scholarly journals Politics or Performance? Leadership Accountability in UN Peacekeeping

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272110289
Author(s):  
Magnus Lundgren ◽  
Kseniya Oksamytna ◽  
Vincenzo Bove
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Member States ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Leadership Accountability ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
Do So

International organizations face a trade-off between the need to replace poorly performing leaders and the imperative of preserving the loyalty of influential or pivotal member states. This performance-politics dilemma is particularly acute in UN peacekeeping. Leaders of peacekeeping operations are responsible for ensuring that peacekeepers implement mandates, maintain discipline, and stay safe. Yet, if leaders fail to do so, is the UN Secretariat able and willing to replace them? We investigate newly collected data on the tenure of 238 civilian and military leaders in thirty-eight peacekeeping operations, 1978 to 2017. We find that the tenures of civilian leaders are insensitive to performance, but that military leaders in poorly performing missions are more likely to be replaced. We also find evidence that political considerations complicate the UN’s efforts at accountability. Holding mission performance constant, military leaders from countries that are powerful or contribute large numbers of troops stay longer in post.

Leadership Selection in United Nations Peacekeeping

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kseniya Oksamytna ◽  
Vincenzo Bove ◽  
Magnus Lundgren
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Geographic Proximity ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Leadership Selection ◽  
Member States ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
Civilian Leaders

Abstract States covet leadership and staff positions in international organizations. The posts of civilian leaders and force commanders of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are attractive to member states. In selecting peacekeeping leaders, the UN Secretariat balances three considerations: satisfying powerful member states by appointing their nationals; recognizing member states’ contribution to the work of the organization; and ensuring that leaders have the necessary skill set. We investigate appointments of more than 200 civilian and military leaders in 24 UN missions, 1990–2017. We find that contributing troops to a specific mission increases the chances of securing a peacekeeping leadership position. Geographic proximity between the leaders’ country and the conflict country is also a favorable factor whose importance has increased over time. Civilian leaders of UN peacekeeping operations tend to hail from institutionally powerful countries, while military commanders come from major, long-standing troop contributing countries. Despite some role that skills play in the appointment process, the UN's dependence on troop contributors, together with its reliance on institutionally powerful states, can be a source of dysfunction if it prevents the organization from selecting effective peacekeeping leaders. This dynamic affects other international organizations that have significant power disparities among members or rely on voluntary contributions.

scholarly journals Only as fast as its troop contributors: Incentives, capabilities, and constraints in the UN’s peacekeeping response

2020 ◽  
pp. 002234332094076
Author(s):  
Magnus Lundgren ◽  
Kseniya Oksamytna ◽  
Katharina P Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
Member States ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Standing Army ◽  
Rapid Deployment

International organizations’ ability to respond promptly to crises is essential for their effectiveness and legitimacy. For the UN, which sends peacekeeping missions to some of the world’s most difficult conflicts, responsiveness can save lives and protect peace. Very often, however, the UN fails to deploy peacekeepers rapidly. Lacking a standing army, the UN relies on its member states to provide troops for peacekeeping operations. In the first systematic study of the determinants of deployment speed in UN peacekeeping, we theorize that this speed hinges on the incentives, capabilities, and constraints of the troop-contributing countries. Using duration modeling, we analyze novel data on the deployment speed in 28 peacekeeping operations between 1991 and 2015. Our data reveal three principal findings: All else equal, countries that depend on peacekeeping reimbursements by the UN, are exposed to negative externalities from a particular conflict, or lack parliamentary constraints on sending troops abroad deploy more swiftly than others. By underlining how member state characteristics affect aggregate outcomes, these findings have important implications for research on the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping, troop contribution dynamics, and rapid deployment initiatives.

scholarly journals Balancing Incentives Among Actors: A Carrots and Sticks Approach to Reputation in UN Peacekeeping Missions

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 228-232
Author(s):  
Sabrina M. Karim
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Member States ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Competing Priorities ◽  
Mixed Motives

As Kristina Daugirdas points out in her article on the role of reputation in international organizations (IOs), peacekeeping operations include a multitude of actors with varying interests. These actors have competing priorities, which forces IOs to balance the needs of the actors involved in peacekeeping missions. Because IOs often depend on member states as implementing agents, this could cause IOs to suppress their own interests in favor of member states, which could ultimately negatively affect the communities in which the peacekeepers operate. This dynamic is present in UN peacekeeping operations. While Daugirdas seeks to align the incentives of the UN and the states that contribute peacekeepers so as to harness reputation as a force to encourage the good behavior of all involved, I argue that this alignment rarely happens because of IOs’ reliance on member states. Through the dynamics of UN peacekeeping operations, I show that the UN reliance on states to provide police officers and troops suppresses the UN's own interests in favor of the contributing states’ interests. I also identify a carrots and sticks approach to balancing incentives. As Paul Stephan does in his essay for this symposium, I draw on a rational-choice, actor-based theory to identify the mixed motives of the various actors who staff and operate peacekeeping missions. The framework proposed here, I contend, provides a way to better understand the sources of the tension that exist when evaluating reputation as a disciplinary tool for IOs.

