Department of Politics and International Relations

Making Peace or Preventing It? UN Peacekeeping, Terrorism, and Civil War Negotiations

Posted on 19 November 2020

Kaisa Hinkkainen Elliott's article in International Studies Quarterly

By Kaisa Hinkkainen Elliott, Sara M T Polo, Liana Eustacia Reyes

International Studies Quarterly 13th November 2020

Abstract:

Previous studies have highlighted that the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are effective at reducing violence during civil wars. But can these operations also change the incentives of the warring parties and lead them to pursue non-violent alternatives? This article provides the first direct test of UN peacekeeping troops’ effectiveness at inducing non-violent engagements, specifically negotiations during civil wars. Our analysis of disaggregated monthly data on peace operations, negotiations, and violence in African conflicts (1989–2009) reveals that sizable deployments of UN military troops, by themselves, are insufficient to foster negotiations, even when they reduce battlefield violence. Instead, the probability of negotiation instances is conditional on rebel tactics. We posit, when rebels engage in terrorism, peacekeeping troops can inadvertently alter the “power to hurt” of the belligerents in favour of rebel groups and create conditions conducive to negotiations. Our results have important implications for research on the effectiveness of both peacekeeping and terrorism and for policy-making.