Trust the Hand That Protects You – Does UN Peacekeeping Harm Post-Conflict Governments’ Legitimacy?

Rebuilding state legitimacy is a thorny challenge in the aftermath of civil wars. The international community has stepped in to support post-conflict states in rebuilding state capacity, sometimes replacing governments in providing public goods.
Most notably, research shows that UN peacekeepers reduce violence and are de facto security providers. On the one hand, by providing a secure environment, UN peacekeepers may facilitate the functioning of domestic institutions, which could reap the reputational benefit of working with the UN. However, JESSICA DI SALVATORE argues that attribution problems and reputational costs may counter the positive impact of the UN’s capacity-building efforts.
The analysis, titled ‘Trust the hand that protects you—Does UN peacekeeping harm post-conflict governments’ legitimacy?’, is published as part of UNU-WIDER’s working paper series. It assesses whether and how external provision of security affects citizens’ trust towards formal institutions—that is, government and police. 
The empirical analysis focuses on the case of the UN mission in Liberia and combines subnational deployment data with three rounds of geocoded Afrobarometer surveys.
The project provides insights on how international interventions affect an understudied aspect of state-building: the legitimacy of the institutions they are expected to assist.

WIDER Working Paper 152/2022 
UNU-WIDER 
https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2022/285-0
© UNU-WIDER 2022

Conflict Management or Conflict Resolution: How Do Major Powers See the Role of the UN in Peacebuilding?

How do major powers conceive the role of the United Nations in peacebuilding?
Writing in the journal Contemporary Security Policy, FANNY BADACHE, SARA HELLMÜLLER and BILAL SALAYMEH conceptualize the UN’s role along the distinction between conflict management and conflict resolution and distinguish between the types of tasks and the approach the UN can adopt. 
In their article titled ‘Conflict management or conflict resolution: how do major powers conceive the role of the United Nations in peacebuilding?’ the authors map states’ conceptions of the UN’s role in peacebuilding by coding peace-related speeches at the UN Security Council (1991–2020) delivered by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States as well as Brazil, South Africa, and Turkey as rising regional powers. 
“Our findings show that states’ conceptions differ regarding the type of tasks the UN should do. However, the main fault line between the countries lie in the approach the UN should adopt to conduct peacebuilding tasks.” 
The authors conclude that major powers see a role for the UN beyond mere conflict management as long as it is done with respect for national sovereignty.

Fanny Badache, Sara Hellmüller & Bilal Salaymeh (2022) Conflict management or conflict resolution: how do major powers conceive the role of the United Nations in peacebuilding?, Contemporary Security Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2022.2147334

Ethical Exit: When Should Peacekeepers Depart?

When should peacekeepers partially or fully withdraw from a country or region in which they operate? This important question has received little scholarly attention. However, it has profound implications. 

If peacekeepers depart prematurely, as happened in Rwanda in 1994, the consequences can be disastrous and potentially lead to widespread preventable deaths and human suffering. 

If they overstay, peacekeepers risk alienating the population they seek to protect and undercutting popular sovereignty at significant economic costs. 

Writing in the European Journal of International Security, EAMON ALOYO and GEOFFREY SWENSON seek to strike a balance. They propose a framework for just withdrawal that is both normatively compelling and empirically sound. 

Their article – titled ‘Ethical exit: When should peacekeepers depart?’ – focuses on three aspects vital for understanding when peacekeepers can depart in an ethically justified manner: just cause, effectiveness, and legitimacy. 

By considering a number of objections, the authors also address critics who challenge the overarching premise of peacekeeping or might prefer different standards by which to suggest peacekeepers should stay or depart. 

Finally, the authors illustrate their argument with theoretical and empirical examples and a discussion of UN peacekeeping in East Timor.

Aloyo, E., & Swenson, G. (2022). Ethical exit: When should peacekeepers depart? European Journal of International Security, 1-20. doi:10.1017/eis.2022.31

Selective Attention: The United Nations Security Council and Armed Conflict

What explains why the United Nations Security Council meets and deliberates on some armed conflicts but not others? 
Writing in the British Journal of Political Science, MAGNUS LUNDGREN and MARK KLAMBERG advance a theoretical argument centred on the role of conflict externalities, state interests and interest heterogeneity. 
In the article titled ‘Selective Attention: The United Nations Security Council and Armed Conflict’, the authors investigate data on the Security Council’s deliberation on armed conflicts in the 1989–2019 period and make three key findings: 
(1) conflicts that generate substantive military or civilian deaths are more likely to attract the Security Council's attention; 
(2) permanent members are varyingly likely to involve the Security Council when their interests are at stake; and 
(3) in contrast to the conventional wisdom, conflicts over which members have divergent interests are more likely to enter the agenda than other conflicts. “The findings have important implications for debates about the Security Council’s attention, responsiveness to problems and role in world politics,” the authors state.

