publications
- Sarah von Billerbeck, Birte Gippert, Kseniya Oksamytna, and Oisín Tansey, United Nations Peacekeeping and the Politics of Authoritarianism (Oxford University Press, 2025)
Why do countries hosting United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations tend to consolidate authoritarian forms of governance, despite the UN’s own stated aim of promoting democratization? This book advances a theoretically innovative and empirically rich answer to this question: while the UN does not intentionally promote authoritarianism, it faces a number of constraints and dilemmas that give rise to what we call authoritarian enabling. Enabling can occur through two mechanisms, capacity-building and the creation of a permissive environment, which enhance the ability of host governments to engage in authoritarian behavior and signal to them that doing so is low cost. We illustrate these two mechanisms with four in-depth case studies of UN peacekeeping operations: the UN Transitional Administration in Cambodia (UNTAC), the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo / UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC/MONUSCO), the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti / Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH), and the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). While enabling stops short of the outright promotion of authoritarianism, it explains why the UN’s activities often appear to contradict its stated objectives and the outcomes it delivers fall short of its goals. In addition to its theoretical and empirical contributions, the book suggests how these dilemmas and challenges can be overcome.
- Kseniya Oksamytna, Oisín Tansey, Sarah von Billerbeck, and Birte Gippert, 'Theorizing Decision-Making in International Bureaucracies: UN Peacekeeping Operations and Responses to Norm Violations', International Studies Quarterly (2023)
Many international organizations (IOs) provide assistance to governments through country offices or peacekeeping operations. Sometimes, government authorities in countries receiving IO services violate norms that underpin IO’s engagement. IO officials must then choose between confrontational and conciliatory responses. These responses are located on a spectrum that ranges from a firm and public response tosilence and downplaying. How do IO officials decide on their response? Based on over 200 interviews with UN peacekeeping officials, we argue that the factors that shape their decision-making are found across three categories: individual, departmental, and positional. In terms of individual characteristics, previous experience, career security, and the length of service at a particular duty station matter. Regarding departmental factors, politicization of work, professional composition, and the type of interlocutors predispose departments to be supporters or critics of authorities in recipient countries. In terms of positional considerations, the place of a post or department in the IO hierarchy, relations with other IO entities, and the distance from the field play a role. While important in its own right, decision-making by civilian UN peacekeeping officials is informative about similar processes in other IOs that employ individuals from diverse backgrounds in complex bureaucracies.
- Challenges of Peacekeeping in Authoritarian Settings: Final Report from Expert Roundtable (London: King's College London, 2022)
The expert roundtable brought together academics and practitioners to examine the challenges that UN peacekeeping operations face when deployed to host states where elites engage in authoritarian practices. Relations with host states are a delicate matter in any context but dealing with illiberal or autocratic elites poses particular difficulties. Contemporary peacekeeping missions are often mandated to pursue a range of liberal goals, while national elites may have different preferences or priorities. Peacekeepers also face a dilemma when their mandate requires that they work closely with host governments to extend state authority and strengthen the capacity of the security services; in these contexts, fulfilling their peacekeeping mandate may entail bolstering authorities who engage in repressive practices and political violence. Peacekeepers also often operate in complex environments where multiple international actors pursue a variety of peacebuilding objectives. Peacekeepers must therefore calibrate their responses in light of their international partners’ actions.
- Adam Day, Sarah von Billerbeck, Oisín Tansey, and Ayham Al Maleh, Peacebuilding and Authoritarianism: The Unintended Consequences of UN Engagement in Post-conflict Setting (New York: United Nations University, 2021)
Many UN peacebuilding interventions take place in settings governed by authoritarian regimes and are often overtly designed to overcome deeply entrenched patterns of autocratic rule. Yet many post-conflict settings experience a further concentration of power and even greater repression as regimes take advantage of new forms of economic development and international support. In some cases, there is evidence that peacebuilding support may have contributed to increasing levels of authoritarianism, even while advancing other important goals.
The principal argument of this brief is that peacebuilding support may enable authoritarian forms of governance in two ways: (1) by providing material and other resources to the central state, thereby allowing it to consolidate control over key institutions and levers of power, and (2) by signalling in ways that lower the perceived costs of autocratic, non-democratic forms of rule and may help to shield leaders from accountability for their actions. While these impacts may be difficult to isolate – especially given that the UN is often a small player in the broader peacebuilding landscape – an examination of international peacebuilding support more generally across a range of settings will facilitate a better understanding of these dynamics at play.
The analysis compares across in-depth country case studies on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Cambodia and draws on an assessment of peacebuilding funding flows in eight other countries.
- Sarah von Billerbeck and Oisín Tansey, ‘Enabling Autocracy? Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, European Journal of International Relations (2019)
Does peacebuilding shape the regime type of countries where international missions are deployed? Most peacebuilding missions take place in authoritarian contexts, and seek to overcome the legacies of conflict by overseeing transitions to democratic rule; however, most regimes that experience peacebuilding still retain some form of authoritarian rule.
In this article, we examine the extent to which international peacebuilding missions contribute to the consolidation of post-conflict authoritarian regimes even when their stated aims involve the promotion of democracy. We argue that international peacebuilders can act as enablers of authoritarianism in host countries. We distinguish this category of behaviour from explicit ‘autocracy promotion’, which implies intentional support to autocracy. Instead, enabling is often an unintended consequence, and we identify two mechanisms through which enabling occurs: by building the capacity of incumbent authoritarian leaders and by signalling a permissive environment for authoritarian behaviour for national actors. We illustrate our argument with the case of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.