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ABSTRACT
Although United Nations peacekeeping operations (UN PKOs) produce positive outcomes for peace, some missions are strategically replaced by cheaper and smaller UN political missions (PMs). This article explores why certain peacekeepers are replaced by UN PMs and unpacks the exit strategy of UN PKOs. The logic of demand-side and supply-side perspectives is evaluated using data on the deployment of UN peacekeepers and UN PMs in post-civil war countries between 1993 and 2016. Signing comprehensive peace agreements (CPAs) increases the chances of UN PKOs being replaced by UN PMs because as the willingness to develop politically increases, the demand for civilian personnel after demilitarization also rises. On the supply side, as the preferences of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council concerning target states become more heterogenous, UN PKOs are more likely to be replaced by UN PMs because coordination problems encourage members to choose less burdensome missions.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank participants at the 20th Jan Tinbergen European Science Conference for valuable comments and suggestions. I also gratefully thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for excellent comments and suggestions.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Gowan et al., “Review of Political 2010 Missions,” 96.
2 UN PMs include Special Advisers/ Special Envoys.
3 in the Appendix shows the full list of UN PMs.
4 Johnstone, “Emerging Doctrine,” 16.
5 Dorussen, “Peacekeeping after Covid-19,” 3.
6 in the Appendix shows the past UN PKOs that were replaced by UN PMs. I consider a peacekeeping operation as a UN PKO if such an operation is listed on the UN peacekeeping website. This implies that observer missions are also considered as UN PKOs.
7 The number of countries that experienced civil war(s) between 1946 and 2019 was identified using the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. See Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict 1946–2001”; Pettersson and Öberg,“Organized Violence.”
8 Although this might only be true since 1999, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon show the positive relationship between PKO and civilian protection from 1991 to 2008; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing.”
9 Smidt, “United Nations Peacekeeping Locally”; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis, “Winning the Peace Locally.”
10 Doyle and Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding”; Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace.
11 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping Operations”; Fortna, “Do Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”; Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”; Mullenback, “Deciding to Keep Peace”; Srojek and Tir, “The Supply Side of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.”
12 UN PKOs and PMs are different from UN conflict management and resolution efforts as I will argue in the theoretical section. PMs do not have a military component while PKOs do.
13 Melin, “Escalation in International Conflict Management.”
14 Clayton, Dorussen, and Böhmelt, “United Nations Peace Initiatives.”
15 Diehl and Druckman, “Multiple Peacekeeping Missions.”
16 As the main goal of this article is to unpack exit strategy of UN PKOs in terms of UN PMs, I only investigate the replacement logic of UN PKOs. When UN PMs are established without PKOs, they start with tasks such as mediation, facilitating parties to reach a ceasefire or peace agreement. As Hirschmann mentions, introducing peacebuilding has become the new standard for exit strategies of PKOs. This implies that PKOs transit to peacebuilding, which is different from starting only with facilitation of political process. Thus, investigation of why UN PMs are established in general is left for future research. Hirschmann, “Peacebuilding in UN Peacekeeping Exit Strategies.”
17 Binger and Golub, “Civil Conflict and Agenda-Setting Speed.”
18 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping.”
19 Morse and Keohane, “Contested Multilateralism.”
20 Lake, Martin, and Risse, “Challenges to the Liberal Order.”
21 Clayton, Dorussen, and Böhmelt, “United Nations Peace Initiatives”; Diehl and Druckman, “Multiple Peacekeeping Missions”; Melin, “Escalation in International Conflict Management”; Owsiak, “Conflict Management Trajectories.”
22 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping Operations”; Fortna, “Do Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”; Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”; Mullenback, “Deciding to Keep Peace”; Srojek and Tir, “The Supply Side of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.”
23 Beardsley and Schmidt, “Following the Flag.”
24 Binder, “Paths to Intervention.”
25 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace.”
26 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping Operations.”
27 Fortna, “Do Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”
28 Mullenback, “Deciding to Keep Peace.”
29 Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement.”
30 Doyle and Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding”; Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”; Walter, Committing to Peace.
31 Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?; Gilligan and Sergenti, “Do UN Interventions Cause Peace?”; Sambanis and Doyle, “No Easy Choices.”
32 Greig and Diehl, “The Peacekeeping-Peacemaking Dilemma.”
33 Kathman and Benson, “Cut Short?”
34 Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing.”
