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ABSTRACT
Do democratic or non-democratic countries contribute more personnel to UN peacekeeping operations? While earlier studies found that democracies make larger contributions than non-democracies, recent research has challenged these findings. Scholarship in this area, however, has largely conceived of ‘non-democracy’ as a monolithic category, despite a growing body of research delineating distinct types of illiberal regimes and identifying their divergent behaviours in a range of domestic and international contexts. In this article, I argue that non-democracies’ personnel contributions to peacekeeping operations vary based on different ‘type’ of illiberal regime, and that this variation is contingent on two main factors: the influence of the military within the regime, and the extent to which a regime values the prestige associated with large-scale peacekeeping contributions. I test this proposition by statistically analyzing data from UN peacekeeping operations between 1991–2018. The findings indicate that single-party regimes are likely to make significantly smaller contributions than democracies; the contribution behaviour of other types of non-democracies is less discernible from their democratic counterparts.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping”; Lebovic, “Uniting for Peace.”
2 Victor, “African Peacekeeping”; Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace”; Levin et al., “A Test of the Democratic Peacekeeping Hypothesis.”
3 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out.”
4 Geddes, “What Do We Know”; Hadenius and Teorell, “Pathways from Authoritarianism”; Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland, “Democracy and Dictatorship.”
5 Brownlee, “Portents of Pluralism”; Weeks, “Strongmen and Straw Men”; Steinberg and Malhotra, “The Effect of Authoritarian Regime Type.”
6 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out.”
7 Peacekeeping data: Perry and Smith, “Trends in Uniformed Contributions”; Regime type data: Bjørnskov and Rode, “Regime Type and Regime Change.”
8 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
9 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping”; Lebovic, “Uniting for Peace”; Daniel and Caraher, “Characteristics of Troop Contributors.”
10 Lebovic, "Uniting for Peace," 912.
11 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping.”
12 Ibid; Andersson, “United Nations Intervention by United Democracies?”; Lebovic, “Uniting for Peace”; Daniel and Caraher, “Characteristics of Troop Contributors”; Perkins and Neumayer, “Extra-Territorial Interventions.”
13 e.g., Victor, “African Peacekeeping”; Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers. Some studies focusing on correlates of peacekeeping contributions include regime type as a control variable, with varying results. For example, Uzonyi finds no relationship between a country's Polity IV score and participation in UN missions (“Refugee Flows and State Contributions”); Kathman and Melin find that autocracies are more likely than democracies to avoid peacekeeping contributions altogether (“Who Keeps the Peace?”); Joshi finds that liberal democracies make larger contributions (“An Institutional Explanation”). None of these studies, however, distinguish between types of non-democratic regimes.
14 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out.”
15 Ibid. Non-democracies may also use peacekeeping as a way to prevent coups (e.g., Kathman & Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Lundgren, “Backdoor Peacekeeping”), though the causal logic (and evidence) behind this assumption has been challenged in recent years (e.g., Dwyer, “Peacekeeping Abroad”; Cunliffe, Legions of Peace; Levin et al., “A Test of the Democratic Peacekeeping Hypothesis”).
16 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out,” 1164.
17 Levin et al., “A Test of the Democratic Peacekeeping Hypothesis,” 358.
18 Cunliffe, Legions of Peace; Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
19 Cunliffe, “From Peacekeepers to Praetorians.”
20 Bobrow and Boyer, “Maintaining System Stability”; Victor, “African Peacekeeping.”
21 Coleman and Nyblade, “Peacekeeping for Profit?”, 737.
22 Ibid, 738.
23 Warner, “Burundian Peacekeeping.”
24 Cunliffe, “From Peacekeepers to Praetorians,” 224.
25 Kendall-Taylor and Frantz, “Mimicking Democracy to Prolong Autocracies.”
26 von Soest and Grauvogel, “Identity, Procedures, and Performance,” 291.
27 Coleman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Decisions,” 330–1.
28 Zaman and Biswas, “Bangladesh”, 191.
29 Coleman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Decisions,” 328.
30 Neack, “UN Peace-Keeping.”
31 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out,” 1164.
32 Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
33 e.g. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics.
34 e.g., Hadenius and Teorell, “Pathways from Authoritarianism”; Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland, “Democracy and Dictatorship.” Geddes (“What Do We Know”) and Geddes, et al. (“Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions”) distinguish ‘personalist’ regimes as a separate type of non-democracy, but do not delineate between single-party and multiparty civilian regimes.
35 Geddes, et al., “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions,” 148.
36 Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland, “Democracy and Dictatorship,” 85–6.
37 Wahman, Teorell, and Hadenius, “Authoritarian Regime Types Revisited,” 25.
38 Ibid.
39 Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism.
40 Diamond, “Elections Without Democracy”; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.
41 Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.”
42 Wahman, Teorell, and Hadenius, “Authoritarian Regime Types Revisited.”
43 Fjelde, “Generals, Dictators, and Kings”; Brownlee, “Portents of Pluralism”; Davenport, “State Repression and Political Order.”
44 Peceny et al., “Dictatorial Peace?”; Weeks, “Strongmen and Straw Men.”
45 Steinberg and Malhotra, “The Effect of Authoritarian Regime Type.”
46 Escribà-Folch and Wright, “Dealing with Tyranny”; Peksen, “When Do Imposed Sanctions Work?”
47 Mattes and Rodríguez, “Autocracies and International Cooperation.”
48 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out,” 1164–5.
49 Coleman and Nyblade, “Peacekeeping for Profit?”, 737, emphasis added.
50 On average, military regimes and monarchies have larger military budgets than other types of autocratic regimes (Bove & Brauner, “The Demand for Military Expenditure”).
