Review: Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War, Un Peacekeeping in Civil Wars
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Author | Nicholas Gammer |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201006500122 |
| Subject Matter | Coming AttractionsReview |
| International Journal | Winter 2009-10 | 273 |
| Reviews |
last-ditch American strategy to turn the tide in Afghanistan, and another
international donor conference on the horizon, it has never been more
important to understand what is going on in the country.
Mark Sedra/University of Waterloo and Centre for International Governance
Innovation
DOES PEACEKEEPING WORK?
Shaping Belligerents’ Choices After Civil War
Virginia Page Fortna
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. 232pp, $24.95 paper
ISBN 9780691136714
UN PEACEKEEPING IN CIVIL WARS
Lise Morje Howard
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 416pp, $36.99 paper
ISBN 9780521707671
The demise of the Cold War brought with it expectations of a new, less
ideologically divisive world order based on international cooperation, the
emergence of revived multilateral institutions, and a more promising future
for the UN and peacekeeping. After years of near-paralysis, the time had
arrived for a transformed UN to intervene in the broad interests of humanity
rather than the narrow self-interest of the state. Much of the peacekeeping
literature in recent years was inspired by that earlier sense of optimism.
Assumptions were also made about the need to augment mechanisms
of conflict resolution by shifting from traditional peacekeeping to peace
enforcement. However, the upsurge of ethnic conflict in the wake of the
disbanding of states such as the former Yugoslavia appeared to overwhelm
what some saw as an increasingly irrelevant peacekeeping institution. Lise
Morje Howard’s UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars and Virginia Page Fortna’s
Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War provide
a timely new justification for peacekeeping and reasons for optimism about
the UN’s work in this area.
In learning from previous UN attempts to manage civil conflict, Howard’s
study suggests that peacekeeping is most effective when peacekeepers take
their cues as much from the local people as UN headquarters. Premised on
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