Only as fast as its troop contributors: Incentives, capabilities, and constraints in the UN’s peacekeeping response
| Author | Kseniya Oksamytna,Katharina P Coleman,Magnus Lundgren |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343320940763 |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
Only as fast as its troop contributors:
Incentives, capabilities, and constraints
in the UN’s peacekeeping response
Magnus Lundgren
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University
Kseniya Oksamytna
Department of War Studies, King’s College London
Katharina P Coleman
Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia
Abstract
International organizations’ ability to respond promptly to crises is essential for their effectiveness and legitimacy. For
the UN, which sends peacekeeping missions to some of the world’s most difficult conflicts, responsiveness can save
lives and protect peace. Very often, however, the UN fails to deploy peacekeepers rapidly. Lacking a standing army,
the UN relies on its member states to provide troops for peacekeeping operations. In the first systematic study of the
determinants of deployment speed in UN peacekeeping, we theorize that this speed hinges on the incentives,
capabilities, and constraints of the troop-contributing countries. Using duration modeling, we analyze novel data
on the deployment speed in 28 peacekeeping operations between 1991 and 2015. Our data reveal three principal
findings: All else equal, countries that depend on peacekeeping reimbursements by the UN, are exposed to negative
externalities from a particular conflict, or lack parliamentary constraints on sending troops abroad deploy more
swiftly than others. By underlining how member state characteristics affect aggregate outcomes, these findings have
important implications for research on the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping, troop contribution dynamics, and
rapid deployment initiatives.
Keywords
deployment speed, peacekeeping, troop-contributing country, United Nations
The speed with which the UN deploys peacekeepers is
critical for the effectiveness and legitimacy of its peace-
keeping operations. Once the Security Council estab-
lishes a peacekeeping operation, every day that passes
before troops are fully deployed weighs on the prospects
of success. In cases like Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and
Chad, the delayed arrival of UN peacekeepers under-
mined, and sometimes derailed, the peace process. The
UN’s credibility and authority suffered, both locally and
globally. In other instances, the UN managed to put a
meaningful military presence on the ground within days,
increasing its ability to shape the tactical and political
environment. How can we account for this variation in
the UN’s response time? In particular, since any UN
peacekeeping force is a composite of troop contributions
by member states, why do some countries deploy their
troops faster than others?
Extant literature does not provide satisfying answers.
While the importance of timely peacekeeping deploy-
ment is undisputed, its determinants remain poorly
Corresponding author:
magnus.lundgren@statsvet.su.se
Journal of Peace Research
2021, Vol. 58(4) 671–686
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343320940763
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understood. To fill this gap, we engage in the first sys-
tematic, large-N analysis of the factors that affect deploy-
ment speed in UN peacekeeping. We develop a
theoretical argument that accounts for variation across
troop-contributing countries (TCCs) and test its obser-
vable implications against new data on the deployment
speed of TCCs across 28 UN peacekeeping operations
established between 1991 and 2015.
Theoretically, we focus on explanations at the contri-
butor level. While a range of factors affects UN deploy-
ment speed, including geopolitics, mission country
conditions, and the UN’s overall force pool, rapid
deployment ultimately depends on how fast member
states are willing and able to deploy the troops that make
up a mission. We therefore contend that a better under-
standing of the UN’s capacity for rapid deployment
hinges on shifting the focus from peacekeeping missions
in the aggregate to their constituent components: indi-
vidual TCCs. We theorize that the relative speed of
deployments depends on the incentives, capabilities, and
constraints of each TCC, conditional on other factors
that affect all missions and all TCCs at a given time.
Empirically, we use a survival framework to model the
time from missionestablishment to observed deployment.
Our data revealthree principal findings,all pointing to the
importance of contributor-level explanations. We demon-
strate, first, that countries that are more sensitive to the
financial incentives that the UN offers deploy more rap-
idly than comparable countries less sensitive to such
incentives. Second, countries that are exposed to conflict
externalities, specifically refugee flows, deploy withgreater
urgency than comparable countries that are less exposed.
Third, countries where foreign deployments require par-
liamentary approval deploy more slowly than others. The
solidity of these findings varies across different cuts of the
data. Beyond TCC-level factors, we find that deployment
speed is sensitive to mission country characteristics,
including its logistical conditions, severity ofviolence, and
colonial linksto the permanent members of theUN Secu-
rity Council (the P5).
Ourstudyhasimplicationsforbothresearchand
policy, further elaborated in the conclusion. First, it
enhances our understanding of rapid deployment in
UN peacekeeping. The nascent literature on institu-
tional arrangements to facilitate rapid deployment (Lan-
gille, 2014; Koops & Novoseloff, 2017; Karlsrud &
Reykers, 2019; Coleman, Lundgren & Oksamytna,
2020) has not analyzed alternative explanations in a mul-
tivariate framework, and no study of rapid deployment
has given sufficient consideration to contributor-level
explanations. When a peacekeeping operation fails to
deploy quickly, the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy is
often blamed. In reality, the UN can only be as fast as
its troop contributors, which differ significantly in their
deployment speed. Mission composition is thus a key
factor in UN rapid deployment.
Second, our study nuances available knowledge on
states’ motivations for participating in UN peacekeeping.
We show how some motivations discussed in the litera-
ture on troop contributions (e.g. Gaibulloev, Sandler &
Shimizu, 2009; Victor, 2010; Coleman & Nyblade,
2018) also affect how quickly contributions are deliv-
ered. At the same time, our study demonstrates that
factors that shape the willingness to contribute troops
are not identical to those determining how fast those
troops are deployed. Even states that are highly moti-
vated to participate and to deploy quickly may be slowed
down by weak capabilities or parliamentary hurdles.
Third, as the first systematic study of UN peacekeeping
deployment speed, the article provides a platform for further
research which could, for example, clarify scope conditions,
generate qualitative evidence on how incentives impact
deployment speed, and systematically assess the assumed
link between deployment speed and mission performance.
Finally, our findings have important policy implica-
tions. We recommend that the UN focuses its efforts to
improve deployment speed on those TCCs that it can
realistically influence. Since financial considerations seem
to motivate rapid deployment, the UN should further
explore possibilities for calibrating the existing system of
incentives in order to increase its deployment speed.
Rapid deployment: Crucial for effectiveness
and legitimacy, but poorly understood
While the ultimate success of a UN peacekeeping oper-
ation depends on many factors, including its mandate,
resources, and local dynamics (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006;
Fortna, 2008; Howard, 2008), the speed with which it
deploys is a decisive element. Rapidly deployed forces
allow the UN to ‘shape the tactical environment on the
ground at the most important, most fluid moment – that
when peace deals have just been struck, or missions just
authorized’ (Jones et al., 2009: 24). The 2015 UN High-
Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations iden-
tified slow deployment as a major problem: ‘When a
mission trickles into a highly demanding environment,
it is dangerously exposed on the ground and initial high
expectations turn to disappointment, frustration and
anger’ (UN, 2015: 63).
Beyond the success of individual missions, rapid
deployment matters for UN legitimacy. Indifference to
672 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 58(4)
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