Authoritarianism and UN Peacebuilding

• In Event: Challenges in UN Peacekeeping

Abstract

What role does peacebuilding play in shaping the regime type of the countries where international missions are deployed? Most peacebuilding missions occur in authoritarian contexts and seek to overcome the legacies of conflict by overseeing transitions to democratic rule; however, most regimes that experience peacebuilding still retain some form of authoritarian rule. In this paper, we examine the extent to which international peacebuilding missions contribute to the consolidation of post-conflict authoritarian regimes even when their stated aims involve the promotion of democracy. We argue that international peacebuilders can act as enablers of authoritarian rule in host countries, and we distinguish this category of behavior from explicit ‘autocracy promotion,’ which implies an intention to support autocracy. Instead, enabling is often an unintended consequence of UN action, and we identify two mechanisms through which enabling occurs: by building the capacity of incumbent authoritarian leaders and by expanding the opportunity structures for authoritarian behavior for national actors. We illustrate our argument by comparing two cases of UN peace operations, DR Congo and Haiti, showing how the missions did not explicitly promote authoritarianism, but contributed to the regime’s institutional and security capacity and created a permissive environment, thus lowering the costs of authoritarian behavior.

Authors

• Sarah von Billerbeck, University of Reading

• Oisin Tansey, King's College London

• Birte Julia Gippert, University of Liverpool

• Kseniya Oksamytna, King's College London