All necessary means to what ends? the unintended consequences of the ‘robust turn’ in UN peace operations

Hybridity and Friction in Organizational Politics: New Perspectives on the African Security Regime Complex

“…However, as several contributions to this Special Issue reflect, recent years have seen changes in the politics and practices of interventions, against the wider backdrop of a transformationand possible declineof the liberal world order. In particular, we observe a shift from liberal reform agendas towards a more pragmatic focus on security and stabilization (Moe and Stepputat 2018)a so-called 'robust turn' in intervention politics (Hunt 2017). This development is particularly evident in growing militarizing tendencies in interventions in Africa (Gelot and Sandor 2019; Moe and Geis forthcoming), which has however largely been absent from analyses of the APSA (Vlavonou 2019).…”

Is conflict prevention a science, craft, or art? Moving beyond technocracy and wishful thinking

“…Good intentions are not sufficient eitherdesign flaws, unintended consequences, lack of resources, lack of local knowledge and other implementation problems may lead to the failure of international preventive actions (Autesserre, 2014;Hunt, 2017). The making of prevention policy is not just about finding the "political will" to do the right thing, to intervene and use the power of external actors to change political dynamics on the ground.…”

Peacekeeping: Resilience of an Idea

“…The switch towards more robust operations has several implications on peacekeeping principles and broader UN peacebuilding attempts (Peter 2015;Hunt 2017;de Coning et al 2017). Most important for the argument in this chapter, is that these missions are abandoning their conflict resolution ambitions, focusing only on the management and containment of these conflicts.…”