1 Global Peace or Internal Security: Democratization from Peacekeeping Maevyn Davis-Rackerby International Relations Honors Thesis New York University April 17th, 2020 2 Abstract The end of the Cold War, the early 1990s, marks a significant turn in the way the United Nations uses its peacekeeping forces—there was an increased emphasis on peacebuilding, and conflict resolution, not just global policing. So, too, did peacekeeping numbers skyrocket, with more states contributing more troops. At the same time, there was a mass wave of democratization, and these new democracies came to be in a changed world. How, then, did these new states contribute to international peacekeeping efforts, and why? This paper posits that in order to promote civilian-military relations and improve international reputation, newer democracies (defined as a 7 or above on the Polity IV scale) have contributed more heavily to international UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) in the post-Cold War (1990-present) period. After running a variety of models, I find that peacekeeping contributions do decrease as democracies age and that anocracies (states that have some democratic features but are not full democracies) behave in similar ways. 3 Contents I. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………4 II. Literature Review………………………………………………………………………...6 III. Theory & Hypotheses…………………………………………………………………...11 IV. Data……………………………………………………………………………...……...16 Controls …………………………………………………………………………….. 18 Descriptive Statistics …………………………………………………………...……19 V. Endogeneity Problems and Estimation Procedure……………………………………...21 VI. Results…………………………………………………………………………………..22 OLS Regressions ……………………………………………………………………..25 Generalized Difference-in-Difference …………………………………………….....27 VII. Discussion & Conclusion……………………………………………………………....33 VIII. References……………………………………………………………………………...35 IX. Appendices……………………………………………………………………………..38 4 Acknowledgements This thesis was made possible by the help and guidance of my advisor, Professor Peter Rosendorff. I am also deeply grateful to our Teaching Assistant Rafa Ch Duran, without whom I could not have run my regressions or completed and who answered my many panicked emails. Special thanks goes out to my friends, with whom I endured late nights in the library, and family, who put up with my ranting about peacekeeping and democracy. I. Introduction On June 26th, 1945, the world took a major step towards global peace and democracy when 46 states signed the United Nations charter. It came into effect later that year as a revolutionary agreement between nations mandated to, as stated in Article 1 of the charter, “maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace” (United Nations Charter, 1945). Articles IV and V then gave the United Nations a mandate to keep the peace through the use of peacekeeping troops, military personnel from the armed forces of member states that are volunteered to represent the United Nations in conflict zones and guide the warring parties towards a peaceful agreement. Peacekeeping politics is complicated—there is a long process before they can be deployed, the differences between invoking article IV and V are subtle but significant, and whether they are successful or not is an entire, hotly-debated body of work by itself. The United Nations has deployed 71 peacekeeping operations (PKOs) since 1948, when 5 the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization was sent to Israel to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict (United Nations Peacekeeping, n.d.). Currently, there are 14 active missions globally, with over 120 states participating and 98,544 active personnel (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2019). In this paper, I focus on why states contribute to PKOs—particularly, on the relationship between contributing and democracy, on the contributing end. I will be exploring the idea that somehow, contributing to PKOs is helpful for the contributing state as well as the receiving state, and that contributing may actually encourage democracy at home. Following this, I argue that states will contribute more heavily to PKOs close after a democratic transition—that newer democracies contribute more to PKOs than older ones Interestingly, democracy is not mentioned at all in the original charter (not every state originally signing it endorsed democracy). However, the United Nations is clear that democracy is a guiding principle today, and argues that the language in the Preamble and Article 1 of the charter on “self-determination” and “the will of the people” show that democracy was a core value even then—that this language “reflect[s] the fundamental principle of democracy - that the will of the people is the source of legitimacy of sovereign states and, therefore, of the United Nations as a whole” (United Nations: Global Issues, n.d.). As the world moved further into the second half of the 20th century, especially as democratic peace theory began to be discussed and talked about in earnest, the ideas of “peace,” “democracy,” and the purpose of the United Nations became to be seen by many as inextricable. Today, the United Nations claims that while it doesn’t advocate for a specific form of government, it embraces “democratic governance as a set of values and principles,” and 6 considers democracy the way towards participation, equality, human development, security, human rights, freedoms, and exercising the will of the people (United Nations: Global Issues, n.d.). The intersection between peace and democracy became especially relevant in the early 1990s, when the ending of the cold war brought both a surge in PKOs and democratization, with many newly-free states seeking to establish themselves in the global democratic order. The UN itself cites a surge in troop numbers and contributions from its member states and in the number of PKOs—20 new operations began between 1989 and 1994, and the total peacekeeper number climbed from 11,000 to 75,000 (United Nations Peacekeeping, n.d.). It describes the shift in uses of peacekeeping from “traditional” or “observational” to “multidimensional” missions, and the tasks put upon peacekeepers also shifted from observing to peacebuilding. (United Nations Peacekeeping). Over 120 states currently contribute to the missions, which is over 60% of UN member states. More than this, I am looking into the disparity between contributions. As of September 2019, China, with the largest military in the world, contributes just 2,521 total personnel to PKOs, or just 0.1% of its 2.5 million total. Even the United States, global superpower and champion of democracy, is only contributing a staggeringly small 31 people to PKOs, or .002% of its 1.3 million total. On the other hand, Ethiopia contributes the most peacekeepers at 7,047, or 4.3% of its total military size. In this paper, I explore the theory that this discrepancy is due to the age of a democracy, and how the contributions of states change as they democratize. 7 II. Literature Review The literature surrounding contributions to PKOs tends to fall under several umbrellas; who contributes, when they contribute, and why they contribute to international PKOs. The answer to the first question is, overwhelmingly, democracies. Lebovic (2004) shows that contributions increase with democracy—more democratic states contribute more to peacekeeping operations. He also finds that once committed, democracies commit more fully to peace actions overall. Lebovic then dives into why democracies may be more likely to contribute to peacekeeping, and posits that states contribute for both realist and liberal reasons—realist in that states did contribute more in areas where they were closer to the conflict in terms of capabilities and alliances but also liberal in that states seem to support PKOs in altruistic ways as well. This indicates that there must be something about the peace process, and contributing to it, that is beneficial to democracies. Lebovic explains this by pointing to democratic peace theory and that democracies simply “embrace liberal values and perspectives” (933), although also acknowledging the realist arguments that democracies contribute to increasing regional security in areas of interest. Gilligan and Stedman (2003) also suggests that national interest influences where states direct their peacekeeping reference; they conclude that states tend to contribute depending on the severity of the conflict, but with a regional bias. That is, within regions, more serious (defined as the number of casualties) conflicts will receive more attention, but regions of stronger national interest to the donor state get more resources overall. The theory behind this is similar to Lebovic’s—states tend to contribute where there is a humanitarian need due to 8 sharing ideals of democracy, liberalism, and spreading peace, but they help regions of national interest more heavily, meaning at least part of the motivation is because contributing to international peace and security is beneficial to individual states. Once it has been established that states contribute to PKOs out of some national interest, the question becomes why this is this case. Boyer and Bobrow (1997) attempt to fill this gap by looking at what national interest contributing to PKOs fulfills. They make a compelling argument that contributing to peacekeeping helps create system-wide stability, look at peacekeeping as a public good that stabilizes the international system overall, and argue that even