Introduction
This introductory chapter starts by presenting the core focus of the book—which is about diversity of mission composition within UN peace operations—and its objectives. The book asks two questions. The first is conceptual and descriptive: what do we mean by mission composition in a peacekeeping mission? The introduction highlights the importance of focusing on diversity of mission composition against the backdrop of recent trends in UN peacekeeping. It presents the analytical framework and the four key dimensions of mission composition: field diversity, top leadership diversity, vertical leadership distance, and horizontal distance. The second question of the book is explanatory: does mission composition in United Nations peacekeeping matter? The Introduction also presents the scope of the explanatory part of the research, where we set to explore how each dimension of mission composition affects peacekeeping effectiveness. The remainder of the Introduction presents the mixed-method design adopted in the book and its strategies of data collection as well as the contributions and limitations of the book. It concludes by outlining the book structure.