When UN Peacekeepers Enforce More, Do Peace Deals Hold?

📌 What Was Studied

How UN peacekeeping missions enforce peace agreements and whether higher rates of enforcement improve agreement implementation and conflict termination. Enforcement is central to peacekeeping effectiveness, yet missions are often mandated to enforce only a minority of agreement provisions and vary widely across time and place.

📚 How Enforcement Was Measured

An original, cross-mission dataset—the Peacekeeping Enforcement Dataset—was compiled to capture enforcement patterns for all UN peacekeeping missions from 1989–2015. The study identifies three distinct dimensions of enforcement and links variation on those dimensions to outcomes for agreement implementation and conflict recurrence.

🧭 Three Enforcement Dimensions Tracked

• The proportion of agreement provisions a mission is mandated to enforce
• The type of provisions missions are mandated to enforce (what kinds of obligations)
• The mandated level of mission involvement in implementing those provisions

🧾 What Was Theorized

Stronger enforcement along these dimensions should produce positive effects on both implementation of peace agreements and the termination of conflict by reducing the likelihood of recidivism.

📊 Key Findings

• Missions are frequently tasked with enforcing only a minority of agreement provisions, and mandates vary across missions and over time.
• Analysis of the Peacekeeping Enforcement Dataset shows that each enforcement dimension has a distinct impact on agreement implementation and on preventing conflict recurrence.
• Those impacts differ across time points, indicating that the effectiveness of specific enforcement strategies is context- and period-dependent.

💡 Why It Matters

Understanding which aspects of enforcement influence whether peace deals hold helps clarify the mechanisms of peacekeeping effectiveness and guides how mandates might be designed to better support durable peace.