UN Peacekeeping Operations: From Mandate to Practices on the Ground and Back

• In Event: New Directions in the Study of UN Peacekeeping

Abstract

The UN Security Council tasks headquarter bureaucrats and civil servants in the field with implementing resolutions on UN peacekeeping operations. Yet these mandates leave room for interpretation. When and under what conditions do UN peacekeeping operations fulfill, go beyond or lag behind their mandated tasks? Studying this variation is important for understanding success and failure of UN peacekeepers, which is usually assessed without acknowledging mandated tasks. We explore the complex dynamics between the UN Security Council (the first UN) and bureaucrats and civil servants (the second UN) using novel data on both peacekeepers’ activities on the ground and Security Council’s mandates in Africa from 1995 to 2016. We argue that the capacity of peacekeeping operations (budget, personnel, material) and the conditions in host countries (conflict type, terrain, non-state actors) may determine variation in how well peacekeepers implement their mandate. When the interests of UN Security Council members are more directly affected, state interests (resource wealth, geo-political location of the host country, etc.) and linkages to the UN host country (colonial history, shared alliances, etc.) seem likely predictors for greater correspondence between mandate and mandate implementation. Finally, implementation failure may also feed back into mandate types, renewals and changes on the part of the UN Security Council.

Authors

• Robert A. Blair, Brown University

• Jessica Di Salvatore, University of Warwick

• Hannah Smidt, German Institute of Global and Area Studies