Buying blue helmets: The role of foreign aid in the construction of UN peacekeeping missions

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Boutton ◽  
Vito D’Orazio
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Do So

While the evolving nature and proliferation of UN peacekeeping operations in the post-Cold War period is well documented, we know less about how personnel are recruited for these missions. Furthermore, recent developments have rendered existing supply-side explanations for troop contributions less convincing. The increasing demand for personnel, along with stagnant UN reimbursement rates and the rising costs of participation that began during the 1990s, mean that it is less attractive than ever for developing countries to offer their own troops to what have become increasingly ambitious operations. Yet, we see a large pool of developing countries continuing to do so. To address this puzzle, we argue that UN member states with strong preferences for establishing peacekeeping missions have begun using foreign aid as an inducement to help potential contributors overcome the collective action problem inherent in multilateral peacekeeping operations. We uncover strong empirical evidence that these ‘pivotal states’ strategically allocate foreign aid to persuade contributing states to boost their contributions, and also to ensure that these missions continue to be staffed and maintained as costs rise, particularly during the post-1999 period. We also find that states are responsive to these financial inducements: foreign aid increases both the likelihood of contributing personnel and the size of a state’s contribution. Theoretically, this article advances the scholarly understanding of international organizations and cooperation by illuminating an informal, extra-organizational strategy by which IOs can facilitate cooperation.

UN Peacekeeping Operations and Article 7 ARIO: The Missing Link

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurel Sari
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Present Note ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Institutional Status ◽  
International Responsibility

Peacekeeping operations conducted by international organizations raise difficult questions of international responsibility. In principle, breaches of international law committed by national contingents serving on such operations may be attributed either to the international organization leading the operation or to the State to which the personnel implicated in the wrongful conduct belongs. The ARIO suggests a seemingly simple solution to this dilemma: wrongful conduct should be attributed to the party exercising effective control over that conduct. The present note argues that this solution is misguided. It deliberately ignores the legal and institutional status of national contingents, does not reflect consistent international practice and may not serve the best interests of potential claimants. In the case of peacekeeping operations incorporated into the institutional structure of an international organization, a more appropriate solution to the dilemma of multiple attribution is to proceed on the basis of a rebuttable presumption that the wrongful acts committed by national contingents are attributable to the international organization and not to their contributing State.

States of Empire

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Musgrave ◽  
Daniel H. Nexon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Community ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Nato Intervention

This chapter addresses the complex and contingent interplay between liberal order and empire. It draws attention to the seemingly irresolvable dilemma that the United States maintains imperial relations with other political communities, whilst also rejecting the legitimacy of empire. The solution has been to ‘democratize’ imperial functions and to vest them in multilateral international organizations and to ensure that they as much as possible reflect the consent of the international community. Deploying an original framework of analysis based on ideal types of empire, the chapter advances the argument that imperial structures may be found embedded in at least three different variations of imperial logics in surprising settings, including inter-governmentalist liberal practices in UN peacekeeping operations and neo-trustee arrangements, such as those following the NATO intervention in Kosovo and NATO's role in Afghanistan.

Why States Pool Authority

2019 ◽  
pp. 104-120
Author(s):  
Liesbet Hooghe ◽  
Tobias Lenz ◽  
Gary Marks
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Veto Players ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Member States ◽  
Cross Sectional Analysis ◽  
Sectional Analysis ◽  
Do So

Why do states sacrifice the national veto in international organizations? A large membership IO can exploit economies of scale and allow states to cooperate over problems that would otherwise confront them individually. However, cooperation among a large number of states brings the danger of decisional blockage. The most plausible explanation for why member states pool authority in international organizations appears to be the simplest: they do so in response to the number of potential veto players in the organization. This argument is assessed in a cross-sectional analysis for seventy-six international organizations using a measure of pooling that distinguishes the mode, bindingness, and substantive area of decision making.

Part 2 The United Nations: What it is, 16 United Nations Privileges and Immunities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Higgins Dame Rosalyn, DBE, QC ◽  
Webb Philippa ◽  
Akande Dapo ◽  
Sivakumaran Sandesh ◽  
Sloan James
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Member States ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
Effective Performance ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Settlement Of Disputes ◽  
International Character

International organizations like the United Nations (UN) require certain privileges and immunities from national jurisdictions for the effective performance of their tasks. These privileges and immunities are granted to preserve the independence of the UN from its member states and to secure the international character of the organization. This chapter discusses the sources of privileges and immunities; reasons for the conferral of privileges and immunities; privileges and immunities of the organization, representatives of member states, officials of the organization, and experts on mission; abuse, waiver, and settlement of disputes regarding privileges and immunities; privileges and immunities during peacekeeping operations; and immunities of international organizations and the jurisdiction of international criminal tribunals.

Monitoring Accountability for un Peacekeeping under iccpr

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Nakamura
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Member States ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping

This article aims to reveal the implications and significance of recent practices of the Human Rights Committee (hrc) in monitoring the human rights situation pertaining to peacekeeping operations; it also seeks to highlight the hrc’s roles in relation to either United Nations (un) member states’ or the un’s accountability over peacekeeping operations. The contribution is inspired by the current study and development of the accountability of international organisations. Empirical analysis shows the potential role of the hrc as one of the monitoring bodies of human rights situations in peacekeeping operations. A parallel question arises: what are the legal bases for the hrc monitoring of un member states’ or the un’s accountability with regard to peacekeeping operations? Considering the matter from various angles based on the concept of accountability reveals the background to and implication of the legal bases in question.

China’s evolving motivations and goals in UN peacekeeping participation

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Songying Fang ◽  
Xiaojun Li ◽  
Fanglu Sun
Keyword(s):  
Developed Countries ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Proactive Approach ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Do So

This brief examines how the motivations and goals of China’s participation in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations have evolved since 1990 as a result of China’s changing national interests. We conclude that China is unlikely to abandon its long-held foreign policy principle of non-interference. However, motivated by a desire to be seen as a responsible global power, Beijing is seriously considering a more proactive approach to humanitarian crises, which may include direct intervention. Furthermore, as a significant contributor of troops and financing, China is uniquely positioned to represent the perspectives of both developing and developed countries in UN peacekeeping. To do so, Beijing will need to increase its leadership role in UN peacekeeping operations and offer creative ideas about how to promote reconciliation and development in post-conflict societies.

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