American Political Science Review (2021) 115, 1, 51–68

doi:10.1017/S0003055420000738 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political
Science Association.
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UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law

ROBERT A. BLAIR Brown University

T
he UN is intimately involved in efforts to restore the rule of law in conflict and postconflict settings.
Yet despite the importance of the rule of law for peace, good governance, and economic growth,
evidence on the impact of these efforts is scant. I develop a theory to explain when UN rule-of-law
reform is likely to succeed, then test the theory using original datasets capturing the number of civilian
personnel deployed to each UN mission in Africa, the number of personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-
law-related tasks, and the extent and nature of actual rule-of-law-related activities in the field. The
correlation between UN presence and the rule of law is weak while conflict is ongoing, but robustly
positive during periods of peace. The relationship is stronger for civilian than uniformed personnel, and is
strongest when UN missions engage host states in the process of reform.

W
hat is the impact of international interven-
tion on the rule of law in conflict and post-
conflict settings? The rule of law is widely
considered a necessary condition for peace, good govern-
ance, and economic growth, especially in countries
recovering from civil war (Rajagopal 2008, 1348). Where
the rule of law is strong, disputes can be resolved through
transparent, publicly promulgated laws enforced by fair
and accountable security and justice institutions—police
forces, courts, prisons—rather than vigilantism or vio-
lence. Perhaps no international organization has
embraced these principles more enthusiastically than
the United Nations (UN). Rule-of-law promotion is
now considered a “core peacekeeping task” (Carlson
2006, 2) and an “integral part of the UN’s approach to
peace and security” (Sannerholm et al. 2012, 14). A rule-
of-law imperative is explicit in numerous UN resolutions
and reports and in the mandates of nearly every UN
peacekeeping operation on the ground today.1
Yet despite “exploding practical interest,” evidence on
the efficacy of third-party rule-of-law promotion remains
“surprisingly limited” (Haggard and Tiede 2014, 406).
Robert A. Blair , Assistant Professor, Department of Political
Science and Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs,
Brown University, robert_blair@brown.edu.
This research was supported by the Folke Bernadotte Academy.
For valuable comments I thank Kyle Beardsley, Jeff Colgan, Lise
Morjé Howard, Aila Matanock, participants at the joint Folke Ber-
nadotte Academy and UNIGE conference State of the Art? The
Future of Peacekeeping Data, and three anonymous reviewers. I also
thank Hannah Smidt, my collaborator on the Peacekeeping Activ-
ities Dataset (PACT). Samuel Berube, Victor Brechenmacher, Erin
Brennan-Burke, Alexa Clark, Paul Cumberland, Rachel Danner,
Mara Dolan, Dylan Elliott-Hart, Lucas Fried, Ugochi Ihenatu, Julia
Kirschenbaum, Ian Lefond, Divya Mehta, Ruth Miller, Remington
Pontes, Lucy Walke, and Yijie Zhu provided excellent research
assistance. Replication files are available at the American Political
Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NRRVJ3.
Received: July 11, 2019; revised: June 24, 2020; accepted: July 14,
2020.
1
While many of the activities I describe in this paper could be
conceptualized as “peacebuilding” (Call 2007), I use the term “peace-
keeping” to distinguish UN missions from the many other domestic
and international institutions that participate in the broader peace-
building process.
Most research continues to focus on the effects of inter-
national intervention on violence against civilians and
civil war recurrence (Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Fortna
2008a; Gilligan and Sergenti 2008; Hultman, Kathman,
and Shannon 2013; 2014).2 To my knowledge, only one
other study has tested the relationship between UN
presence and the rule of law cross-nationally, but even
the authors characterize their results as “preliminary”
(Haggard and Tiede 2014, 413–14). Another study tests
the relationship sub-nationally in Liberia, but these find-
ings may not generalize to national-level reform pro-
cesses (Blair 2019). The rule of law has been described
as one of the “few but fortunate concepts that has
universal support” (Sitaraman 2012, 183), even the
“nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular
religion” (Bingham 2011, 174). Yet we know surprisingly
little about how to establish it, especially in the world’s
weakest and most war-torn states—arguably the settings
in which it is most urgently needed.
