Keeping electoral peace? Activities of United Nations peacekeeping operations and their effects on election-related violence

Abstract

In war-torn countries, elections are held to support peacebuilding, but they sometimes trigger new violence. While peacekeeping operations (PKOs) regularly accompany electoral periods, we lack systematic knowledge on how they influence election-related violence. I argue that variation in peacekeepers’ activities is fundamentally important: only if PKOs assist with securing and organizing elections can they reduce election-related violence. Using novel data on PKOs’ election-related activities and accounting for endogeneity in both peacekeeping deployment and activities, the analyses of all 630 elections in conflict-affected countries support this expectation. The result implies that the design of PKOs is crucial for effectively managing post-war political transitions.

Mitigating election violence locally: UN peacekeepers’ election-education campaigns in Côte d’Ivoire

“…First, learning about PKOs’ support for peaceful elections during election-education events can augment people’s perceptions that political opponents cannot target them with violence. Peacekeeping research supports the idea that deploying peacekeepers reduces violence associated with elections (Brancati & Snyder, 2013), for example, by implementing electoral security plans or advising the election commission (Smidt, 2017). But only if citizens know about PKOs’ security-enhancing activities can these activities affect civilians’ perceived security.…”

Protecting the Vote? Peacekeeping Presence and the Risk of Electoral Violence

“…Against this backdrop, peacekeepers' impact on electoral violence has been surprisingly understudied. The only cross-national study on this relationship shows that peacekeepers' impact on the risk of electoral violence is conditional on their activity in assisting with electoral security and organizing elections (Smidt 2020a). Yet, country-level associations make it hard to distinguish the contributions of local peacekeeping deployments from the overall effect of international interventionincluding, for example, diplomatic efforts and other forms of election assistance.…”

Protecting the Vote? Peacekeeping Presence and the Risk of Electoral Violence

“…The pivotal role of elections in the political trajectories of conflict-affected societies has led the international community to invest heavily in their safety. Most contemporary United Nations peacekeeping missions have mandates to oversee, organize and secure elections (Smidt 2020a). In addition to technical electoral assistance, peacekeeping missions, for example, deploy uniformed personnel to safeguard polling stations, conduct military patrols to ensure that voters can exercise their political rights, and protect electoral materials.…”

“…In addition to technical electoral assistance, peacekeeping missions, for example, deploy uniformed personnel to safeguard polling stations, conduct military patrols to ensure that voters can exercise their political rights, and protect electoral materials. However, prior research on the ability of UN peacekeeping operations to augment electoral security and reduce the risk of electoral violence is limited and focused on single cases (Mvukiyehe 2018; Mvukiyehe and Samii 2017; Smidt 2020b) or aggregate cross-national relationships (Smidt 2020a). A growing body of literature has testified to the ability of UN peacekeepers to end civil war violence, prevent its resurgence and protect civilians from wartime abuse (for reviews, see Di Salvatore and Ruggeri 2017; Walter, Howard, and Fortna 2020).…”