decisive equilibria.