Extant commitment, risk, and UN peacekeeping authorization

Rebecca Cordell, Thorin Wright and Paul F. Diehl

International Interactions, 2021, vol. 47, issue 1, 135-160

Abstract: Do aspects of current UN peacekeeping operations affect the willingness of that body to authorize new operations? Our theoretical arguments center on the capacity and costs of the organization – specifically the committed resources and risks associated with ongoing operations – with the assumption that greater existing commitments and perceived risks lessen the likelihood that the UN will create new operations. Related to the concern with risk, does successful diplomacy that produces a peace agreement in the conflict at hand lessen expected costs and therefore make authorizing new peacekeeping operations more attractive? To answer these questions, we examine UN peacekeeping authorization decisions over the period 1989–2016. Our results demonstrate that UN decisions to authorize new peacekeeping missions are connected to two forms of conflict management. First, successful attempts at peacemaking (evidence by peace agreements) increased the likelihood that a UN peacekeeping operation would be sent to that conflict in the aftermath of the agreement. We also demonstrate that the number of ongoing UN peacekeeping efforts are a strong negative predictor of whether or not the UN authorizes new missions. Theoretically, the concepts of perceived carrying capacity and risk, derived from other conflict management efforts, provided the explanatory bases for these effects.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03050629.2020.1814764 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:47:y:2021:i:1:p:135-160

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GINI20

DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2020.1814764

Access Statistics for this article

International Interactions is currently edited by Michael Colaresi and Gerald Schneider

More articles in International Interactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().