| Why do developing countries participate in peacekeeping operations sponsored by the United Nations? In the literature of peacekeeping, scholars mainly argue that states participate in peacekeeping for their own national interests. According to these arguments, states agree to contribute their troops to UN multilateral operations to further their own national interests, including diplomatic, economic, and military ones. However, their national interests are anticipated not by a natural process or a unitary actor's decision but by complex political processes that involve both domestic political actors and international ones.; To understand and explain developing countries' motivations for UN peacekeeping, it is necessary to introduce a comprehensive analytic framework that covers international and domestic political factors simultaneously. This dissertation presents a triavariant model to show how political actors in developing states and the UN influence one another in the process of making decisions to commit troops to UN peacekeeping operations. The model includes three variables: ideology of political leaders, the interest of the military, and influence of the UN authorities. Using these three domestic and international factors, this dissertation analyzes four Southeast Asia countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.; This dissertation finds that an internationalist ideology of political leaders is the most important factor, and the influence of the UN authorities and interests of the military support or sometimes block political leaders willingness of participation in peacekeeping. In the Malaysian case, the political leader's ideology and the military's interest strongly supported Malaysia's participation in UN peacekeeping. In the Indonesian case, participation in UN peacekeeping varied considerably based on the regime in power. In the Philippine case, the military dominated political decisions related to peacekeeping. In Thailand, there was a standoff between political leaders and the military which did not prevent participation in peacekeeping. For all four countries, the UN authorities worked as a catalyst. The UN Secretary-General sometimes played a very important role in recruiting troops from these countries; however, the function of UN authorities is not clear enough to show that it is a dominant variable in every situation. |
