Understanding Coherence in United Nations Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework

Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically, SEBASTIAAN RIETJENS and CHIARA RUFFA state.
Borrowing the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory, the authors use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. “Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the mandate, on the one hand, and an institutional set-up and the implemented practices, on the other,” they state in ‘Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework’, published in the journal International Peacekeeping.
RIETJENS and RUFFA identify three relevant dimensions of fit to study coherence: strategic and organizational, cultural and human and operational fit. Their empirical material focuses on the UN mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and in particular on the interplay between the intelligence components and the rest of the mission.
Drawing upon a large empirical dataset containing over 120 semi-structured interviews, field observations and participation in pre-deployment exercises and evaluation sessions, RIETJENS and RUFFA’s empirical analysis suggests that low level of fit across several dimensions leads to inertial and widespread frictions in the practice of peacekeeping and could potentially undermine peacekeeping effectiveness. “Building on existing scholarship on micro-level approaches to peacekeeping, we hope to further the debate on organizational dynamics within peace operations.”
The analysis revealed many manifestations of misfit on each of the three key areas. “If we consider the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations as the level of goal realization (i.e. fulfilling the UN mandate) our analysis suggests a positive and rather strong relation between the coherence and effectiveness.” When coherence or a lack thereof was observed in each of the three key areas, this directly seemed to impact the level of goal realization.
Increasing coherence between the actors that are involved in peacekeeping operations however does not require having all actors to interact in a unified way, RIETJENS and RUFFA write. There are just too many different interests, mandates and modi operandi to make full integration possible or even desirable. “But we find that unpacking coherence is a first step in shedding light to further theorizing on this issue.”
Further research could explore the relation between different key areas of fit and also on how they influence each other, i.e. a lack of organizational fit is one of the reasons for a lack of operational fit. And the fit-model should be tested to additional cases to see if it holds. Further research should also explore more systematically how organizational variables may hinder peacekeeping success.
Turning to MINUSMA in particular, the authors state, it becomes clear that the mission would benefit from higher levels of coherence than is presently the case. The fit model is a useful tool for identifying key areas in which further work is needed. This implies that actors should try to better integrate their approaches and activities while maintaining their individual identities as well as their right to take independent decisions.
Looking at the three different key areas (strategic and organizational fit, cultural and human fit and operational fit), the authors state, there are several recommendations that deserve immediate follow-up.
First, with respect to the area of strategic and organizational fit it is important to increase role clarity between the All Sources Information Fusion Unit (ASIFU) and the Joint Mission Analysis Center and to further integrate or at least more clearly define command and control relationships of the Force Headquarters cell (U2) and ASIFU.
In addition, it would be important to improve linkages (e.g. liaison officers) between military intelligence capacities and the main force. Relatedly it would be key to give existing coordination platforms decision powers and inserting them in the chain of command and control. The lack thereof could explain the failures of the Joint Coordination Board.
In relation to the cultural and human fit, more emphasis on the development of cross-cultural competences seems essential to operate more effectively. Three main components have been identified as necessary to acquire cross-cultural competence and therefore to effectively work in a foreign culture (Abbe & Halpin).
These are cultural knowledge (i.e. an awareness of one’s own culture and an understanding of culture and cultural differences through schemata or frameworks), affect (i.e. attitudes toward other cultures such as openness and empathy and the motivation to learn about and en­gage with them) and skills ‘to regulate one’s own reactions in a cross-cultural setting, interpersonal skills, and the flexibility to assume the perspective of someone from a different culture’. Emphasizing these competencies e.g. during pre-deployment training and exercises seems very beneficial.
Finally, within the area of operational fit, it seems crucial to better marry the Western and African capabilities. This includes aligning procedures and standards and requiring systems to uphold information security. In this respect, establishing a joint database, including underlying technical and security infrastructure is crucial. More in general, the UN and the international community at large should think at how to better integrate of high-tech capabilities within a generally low-tech environment, without recreating divisive practices of exclusions based on technological divides.
One of the core issues here seems the conflation of capabilities with trust: in MINUSMA when capabilities were absent trust was lost. One way to address this issue is to acknowledge the complementarity of skills and context awareness but also systematically engage in joint training to bridge the Western-African divide.
“Overall, the main take away of this paper is that functional differentiation has important implications for misfit across all levels of the organizations.” While greater diversity in UN peacekeeping has undeniable advantages in terms of legitimacy and representativeness, the recent return of European troops to UN peacekeeping in Africa begs the question of how to strike the balance. “We find that addressing misfit more openly could be useful to make peacekeeping more effective.”

