Unit Fragmentation and Local Peacekeeping Effectiveness: Micro-level Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

• In Event: Peacekeeping

Abstract

What determines the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations (PKOs)? Recent literature has experienced a shift away from the binary discussion on the presence or absence of peacekeeping, to a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of specific mission characteristics. As summarised by Bove and Ruggeri (2016, 682): “If peacekeeping works, how does the composition of a mission affect its performance?” My project builds on this new strand of scholarship. Assuming that peacekeepers are to be deployed, what will increase or decrease their military effectiveness? I show that force specialisation and healthy civil-military relations in the troop contributing countries (TCC) themselves improve the quality of their peacekeeping units. Drawing on newly published data on PKO troop composition in Sudan and South Sudan, I investigate how certain features of the state militaries of TCCs influence their peacekeeping performance. The results of a Bayesian hierarchical negative-binomial regression support my theory. The contribution of this research goes beyond peacekeeping alone, as PKOs offer a unique security setting in which multiple TCCs engage in the same area of operation and under the same UN mandate, thus providing a quasi-experimental setting to test the effect of prior military training and structure on effective security provision.

Authors

• Christoph Dworschak, University of Essex

• Deniz Cil, University of Maryland, College Park