A Recipe for Success? Ingredients of a Successful Peacekeeping Mission

This article seeks to determine why the UN has been more successful in managing some internal conflicts than others. First, success is defined broadly – limiting violence, reducing human suffering, and containing the conflict as well as fulfilling the mission’s mandate. Second, a broad set of potential determinants of success collected from the literature is tested using an analysis of 17 peacekeeping missions from 1945 to 1998. This study confirms the hypotheses that mission success is tied to UN commitment, absence of external support for the belligerents, successful diplomatic efforts, and a low degree of mutual antagonism. Contrary to expectations, the involvement of great powers or regional organizations, the presence of military stalemate, and the absence of an ethnic component did not appear to be correlated to success. Specific characteristics of missions such as duration and size did not appear to have an effect.