In this paper I develop and test a theory to explain the
conditions under which UN missions are likely to suc-
ceed in restoring the rule of law after conflict. My theory
departs from existing quantitative studies, most of which
conceptualize UN intervention as a mechanism for
mitigating commitment problems and information
asymmetries between armed actors, typically through
the interposition of UN troops and military observers
(Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Hultman, Kathman, and
Shannon 2014; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis 2017). I
draw instead on constructivist accounts emphasizing the
UN’s power to shape laws, institutions, and behaviors
without the use or threat of physical force, often through
the efforts of civilian rather than uniformed personnel
(Barnett and Finnemore 1999; Finnemore and Sikkink
1998; Howard 2019; Whalan 2014). These accounts have
been highly influential in qualitative peacekeeping
research, but have been all but lost in the quantitative
literature.
2
Studies of the UN’s impact on outcomes other than violence
generally focus on democracy, with mixed results (Doyle and Sam-
banis 2006; Fortna 2008b; Steinert and Grimm 2015). Democracy and
the rule of law are empirically related but conceptually distinct,
requiring different reforms targeting different actors and institutions
(Rajagopal 2008).

51
 Robert A. Blair
Drawing on constructivist insights, I conceptualize
third-party rule-of-law promotion as a form of con-
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tested norm diffusion. I argue that UN missions instill
norms that are consistent with the rule of law through a
combination of four mechanisms—education, induce-
ment, persuasion, and oversight—targeting four links
in the “justice chain:” police forces, courts, prisons, and
laws. I then identify three sources of variation in the
efficacy of the UN’s efforts, related to the personnel
deployed to each UN mission, the activities they pursue
in the field, and the timing of those activities. I test my
theory by combining existing data on the number of
uniformed personnel deployed to each UN mission in
Africa since the end of the Cold War with three original
datasets capturing the number of civilian personnel
deployed to each UN mission in Africa, the number
of personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-law-related
tasks, and the extent and nature of the UN’s actual rule-
of-law-related activities on the ground. These datasets
are gleaned from sources that have never or only rarely
been used for purposes of research. I focus on Africa
because it remains the locus of UN peacekeeping
worldwide. I focus on the period after the Cold War
because this is when the UN has been most active in
pursuing rule-of-law reform.
Consistent with my theory, I find that the rule of law
improves as the number of personnel deployed to a UN
mission increases, but that the magnitude of the correl-
ation is smaller for uniformed personnel than for civilian
personnel or personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-
law-related tasks. Among uniformed personnel, the
correlation is smaller for troops than for UN police
officers, who tend to be more intimately involved in
rule-of-law promotion; among civilian personnel, the
correlation is smaller for national than for international
staff, who tend to be better paid and enjoy higher status
within UN missions. I also find that the rule of law
improves when UN missions actually pursue rule-of-
law-related activities in the field, but that the magnitude
of the correlation is larger when they engage host states
in the process of reform, rather than bypassing them
altogether. Finally, I find that the correlation between
UN presence and the rule of law is weak or even
negative during ongoing civil wars, but strongly and
consistently positive after a peace process has begun.
These are correlations, not relationships of cause and
effect. Nonetheless, consistent with other recent studies
(Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Fortna 2008a; Gilligan and
Stedman 2003), I show that UN missions tend to focus
on the “hard” cases, expanding in size as threats to the
rule of law become more severe and pursuing rule-of-
law-related activities at moments when they are least
likely to succeed. This suggests that if anything, my
results are likely to under- rather than overestimate the
efficacy of the UN’s efforts. I use fixed effects to
eliminate time-invariant confounders and a variety of
controls to mitigate time-varying confounders. In a
placebo test I also show that the relationship between
UN intervention and the rule of law is not a byproduct
of other activities that UN missions pursue in the field.
My theoretical framework and empirical results
stand in contrast to the pessimism that pervades much
52
of the academic and policy literature on third-party
rule-of-law promotion. Clunan and Trinkunas (2010,
288), for example, criticize the international commu-
nity’s rule of law agenda as “breathtakingly mechanis-
tic.” Ledwidge (2017, 143, 162) argues that third-party
rule-of-law reform is at best ineffective and at worst
counterproductive. Some of this skepticism is a result of
a lack of research. Kavanagh and Jones (2011, 26)
suggest that given the “dearth of knowledge and
evidence,” policy makers should lower “rule-of-law
expectations in highly complex and volatile settings.”
My theory and results suggest that such skepticism may
be unwarranted, and that UN intervention can be an
effective mechanism for restoring the rule of law even
in the world’s weakest and most war-ravaged states.
