Peace mission strategy and domestic actors: UN mediation, verification and institution‐building in El Salvador

Abstract

The UN's effort to end the civil war in El Salvador is among its most successful to date. While this success was achieved under propitious conditions that are not likely to be repeated anywhere else, there are a number of lessons from the El Salvador experience that can be applied elsewhere. The central challenge in El Salvador, as in other cases, was to influence the behaviour of autonomous domestic actors. Our review of interactions between the UN mission and domestic actors in El Salvador suggests the following lessons: the UN was able to enhance its leverage by combining its three main roles ‐ mediation, verification and institution‐building ‐ in strategic and mutually‐reinforcing ways; an important part of the UN's leverage derived from its ability to confer international political legitimacy on domestic actors; the UN enhanced its leverage through principled action, even when this meant going against bargains that domestic parties themselves were willing to accept; and one of the mission's greatest assets was its flexibility to respond to unexpected opportunities and to carry out important, unanticipated roles when domestic actors defaulted at crucial moments in the peace process.