UN PEACEKEEPING AND THE LINKS BETWEEN CIVIL WAR PEACE PROCESSES

Abstract

Why do combatants in civil wars engage in UN-led negotiations even when they believe the UN is a failed, flawed contributor to the peace process? Drawing on regression analysis, extensive archival work, interviews, and two process-traced civil war negotiations, I argue that, even when they have little faith in peacekeepers' ability to uphold peace agreements, warring parties turn to the UN because its presence in negotiation processes enables unique tactical, symbolic, and post-conflict reconstruction outcomes that have little to do with the end of fighting. My research takes a unique structural perspective on international organizations' peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts and reveals, first, how the simultaneity of international organizations' interventions can produce unanticipated consequences, and second, how information about the UN's intervention behavior affects the negotiation of peace agreements in civil wars globally. This dissertation thus forces us to reconsider both the way peacekeeping works and what drives combatants to the bargaining table.