Enabling autocracy? Peacebuilding and post-conflict authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

Does peacebuilding shape the regime type of countries where international missions are deployed? Most peacebuilding missions take place 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 article, 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 authoritarianism in host countries. We distinguish this category of behaviour from explicit ‘autocracy promotion’, which implies intentional support to autocracy. Instead, enabling is often an unintended consequence, and we identify two mechanisms through which enabling occurs: by building the capacity of incumbent authoritarian leaders and by signalling a permissive environment for authoritarian behaviour for national actors. We illustrate our argument with the case of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Adapting the ESSENZ Method to Assess Company-Specific Criticality Aspects

“…The political situation in the Dem. Rep. Congo is highly unstable due to political conflicts that officially ended at the beginning of the 21 st century (e.g., the Second Congo War) but continue to have an impact [47]. Thus, the country's trading environment is unstable.…”

Token Forces

“…International Relations scholars have explored unintended consequences of norm advocacy (Weeks, 2017;Bradley, 2019;Snyder, 2020) and other normatively inscribed international activities, including peacekeeping (e.g., Jennings, 2010;von Billerbeck & Tansey, 2019), but have tended to focus on unforeseen implementation effects rather than unintended consequences arising from the existence of norms themselves. Yet international norms are recognized as enabling as well as constraining behavior (Wheeler, 2000;Hurd, 2017).…”

Criminal accountability at what cost? Norm conflict, UN peace operations and the International Criminal Court

“…The expectation that peacekeepers should primarily occupy themselves with achieving and maintaining stability is widely shared among UN member states and UN actors (von Billerbeck and Tansey, 2019). Even those concerned with the 'agenda of protection' have generally tended to prioritise stability when there was a possibility that justice could undermine peace (Peskin and Boduszynski, 2016).…”

“…To ground our analysis, we build on and contribute to scholarly work which analyses how UN peace operations balance their frequently conflicting obligations (f.e. von Billerbeck and Tansey, 2019). In this context, we use as our unit of analysis what Winckler (2015: 43) calls ‘the peacekeeping bureaucracy’: the UN Secretariat’s Departments of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and Political Affairs (DPA) and the field-level missions themselves.…”