Peacekeeping International Relations

This volume is the first comprehensive overview of how International Relations theories - liberal, rational choice, feminist, and sociological institutionalism, realism, constructivism, practice theories, critical security studies, and complexity theory - can help us understand UN peace operations.

United Nations peace operations have undergone multiple transformations over the more than seventy years of their existence. Multidimensional peace operations have organised elections, helped deliver humanitarian assistance, advised on army and police reform, and fought rebel groups. Such operations not only represent a core pillar of the multilateral peace and security architecture but also fundamentally reshape lives of millions of people around the world. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of multiple theoretical perspectives on UN peace operations. It offers practical examples of how International Relations theories apply to specific policy issues and simultaneously demonstrates how major debates on UN peace operations - on civilian protection, local ownership, or gender mainstreaming - benefit from theoretical exploration. With insightful contributions from a range of international academics, UN peace operations and International Relations theory is an essential book for scholars, students, and experts working on peace and security and the broader issue of international cooperation.

Integrating comparative empirical studies with cutting-edge theory, this dynamic Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the study and practice of peacekeeping. Han Dorussen brings together a diverse range of contributions which represent the most recent generation of peacekeeping research, embodying notable shifts in the kinds of questions asked as well as the data and methods employed.

The Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations presents an innovative, authoritative, and accessible examination and critique of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. Since the late 1940s, but particularly since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping has been a central part of the core activities of the United Nations and a major process in global security governance and the management of international relations in general. The volume will present a chronological analysis, designed to provide a comprehensive perspective that highlights the evolution of UN peacekeeping and offers a detailed picture of how the decisions of UN bureaucrats and national governments on the set-up and design of particular UN missions were, and remain, influenced by the impact of preceding operations. The volume will bring together leading scholars and senior practitioners in order to provide overviews and analyses of all 65 peacekeeping operations that have been carried out by the United Nations since 1948. As with all Oxford Handbooks, the volume will be agenda-setting in importance, providing the authoritative point of reference for all those working throughout international relations and beyond.

A critical examination of the global power relations that underpin the unprecedented deployments of UN peacekeepers from poor and developing countries since.

Explains how peacekeeping can work effectively by employing power through verbal persuasion, financial inducement, and coercion short of offensive force.

Peace operations are now a principal tool for managing armed conflict and building world peace. The fully revised, expanded and updated second edition of Understanding Peacekeeping provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the theory, practice and politics of contemporary peace operations. Drawing on more than twenty-five historical and contemporary case studies, this book evaluates the changing characteristics of the contemporary environment in which peacekeepers operate, what role peace operations play in wider processes of global politics, the growing impact of non-state actors, and the major challenges facing today's peacekeepers. All the chapters have been revised and expanded and seven new chapters have been added. Part 1 summarizes the central concepts and issues related to peace operations. It includes a new discussion of the theories of peace operations and analysis of the emerging norm of responsibility to protect. Part 2 charts the historical development of peacekeeping from 1945 and offers a new chapter on peace operations in the twenty-first century. In part 3, separate chapters analyse seven different types of peace operations: preventive deployments; traditional peacekeeping; assisting transition; transitional administrations; wider peacekeeping; peace enforcement; and peace support operations. Part 4 looks forward and examines the central challenges facing today's peacekeepers, namely, the regionalization of peace operations, the privatization of security, civilian protection, policing and gender issues. This second edition of Understanding Peacekeeping will be essential reading for students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, security studies and international relations. Visit http://www.polity.co.uk/up2/ for more information and additional resources.