Help is close at hand? Proximity and the effectiveness of peacekeepers

Goldring, Edward; Hendricks, Michael

doi:10.1177/2053168018805612

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…As well, if personnel fatalities signal the possibility of rising violence or mission failure, they may generate a heightened sense of urgency or political pressure for leaders of neighboring contributors to help stabilize the mission. Some existing work suggests that missions with more peacekeepers from contiguous states are more effective at preventing violence against civilians (e.g., Goldring and Hendrick 2018). Other work shows that the payoffs of effective peacekeeping missions may be particularly high for states that are more proximate to those missions (e.g., Beardsley 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A price for peace: troop contributing countries’ responses to peacekeeper fatalities

Oestman

2021

International Interactions

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How do states respond to fatalities of their troops in UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs)? Recent research highlights that participation in peacekeeping is costly for most states. Personnel fatalities should create further costs for contributors and often result in a reduction of their commitments. Studies that evaluate this expectation yield mixed findings. One finds no evidence that OECD countries provide fewer personnel to UN PKOs following fatalities. In contrast, another finds that fatalities generally correspond with reductions in states' personnel commitments to UN operations in Africa but also reveals that wealthier contributors tend to withdraw at larger magnitudes than their poorer counterparts. This study builds on this work by further hypothesizing that the incentives that motivate states to participate in PKOs condition their willingness to maintain their contributions after experiencing fatalities. An analysis of states' troop fatalities and commitments to 41 UN operations from 1990 to 2015 supports this expectation. States that are contiguous to an operation, which face greater concerns about the externalities of nearby conflicts, and states that receive side payments for their troop commitments, via foreign aid, are more willing to maintain their commitments in response to fatalities of their troops than other contributors. Additional findings suggest that non-contiguous contributors that do not receive side payments are also inclined to withdraw troops in response to upticks in organized violence surrounding a mission as well as fatalities of other contributors' troops. These results illustrate that the motives that states face to participate in PKOs also affect their willingness to maintain their troop commitments as their costs for participation increase. ¿Cómo reaccionan los Estados ante las muertes de sus tropas durante las operaciones de mantenimiento de la paz (Peacekeeping Operation, PKO) de la ONU? Las investigaciones recientes destacan que la participación en el mantenimiento de la paz es costosa para la mayoría de los Estados. Las muertes del personal deberían generar mayores costos para los países colaboradores y, a menudo, dan lugar a una reducción de sus compromisos. Los estudios que se realizan para evaluar esta expectativa arrojan resultados dispares. Uno de estos no halla KEYWORDS Peacekeeping; peacekeeper fatalities; troop deployments; foreign policy CONTACT Jared Oestman

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A price for peace: troop contributing countries’ responses to peacekeeper fatalities

Oestman

2021

International Interactions

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“…The study of peacekeeping effectiveness has proliferated in the last two decades following an increase in peacekeeping operations (PKOs) since the Cold War. 1 Much of this research features cross-national quantitative analyses where scholars examine how peacekeepers prevent civilians from dying ( Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon 2013 ;Goldring and Hendricks 2018 ). However, peacekeeping is not a national-level endeavor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

All Peacekeeping is Local: Measuring Subnational Variation in Peacekeeping Effectiveness

Reeder

Hendricks

Goldring

2022

International Studies Quarterly

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Understanding whether peacekeepers reduce fatalities at the local level is an important question. We can have increased confidence in peacekeepers’ capabilities by testing whether deaths decrease in the locations where peacekeepers are present. However, commonly used modeling techniques cannot easily test peacekeepers’ local effectiveness. Coefficients from methods such as linear regression, logit, and count models provide average estimates of peacekeepers’ effects on violence. We argue that a solution lies in geographically weighted regression (GWR). GWR can more clearly reveal subnational spatial heterogeneity in peacekeepers’ (in)effectiveness at reducing violence. We conduct an illustrative test of our argument using data on the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2001 and 2014 and replicate an existing study to show that GWR can also help resolve seemingly contradictory findings of whether peacekeepers are better at reducing violence by government or rebel actors. The article contains important implications for how scholars can more accurately measure peacekeeping effectiveness.

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Help is close at hand? Proximity and the effectiveness of peacekeepers

Cited by 2 publications

References 25 publications

A price for peace: troop contributing countries’ responses to peacekeeper fatalities

A price for peace: troop contributing countries’ responses to peacekeeper fatalities

All Peacekeeping is Local: Measuring Subnational Variation in Peacekeeping Effectiveness

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