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On the Frontline Every Day? Subnational Deployment of United Nations Peacekeepers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2016

Andrea Ruggeri ,
Han Dorussen  and
Theodora-Ismene Gizelis
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Abstract

United Nations (UN) peacekeepers tend to be deployed to ‘hard-to-resolve’ civil wars. Much less is known about where peacekeepers are deployed within a country. However, to assess peacekeepers’ contribution to peace, it matters whether they are deployed to conflict or relatively safe areas. This article examines subnational UN peacekeeping deployment, contrasting an ‘instrumental’ logic of deployment versus a logic of ‘convenience’. These logics are evaluated using geographically and temporally disaggregated data on UN peacekeepers’ deployment in eight African countries between 1989 and 2006. The analysis demonstrates that peacekeepers are deployed on the frontline: they go where conflict occurs, but there is a notable delay in their deployment. Furthermore, peacekeepers tend to be deployed near major urban areas.

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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 1005 - 1025
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© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford (email: andrea.ruggeri@politics.ox.ac.uk); Department of Government, University of Essex (emails: hdorus@essex.ac.uk, tig@essex.ac.uk). Previous versions were presented at the first EPSA meeting, Dublin, 16–18 June 2011 and at the annual ISA meeting, San Diego, CA, April 2012. The project was supported by funding of the Folke Bernadotte Academy, Sweden with special thanks to Birger Heldt. We thank Brian Burgoon, Giovanni Carbone, Paul Diehl, Robert Franzese, Erik Gartzke, Nils Weidmann and Andreas Tollefsen for their comments. We also thank the editor, Shaun Bowler, and nine anonymous reviewers for making this article better. Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S000712341600017X.

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Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EC0BKU
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