51 Ibid.
52 Douglas, “Nepal Under Reign of Terror.”
53 Sotomayor, “Nepal,” 295.
54 Ibid, 301.
55 Ibid, 305.
56 Escribà-Folch et al., “Authoritarian Regimes and Civil-Military Relations,” 564.
57 Frantz and Ezrow, The Politics of Dictatorship, from Bove and Brauner, “The Demand for Military Expenditure,” 11.
58 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out.”
59 Dukalskis and Gerschewski, “What Autocracies Say,” 257.
60 Kendall-Taylor and Frantz, “Mimicking Democracy to Prolong Autocracies.”
61 Tallberg et al., “Why International Organizations Commit to Liberal Norms.”
62 While international and regional organizations can theoretically bolster illiberal rule in numerous ways, multiparty regimes may be especially likely to leverage their membership to strengthen legitimacy claims. For instance, Debre (“The Dark Side of Regionalism”) examines three case studies in which non-democratic regimes—Zimbabwe (2008), China (2009), Bahrain (2011)— faced threats to their survival and each turned to regional organizations for support. Of the three regimes, Zimbabwe was the only multiparty regime and the only one to leverage its membership in a regional organization specifically to increase domestic and international legitimacy.
63 e.g., Jakobsen, “Still Punching Above Their Weight?”; Carroll, “Peacekeeping: Canada's Past.”
64 Dersso, “Contributor Profile: Ethiopia,” 3.
65 Perry and Smith, “Trends in Uniformed Contributions.”
66 Dibaba, “Ethiopia’s Membership in UNSC Well Deserved.”
67 Coppedge et al., “V-Dem Codebook V11.”
68 “Supply-Side Peacekeeping,” cited in Zaman and Biswas, “Bangladesh.”
69 Coleman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Decisions,” 328.
70 Ibid, 334.
71 While monthly data on states’ peacekeeping contributions is available, many other variables are only available annually. The outcome variable thus reflects the mean of each country’s monthly personnel contributions in a given calendar year (see also: Uzonyi, “Refugee Flows and State Contributions”; Kathman & Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Joshi, “An Institutional Explanation”; Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”).
72 Perry and Smith, “Trends in Uniformed Contributions.”
73 Bjørnskov and Rode, “Regime Types and Regime Change;” Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland, “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited.”
74 Wilson, “A Discreet Critique.”
75 Wahman, Teorell, and Hadenius, “Authoritarian Regime Types Revisited.”
76 World Bank, “GDP Per Capita.”
77 IISS, “Armed Forces Personnel Total.”
78 World Bank, “Population, Total.”
79 Petterson et al., “Organized Violence, 1989–2020.”
80 Perry and Smith, “Trends in Uniformed Contributions.”
81 Perkins and Neumayer, “Extra-Territorial Interventions.”
82 Perry and Smith, “Trends in Uniformed Contributions.”
83 Joshi, “An Institutional Explanation.”
84 Gygli et al., “The KOF Globalization Index.”
85 UN Peacekeeping, “Peacekeeping Fatalities Open Data.”
86 e.g., Uzonyi, “Refugee Flows and State Contributions”; Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
87 For additional discussion of this dynamic, see supplementary information in Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
88 Raes, Du Bois, and Buts, “Supplying UN Peacekeepers.”
89 e.g., Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
90 Achen, “Why Lagged Dependent Variables.”
91 Arellano and Bond, “Some Tests of Specification.”
92 Raes, Du Bois, and Buts, “Supplying UN Peacekeepers”; Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”, 707.
93 One alternative to the ZINB or GMM approaches is OLS with a lagged dependent variable and fixed effects (Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Joshi, “An Institutional Explanation.”). However, this requires the number of temporal periods to exceed the number of panels, which does not apply in this case (Raes, Du Bois, and Buts, “Supplying UN Peacekeepers”).
94 Uzonyi, “Refugee Flows and State Contributions”; Kathman and Melin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Levin, “Whitewashing and Extortion”; Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
95 The monarchy coefficient is statistically significant at p < 0.10.
96 The mean VIF (after an OLS regression of the variables in the ZINB equation) is 2.37.
97 Coleman and Nyblade, “Peacekeeping for Profit?”
98 Wahman, Teorell, and Hadenius, “Authoritarian Regime Types Revisited.”
99 For a thorough discussion, see Wilson, “A Discreet Critique.”
100 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out.”
101 Coppedge et al., “V-Dem Codebook V11.”
102 Roodman, “How to do xtabond2.”
103 Lei, “Two Pillars”; Zhengyu and Taylor, “From Refusal to Engagment”; Fung, “What Explains China's Deployment”; Cho, “China's Participation in UN Peacekeeping”; Gill and Huang, “The People's Republic of China”; Hirono and Lanteigne, “Introduction: China and UN Peacekeeping”; Richardson, “A Responsible Power?”
104 Bellamy and Williams, Broadening the Base; Smith and Boutellis, Rethinking Force Generation.
105 Duursma and Gledhill, “Voted Out,” 1179.
106 Ibid, 1179.
107 In this study's sample, the average V-Dem score for single-party regimes is 0.109, compared with 0.138 for monarchies, 0.132 for military regimes, and 0.243 for multiparty regimes.
108 Lundgren, “Backdoor Peacekeeping”; Passmore, “Democratization and Troop Contributions.”
109 Bellamy and Williams, Broadening the Base.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew Levin
Andrew Levin is Assistant Professor of Government and International Relations at Connecticut College.