The Pieces Kept after Peace is Kept: Assessing the (Post-Exit) Legacies of Peace Operations

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgements

A number of the articles in this forum build on contributions to a workshop hosted at Brasenose College, Oxford, on 20 September, 2017. We thank contributors, participants, and sponsors of the workshop. We also thank colleagues and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of our contributions, and the editors of International Peacekeeping.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

John Gledhill is Associate Professor of Global Governance in the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. In current research and writing, he explores themes of state capacity/fragility, nonviolent resistance and social mobilization, and post-conflict peacebuilding. His recent publications have appeared in the European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Global Security Studies, and Civil Wars.

ORCID

John Gledhill http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4275-2556

Notes

1 Recognizing that ‘boundaries between conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peace enforcement have become increasingly blurred’ (United Nations Peacekeeping, “Terminology”), this introductory essay uses the term ‘peace operations’ in reference to the various military and political interventions that the United Nations and regional actors realize in support of peace. More specific terms, such as (military) peacekeeping, are used when appropriate.

2 Many of these reports are publicly available at https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/reports-secretary-general (accessed 18 March, 2019).

3 United Nations, “A More Secure World,” 61; Ponzio, “After Exit: The UN Peacebuilding Architecture,” 294. Note, however, that cases can remain formally on the UNSC’s agenda.

4 United Nations, “Uniting Our Strengths for Peace”; United Nations, “Brahimi Report”; United Nations Security Council, “No Exit Without Strategy.”

5 Bellamy, “The Institutionalisation of Peacebuilding,” 204–6.

6 For an overview of such assessments, see Di Salvatore and Ruggeri, “Effectiveness of Peacekeeping Operations.”

7 For example, Hultman et al., “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection in Civil War”; Hultman et al., “Beyond Keeping Peace”; Ruggeri et al., “Winning the Peace Locally.”

8 For example, Beardsley, “The UN at the Peacemaking-Peacebuilding Nexus”; Caplan and Hoeffler, “Why Peace Endures”; Doyle and Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding”; Gilligan and Sergenti, “Do UN Interventions Cause Peace?”.

9 For discussions of incorporating mission exit into quantitative studies of peacekeeping efficacy, see Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?” and Does Peacekeeping Work, Ch.5.

10 Diehl and Druckman, “Multiple Peacekeeping Missions,” 34.

11 The work of Doyle and Sambanis is an exception to this rule, along with Brosig and Sempijja’s recent study of “What Peacekeeping Leaves Behind.”

12 For overviews of evaluation criteria (including qualitative indicators), see Diehl and Druckman, “Evaluating Peace Operations”; Whalan, “Evaluating Integrated Peace Operations”; Peter, “Measuring the Success of Peace Operations”.

13 See, for example, contributions to Druckman and Diehl (eds.), Peace Operation Success.

14 See Doyle and Suntharalingam, “The UN in Cambodia”; Smith and Dee, “East Timor”; Novosseloff, “The Many Lives of a Peacekeeping Mission”; Adebajo, UN Peacekeeping in Africa, Ch. 5. Also see selected evaluations of UN missions in Koops et al. (eds), The Oxford Handbook.

15 See, for example, Aning and Edu-Afful, “Unintended Impacts”; Hull et al., Managing Unintended Consequences; Jennings, “Life in a ‘Peace-kept’ City”.

16 See discussion in Diehl and Druckman, “Evaluating Peace Operations.”

17 Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace; Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars.

18 Caplan, “After Exit: Successor Missions”; Caplan (ed.), Exit Strategies and State Building.

19 Beber et al., “Challenges and Pitfalls of Peacekeeping Economies.”

20 Dorussen, “Security Perception.”

21 Tansey, “Evaluating the Legacies of State-Building.”

22 Oxford English Dictionary, “Legacy, n.”

23 Note that some contributions refer to diverse outcomes and, thus, diverse types of legacy. In this introduction, however, I draw selectively on the studies that follow in order to facilitate illustration of the typology that I introduce.

24 Based on Wittenberg, “Conceptualizing Historical Legacies,” 372.

25 Diehl and Druckman, “Multiple Peacekeeping Missions,” 45.

26 On path dependence and legacies, see Collier and Collier, “Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies”; Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence.”

27 See discussion in Diehl and Druckman, “Evaluating Peace Operations,” 97.

28 This builds on logic articulated in Wittenberg, “Conceptualizing Historical Legacies,” 373.

29 See related discussions in Brosig and Sempijja, “What Peacekeeping Leaves Behind”; Tansey, “Evaluating the Legacies of State-Building.”

30 Diehl in Druckman et al., “Evaluating Peacekeeping Missions,” 156.

31 Recognizing that the international community’s presence in Bosnia has substantially reduced but not ‘exited’.