35 Smidt, “United Nations Peacekeeping Locally”; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis, “Winning the Peace Locally.”
36 Oudraat, “The United Nations and Internal Conflict.”
37 Srojek and Tir, “The Supply Side of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.”
38 Oudraat, “The United Nations and Internal Conflict.”
39 Beardsley and Schmidt, “Following the Flag.”
40 Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”
41 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Gaibulloev, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Demands for UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping”; Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Khanna, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Sharing the Financial Burden”; Passmore, Shannon, and Hart, “Rallying the Troops”; Shimizu and Sandler, “Peacekeeping and Burden-Sharing.”
42 Wright and Greig, “Staying the Course.”
43 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping.”
44 Wright and Greig, “Staying the Course.”
45 Bobrow and Boyer, “Maintaining System Stability”; Diehl, International Peacekeeping; Gaibulloev, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Demands for UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping”; Khanna, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Sharing the Financial Burden.”
46 Passmore, Shannon, and Hart, “Rallying the Troops.”
47 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Gaibulloev et al., “Personnel Contributions”; Khanna, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Sharing the Financial Burden”; Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations.”
48 Gaibulloev et al., “Personnel Contributions,” 731.
49 Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations,” 1883.
50 Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”
51 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
52 Benson and Kathman, “United Nations Bias.”
53 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping.”
54 Benson and Kathman, “United Nations Bias.”
55 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping.”
56 Bertman, “Reinventing Governments.”
57 Resolution 1719 (2006) / adopted by the UNSC at its 5554th meeting, on 25 October 2006.
58 “Second Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Integrated Office in Burundi,” UNSC (S/2007/682), 23 November 2007.
59 Bah, “Sierra Leone.”
60 Bertman, “Reinventing Governments.”
61 Bercovitch and Jackson, Conflict Resolution in the Twenty-First Century.
62 Haidara, “Amid Popular Opposition.”
63 Gowan, “Multilateral Political Missions.”
64 Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis, “Winning the Peace Locally.”
65 However, PMs sometimes have armed guards to protect UN personnel and install some security presence.
66 Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War.”
67 Greig and Diehl, “The Peacekeeping-Peacemaking Dilemma.”
68 Axelrod defines conflict as ‘a property of the preferences of the participants and the structure of situation in which they find themselves’. See Axelrod, “Conflict of Interest,” 87.
69 The percentages were calculated using information taken from the UCDP Peace Agreement Dataset. See Pettersson, Högbladh, and Öberg, “Organized Violence.”
70 Jarstad and Nilsson, “From Words to Deeds.”
71 Huang, “Rebel Diplomacy in Civil War.”
72 Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement.”
73 Ibid.
74 Walter, “Designing Transitions from Civil War.”
75 Vela, “MINUSMA and the Militarization of UN Peacekeeping.”
76 Gowan et al., “Review of Political 2010 Missions.”
77 “Fifth Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Operation in Burundi,” UNSC (S/2005/728), 21 November 2005.
78 Melin, “Escalation in International Conflict Management.”
79 Regarding how military personnel could give a sense of exclusion to civilians, see Vela, “MINUSMA and the Militarization of UN Peacekeeping.”
80 Bah, “Sierra Leone.”
81 “Twenty-Fourth Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone,” UNSC (S/2004/965), 10 December 2004.
82 Sudan Tribune, “UNAMID to Start Withdrawing Troops.”
83 Morse and Keohane, “Contested Multilateralism.”
84 Keohane and Ostrom, Local Commons and Global Interdependence.
85 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Gaibulloev et al., “Personnel Contributions”; Khanna, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Sharing the Financial Burden”; Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations.”
86 Passmore, Shannon, and Hart, “Rallying the Troops.”
87 Beardsley and Schmidt, “Following the Flag.”
88 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping.”
89 As I will mention later, P5 members of the UNSC are required to contribute a relatively large share of the UN peacekeeping budget.
90 Bobrow and Boyer, “Maintaining System Stability”; Diehl, International Peacekeeping; Khanna, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Sharing the Financial Burden.”
91 Diehl, “Peacekeeping Operations and the Quest for Peace.”
92 Political and Peacebuilding Affairs: https://dppa.un.org/en/what-we-do.
93 Coleman, The Political Economy of UN Peacekeeping.
94 United Nations peacekeeping website: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/how-we-are-funded.
95 Ibid.
96 Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars.