Sebastiaan Rietjens & Chiara Ruffa (2019) 'Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework', International Peacekeeping, DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2019.1596742

Accountability in Peace Operations and the Evolution of the United Nations Human Rights Due Diligence Policy

As international organizations increasingly cooperate with national actors in order to implement global decisions and policies, such partnerships have often become problematic when implementing partners have increasingly been accused of serious human rights violations.
GISELA HIRSCHMANN analyzes how implementing partners from the host state of a United Nations peace operation are held accountable. Arguing that the complexity of contemporary peacekeeping limits the availability of traditional accountability mechanisms, she develops a conceptual model to demonstrate how, instead, different accountability forms interact and complement each other.
In an article titled ‘Cooperating with evil? Accountability in peace operations and the evolution of the United Nations Human Rights Due Diligence Policy’, published in Cooperation and Conflict, the author illustrates this interplay of accountability with a case study on the emergence of the UN Human Rights Due Diligence Policy (HRDDP).
The accountability framework enacted by the Joint Human Rights Unit, the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the context of the UN peace operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) threatened the legitimacy of UN peacekeeping. As a consequence, the UN adopted the HRDDP as a new, UN-based accountability mechanism to hold implementing partners from the host state of peace operations accountable.
The UN’s operations in the DRC (MONUC or MONUSCO as it is named since July 2010) have become a case in point for the implications of the cooperation between international organizations and national actors, HIRSCHMANN states. The UN decided to cooperate with the Congolese army to disarm and re-integrate former combatants in particular in the Eastern Congo. Many of these actors supported by the UN, however, had and have been committing serious human rights violations such as sexual abuse and mass killings. “The question of accountability thus became of utmost relevance, not only for the UN’s operation in the DRC but also for other operations that supported partners who had been violating human rights.”
Initially, the UN denied any association with the alleged human rights violators and tried to redirect the blame to the implementing partner on the ground. This blame avoidance strategy, however, proved untenable for the UN Secretariat once the practice that ultimately violated human rights became directly associated with MONUC’s mandate to support the alleged perpetrators, HIRSCHMANN writes.
Normative pressure increased after the ICC’s indictment against Bosco Ntaganda had been unsealed. In particular, the report of the Special Rapporteur – which for the first time openly acknowledged the relationship between MONUC’s mandate and the human rights violations committed in the context of joint operations – as well as press and NGO reporting on MONUC’s support to the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo increased the pressure on the UN. Facing a legitimacy crisis, the UN Secretariat realized that blame could no longer be redirected. In order to restore the organization’s legitimacy, it supported the development of a conditionality policy for the operation in the Congo. This policy became the foundation for the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, an instrument to hold national cooperating security partners accountable for human rights violations.
By analyzing the evolution of this policy, HIRSCHMANN has demonstrated how pluralist accountability, by threatening an international organization’s legitimacy, can result in increased vertical accountability.
Three conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of accountability dynamics in peace operations, HIRSCHMANN states. The first concerns the institutional relationship of pluralist accountability holders. Third parties can become accountability holders even if they are formally part of the institutional structure of an operation. The Joint Human Rights Office in this case was officially part of the operation’s institutional structure but de facto independent through their close relationship to their external mandate-givers. The UN’s increasing tendency to integrate human rights components into the institutional framework of a peacekeeping operation has generated the – in some cases well-founded – fear that human rights would be further marginalized in the operation’s activities. Also, within MONUSCO there were attempts to marginalize the work of the human rights component. The effort of the Joint Human Rights Office to act as an accountability holder and to support the experts of the Special Procedures as accountability holders constitutes an important example of the importance of a strong human rights component for accountability in peace operations.
The second conclusion that can be drawn from her study is that pluralist accountability emerged even in cases where the implementing tasks were delegated to sovereign actors. The results thus show that sovereignty concerns do not preclude the development of pluralist accountability. This is an important insight for the study of complex global governance arrangements, where international organizations cooperate with national implementing partners on the ground that emphasize their sovereignty.
Finally, against the background of the potential emergence of Global Administrative Law, the HRDDP can be considered an important step forward in promoting compliance with core human rights principles in global security governance. Members of the UN Secretariat emphasize that the HRDDP is nothing revolutionary as it is supposedly not new that the UN should be bound by international humanitarian law, human rights law and refugee law; from an international law perspective it is indeed nothing new. However, the disapproving reactions from the MONUC leadership indicate that the recognition of these obligations by the UN itself is nevertheless something rather novel. The development of the HRDDP therefore can be regarded as a significant means of vertical accountability, through which the UN Secretariat engaged in monitoring and sanctioning the implementing partners.
It is important to note, however, that institutionalized vertical accountability does not necessarily lead to effective human rights protection, HIRSCHMANN states. The current scope of the HRDDP is limited to the UN’s cooperation with national security institutions only, although the UN is beginning to apply it also to its provision of support to regional organizations such as the African Union. Moreover, sexual violence is far too widespread in the DRC for the UN’s conditionality to make a tangible difference, leaving aside the human rights attitudes of a number of peacekeepers.
It is still too early to say to what extent the HRDDP actually improved the respect for human rights within the Congolese army or other implementing partners of the UN, according to HIRSCHMANN. “Nevertheless, it can be regarded as an important sign that the UN has become aware of its responsibility as a vertical accountability holder when cooperating with national implementing partners.”

