Abstract
Why do states participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions? Extant theory revolves around two benefits states derive from participation: the financial benefits participants receive for their contributions and the ability to further liberal norms abroad. Yet, these theories have received limited empirical support. In addition, they cannot explain where and when leaders send troops. To rectify these limitations, I focus on a more straightforward benefit states receive from limiting conflict and providing stability to war-torn regions. Namely, stabilizing conflict areas helps stem the externalities caused from ongoing conflicts, such as refugees. This explanation of participation in peacekeeping predicts who is most likely to send support (those fearing refugee inflows), the size of contribution (increasing relative to the inflows), and where they send assistance (to the specific conflict area producing the externalities). Statistical analysis of all UN peacekeeping missions since 1990 provides support for this argument and reveals that refugee flows better predict who is likely to contribute troops, and to what conflict, than the size of those contributions. While other realpolitik considerations strongly influence which states participate in UN peacekeeping, neither democracy nor state need is a statistically significant explanator of who contributes. However, state need does predict the size of contribution.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
