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.