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The Effect of ‘Stabilization’ in the Mandates and Practice of United Nations Peace Operations

While UN peace operations in the last decade have begun to explicitly seek ‘stabilization’ in the states to which they are deployed, the world body itself is yet to outline an organization-wide understanding of the term. “Instead, the mandates include varying activities under the heading of stabilization depending on the mission,” writes ALEXANDER GILDER in the Netherlands International Law Review.
Missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and the Central African Republic have linked the term with offensive force, ‘robust’ force, counter-terrorism, and increased cooperation with host state forces. However, stabilization has also led to UN attention on returning basic services, building the capacity of the host state to enforce the rule of law, and an inclusive peace process.
“Public international lawyers have seldom addressed the adoption of stabilization by peace operation mandates despite the potential legal effects and the overall trajectory of the international security system,” GILDER writes. In light of stabilization mandates, what is needed is to ascertain the next steps in developing mandates which are flexible yet consistent, respond to the needs of individuals in harm’s way, but do not undermine the UN’s ability to maintain international peace and security, and ensure adherence to humanitarian and human rights laws.
Concurrently, stabilization missions have seen the use of language such as ‘robust posture’ and ‘active patrolling’, increased logistical capabilities from Western military hardware, the encroachment of a counter-terrorism rhetoric, operations alongside host state forces, and an emphasis on (re)establishing the rule of law. “Due to the competing interests introduced by stabilization, the mandates issued by the UN Security Council require further clarity and harmonization to prevent the pursuit of lasting peace from being undermined.”
The strategy of clearing an area of armed groups through the use of robust force to extend state authority and building peace in the vacuum left behind is not without its risks. It has been argued that the robust use of force in defense of the mandate strays into taking the initiative in the use of force and currently toes a fine line between peacekeeping and peace enforcement.
Furthermore, taking the initiative could lead to the intensification of hostilities and ultimately the UN could be regarded as a party to the conflict under international humanitarian law. In the future, the UN Security Council will need to clarify its use of the term ‘robust’ and the UN should provide legal guidance on the consequences of robust force and support for the host state.
In the current climate, counter-terrorism is a hot topic which demands the UN’s attention. It is important that the UN responds to current needs to be as relevant as possible and at the moment that means having a response to global terrorism. However, if the UN Security Council wishes to engage further with counter-terrorism operations the UN will need to be cautious about supporting the activities of other international and regional operations and the effect the support has on competing pursuits, such as supporting national reconciliation.
Operating alongside the host state is becoming a principal feature of stabilization and poses similar risks as counter-terrorism. Depending on the level of support provided the UN exposes itself to legal responsibility for wrongful acts committed by the host state.
A documented consequence of the host state violating human rights, for instance, is that the population feels marginalized from the peace process. The situation in Mali in particular needs to be monitored closely with future research examining the effect of counter-terror efforts on the Malian peace process.
The thread which links the issues discussed is how the UN will ensure harmony between the first stage of stabilization and the second. Under current practice competing interests in the mission mandates risk undermining each other. The focus of the missions above on the rule of law and using local-level peace initiatives to foster national reconciliation are positive developments in the mandating of operations.
However, the UN will need to carefully consider how it wishes to proceed in future stabilization mandates to avoid a situation where fighting terrorists or working closely alongside the state frustrates efforts to build an inclusive peace.
Particularly in international law, the effects of these new mandates which include robust force and counter-terror cooperation are underexplored. Stabilization mandates will need further attention from international lawyers in the coming years if the UN continues along its current plotted course.

