Networks of Influence and Support in UN Peacekeeping Operations

• In Event: Challenges in UN Peacekeeping

Abstract

Even though the majority of peace operations are multidimensional (including both military and civilian components), existing data on these missions largely ignore the civilian aspects of peacekeeping. The omission of civilian actors is substantiated by the theory that underpins much of the peacekeeping literature: that the presence of peacekeepers increases the costs of war and reduces the costs of cooperation (Fortna 2008; Fortna and Howard 2008). But the focus of existing analyses on peacekeepers may overestimate the contribution of military actors and underestimate the contribution of the hundreds of civilian actors and agencies, as well as international donors, that increasingly comprise multidimensional peace operations. By focusing primarily or wholly on one type of actor in peacekeeping operations, existing scholarship fails to capture the ways in which these different actors support one another, forging new pathways to power and influence. The inability to capture these networks of influence is exacerbated by very poor data about many of the non-state, non-governmental, and international actors operating in conflict-affected countries. Using mixed-method analyses of domestic-international networks of actors involved and associated with UN peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this paper develops a theory of networks of influence among diverse state, non-state, and international actors in conflict-affected countries, explaining how they shape conflict and cooperation outcomes, often in counterintuitive ways.

Authors

• Jessica Maves Braithwaite, University of Arizona

• Susanna Campbell, American University