THREATS TO THE RULE OF LAW IN
CONFLICT AND POSTCONFLICT SETTINGS
The UN conceptualizes the rule of law as a set of
principles according to which both citizens and the state
are held accountable to laws that are “publicly prom-
ulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudi-
cated” and which are “consistent with international
human rights norms and standards.” Establishing the
rule of law thus requires ensuring “adherence to the
principle of supremacy of law, equality before the law,
accountability to the law, fairness in the application of
the law, separation of powers, participation in decision
making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and
procedural and legal transparency” (UN Secretary-
General 2008, 1). The UN’s conceptualization of the
rule of law is grounded in the organization’s charter, as
well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
other foundational documents developed over the past
century. The UN’s definition also encompasses prom-
inent accounts of the rule of law in both legal and
political theory (Sannerholm et al. 2012). While the
UN’s rule-of-law agenda targets both citizens and
states, for simplicity I focus in this paper on states alone.
For an analysis of the UN’s approach to instilling rule-
of-law principles among citizens, see Blair (2019).
Many (though not all) threats to the rule of law can
be traced to weaknesses in one of four links in the
“justice chain:” police forces, courts, prisons, and laws
themselves (HIPPO 2015, xi). When police officers
inflict extrajudicial punishments or discriminate against
ethnic minorities, they violate the principles of equal
enforcement, equality before the law, and fairness in
the application of the law. When judges issue rulings
that systematically favor incumbent over opposition
parties, they violate the principle of separation of
powers. When prison officials detain suspects indefin-
itely, or for capricious or political reasons, they violate
the principles of avoidance of arbitrariness and proced-
ural and legal certainty. And when laws themselves are
vague, opaque, or contradictory, they violate the prin-
ciples of public promulgation and legal transparency.
Reforming host state police forces, courts, prisons,
and laws is a necessary (if not sufficient) condition for
establishing the rule of law, and the UN’s rule-of-law

agenda targets all four of these links in the justice chain.
Police, court, and prison reform involve efforts to alter
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the attitudes and behaviors of individual police officers,
judges, prosecutors, wardens, and guards and to
restructure the institutions within which those individ-
uals operate. Legal reform involves efforts to pass new
laws and amend existing ones in accordance with local
and international standards. These four categories of
reform are interdependent and mutually reinforcing,
and UN missions almost always pursue them simultan-
eously. Indeed, as we will see, the four categories of
reform are so highly correlated that it is impossible to
disentangle their effects empirically.
MECHANISMS FOR NEUTRALIZING
THREATS TO THE RULE OF LAW
Strengthening the justice chain is not merely a technical
exercise. It is also a deeply political one. Drawing on
the constructivist literature in international relations, I
argue that third-party rule-of-law promotion is best
understood as a form of contested norm diffusion.
The dynamics of norm diffusion have been studied
most directly in the context of human rights (e.g.,
Greenhill 2015), but they are equally relevant to the
rule of law. Like other norms, the rule of law emerges in
a “highly contested normative space” where it com-
petes with other norms, rules, habits, and perceptions
of interest (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 897). I argue
that four features of this normative space are especially
problematic for the rule of law. These relate to state
actors’ competencies, incentives, beliefs, and account-
ability. UN missions attempt to overcome these
challenges through a combination of education, induce-
ment, persuasion, and oversight.
In this section I describe each of these challenges and
mechanisms in turn. I offer brief empirical examples of
the mechanisms at work, as well as a more detailed
description of the way they were operationalized in the
case of Liberia. The mechanisms are not mutually
exclusive, and in some cases may be overlapping—for
example, when UN-funded infrastructure simultan-
eously incentivizes and enables civil servants to per-
form their duties more effectively. I conclude by
identifying three sources of variation in the efficacy of
the UN’s rule-of-law agenda, related to the personnel
deployed to each UN mission, the activities they pursue
on the ground, and the timing of those activities. These
three sources of theoretical variation generate five
empirical hypotheses for me to test.
Competencies and Education
Some state actors violate rule-of-law principles because
they do not understand them or lack the skills or
resources to adhere to them. In Liberia, for example,
where the legal system incorporates elements of US
common law, inadequately trained judges have often
issued apparently arbitrary rulings because they do not
understand the distinction between precedents based
on US common law and those based on US statutes that
UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law
do not apply in Liberia (Lubkemann, Isser, and Banks
III 2011, 205). This is a problem of competencies, which
UN missions attempt to solve through training, tech-
nical support, and other forms of education, broadly
defined.