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Aid Targeting to Fragile and Conflict-Affected States and Implications for Aid Effectiveness

Donors must pay more attention to the multiple ways in which countries are fragile and the conditions that prevent them from exiting fragility permanently, such as lethal and pernicious feedback loops, rent seeking and failure to buy reform, two leading experts write in a recent paper.
While issues of aid allocation and aid effectiveness have received a lot of attention in the academic and policy literature, comparatively less has been written about these issues with respect to fragile states, DAVID CARMENT and YIAGDEESEN SAMY write in their working paper for the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research. They combine the findings of quantitative analysis with specific country-cases to examine whether aid is targeted towards the characteristics that explain the evolution of states.
“By comparing the sectoral allocation of aid with the CIFP [Country Indicators for Foreign Policy] framework, we have shown that aid allocation does not pay sufficient attention to issues of legitimacy and authority, both of which are important for understanding why countries are fragile,” CARMENT and SAMY write in the paper titled “Aid targeting to fragile and conflict-affected states and implications for aid effectiveness”.
For those states where fragility is persistent, the authors find that elites who are resistant to change engage in damaging and self-interested behavior such as corruption and rent seeking. With a focus on symptoms rather than causes, policies are rarely successful because they do not get to the core of the fragility-trap problem, they state.
International and domestic incentives for leaders of trapped states to embrace reforms that affect their personal interests are often too weak. “Indeed, policies intended to induce reform are not only misplaced: they are often counterproductive.”
In addition to the dilemma that selectivity poses for fragile states, there is an extensive literature on conditionality associated with aid programmes, which the authors say reinforces their point that aid conditionality fails more often than not. “This is because it relies on causal explanations focusing on single structural factors such as economic development or political development, which by themselves are insufficient.” In many of these interpretations, fragility is usually associated with poor policy environments, aid absorption problems, conflict and poverty.
“We find that policies focused purely on structure will be misplaced if there is limited willingness to reform among leaders of trapped states. We emphasize the importance of state–society relations – specifically the role of legitimacy in underpinning the behavior of political, social and economic elites – in the formation of under-governed spaces, a coercive state apparatus and rent-seeking behavior, and in building a less resilient society overall.”
These assumptions are premised on claims regarding interactions between the superordinate elements of state authority, capacity and legitimacy, and not just economic development and democracy. For a state that has exited fragility, positive changes in authority that address societal wellbeing not only provide valuable guidance for government policy: they also reduce literal barriers to commerce and economic development (measures of capacity) such as restrictions on citizen movement and assembly (measures of legitimacy).
Responsiveness also induces governments to produce policies addressing popular concerns that are not growth-focused, such as wealth distribution and social programming, and which by extension increase state legitimacy.
“Our overall conclusion is that trapped states are most prone to lethal and pernicious feedback loops, the authors assert. In general terms, strengthening authority structures without appropriate resource distribution goes hand in hand with declining legitimacy. Capacity is skewed to maintaining control over the distribution of resources and rents in favor of entrenched and often unelected elites. Fissures based on ethnic cleavages, elite capture and rent-seeking behavior are met with coercive measures to maintain stability but come at the cost of further declines in legitimacy.
Lethal feedback loops occur when regime survival is tied to a declining rent economy leading to reduced capacity and control over territory, and ultimately collapse. Under-governed spaces increase over time, as patron–client politics and resources weaken simultaneously. Under these conditions, elites express only a minimal commitment to reform. This is because the centralization of state authority and the pursuit of development policies aimed at maximizing revenues and rents, rather than social welfare, produce a process which has non-elected institutions and elites dominating. “There is only a limited opportunity for elites to pursue reforms.”

