| So long as civil conflict remains a threat to international peace and security and so long as democracy is held as the political system most likely to promote internal and international peace, there will be a demand for United Nations peacebuilding operations and other forms of third-party support of peace processes that include democratization. This study seeks to better understand the outcomes of United Nations peacebuilding operations. Borrowing from Finnemore and Sikkink's model of norm construction and the work of other social constructivists, this study explores the relationship between the social construction of democratic norms of political legitimacy and the durable transformation of violent political conflict in the cases of United Nations peacebuilding operations in El Salvador and Cambodia. In the case of El Salvador, where UN peacebuilders and other third-party supporters of the peace process engaged in both norm articulation and strategic social construction, including aid conditionality, the political transformation endured for more than five years following the departure of ONUSAL. In Cambodia, where the peace process was not supported by a strategy of norm construction, there was a return to political violence less than five years following the end of the UNTAC operation. |