Education is one of the UN’s most widely used
mechanisms for socializing state actors to align their
behavior with rule-of-law (and other) principles
(Howard 2019). In the Central African Republic
(CAR), for example, BINUCA helped the Ministry
of Justice revise the Criminal and Criminal Procedure
Codes in accordance with international law, then
hosted seminars to improve understanding of the
Codes among judges, lawyers, law school professors,
court clerks, police officers, and gendarmes. The mis-
sion also sought to educate both citizens and state
actors on their new legal rights and responsibilities by
distributing some 3,000 hard copies of the Codes
nationwide (UN Criminal Law and Judicial Advisory
Service 2013).
Incentives and Inducement
Other state actors have the skills and information
necessary to adhere to rule-of-law principles, but vio-
late them because they benefit from doing so. In the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for
example, police officers derive much of their income
from institutionalized illicit transfers, including extor-
tion of civilians. This is a problem of incentives, which
UN missions attempt to solve through inducement.
Like other international organizations, UN missions
“have the advantage of resources and leverage over
weak or developing states they seek to convert to their
normative convictions” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998,
900). They use these resources and leverage as mech-
anisms of inducement.
In particular, UN missions are conduits for funding
and other forms of material support from the inter-
national community, which are often tied to the imple-
mentation of particular reforms. In Côte d’Ivoire, for
example, UNOCI raised millions of dollars to rehabili-
tate the courts and prisons while also creating an office
within the Ministry of Justice to vet and monitor judges
(UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations 2010,
10). In Côte d’Ivoire and elsewhere, state actors who
benefit from the increased capacity that UN missions
provide may be willing to undertake other, potentially
more controversial reforms in order to secure add-
itional material support. Like education, inducement
can also enable state officials to perform their duties
more effectively (and potentially more consistently
with rule-of-law principles)—for example by paying
the salaries of civil servants or by providing police
officers with vehicles and computers.
Beliefs and Persuasion
Other state actors violate rule-of-law principles
because they do not believe those principles are accept-
able, appropriate, or legitimate. In Mali, for example,
justice sector personnel often refuse to investigate
53
 Robert A. Blair
abuses by state security forces because they believe due
process protections should not extend to suspected
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enemies of the state (Human Rights Watch 2018,
359–62). This is a problem of beliefs, which UN mis-
sions attempt to solve through persuasion (Howard
2019, 42). International organizations “are rarely able
to coerce agreement to a norm—they must persuade”
(Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 900). In South Sudan,
for example, UNMISS established liaison officers in
prisons and mobile courts in order to “change the
mindset of judges, prosecutors, and prison officials
regarding prolonged and arbitrary detention”
(UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations 2014,
6, my emphasis). These initiatives are designed to “take
what is seen as natural or appropriate and convert it
into something perceived as wrong” (Finnemore and
Sikkink 1998, 900).
Accountability and Oversight
Finally, some state actors violate rule-of-law principles
because they do not expect to be caught or punished
for doing so. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, a break-
down in civilian control over the police, army, and
gendarmerie fostered impunity as “renegade forces”
created “pockets of disobedience and insubordin-
ation” (Outtara 2008, 82, 89). This is a problem of
accountability, which UN missions attempt to solve
through monitoring, surveillance, and other forms of
oversight.
Oversight constitutes a mechanism of “accountabil-
ity politics” whereby “increased attention, followed by
changes in discursive positions” make state actors more
“vulnerable” to reform (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 26).
When combined with arm-twisting or naming and
shaming, oversight can also serve as a mechanism of
coercion that does not rise to the level of physical force
(Howard 2019, 141). In Namibia, for example,
UNTAG police officers trained their local counterparts
in “policing by consent” standards, then monitored
compliance with those standards by conducting joint
foot and vehicle patrols, codeploying in police stations,
and reporting acts of misconduct up the chain of com-
mand (Howard 2008, 75–6).
EMPIRICAL EXAMPLE OF THE UN’S RULE-
OF-LAW AGENDA IN LIBERIA
To illustrate, consider the case of UNMIL in Liberia.
UNMIL attempted to strengthen all four links in the
Liberian justice chain through a combination of all four
mechanisms described above. In its efforts to reform
the Liberian National Police (LNP), for example,
UNMIL required that officers reapply under more
stringent eligibility criteria before undergoing a com-
bined nine months of field and academy training. The
mission developed similar training regimens for magis-
trates, judges, court clerks, lawyers, and prison guards.
UNMIL combined education with inducement in the
form of material support, including rehabilitation of the
LNP Training Academy in Monrovia and the
54
reopening of 20 circuit courts, over 150 magistrate
courts, and 16 prisons (UN Office of Rule of Law and
Security Institutions 2018).