SDGs in Low-Income Countries are Grossly Underfunded

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are underfinanced in developing countries, especially in low-income countries (LICs), which necessitates a significant change in policy priorities and allocation decisions in developing as well as donor countries.
OLE WINCKLER ANDERSEN and OLE THERKILDSEN base this conclusion on a review of SDG financing needs and available financing sources – including international private finance, blended finance, remittances, domestic resource mobilization, ODA and debt financing.
Whether the changes in policy priorities and allocation decisions are possible depends on the local and international political contexts, the authors write in a working paper for the Danish Institute for International Studies. “Realistically not all SDGs will be fully funded.”
The significant underfinancing of the SDGs must be seen in a local and international political context, which vary between individual developing countries and sectors. Although the SDG financing gaps in LICs may sound substantial, it is only half a percentage point of world GDP in 2030.
“Thus, there is a clear need for more focus on the costs and financing of the SDGs in the poorest developing countries in particular. Without (unlikely) radical change in available resources, there is an urgent need to rethink the implications of looming severe underfunding of the SDG package,” ANDERSEN and THERKILDSEN state in their paper titled 'Can the SDGs in Low-Income Countries Be Financed? And Should We Care?'.
Despite the ambition of the SDGs of leaving no one behind, there are strong indications that the poorest developing countries are being left behind. At the same time, support for institutional and policy reform has declined, which is particularly critical for this group of countries.
Finally, analyses show that private development finance is targeted at a few sectors with the potential implication that other sectors are even more underfunded. This leads to four main conclusions, the authors state.
First, the assumptions related to the estimation of costs and financial resources for the SDGs in LICs do not reflect reality. Their specific conditions and challenges must be better reflected in the cost estimates: the optimism attached to private sector development finance and blended finance is simply unrealistic. This also applies to the assumption that the SDG financing structure in LICs can be close to the present structure in most developed countries. Recent figures on private finance show that the LICs are not receiving private finance as envisaged. The important role given to public sector finance in LICs is not realistic either as the financing needs of the SDGs will lead to a significant increase in public sector budgets. An indication of this is the increasing debt levels in several LICs.
Second, the policy implications of severe underfunding for the SDG agenda – especially in LICs – are difficult to predict. These implications are under-researched and have only partly been dealt with in existing analyses. Little is therefore, known about how various actors, including donor governments and domestic governments in LICs, will react to a situation with severe underfunding.
Third, an alternative to continuing making international SDG cost and financing estimates is to focus on national estimates, which should be based on more specific assumptions related to the individual countries. The development of national plans has been a recommendation in several analyses. Whether national plans will have a mobilizing effect remains to be seen, but such plans may ensure that SDG discussions are based on more realism. Again, research on this is limited. Little is known about how the SDG vision actually influences the political and administrative decision-making processes in poor developing countries.
Fourth, effective development assistance will require that it is carefully managed in view of the available funding in LICs for the SDGs.
ANDERSEN and THERKILDSEN present key suggestions, including that donors should clearly distinguish between different groups of developing countries, revive support for policy and institutional reforms in LICs, develop specific financing instruments with a view to incentivizing private investments in LICs, increase the share of ODA going to LICs, reconsider the sectoral distribution of aid, and, finally better understand the distributional implications of various policy measures.

Under the Blue Flag: Leadership and Strategic Communications in UN Peace Operations

