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ABSTRACT
Private interests might occasionally influence the decisions of troop-providers when contributing to UN peacekeeping missions. However, the pursuit of private benefits impacts how the mandates of peacekeeping missions are fulfilled. Drawing upon the conflict-of-interest theory, I argue that the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations is compromised when troop-providers lack ideational commitment to the principles of UN peacekeeping. This article explores the impact of troop-providers’ ideational commitment to UN peacekeeping on the duration of UN missions. To achieve this, a duration analysis is conducted over all completed and ongoing peacekeeping operations from April 1991 to December 2019. The results reveal that conflicting interests within peacekeeping operations lead to an increased time required for concluding UN missions. In essence, by establishing a connection between the raison d’^etre of troop-providers and the duration of missions, this article outlines significant policy implications for the United Nations.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Theofilopoulou, “United Nations Mission for the Referendum”.
2 Rieff, “Slaughterhouse”.
3 Melander, “Selected to go where,” 390.
4 Andreas, “Blue helmets and black markets,” 46.
5 Walter, “Committing to peace”.
6 Lundgren, “Which type of international organizations?”
7 Diehl, “Breaking the conflict trap”.
8 David Mason et al., “When civil wars recur”; Doyle and Sambanis, “Making War”; Fortna, “Does peacekeeping work?”
9 Doyle and Sambanis, “International peacebuilding”.
10 Fortna, “Does peacekeeping keep peace?”
11 Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations peacekeeping dynamics”.
12 Kathman and Benson, “Cut Short?”
13 Diehl, “International peacekeeping,” 39.
14 Wright and Greig, “Staying the course”.
15 Ibid.
16 Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of blue”; Bove and Ruggeri, “Peacekeeping Effectiveness”; Haass and Ansorg, “Better peacekeepers”.
17 Bove, Ruffa, and Ruggeri, “Composing peace”.
18 Gaibulloev et al., “Personnel contributions”.
19 Boutton and D’Orazio, “Buying blue helmets”.
20 Stojek and Tir, “The Supply Side”.
21 Zhang, “Trade Potential”.
22 Morrison, Kiras, and Blair, “UN peacekeeping reform”.
23 Abiola et al., “The large contributors”; Koops et al., “Introduction: Post-Cold War”.
24 Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of blue”; Haass and Ansorg, “Better peacekeepers”.
25 Bove and Ruggeri, Ibid; Bove, Ruffa, and Ruggeri, “What do we know?”
26 Available from https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/what-is-peacekeeping.
27 McGreal, “Nigerian peace force”.
28 Jetley, “Report on the Crisis,” para. 10.
29 Ibid, para. 5.
30 Thakur, “From peacekeeping to peace,” 398.
31 Albrecht and Cold-Ravnkilde, “National interests”.
32 Balch-Lindsay and Enterline, “Killing time”; Gent, “Going in when it counts”; Linebarger and Enterline, “Third party intervention”.
33 Diehl and Druckman, “Evaluating peace,” 95.
34 Howard, “Power in peacekeeping,” 14.
35 Albrecht and Cold-Ravnkilde, “National interests”.
36 Reilly, ”Post-war elections”.
37 Brancati and Snyder, ”Pushing to the polls”.
38 Smidt, ”Keeping electoral peace?”
39 Smidt, ”Mitigating election violence”.
40 Howard, ”Power in peacekeeping”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, ”Beyond keeping peace”.
41 Fox and Weisberg, “Cox proportional-hazards,” 3.
42 For instance, the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) was withdrawn on 28 February 1999, following China’s veto of the mission’s mandate renewal due to North Macedonia’s decision to recognize Taiwan.
44 Scartascini, Cruz, and Keefer, “The database”.
45 Available at: https://www.peacemissions.info.
46 Strezhnev and Voeten, “UNGA voting data”.
47 The resolutions on the Palestinian issue are deliberately excluded as the Israel-Palestine conflict is a highly politicized debate and makes up “one third of contentious UNGA votes concerns the Middle East” (Voeten, “Data and analyses of voting,” 56).
48 The ambiguity regarding ‘yes’ votes is illustrated in the example of Agenda item 27 of the sixty-fifth plenary meeting at the seventy-first session of the General Assembly (Monday, 19 December 2016, 10a.m. New York). The draft report A/71/477 named Advancement of Women is brought by the Sudanese Delegation. Though the name of the draft report gives the impression that Sudanese Delegation has a supportive stance towards women’s rights, a closer investigation of the proposal shows the opposite. The Sudanese Delegation requests the deletion of the fifteenth preambular paragraph in the report prepared by the Third Committee to weaken International Criminal Court (ICC)’s jurisdiction on gender-related crimes. The proposed draft amendment was supported by countries such as Eritrea, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Oman, Cameroon and China, which struggle to give jurisdiction to ICC. On the other hand, countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and EU members voted against the proposal. The example, in this respect, displays the fact that ‘yes’ votes on human rights issues do not always mean respect/support of human rights.
49 Boockmann and Dreher, “Do human rights offenders oppose?”
50 Lijphart, “Analysis of bloc voting”.
51 Peacekeeping, “IPI peacekeeping dataset”.
52 Haass and Ansorg, “Better peacekeepers”.
53 Coppedge et al., “V-Dem dataset”.
54 Simi´c, “Does the presence of women”.
55 Bridges and Horsfall, “Increasing operational effectiveness”.
56 Duursma, “Obstruction and intimidation”.
57 Salverda, “Blue helmets as targets”.
58 Available from https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/peacekeeper-fatalities.
59 Mullenbach, “Third-party peacekeeping”.
60 Pettersson and O¨ berg, “Organized violence”; Sundberg and Melander, “UCDP georeferenced event dataset”.
61 H¨ogbladh, “UCDP GED codebook”.
62 Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and grievance”.
63 Young, “Antecedents of civil war”.
64 vailable from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS.
65 DeRouen Jr and Sobek, “What do we know?”; Goodwin and Skocpol, “Explaining revolutions”.
66 Marshall and Gurr, “Political regime characteristics”.
67 Pettersson, H¨ogbladh, and O¨ berg, “Organized violence”.
68 Bouliotis and Billingham, “Crossing survival curves”.
69 Box-Steffensmeier and Zorn, “Duration models”.
70 Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of blue”.
71 Giray, ”Troop-providers’ ideational commitment”.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Burak Giray
Burak Giray is a postdoctoral researcher at Hertie School’s Centre for International Security and a visiting researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University. He has been awarded the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)’s 2022/23 Postdoctoral Researchers International Mobility Experience (PRIME) Fellowship. He received his PhD from the University of Houston. His main research interests focus on various aspects of UN interventions in conflicts, including the supply-side dynamics, effectiveness, and legitimacy of UN peacekeeping operations.