This article reassesses how members of the UN Security Council exercise influence over the Council’s decision-making process, with particular focus on the ten elected members (the E10). A common understanding of Security Council dynamics accords predominance to the five permanent members (the P5), suggesting bleak prospects for the Council as a forum that promotes the voices and representation of the 188 non-permanent members. The assumption is that real power rests with the P5, while the E10 are there to make up the numbers. By articulating a richer account of Council dynamics, this article contests the conventional wisdom that P5 centrality crowds out space for the E10 to influence Council decision-making. It also shows that opportunities for influencing Council decision-making go beyond stints of elected membership. It argues that the assumed centrality of the P5 on the Council thus needs to be qualified and re-evaluated.
This article analyzes the power and legitimacy of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), explaining why local actors chose to comply and cooperate with the operation in its crucial first year. It argues that, to be effective, peace operations require the compliance of local populations, and finds that RAMSI's ability to shape the attitudes, incentives and interests of local actors was determined by the relationship between its three currencies of power: coercion, inducement and legitimacy. Focused on the exercise of power by RAMSI, this article enables much-needed analysis of the local dimensions of peace operations and affords serious consideration to processes of local legitimation. Within the local realm, the case of Solomon Islands provides three important insights on the power and legitimacy of peace operations. First, the design and implementation of RAMSI's communications strategies were central to its ability to exercise coercive and inducive power and, crucially, to legitimize its power relationship with local populations. Second, the manner in which RAMSI exercised authority affected local perceptions about its legitimacy, independent of the operation's outcomes. Third, the quality of treatment people received from RAMSI was influential in their decisions to comply and cooperate with the operation. This suggests that carefully examining the way that peace operations and local people interact can help to identify the determinants of an operation's effectiveness.
This article applies Diehl and Druckman’s evaluative framework to the case of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC, 1992-1993), finding it to be of high utility in analyzing the record of this operation. By directing the analyst to evaluate discreet objectives within three goal categories, Diehl and Druckman encourage the disaggregated evaluation that, I argue, holds most value for scholars and practitioners seeking to explain the outcomes of peace operations. In particular, this approach requires that the underlying purposes and normative agendas that always color evaluation be explicitly addressed. The article finds that UNTAC was a partial success and, more importantly, suggests a number of refinements to strengthen Diehl and Druckman’s framework. First, it recommends greater analysis of the relationship between a peace operation’s roles of action and reaction. Second, the case of UNTAC demonstrates the need for time-series evaluation to be based on sufficiently regular measurement if it is to capture very short-term patterns of conflict, such as wet- and dry-season violence cycles. Finally, the article questions the appropriateness of including ‘good relations with the local population’ as a dependent variable to be evaluated, recommending instead that such outcomes be considered by assessing the social costs of peace operations to host societies.
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