With peace operations likely to remain an indelible feature of the international system for the foreseeable future, the link between leadership and strategic communications will become even more central to the successful conduct of those operations.
“A mainstreamed, integrated strategic communications approach must be mandatory for UN leadership and that a number of adjustments must be made in terms of mindset, support structures and training to ensure that this becomes a required capacity rather than an aspirational proposal,” writes NICK BIRNBACK in a policy brief for the Challenges Forum.
Strengthening the UN’s efforts to promote effective strategic communications by and from leadership in peace operations will help the system deter spoilers, address its critics, rally its supporters, maximize opportunities and leverage all available resources to help vulnerable populations have a fighting chance for peace, he writes in the brief titled ‘Under the Blue Flag: Leadership and Strategic Communications in UN Peace Operations’.
For leadership to be fully enabled to fulfill these requirements in the field, the headquarters context must shift as well, states BIRNBACK, head of public affairs for peacekeeping at the United Nations. An internal communications focused change management process should be undertaken in the field and at UN Headquarters to socialize the cultural and mind-set shift that successful implementation of these recommendations will require.
In addition to the creation of an oversight body, this author recommends a number of practical steps that can be characterized as the ‘six Ms’ that would help to create an environment that would empower UN leadership to successfully fulfill these critical requirements in today’s complex communications environment. They are:
(1) Mainstream: Strategic Communications considerations—starting with desired outcomes and effects, then creation of an actual plan including identification of target audiences, then master messages and sub-messaging, then identification of channels for distribution, then measurement of effect and evaluation of impact—should from the planning phase be a feature of all aspects of policy decision making.
(2) Modernize: Today’s communications landscape has changed fundamentally from analogue to digital, from one-way/top-down to circular-/dialogue-driven. The UN must pivot to accept these new realities and adjust resources to ensure the required outputs. This will require a bottom-up review of existing communications capabilities and assets to ensure that the UN is fully leveraging all possible capacities in an impactful, deliberate, efficient, effective and quantifiable manner.
(3) Merge: There is undoubtedly duplication in the existing communications architecture at UNHQ. The bottom-up review should identify areas where capacities can be combined and efficiencies realized using existing resources and where outdated assets could be repurposed to fulfill prioritized communications tasks.
(4) Manage: Integrated and coordinated backstopping of field presences will require a clear definition of roles and responsibilities and a willingness to use non-traditional means such as outsourcing and centralization/sharing of technical assets such as FM radio production. This should throughout involve deliberate and contemplative oversight with clear lines of accountability.
(5) Measure: A data-driven, measures of effect-oriented, quantifiable approach will allow a strategic communications approach that demonstrates effective use of scarce resources, value for money and overall impact. Monitoring, through software and other more traditional tools will increase situational awareness and can be a huge asset in this regard.
(6) Message: Leadership-driven, corporate messaging beginning with a core narrative and then flowing into thematic and issue-specific subgroupings will allow the Organization to communicate as one and leverage the diverse resources of the whole UN system to provide a compelling narrative on the intrinsic value of the UN and the multilateral approach it embodies. Specific departments and agencies, funds and programmes will harmonize against these broad themes rather than repeat them, but the diverse voices when properly coordinated and integrated can ensure that the system, and the UN leadership that embodies it, can manage its reputation and communicate effectively and persuasively to a diverse set of target audiences.
To operationalize the recommendations and practical suggestions outlined, the logical next step would be to work directly with the UN’s training teams to translate related principles into the best practices-driven, practical training for UN leadership on peace operations. It will also require the establishment of integrated strategic communications oversight and a bottom-up review of the strategic communications architecture at headquarters and on UN Peace Operations, the provision of the necessary digital resources, and the creation of an accountability framework to ensure compliance and measure success.
“The UN has a remarkable opportunity to raise its voice in the name of those who cannot be heard. It should spare no efforts to make sure the message is loud, clear and effective.”

