Learning to keep the peace? United Nations multidimensional peacekeeping in civil wars

Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has expanded its peacekeeping operations in response to the large number of civil conflicts around the world. Many of these recent missions are "multidimensional," in that they include sizable military, police, refugee, humanitarian, electoral, and often human rights components. How often has the UN been successful in these operations? What are the primary causes of success and failure? In taking account of the evidence from in-depth case studies, I argue that three conditions---the consent of the warring parties, consensual interests of the Security Council, and UN organizational learning---are each necessary for success, and jointly they are sufficient. While the first two factors have been explored by scholars and policymakers, the third is often overlooked.; Since there are only nine completed cases of post-Cold War UN multidimensional peacekeeping, I employ qualitative, comparative methods to construct my research design, compare cases, evaluate alternative hypotheses, and craft my own argument. Of the nine recently-completed, multidimensional UN peacekeeping operations, five have been successful at mandate fulfillment, including the missions in Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, and Eastern Slavonia/Croatia, even though the four cases of failure in Somalia, Rwanda, Angola and Bosnia are the most frequently studied. I devote one chapter to a discussion of the four failures, followed by five empirical chapters, each an in-depth study of a successful peacekeeping operation.; The bulk of my analysis concerns "first-level learning," or lack thereof, within peacekeeping missions. In addition, I address the extent to which the UN has appeared to learn between missions, or what I label "second-level learning." I conclude that while the first type has been more frequent than expected, the second type is extremely rare, and I delineate changes that would have to occur within the UN before it would be able to engage more fully in second-level learning.