Given the physical destruction wrought by the
Liberian civil wars, infrastructure served as an import-
ant inducement for state actors to comply with
UNMIL’s agenda. UNMIL simultaneously used per-
suasion to advocate for legal and institutional reforms
related to sexual and gender-based violence, judicial
independence, jury selection, and pretrial detention,
among many other issues (Sannerholm et al. 2012, 31).
The mission also used persuasion when training secur-
ity and justice sector personnel, combining “hard”
skills like forensics and crowd control with “softer”
skills, such as respect for the rights of women and
children.
UNMIL monitored adherence to these standards
through codeployments in police stations, courts, and
prisons, and through the introduction of new over-
sight and accountability mechanisms, including a Pro-
fessional Standards Division for police officers, a
Grievance and Ethics Committee for judges, and a
Case Flow Management Committee for prison war-
dens (UN Office of Rule of Law and Security Insti-
tutions 2018). UNMIL thus pursued police, court,
prison, and legal reform simultaneously, through a
combination of education, inducement, persuasion,
and oversight. Nor was UNMIL unique in this
respect. The mission shared many similarities with
other peacekeeping operations in Africa (Howard
2008, 312), and its approach to rule-of-law promotion
is now typical of UN missions throughout the contin-
ent and worldwide.
VARIATION IN THE EFFICACY OF THE UN’S
RULE-OF-LAW AGENDA
Nearly all contemporary UN missions are mandated to
promote the rule of law by strengthening the four links
in the host state’s justice chain. But the efficacy of these
efforts varies across time and space. In this paper I
focus on three sources of variation in particular. The
first relates to capacity and composition, as reflected in
the number and type of personnel deployed to each UN
mission. The second relates to mandate implementa-
tion, as reflected in the nature and extent of actual rule-
of-law-related activities in the field. The third relates to
the timing of these activities. Each of these theoretical
sources of variation generates one or more empirical
hypotheses for me to test.
Personnel: Capacity and Composition
UN missions vary in their capacity to pursue rule-of-law
reform. While capacity has many dimensions, most
scholars proxy for it using personnel numbers
(Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon 2013; 2014;
Kathman et al. 2017). Personnel numbers matter for
rule-of-law promotion for at least two reasons. First,
efforts to reform the four links in the justice chain are
labor intensive, especially when undertaken

simultaneously. The larger the mission, the more
human resources it can devote to these tasks. Second,
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reform is more likely to succeed when state actors
believe the international community is committed to
the process. Personnel numbers are arguably the
“strongest observable signal of the UN’s resolve”
(Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen 2012, 388).
But not all UN personnel contribute equally to the
UN’s rule-of-law agenda. Most quantitative peace-
keeping studies focus exclusively on uniformed person-
nel (Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon 2013; 2014;
Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen 2012). Uniformed per-
sonnel can have important indirect effects on the rule of
law by maintaining stability, neutralizing spoilers, and
creating the conditions under which more direct
attempts at reform can occur. But rule-of-law principles
are unlikely to become entrenched through the pres-
ence of uniformed personnel alone. Arguably more
important are the UN’s civilian personnel, who are
almost solely responsible for court, prison, and legal
reform, and who share responsibility for police reform
with UN police officers.
UN civilian and police contingents perform “critical
functions” that cannot be easily outsourced to their
military counterparts, including “developing national
rule of law plans and strategies, coordinating national
and international stakeholders, advising on justice mat-
ters, and providing technical expertise” (Sannerholm
et al. 2012, 8). While UN troops and military observers
may be more effective at separating belligerents, UN
civilian and police personnel are likely to be more
effective at educating, inducing, persuading, and over-
seeing host state police forces, courts, prisons, and
legislatures. As the UN itself has acknowledged, these
initiatives require significant “civilian capacity”
(HIPPO 2015, 41).
Rule-of-law reform is also more likely to be effect-
ive when UN missions assign civilian and police
personnel specifically to rule-of-law-related tasks.
Rule-of-law reform demands “dedicated capacities”
(UN Secretary-General 2006, 1–2, 8) and “special-
ized expertise” (HIPPO 2015, 41). Assigning person-
nel specifically to rule-of-law-related tasks is
especially important in missions with complex, multi-
dimensional mandates, where potentially competing
goals can undermine the mission’s ability to pursue
any of them effectively (Blair, di Salvatore, and Smidt
2020). By assigning personnel specifically to rule-of-
law-related tasks, missions help ensure that rule-of-
law promotion remains a priority even as mandated
tasks proliferate. My first two hypotheses follow from
these observations:
Hypothesis 1 (capacity): The rule of law improves
as the number of personnel deployed to a UN mission
increases. But:
Hypothesis 2 (composition): The magnitude of the
relationship between UN personnel and the rule of law
is smaller for uniformed personnel than for (a) civilian
personnel or (b) personnel assigned specifically to rule-
of-law-related tasks.
UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law
Activities: Mandate Implementation and
Engagement with Host States
Even UN missions with similar mandates may imple-
ment those mandates in different ways (Kathman et al.
2017), and even missions with similar capacities and
compositions may vary in the activities they pursue in
the field (Smidt 2016). UN missions exercise discretion
over these tactical and operational decisions, allowing
them to execute their mandates in unintended and
unanticipated ways (Barnett and Finnemore 1999,
699). As Blair, di Salvatore, and Smidt (2020) show,
the extent to which a given UN mission even attempts
to fulfill the tasks assigned to it in its mandate can
fluctuate dramatically from one year to the next. These
fluctuations constitute an important but understudied
source of peacekeeping success or failure (Lipson
2010). I argue that establishing the rule of law requires
reforming the four links in the justice chain. Whether
peacekeepers succeed in instituting these reforms
depends on whether they actually attempt to do so.3
Even peacekeeping operations that pursue the same
combination of police, court, prison, and legal reform
may do so in different ways. I argue that UN missions
are most successful when they pursue rule-of-law
reform through a combination of education, induce-
ment, persuasion, and oversight. Importantly, all of
these mechanisms involve engaging host states in the
reform process. But as Dorussen and Gizelis (2013, 6)
note, the nature of peacekeepers’ “specific involve-
ment” with host states “varies widely from technical
assistance and monitoring to direct line authority or
even direct implementation”—that is, performing man-
dated tasks without host state involvement. In CAR,
for example, MINUSCA was authorized to use
“Urgent Temporary Measures” to maintain law and
order in areas where the police and courts were absent
or dysfunctional. Other missions have similarly
bypassed host states in the process of reform.
But this approach is risky, for at least five reasons.
First, UN missions that bypass host states may weaken
the capacity of the very same institutions they are
ostensibly mandated to strengthen (Lake 2010). Sec-
ond, bypassing host states may provoke backlash from
state actors, who may “contest peacekeeping actions
that replace rather than improve their regulatory cap-
acity” (Dorussen and Gizelis 2013, 6). Third and
related, bypassing may create incentives for state actors
to erect “parallel structures of government” that later
pose “serious obstacles” to the rule of law (Beauvais
2001, 1117).
Fourth, UN missions that bypass host states may
forgo opportunities to influence the beliefs and behav-
iors of government officials and the structure of gov-
ernment institutions. This may prolong the reform
3
Documenting rule-of-law-related activities may be more inform-
ative than counting personnel numbers, as in some cases UN missions
may have ample budgets for personnel but more limited budgets for
implementation, and staff may spend much of their time performing
tasks that do not contribute to the rule of law in a direct way (e.g.,
filing reports or fulfilling other bureaucratic functions).
55
 Robert A. Blair
process, thus allowing state dysfunction and predation
to persist. Fifth, bypassing host states may increase the
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risk that reforms prove inappropriate or inadequate for
the contexts in which they are implemented. For all of
these reasons, the UN itself has advocated for “high-
level political engagement in support of national
[reform] efforts” (HIPPO 2015, x) and has urged peace-
keepers to “identify, support, and empower domestic
reform constituencies” rather than circumvent them
(UN Secretary-General 2004, 8). My third and fourth
hypotheses therefore predict the following:
Hypothesis 3 (mandate implementation): The rule
of law improves when a UN mission actually pursues
rule-of-law-related activities in the field—in particular
police, court, prison, and legal reform. But:
Hypothesis 4 (engagement with host states): The
magnitude of the relationship between UN activities
and the rule of law is larger when a mission engages the
host state in the process of reform—in particular
through education, inducement, persuasion, and over-
sight—rather than bypassing it altogether.
Timing
Finally, UN missions vary in the timing of their deploy-
ments and the activities they pursue. In particular, peace-
keepers are increasingly expected to advance the UN’s
rule-of-law agenda even in settings where civil war is
ongoing. Indeed, as we will see, UN missions are actually
more likely to pursue rule-of-law reform during periods
of conflict than periods of peace. But reform is also less
likely to succeed amidst ongoing civil war. During periods
of conflict, UN missions risk being perceived not as
impartial forces but as warring parties, thus exposing
themselves to threats of violence (Karlsrud 2015). Rule-
of-law reform is less likely to be effective when UN
personnel are preoccupied with protecting themselves,
and civilians, from imminent physical harm.