Contested Multilateralism: the United Nations and the Middle East

In the Middle East, multilateralism has often been associated with intervention and creating order (or disorder), rather than being a positive force for integrating the region in an equitable manner. Many of the regional struggles and their attendant multilateral implications that have taken place have played out in international institutions, and particularly in the United Nations, through its resolutions, agencies and emissaries, writes KARIM MAKDISI.
In a working paper published as part of the Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture project, he explores how conflicts in the MENA region are dealt with within the context of this (contested) multilateralism, focusing on the UN as its main institutional embodiment and as a site of competing claims of legitimacy.
In the paper, titled 'Contested Multilateralism: the United Nations and the Middle East', MAKDISI uses concepts from critical realism and constructivism, and claims that the Middle East is a central site in which both the world order and many of the UN institutions have been produced or contested.
The author, Associate Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at the American University of Beirut, first sets out the context for multilateralism and world order, and explores how this has played out in the Middle East through the UN during the main phases of contemporary international order, from the Cold War to the immediate post-Cold War period, to the war on terror and beyond.
He concludes by briefly evaluating the UN during the Arab uprisings, arguing that the organization’s ambivalence reflects an evolving and contested multilateralism.
“The Arab uprisings that began in 2010 reflect the ambivalence of multilateralism,” MAKDISI contends. During these early days, the UN dispatched high-ranking diplomats to mediate the conflicts in Libya and Yemen and provided technical assistance in the Tunisian and Egyptian-led elections processes.
Even the explicit use of the R2P principle in the Security Council resolution justifying military intervention in Libya – for the protection of civilians – was unanimously passed and promptly celebrated in UN circles as the dawn of a new era in which violent state clampdowns on their own citizens would no longer be tolerated and international norms would prevail.
These sorts of intervention, popular locally and supported by consensus among the key UN member states, were very much in line with the UN’s wider peacebuilding mandate in the post-Cold War paradigm of the liberal peace. Before long, however, during the Arab uprisings the UN was thrust into increasingly uncomfortable positions and the spotlight as the violent counter-attack began in the region. Its role in the global liberal peace project depended on international consensus, and this was quickly dissipating – as it did during the 2003 US war on Iraq – as regional actors competed to fill the void and direct this regional transformation. In particular, Libya, Yemen and Syria witnessed humanitarian tragedies, unprecedented displacement crises and high-profile diplomatic failures. “In each of these instances, the UN was increasingly disparaged, at best, or accused of complicity.”
The harsh criticism of the UN’s response in the Syrian war, and its failures in Libya and Yemen (not to mention its silence in places such as Bahrain), are certainly valid. But the UN has all too often been used a convenient punch bag, masking the moral and political failures of key regional and international players. As with the other phases of international politics outlined above, at its most basic level the UN and the multilateral context within which it operates is a reflection of great power politics.
The Middle East is a central site in which both world order and many UN institutions have been created or contested. "Overall, the uncertain and ambivalent role of the UN during the Arab uprisings reflects a world order in transition. It is caught between maintaining an old order that it is familiar with – mediating, working with sovereign states to find political solutions, creating space for humanitarians to work in and assisting the liberalizing process – and an emerging order in which US power is in decline, a more 'multiplex' order is emerging, and non-state players increasingly challenge the notion of sovereignty.
During such turbulence, the default position for UN machinery is working towards maintaining order and stability rather than promoting genuine transformation. “Such a view makes it easier to understand – if not to accept – why [then UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn] Pascoe’s remarks about the UN siding with the 'people' during the uprisings was merely aspirational,” the author states.

The Soviet Origins of the United Nations

While mainstream history under-explores the contribution of the USSR to the origins of the United Nations, a closer examination of the negotiations to establish the world body from the Soviet perspective reveals a somewhat different picture, writes GEOFFREY ROBERTS.
Far from being unimportant to Moscow, the creation of a successor to the League of Nations was a central preoccupation of Soviet postwar peace planners. As Josef Stalin told Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta, the author recalls, the Big Three had to create an international security organization that would keep the peace for 50 years.
“The centrality of the Soviet role in the foundation of the UN was the result of long-term engagement with the idea of an international organization of states dedicated to the maintenance of peace and security,” ROBERTS writes in the Journal of Contemporary History.
While Soviets never embraced the liberal concept of world government – they had their own utopian idea of a world federation based on workers’ power and class solidarity – they took seriously the practical utility of the League of Nations long before they became a member of the organization, he writes in an article titled ‘A League of Their Own: The Soviet Origins of the United Nations’.
Crucial was the post-revolutionary shift in Soviet foreign policy to seeking peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world, initially as a temporary tactic of survival and then as a long-term strategy for the spread of socialism, states ROBERTS, a professor at the University of Helsinki. “In that context, Moscow saw the League as a means to promote the cause of disarmament and then, in the 1930s, as a framework for the pursuit of collective security.”
The abysmal failure of the League and of the Soviets’ own policy of collective security induced Stalin to pursue more conventional great power politics in the form of a spheres influence deal with Hitler, the author states. After the failure of the Nazi–Soviet pact, the Soviets returned to the idea of collective security in the form of proposals for an international organization that would institutionalize a concert of great powers imposing peace and security across the globe.
The security architecture of the newly created UN reflected that Soviet vision, he writes, but it lacked the necessary political basis. The grand alliance broke up after the war and the UN became a battleground of the Cold War. “Paradoxically, what kept the Soviet Union from leaving the organization was the veto system, which was devised to foster great power unity, but in practice became a mechanism used by all the permanent members to protect their vital interests from UN encroachments. This was a far cry from Soviet hopes and optimism in 1945.”

