https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4319-8315
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ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) repeatedly expresses its support to principles and values of the United Nations (UN), seeing the UN as the core of a rules-based global order. How does the EU perform in contributing personnel to UN peacekeeping operations, and what factors affect their personnel commitments? Recent work shows that the size of the deployed personnel matters for peacekeeping effectiveness, and personnel commitment is a crucial effort by the UN member states to prolong peace. This article’s contribution is to conduct the first analysis on the EU member states’ contribution rates on 53 UN peacekeeping operations throughout the last 30 years. By testing arguments of two general explanations for factors that affect peacekeeper contributions, the empirical findings reveal that although the EU members tend to contribute less to UN peacekeeping operations, they contribute significantly higher in the case of rising peacekeeper fatalities. However, the EU member states are less likely to contribute with humanitarian impulse or international security threat concerns. The findings suggest that no single theory can explain the contribution motives; instead, a wide range of interacting factors determine the decision to commit personnel to an operation.
Acknowledgements
A previous version of this paper was presented at the International Political Science Association’s 26th World Congress of Political Science in July 2021. I thank Reşat Bayer and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data Availability Statement
Data and replication files are available upon request.
Notes
1 UN News, “EU an ‘Indispensable’ UN Partner,” para. 8.
2 Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “Beyond Keeping Peace”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics and the Duration”; Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen, “Managing Mistrust”; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis, “Winning the Peace Locally.”
3 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
4 Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War.”
5 Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue”; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis, “Winning the Peace Locally.”
6 Holt, Taylor, and Kelly, Protecting Civilians in the Context.
7 Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics and the Duration.”
8 Benson and Kathman, “United Nations Bias and Force Commitments”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics and the Duration”; Pushkina, “A Recipe for Success?”; Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen, “Managing Mistrust.”
9 Beardsley, Cunningham, and White, “Mediation, Peacekeeping and the Severity”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “Beyond Keeping Peace”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, Peacekeeping in the Midst of War.
10 Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, Peacekeeping in the Midst of War; Kathman and Wood, “Managing Threat, Cost, and Incentive to Kill”; Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing During the ‘Peace.’”
11 Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen, “Managing Mistrust.”
12 Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics and the Duration.”
13 Kathman and Benson, “Cut Short?”
14 Beardsley, “Peacekeeping and the Contagion of Armed Conflict”; Beardsley and Gleditsch, “Peacekeeping as Conflict Containment.”
15 Jett, Why Peacekeeping Fails; Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda; Diehl, Reifschneider, and Hensel, “United Nations Intervention and Recurring Conflict.”
16 Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing During the ‘Peace’”; Pushkina, “A Recipe for Success”; Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen, “Managing Mistrust”; Thyne, How International Relations Affect Civil Conflict.
17 Walter, Committing to Peace.
18 Holt, Taylor, and Kelly, Protecting Civilians in the Context.
19 Durch et al., “The Brahimi Report at Thirty (Months),” 16.
20 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping Operations, 1990–1996”; Bellamy, Williams, and Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping.
21 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers; Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Personnel Commitments, 1990–2011.”
22 UN, “Troop and Police Contributors.”
23 Bueno de Mesquita et al., “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace.”
24 Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace.
25 Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom.
26 Malik, “Pakistan.”
27 Passmore, Shannon, and Hart, “Rallying the Troops.”
28 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
29 Ibid.; Neack, “UN Peace-Keeping.”
30 De Jonge Oudraat, “The United Nations and Internal Conflict”; Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?
31 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Uzonyi, “Refugee Flows and State Contributions.”
32 Uzonyi, “Refugee Flows and State Contributions.”
33 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers; Lebovic, “Uniting for Peace?”
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Lebovic, “Uniting for Peace,” 912.
37 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers; Mansfield and Pevehouse, “Democratization and International Organizations”; Pevehouse, “Democracy from the Outside-In?”
38 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers; Owen, “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.”
39 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
40 Tardy, “The European Union and the United Nations,” 191.
41 Ibid.
42 UN News, “EU an ‘Indispensable’ UN Partner,” para. 8.
43 Tardy, “The European Union and the United Nations.”
44 Koops and Tercovich, “A European Return to United Nations Peacekeeping?”
45 Coleman, “Token Troop Contributions to United Nations,” 48–68; Koops and Tercovich, “A European Return to United Nations Peacekeeping?”
46 Koops and Tercovich, “A European Return to United Nations Peacekeeping?”
47 Council of the European Union, Strengthening the UN-EU Strategic Partnership.
48 Koops and Tercovich, “A European Return to United Nations Peacekeeping?”
49 As will be detailed in the next section, the UK is considered part of the EU for most of the study’s timeline.
50 Beardsley, “UN Involvement in International Crises”; Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”; Jakobsen, “National Interest, Humanitarianism or CNN.”
51 Williams, “The United Kingdom.”
52 Doyle and Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding”; Ross, “What Do We Know.”
53 Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work; Aydin, “Where Do States Go?”; Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”
54 Tardy, “France.”
55 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace.”
56 De Jonge Oudraat, “The United Nations and Internal Conflict.”
57 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace.”
58 International Peace Institute, “European Contributions to UN Peacekeeping Operations.”
59 Van Willigen, “A Dutch Return to UN Peacekeeping?”
60 Data and replication files are available upon request.
61 Fortna and Howard, “Pitfalls and Prospects in the Peacekeeping Literature.”
62 International Peace Institute, “IPI Peacekeeping Database”; Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Personnel Commitments.”
63 UN, “Troop and Police Contributors.”
64 Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU in 1995; Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia were declared EU members in 2004; Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007; lastly, in 2013, Croatia was declared a member state of the EU.
65 Walker, “Brexit Timeline,” 74.
66 The 28 member countries of the European Union are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.
67 Sundberg and Melander, “Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.”
68 Henke, “UN Fatalities 1948–2015”; UN Peacekeeping, “Fatalities.”
69 UNHCR, “Total Refugee Population by Origin, 1960–2018.”
70 World Bank, “Fuel Exports (% of Merchandise Exports).”
71 Mayer and Zignago, “Notes on CEPII’s Distances Measures.”
72 Jetschke and Schlipphak, “MILINDA: A New Dataset.”
73 Ibid.
74 World Bank, “Population”; World Bank, “Land Area.”
75 Heckman, “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.”
76 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Gilligan and Sergenti, “Do UN Interventions Cause Peace?”; Sartori, “An Estimator for Some Binary-Outcome Selection Models.”
77 Brahimi, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations.
78 Tardy, “France: The Unlikely Return.”
79 Bara and Hultman, “Just Different Hats?”; International Peace Institute, “IPI Peacekeeping Database”; SIPRI, “Multilateral Peace Operations Database.”
80 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace.”
81 Van Willigen, “A Dutch Return to UN Peacekeeping?”
82 Boutellis and Beary, “Sharing the Burden,” 4.
83 UN Peacekeeping, “Fatalities by Mission and Incident Type.”
84 Bara and Hultman, “Just Different Hats?”; International Peace Institute, “IPI Peacekeeping Database”; SIPRI, “Multilateral Peace Operations Database.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Firuze Simay Sezgin
Firuze Simay Sezgin is a PhD candidate at Koç University. Her PhD thesis examines the speed and size of UN peacekeeping operations.