Research Findings on the Evolution of Peacekeeping

Peacekeeping has evolved both in its focus and in setting increasingly ambitious goals. In effect, the referent object of peacekeeping—what and whose peace is to be kept—has changed. The peace that is to be kept has evolved from a negative conception of peace to encompassing an increasingly positive understanding of peace. Similarly, the object of the peace has shifted from the global to the national, and ultimately to the local. In effect, this has raised the bar for peacekeeping. Peacekeeping research has mirrored these changes in the expectations and practice of peacekeeping, where the (in)effectiveness of peacekeeping has remained a constant concern. The evaluation has shifted from the authorization and organization of peacekeeping missions to the impact of peacekeepers in avoiding the recurrence of conflict, to ultimately the ability of peacekeepers to change the situation on the ground as well as the interaction between peacekeepers and the local population. Research on peacekeeping has become increasingly methodologically sophisticated. Originally, qualitative case studies provided a largely critical evaluation of the effect of peacekeeping. Large-n quantitative studies have reassessed where peacekeepers are deployed and who provides peacekeepers. Controlling for selection bias and possible endogeneity, quantitative research finds that peacekeeping makes the recurrence of conflict less likely. Disaggregate data on peacekeeping confirm that peacekeeping contains local conflict and protects local civilian populations. At the same time, peacekeepers have had only limited success in positively affecting conflict societies by means of security sector reform and building state capacity. There is little evidence that peacekeeping is able to support democratization and economic development.</p

Maternal Health Care in the Time of Ebola: A Mixed-Method Exploration of the Impact of the Epidemic on Delivery Services in Monrovia

Public health emergencies like major epidemics in countries with already poor health infrastructure have the potential to set back efforts to reduce maternal deaths globally. The 2014 Ebola crisis in Liberia is claimed to have caused major disruptions to a health system not fully recovered after the country’s civil war, and is an important and relevant case for studying the resilience of health systems during crises. We use data on the utilization of maternal health care services from two representative surveys, one conducted before the outbreak of Ebola, the 2013 Liberian DHS, and another, smaller survey conducted in Monrovia in December 2014, during the height of the epidemic. We focus exclusively on data for women aged 18–49 residing in urban Monrovia, restricting our samples to 1,073 and 763 respondents from the two surveys respectively. We employ a mixed methods approach, combining a multinomial logit model with in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our regression analyses indicate that deliveries in public facilities declined whereas they increased for private facilities. Furthermore, overall facility delivery rates remained stable through the Ebola epidemic: the proportion of home births did not increase. Drawing on insights from extensive qualitative interviews with medical personnel and focus groups with community members conducted in Monrovia in August–September 2015 we attribute these survey findings to a supply side “substitution effect” whereby private clinics provided an important cushion to the shock leading to lower supply of government services. Furthermore, our interviews suggest that government health care workers continued to work in private facilities in their local communities when public facilities were closed. Our findings indicate that resources to shore up healthcare institutions should be directed toward interventions that support private facilities and health personnel working privately in communities during times of crisis so that these facilities are safe alternatives for women during crisis

It Takes a Village: UN Peace Operations and Social Networks in Post-conflict Environments

Why civil society organizations (CSOs) so often are unable to make a difference during the transition process to peace despite the widespread recognition of their potential role in fostering peace? I argue that the involvement and contributions of local civil society organizations and women’s organizations (WOs) in post-conflict peacebuilding should be understood in terms of social networks and connections that emerge in the peacebuilding process. Both linking and bridging social capital shape social interactions essential for successful post-conflict reconstruction. Yet, external actors often implement policies that strengthen hierarchical networks at the expense of horizontal networks; thus, undermining the creation of bridging social capital. To explore the types of networks that emerge in post-conflict reconstruction I use semi-structured interviews conducted in Liberia. The evidence suggests that emerging horizontal networks are more robust in areas where local communities and women have a tradition of organizing. However, these networks remain fairly unstable. The assistance is mostly channeled centrally strengthening hierarchical ties and leading to distortions in the distribution of resources. This type of external intervention has negative implications and hinders bridging social networks even when these networks are present

Preservation of regional cultures: Proposal for joint research study

[Δε διατίθεται περίληψη / no abstract available][Δε διατίθεται περίληψη / no abstract available

More heat, less light! The resource curse & HIV/AIDS: A reply to Olivier Sterck

We reported fairly robust results suggesting that resource rich countries did less well containing HIV/AIDS than resource poor states (de Soysa and Gizelis, 2013). We argued that public action to prevent the spread of disease was going to be weaker in resource rich states because rulers would have less incentive to fight disease. Olivier Sterck (this issue) criticizes our study on several grounds, arguing that resource rich states can provide anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and thereby fight the AIDS epidemic. He, however, finds no relationship between resource wealth and HIV/AIDS. We argue that his reanalyses do not fully address the theoretical association between resource wealth and the spread of HIV/AIDS and that his argument about ART is more wishful than a realistic expectation. Future research should probe more carefully why resource wealth has not been deployed more effectively for fighting disease-a point we can all agree on

Decoupling Local Ownership? The Lost Opportunities for Grassroots Women’s Involvement in Liberian Peacebuilding

Civil society organizations and grassroots groups are often unable to play an active role in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. A possible explanation for the observed challenges in peacebuilding is the gap or decoupling between international expectations and norms from practical action, local norms and capacities. External actors are often overly instrumental and operate according to a general template that fails to start from what the local capacities might actually be. This often leads to the decoupling of general values from practical action, which helps account for the observed barriers of engaging local civil and community organizations in reconstruction. We examine the different types of decoupling and the challenges these present. We evaluate our general theoretical argument using evidence based on the experiences of Liberian women’s civil society organizations. Given the compliance of the Liberian government with international norms, we should expect external actors to have an easier task in incorporating civil society and women’s organizations in the post-conflict reconstruction process; yet, the record appears to be the opposite. While we present the ‘tragic’ aspect of this relationship between international norms and local practice, we also suggest opportunities for ‘hybrid’ alternatives

Preservation of regional cultures: Proposal for joint research study

[Δε διατίθεται περίληψη / no abstract available][Δε διατίθεται περίληψη / no abstract available

Advancing the Frontier of Peacekeeping Research

The impact of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping on conflict has received a sustained amount of attention in the empirical literature. The advent of new data on UN peacekeeping and new temporal units of analysis have enabled researchers to expand the frontiers of peacekeeping research and undertake a more nuanced examination of peacekeeping effectiveness. In this special section, a series of articles examine how UN peacekeeping affects different types of violence within conflicts and leads to different types of peaceful outcomes. Factors such as the cultural affinity between peacekeepers and local communities, the size of peacekeeping operations and the specific composition of UN forces are shown to be important variables associated with lower levels of casualties and violence and also a higher likelihood of mediation and timely peaceful settlements in civil wars. In the aggregate, these articles suggest that robust peacekeeping is associated with better outcomes in many stages of conflict