Too good to be true? United Nations peacebuilding and the democratization of war-torn states

Abstract

This article examines the effectiveness of UN peacebuilding missions in democratizing war-torn states, emphasizing those missions that include democracy promotion components in their mandates. Based on a multinominal logistic regression, we reveal that democratization is significantly more likely if a UN peacebuilding mission is deployed. Furthermore, regimes categorized as more liberal at the outset have an increased risk of revealing antidemocratization trends over the postwar period. Oil wealth impedes democratization and clear victory of one conflict party makes regime transitions more likely, yet in both directions. Descriptive statistics suggest that an increase in the mission's capacities may be conducive to democratization.

Enabling autocracy? Peacebuilding and post-conflict authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo

“…However, there are mixed findings on the success of these efforts and the scholarship in this area suffers from a number of limitations. Several authors find that democratization is more likely if a UN peacebuilding mission is deployed (Doyle and Sambanis, 2006; Joshi, 2013; Steinert and Grimm, 2015). Others are more sceptical about whether peacekeeping has any significant impact on post-conflict democracy, and Fortna (2008) finds no clear or positive relationship between peacekeeping and democratization.…”

“…In addition to these mixed findings, the scholarship in this area suffers from a problematic democracy bias that manifests itself in two ways. First, the theoretical discussions in this work focus on the causal mechanisms linking peacebuilding primarily with democratic rather than authoritarian governance (Doyle and Sambanis, 2006; Joshi, 2010; Matanock, 2017; Steinert and Grimm, 2015; Wantchekon, 2004). For example, in their critical review of the literature, Fortna and Huang (2012) test the hypotheses that peacekeeping leads to greater democratization or has no effect, without explicitly discussing authoritarian outcomes.…”

“…1 Scholarship on why post-conflict regimes consolidate authoritarian rather than democratic governance has, to date, focused on domestic features of the society in question, including levels of economic development, the nature of the conflict and the kind of political institutions established once the conflict ends (Fish and Kroenig, 2006; Reilly, 2001; Reynolds, 2010; Sambanis, 2000). More recent scholarship has examined the impact of peacebuilding missions, but it has offered conflicting results and is characterized by a problematic democracy bias (Fortna and Huang, 2012; Joshi, 2010; Steinert and Grimm, 2015). Indeed, it has principally focused on the ways in which peacebuilding can contribute to democratic rule, but there is rarely any in-depth discussion of the causal mechanisms linking peacebuilding missions to authoritarian outcomes.…”

Mitigating election violence locally: UN peacekeepers’ election-education campaigns in Côte d’Ivoire

“…Evaluating electioneducation events locally may add nuance to the debate on the local turn in international peacebuilding. Second, previous works have presented mixed results on whether PKOs build peace and foster democratization simultaneously (Steinert & Grimm, 2015;Doyle & Sambanis, 2006;Heldt, 2011;Fortna, 2008;Paris, 2004). By focusing on election education, this article examines one possible mechanism of how PKOs contribute to peaceful democratization.…”

UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law

“…While many of the activities I describe in this paper could be conceptualized as "peacebuilding"(Call 2007), I use the term "peacekeeping" to distinguish UN missions from the many other domestic and international institutions that participate in the broader peacebuilding process.2 Studies of the UN's impact on outcomes other than violence generally focus on democracy, with mixed results(Doyle and Sambanis 2006;Fortna 2008b;Steinert and Grimm 2015). Democracy and the rule of law are empirically related but conceptually distinct, requiring different reforms targeting different actors and institutions(Rajagopal 2008).…”