Photo: Graffiti Equating and Protesting against the EU and UN Missions in Kosovo, Prishtina, Kosovo
Coordinating Peace: International Missions and Post-Conflict Statebuilding and Peacebuilding Reforms
Why do some efforts by missions to rebuilding post-conflict countries succeed, while others fail? Established peacekeeping, statebuilding, and peacebuilding scholarship largely focuses on the demographic, resource, and geo-spatial characteristics of UN missions to explain their effectiveness. However, little attention is paid to the variation in statebuilding and peacebuilding activities in which these missions engage, as well as the activities of regional organizations’ missions.
I address this gap in two ways in this book project. First, I develop a theoretical and analytical framework—“programmatic peacebuilding”—that explains the causes and consequences of the variation in the statebuildng and peacebuilding activities in which international organizations' missions engage. The framework expounds the scheduled, schematic, and procedural approach that these missions take to the post-conflict statebuilding and peacebuilding process and, in doing so, explicates the systemic and contextual determinants of the statebuilding and peacebuilding activities in which missions engage. It also highlights the ways in which missions, through this process, become embedded in post-conflict societies, leading to meaningful--and oftentimes divergent--impacts on post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding processes at various levels of analysis.
Second, I assess each component of the programmatic peacebuilding framework. Leveraging an original, time series-cross sectional dataset of the statebuilding and peacebuilding activities of all UN and regional organizations’ missions (1989 -2020), as well as interviews with mission personnel, I find that international agenda setting, norm institutionalization, and patterns of coordination and sequentialization among international organizations determines the type and amount of peacebuilding and statebuilding activities in which missions individually and collectively engage. I also find that such variation has a meaningful impact on various macro- and meso-level outcomes. Utilizing observational and experimental data gathered from an original survey fielded in Kosovo, as well as novel text analyses of over 28,000 newspaper articles published in Kosovo (2000-2020), I find that mission embedding leads Kosovars to develop discernible, independent attitudes toward each mission. I also find that variation in attitudes toward each mission strongly determine the contours of post-conflict state-society relations.
Ultimately, I present and assess in this book project the first unified framework for understanding, at once, the causes of international missions’ involvement in various post-conflict statebuilding and peacebuilding activities and the impact that variation therein has on peace outcomes at various levels of analysis.
Why do some efforts by missions to rebuilding post-conflict countries succeed, while others fail? Established peacekeeping, statebuilding, and peacebuilding scholarship largely focuses on the demographic, resource, and geo-spatial characteristics of UN missions to explain their effectiveness. However, little attention is paid to the variation in statebuilding and peacebuilding activities in which these missions engage, as well as the activities of regional organizations’ missions.
I address this gap in two ways in this book project. First, I develop a theoretical and analytical framework—“programmatic peacebuilding”—that explains the causes and consequences of the variation in the statebuildng and peacebuilding activities in which international organizations' missions engage. The framework expounds the scheduled, schematic, and procedural approach that these missions take to the post-conflict statebuilding and peacebuilding process and, in doing so, explicates the systemic and contextual determinants of the statebuilding and peacebuilding activities in which missions engage. It also highlights the ways in which missions, through this process, become embedded in post-conflict societies, leading to meaningful--and oftentimes divergent--impacts on post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding processes at various levels of analysis.
Second, I assess each component of the programmatic peacebuilding framework. Leveraging an original, time series-cross sectional dataset of the statebuilding and peacebuilding activities of all UN and regional organizations’ missions (1989 -2020), as well as interviews with mission personnel, I find that international agenda setting, norm institutionalization, and patterns of coordination and sequentialization among international organizations determines the type and amount of peacebuilding and statebuilding activities in which missions individually and collectively engage. I also find that such variation has a meaningful impact on various macro- and meso-level outcomes. Utilizing observational and experimental data gathered from an original survey fielded in Kosovo, as well as novel text analyses of over 28,000 newspaper articles published in Kosovo (2000-2020), I find that mission embedding leads Kosovars to develop discernible, independent attitudes toward each mission. I also find that variation in attitudes toward each mission strongly determine the contours of post-conflict state-society relations.
Ultimately, I present and assess in this book project the first unified framework for understanding, at once, the causes of international missions’ involvement in various post-conflict statebuilding and peacebuilding activities and the impact that variation therein has on peace outcomes at various levels of analysis.