Moreover, as critics both inside and outside the UN
system have warned, UN missions are often “poorly
suited to these operating environments,” making their
mandates “less achievable” (HIPPO 2015, x, 47). Not
coincidentally, previous studies have found that peace-
keeping operations are less successful during periods of
conflict than periods of peace (Doyle and Sambanis
2006; Gilligan and Sergenti 2008). Challenges that UN
missions struggle to overcome in peacetime become
even more intractable in the “fog of war,” including
culture clashes, turf battles, and coordination problems
both between and within civilian and uniformed con-
tingents (Blair, di Salvatore, and Smidt 2020), which
comprise personnel from diverse settings, with dispar-
ate levels of training and expertise. This is especially
problematic for the UN’s rule-of-law agenda, which
requires carefully coordinating efforts to reform the
four links in the justice chain simultaneously.
Perhaps most important, state actors are unlikely to
have the will or capacity to participate in the reform
process if they are busy fighting rebel groups. Indeed,
state actors may reject some reforms out of hand if they
56
are perceived as impediments to counterinsurgency
(Blair, di Salvatore, and Smidt 2020)—restrictions on
pretrial detention, for example, or on the use of force by
police officers. Peace processes create “windows of
opportunity” for reform (Call 2007, 11), and the UN
itself has identified the first few years after civil war
termination as the most “opportune moment to work for
change” (Carlson 2006, 2). This window of opportunity
is likely to be narrower when there is no peace to keep,
and even reforms that begin during conflict are only
likely to become institutionalized after the fighting stops.
My fifth hypothesis follows from these propositions:
Hypothesis 5 (timing): The magnitude of the rela-
tionship between the rule of law and both (a) personnel
and (b) activities is larger during periods of peace than
periods of civil war.
DATA
Operationalizing UN Personnel and Activities
My theory predicts that the efficacy of UN rule-of-law
promotion should vary as a function of UN personnel,
activities, and timing. I operationalize UN personnel
and activities using four sources of data. First, I use
Providing for Peacekeeping (P4P) data on the number
of uniformed personnel deployed to each UN mission
in Africa since 1990.4 While P4P distinguishes between
UN troops, police officers, and military observers,
different categories of uniformed personnel tend to
be highly correlated with one another, and I combine
them into a single count. I discuss the issue of multi-
collinearity in further detail in Appendix G, and in
Appendix J I disaggregate military and police person-
nel, as the latter tend to be more intimately involved in
rule-of-law reform than the former. Figure A.1 plots
the distribution of uniformed personnel across Africa.
Often it is the UN’s civilian components that are most
directly responsible for advancing the UN’s rule-of-law
agenda. I use annual budget performance reports pre-
pared by the UN’s Advisory Committee on Adminis-
trative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) to build
what is, to my knowledge, the first dataset of civilian
contributions to UN peacekeeping operations. ACABQ
reports distinguish four categories of civilian personnel:
international staff, national staff, government-provided
personnel (GPPs), and UN Volunteers (UNVs). To
avoid multicollinearity, I again collapse these categories
into a single count. In Appendix K, I disaggregate
international and national civilian staff, as the former
tend to be better paid and enjoy higher status within UN
missions than the latter. Figure A.2 plots the distribution
of civilian personnel across the nine African countries
for which budget performance reports are available.5
4
See http://www.providingforpeacekeeping.org/.
5
While budget performance reports are available for some other
countries as well, their format varies widely, making it difficult to
draw valid comparisons between missions, or across years within the
same mission.

Even within the civilian components of UN missions,
different personnel play different roles. I use the UN
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Secretary-General’s annual budget requests to code the
number of UN personnel assigned specifically to rule-
of-law-related tasks. Budget requests are unique in
specifying the number of personnel assigned to each
dimension of a mission’s mandate, as the example in
Figure A.3 illustrates. But budget requests are also
limited in two ways. First, in most cases budget requests
only begin drawing distinctions between mandate com-
ponents in 2003. Second, budget requests only capture
the number of personnel approved by the UN General
Assembly. As I discuss in Appendix C, however, the
correlation between approved and actual personnel
numbers is generally very close to 1.00, suggesting that
the former is a useful proxy for the latter. I discuss my
coding rules and missing data issues in detail in Appen-
dix C. To my knowledge, this is the first dataset to
disaggregate UN personnel by mandate component.
