| Summary: | 博士 === 國立政治大學 === 外交研究所 === 99 === The main feature of international relations in the first decade after the Cold War is the burgeoning of ethnic conflicts. IR theorists soon find themselves uncomfortable while trying to explain the phenomenon, not even close to the ‘resolution’. Ethnic conflicts are apparently not new to this globe, but they happened everywhere and thereby dominated international security agenda-setting, especially in the 1990s. In the meantime, international security institutions actively intervened in those conflicts and settled some of them. This could not be explained by the traditional IR theories either. Those ethnic conflict theories focus most of the origins, are also incapable of offering good analysis.
There is still in lack of systematic research about the resolution of ethnic conflicts. The thesis claim international security institutions are well-designed and institutionalized to settle ethnic conflicts for two reasons. Firstly, international security institutions are the product of international cooperation for common good and transaction-cost cutting. Conflict regulating mechanisms are always embedded in these institutions. These mechanisms will be automatically activated while regional (or international) security is seriously endangered. Secondly, bloody violence and antagonism makes the conflicting parties hard to find feasible solutions to end these conflicts. According to the conflict resolution approach, the ethnic conflicts could be settled when international security institutions taking initiative to change the structure of conflict.
By taking both institutionalism theory and conflict resolution approach as an analytical scheme, the thesis will not only explain the motives for international security institutions’ intervention, but also analyze the roles that international security institutions can play during the conflict process. Four case studies followed will be further explored to testify this hypothesis.
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