Methodology
We have carried out process tracing of the impact of UN peacekeeping operations’ activities on authoritarian behaviour in Cambodia, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia.
We have undertaken in-person fieldwork before the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and remote fieldwork throughout the project, which was complemented by archival research. We have conducted more than 200 semi-structured interviews with current and former UN officials who have worked across a range of peacekeeping missions and at UN headquarters, including seven Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) and eleven Deputy SRSGs.
Here are some examples of field trips and data collection:
- November 2018 Oisín Tansey and Birte Gippert undertook a visit to a private archive of the Deputy Director of the Analysis and Assessment Unit of UNTAC’s Information and Education Division, which is held at the University of Marburg
- July 2019 – November 2021 Oisín Tansey, Sarah von Billerbeck, Birte Gippert, and Kseniya Oksamytna conducted fieldwork by telephone and videoconference
- July 2019 – March 2020 Oisín Tansey and Kseniya Oksamytna conducted fieldwork in London
- January 2020 Sarah von Billerbeck conducted fieldwork in New York
- January – February 2020 Sarah von Billerbeck and Kseniya Oksamytna conducted fieldwork in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo
- February 2020 Sarah von Billerbeck conducted fieldwork in Berlin