97 Shimizu and Sandler, “Peacekeeping and Burden-Sharing.”
98 Fortna, “Where Have All the Victories Gone?”
99 Campos and Vines, “Prospects for Improving U.S.-China-Africa Cooperation”; Graham, “Covert Collusion?”; Weissman, “CIA Covert Action in Zaire and Angola.”
100 Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars.
101 Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict 1946–2001”; Petterson and Öberg, “Organized Violence, 1989–2019.”
102 Bara and Hultman, “Just Different Hats?”
103 One might consider that this number, i.e. 139 country-years of UN PKOs during 1993 to 2016, is small considering the peacekeeping missions established during this period. This is because, as mentioned, once a country experienced an onset of UN PM, subsequent country-year observations were dropped from the sample.
104 DPPA Around the World. https://dppa.un.org/en/dppa-around-world.
105 Regarding Ivory Coast, although the start year of CPA recorded in Peace Accord Matrix is 2007, Linas-Marcoussis Peace Accord, which has been considered as a CPA by United Nations Peacemaker, was signed in 2003 when a political mission – UN Missing Cote d’Ivoire (MINUCI) was established. Thus, regarding Ivory Coast, the independent variable, CPA is coded as 1 for 2003. See Joshi and Darby, “Introducing the Peace Accords Matrix”; Joshi, Quinn, and Regan, “Annualized Implementation Data.”
106 Bailey, Strezhnev, and Voeten, “Estimating Dynamic State Preferences.”
107 The details and examples are explained in the Appendix.
108 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping.”
109 Caplan, “Exit Strategies and State Building.”
110 Bara and Hultman, “Just Different Hats?”
111 Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers, “Polity IV Project.”
112 Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”
113 Petterson and Öberg, “Organized Violence, 1989–2019.”
114 Bara and Hultman, “Just Different Hats?”
115 Gaibulloev, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Demands for UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping.”
116 Carter and Signorino, “Back to the Future.”
117 Zartman, Ripe for Resolution.
118 Beardsley, “Agreement Without Peace?”
119 King, Tomz, and Wittenberg, “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses.”
120 Regarding this point, in the conclusion section, I refer to how we could be benefitted from case studies in the future research.
121 Imai, King, Lau, “Zelig”; Imai, King, Lau, “Toward a Common Framework”; Lam, “logit.gee.”
122 Cordell, Wright, Diehl, “Extant Commitment, Risk, and UN Peacekeeping Authorization.”
123 In simulation, values of other variables were held at their median and mean values.
124 Precise number is 0.0004576.
125 Allen and Yuen, “The Politics of Peacekeeping”; Beardsley and Schmidt, “Following the Flag.”
126 Gaibulloev, Sandler, and Shimizu, “Demands for UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping.”
127 Passmore, Shannon, and Hart, “Rallying the Troops.”
128 Wright and Greig, “Staying the Course.”
129 “Situation in South Sudan: Report of the Secretary-General”, UNSC (S/2022/689), 13 September 2022.
130 Caplan, “Exit Strategies and State Building.”
131 Hirschmann, “Peacebuilding in UN Peacekeeping Exit Strategies,” 178.
132 Fjelde, Hultman, and Bromley, “Offsetting Losses”; Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Personnel Commitments, 1990–2011.”
133 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
134 Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”
135 Wright and Greig, “Staying the Course.”
136 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping Operations”; Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”; Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”; Mullenbach, “Deciding to Keep Peace”; Oudraat, “The United Nations and Internal Conflict”; Stojek and Tir, “The Supply Side of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.”
137 Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”; Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”
138 Greig and Diehl, “The Peacekeeping-Peacemaking Dilemma.”
140 Ibid.
142 Dzinesa, “A Comparative Perspective of UN Peacekeeping.”
143 Ibid.
144 MacQueen, “Peacekeeping by Attrition.”
145 Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars.
146 Ibid.
147 Ibid.
148 Campos and Vines, “Prospects for Improving U.S.-China-Africa Cooperation.”
149 Ibid.
150 Graham, “Covert Collusion?”; Weissman, “CIA Covert Action in Zaire and Angola.”
151 Human Rights Watch, Angola.
152 Wright, The Destruction of a Nation.
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Wakako Maekawa
Wakako Maekawa (PhD, 2018, University of Essex) is an Associate Professor at Osaka University. Research interest: Civil war, Peacekeeping, Intervention, Conflict Resolution.