The long and winding road … to success? Unit peace operation effectiveness and its effect on mission success

Chiara Ruffa

Defense & Security Analysis, 2013, vol. 29, issue 2, 128-140

Abstract: Why does peacekeeping sometimes fail? How can effective peacekeepers increase the likelihood of success of a mission? The two main flaws in the current evaluations of peace operations are that they mainly rely on already concluded missions and that they make use of indicators that do not reveal micro-level dynamics. This article introduces an analytical framework relating the effectiveness of soldiers to their actual impact in their area of operation in a peace operation. The framework is called “unit peace operation effectiveness” (UPOE). Focusing on soldiers in peace operations, this article shows that: different units behave differently; emphasize different aspects of the mandate; and are effective in different ways. Ultimately, this has an actual impact on the end-state of the mission. It relies on and adapts classic security studies works to theoretically enrich the peacekeeping literature. The model is tested in an illustrative case study based on ethnographic work on French and Italian units in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2010.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14751798.2013.787793 (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:cdanxx:v:29:y:2013:i:2:p:128-140

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CDAN20

DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2013.787793

Access Statistics for this article

Defense & Security Analysis is currently edited by Martin Edmonds

More articles in Defense & Security Analysis from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().