Who Can Go First? Evidence From UN PKOs in Africa in 1990-2016

Abstract

ABSTRACT The peacekeeping literature has primarily documented correlations between peacekeeping operations (PKOs) and their effectiveness or has focused on the decisions of troop-contributing countries participating in PKOs. Unlike the extant research, this paper shifts the focus to the decision-making process within PKOs. More specifically, this paper focuses on the timing of peacekeeper deployment by investigating how contributor leaders are distinguished from contributor followers. To tackle this topic, I use deployment-map data from 13 UN PKOs in Africa from 1990 to 2016. When a leader country deploys to a region before other countries, the followers will thus face an incentive to free ride because waiting to deploy to the region until it is secure is less risky. In short, there is a second-mover advantage that induces other countries to delay deployment until much later in a given UN PKO’s designated deployment window. This study finds that countries that could deploy more troops at their initial time of deployment and that have many previous UN PKO experiences are more likely to be leaders. Results also suggest that contributors engaging in multiple UN PKOs contemporaneously are less likely to be leaders.