Lundgren, M., & Klamberg, M. (2022). Selective Attention: The United Nations Security Council and Armed Conflict. British Journal of Political Science, 1-22. doi:10.1017/S0007123422000461

Adoption, Adaptation or Chance? Inter-organizational Diffusion of the Protection of Civilians Norm from the United Nations to the African Union

Norms can be adopted without modifications or adapted to regional contexts for strategic or principled reasons. Norm adoption and adaptation can also happen by chance. 
When adoption takes place without consideration of the norm’s effectiveness or appropriateness, we speak about imitation. When adaptation takes place in such a manner, we lack conceptual tools to analyze it. 
“We propose a novel concept of incidental adaptation – divergence between promoted and adopted norms due to fortuitous events,” KSENIYA OKSAMYTNA and NINA WILÉN write in Third World Quarterly. “This completes the typology of scenarios leading to norm adoption and adaptation,” they write in their article titled ‘Adoption, adaptation or chance? Inter-organizational diffusion of the protection of civilians norm from the UN to the African Union.’
OKSAMYTNA and WILÉN apply the typology to the transmission of the protection of civilians norm in peace operations from the United Nations (UN) to the African Union (AU). The AU adopted the UN’s approaches in pursuit of interoperability and resources, and out of recognition of the UN’s normative authority. 
It also happened incidentally when the AU temporarily followed the UN’s approaches. The AU engaged in adaptation to reflect the nature of its operations and normative orientations of AU member states. 
Incidental adaptation accounted for the presence of the rights-based tier in the AU’s protection of civilians concept. 

“These findings nuance our understanding of norm diffusion, inter-organizational relations and the role of chance in international affairs.”

Kseniya Oksamytna & Nina Wilén (2022) Adoption, adaptation or chance? Inter-organisational diffusion of the protection of civilians norm from the UN to the African Union, Third World Quarterly, 43:10, 2357-2374, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2022.2102474

International Law and the Securitization of Peacemaking: On Chapter VII, the United Nations Security Council and the Mediation Mandate in Yemen

Peace mediation as a form of peaceful settlement of disputes has evolved significantly in the past 20 years, moving away from an informal process between parties towards a more structured undertaking rooted in norms and values of international law. 
Sitting between Chapter VI and Chapter VII of the UN Charter, mediation is an underexplored aspect of the collective security regime in international law, Catherine Turner writes in the Journal of Conflict and Security Law.
“Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the exercise of legal authority under Chapter VII in shaping mediation mandates,” the author states in her article titled ‘International Law and the Securitization of Peacemaking: On Chapter VII, the Security Council and the Mediation Mandate in Yemen’. 
The article addresses this gap by developing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of UNSC in the construction of security in the context of peacemaking. 
Using the mandate of the Office of the Special Envoy for Yemen as a case study, the article traces the progression of the mediation mandate as set out in the UNSC resolutions, interrogating the shift in discourse from UN support for an inclusive political transition into a narrower focus on hard security and the international response to the threat of terrorism. 
Through this analysis the article demonstrates how the place of UNSC within the Charter system allows for a gradual securitization of the peace mediation process at the expense of inclusive approaches. At a time when consensus on collective security appears to be weakening, the role of the UNSC in constructing and responding to global threats is of significant interest to the future of Charter-based international peace and security.

Catherine Turner, International Law and the Securitisation of Peacemaking: On Chapter VII, the Security Council and the Mediation Mandate in Yemen, Journal of Conflict and Security Law, 2022;, krac031, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcsl/krac031

On the Right to Diplomacy: Historicizing and Theorizing Delegation and Exclusion at the United Nations

COSTAS M. CONSTANTINOU and FIONA MCCONNELL analyse the disregarded notion of the ius legationis (right of legation), revisiting historical debates in diplomatic theory and law over who possesses or ought to have this right. 
“By examining how the ius legationis manifested into a volitional or subjectional or natural right, we argue that this renders it not merely a legal issue, but a highly political and ethical question that is of direct relevance to contemporary international relations,” the authors write in ‘On the right to diplomacy: historicizing and theorizing delegation and exclusion at the United Nations’, published in the journal International Theory.
In an era where inclusivity is rhetorically promoted at the United Nations, the authors suggest that a rekindled right to diplomacy (R2D) – conceiving diplomacy as a right that is claimed but also contested – can shed light onto inequalities of representation and the role international law can play in remedying asymmetries and ethicizing the practice of diplomacy. 
Beyond its primary normative contribution, CONSTANTINOU and MCCONNELL argue that the R2D can also provide an analytical framework to understand UN’s efforts at institutionalizing diplomatic pluralism, its logics of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the struggles of diverse groups to obtain accreditation, consultative status, and negotiation ability within multilateral diplomacy.

Constantinou, C., & McConnell, F. (2022). On the right to diplomacy: Historicizing and theorizing delegation and exclusion at the United Nations. International Theory, 1-26. doi:10.1017/S1752971922000045