Voted Out: Regime Type, Elections and Contributions to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations

What kind of governments are more likely to contribute troops to United Nations peacekeeping operations? Most research suggests that leaders of democratic regimes are considered particularly willing to do so because backing ‘liberal’ peacekeeping allows them to support the diffusion of liberal institutions.
However, evidence used to sustain this argument is based on contribution patterns during the decade of peacekeeping that followed the Cold War, ALLARD DUURSMA and JOHN GLEDHILL contend. They argue that there has been a reversal in the relative willingness of democratic and non-democratic governments to provide the UN with peacekeepers since then.
“Specifically, we propose that the introduction of more ‘robust’ forms of peacekeeping during the ’90s has rendered democratic governments reluctant to contribute large numbers of peacekeepers to UN operations because elected leaders are now concerned that voters may object to the deployment of national troops to high-risk humanitarian missions in which there is no clear national interest,” the authors write in the European Journal of International Relations.
By contrast, non-democratic leaders partly discount public opinion because they are less reliant on popular support to retain power. Thus, when non-democrats see that contributing troops to UN peacekeeping will bring them reputational and/or resource benefits, they are willing to contribute peacekeepers -- and on a large scale, DUURSMA and GLEDHILL assert in the article titled ‘Voted out: Regime type, elections and contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations’.
Testing their claims quantitatively, the authors find that, since the 1990s, democratic governments have remained more likely than non-democrats to contribute some troops to UN peacekeeping operations, but non-democratic governments have been more likely to make large-scale contributions. “We also find that governments have been especially reluctant to make sizable contributions to peacekeeping when elections have been on the horizon.”
From an analytic perspective, the findings suggest that domestic-level political interests now play a more important role than liberal ideas in shaping the (un)willingness of governments to commit their states’ troops to UN missions, the authors state. “This matters because previous works had shown that the pendulum between interests and ideas as a motivator for PKO contributions had swung in favor of the latter after the Cold War. While our findings do not repudiate that claim, our updated analysis suggests that the pendulum has swung back over the past 15 or so years, so that governments now prioritize political self-interest when considering whether to contribute troops to UN peacekeeping operations.”
Contrary to the assumption of many realist scholars, however, the authors argue that considerations of political self-interest do not necessarily relate to the international-level interests of states. Rather, the domestic-level political interests of governments have a strong influence over the foreign policy positions that leaders take on the issue of peacekeeping.
From a policy perspective, the findings matter because they suggest that much of the ‘everyday’ work of liberal peacebuilding is now being executed by troops that are sent into the field by illiberal governments. Beyond the fact that democracies may be free-riding off the contributions of autocratic states, a proliferation of troops from illiberal regimes may be undermining the efficacy of the so-called liberal peace project.
While it would be wrong to assume that troops act in illiberal ways simply because their governments are thus, the authors write, it is possible that troops deployed to UN missions by illiberal governments have less preparation in areas that are key for liberal peacebuilding, such as human rights and election monitoring.
“Democracies also tend to be characterized by greater levels of gender equality than autocracies, and we know that PKOs populated by peacekeepers who hail from states with strong gender equality show lower levels of sexual exploitation and abuse. Thus, it may be that large-scale contributions of troops from illiberal regimes can partly explain the ongoing problem of human rights violations by UN peacekeepers.”
If there is reason to think that UN peacekeeping would benefit from an increase in contributions from liberal democracies, then it is worth closing by considering whether institutional reforms could encourage democratic governments to support UN missions when humanitarian need arises. “One such reform, we propose, would be for democracies to establish professional, standing peacekeeping forces as branches of their national militaries. That way, when UN missions form and troop contributions are needed, elected leaders could swiftly contribute their own peacekeepers to a UN PKO without fear of incurring public opinion costs for doing so.”
After all, the decision of a government to deploy troops who have volunteered to join a national ‘peacekeeping unit’ would presumably not be met with objection by the volunteers themselves, or by constituents who sympathize with those volunteers.
Consequently, the domestic political costs to democratic governments that are willing to support UN peacekeeping could be minimal and, as such, those governments may become willing to contribute peacekeepers when need calls, rather than when it is politically convenient.

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