New Data on UN Mission Mandates 1948–2015: Tasks Assigned to Missions in their Mandates (TAMM)

Abstract

Tasks Assigned to Missions in their Mandates (TAMM) provides comprehensive new data on the mandates of UN missions between 1948 and 2015. Until now, datasets have described mandates in terms of their influential characteristics, such as whether they are robust or multidimensional, or placed them into broad categories driven by idiosyncratic theoretical expectations. Despite limitations on data availability, mandates have been tied to numerous outcomes related to peacekeeping effectiveness. TAMM meets the need for flexible, minimally processed, and fine-grained data on mission mandates by recording the full range of tasks in mandates. The dataset comes in mission-resolution and mission-month versions that are designed to complement existing data on peacekeeping and to be easily adaptable to a wide range of research interests. In this article, I introduce TAMM and use the data to conduct a replication and expansion of Hultman, Kathman and Shannon (2014). I find evidence that missions with mandates that dictate they provide security guarantees and raise the costs of fighting, reduce battlefield hostilities.