Figure A.4 plots the distribution of UN personnel
assigned specifically to rule-of-law-related tasks across
the nine countries for which budget requests are
available.
Finally, in collaboration with Hannah Smidt, I use
UN Secretary-General progress reports to code the
extent to which UN missions actually pursue rule-of-
law-related activities on the ground. Progress reports
are typically published four to seven times per year. We
use them to code 37 different activities from 1989 to
2016, ranging from demining to voter education to
humanitarian relief, and encompassing virtually the
entire universe of activities that UN missions imple-
mented during these years. Following my theoretical
framework, I focus on activities targeting the four links
in the justice chain—police forces, courts, prisons, and
laws—through four mechanisms of engagement with
host states: education, inducement, persuasion, and
oversight. I also code implementation of rule-of-law
reform without host state involvement. In Appendix D,
I discuss coding rules, intercoder reliability, and limita-
tions—in particular, the possibility that progress
reports may be selective and may emphasize activities
that the UN believes best reflect its achievements. Our
Peacekeeping Activities Dataset (PACT) extends earl-
ier efforts by Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen (2011)
and Smidt (2016). PACT is more comprehensive than
its predecessors, substantively, geographically, and
temporally. I compare PACT to these other datasets
in Appendix D.
Table A.1 summarizes the prevalence of police,
court, prison, and legal reform in the PACT dataset.
Table A.1 also summarizes the prevalence of rule-of-
law-related education, inducement, persuasion, and
oversight. The UN typically pursues all four categories
of reform simultaneously, using a combination of all
four mechanisms of engagement, and the pairwise
correlations between rule-of-law-related activities are
very high—always between 0.68 and 0.91. These cor-
relations are important in themselves, as they suggest
the UN has succeeded in pursuing a relatively “bal-
anced and holistic” approach to rule-of-law reform
(Carlson 2006, 2). Simultaneity is, however,
UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law
disadvantageous for my analysis, as multicollinearity
prevents me from estimating the effects of each activity
conditional on the others.
Operationalizing the Rule of Law
To operationalize the rule of law, I rely primarily on
two widely used indices from the World Bank and
Freedom House. Freedom House’s rule-of-law index
is based on reports from country and subject matter
experts. The World Bank’s index aggregates data
from 32 public, private, and nonprofit sources, includ-
ing Freedom House. The World Bank’s index is avail-
able for most countries in the world beginning in 1996.
The Freedom House index is available for most coun-
tries beginning in 2003. The World Bank’s index is
standardized to have 0 mean and unit standard devi-
ation globally. To facilitate comparison to other
regions, I do not restandardize to the countries in
my sample. Freedom House’s index is scaled from
0 to 16. Table A.2 reports descriptive statistics, and
Figures A.5 and A.6 plot trends in the two indices
over time.
The World Bank defines the rule of law as “the
extent to which agents have confidence in and abide
by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of
contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and
the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and
violence.”6 This definition is both broader and nar-
rower than the UN’s, encompassing some secondary
dimensions of the rule of law (the incidence of crime,
for example) while ignoring some primary ones (for
example, the extent to which laws are publicly promul-
gated). Nonetheless, the World Bank’s definition
echoes the UN’s and captures several key components
of the rule of law, including the quality of state security
and justice provision and the extent to which govern-
ment officials adhere to legal and constitutional con-
straints. Among the variables in the World Bank’s
index are 16 proxies for the fairness, efficacy, and
reputation of the courts; five indicators for the reliabil-
ity of the police; and four measures of the independ-
ence of the judiciary. A list of sources included in the
index is in Appendix A.
Freedom House’s definition of the rule of law com-
prises four parts: independence of the judiciary, respect
for due process, protection from the “illegitimate use of
physical force and freedom from war and
insurgencies,” and equality of access to justice.7 While
also somewhat broader than the UN’s, Freedom
House’s definition incorporates country experts’
responses to a battery of questions that correspond
closely to the UN’s understanding of the rule of law.
A list of these questions is in Appendix B. Importantly,
while Freedom House includes “freedom from war and
insurgencies” as one component of the rule of law,
6
See http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/#doc.
7
See https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-
2018.
57
 Robert A. Blair
scores on the index vary widely even during periods of
conflict.8
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The rule of law is a multidimensional concept, and
the World Bank and Freedom House indices are broad
enough to capture multiple dimensions simultaneously.
As a robustness check, Appendices L through N repli-
cate my analysis using four narrower indices designed
to capture more specific rule-of-law principles. One key
principle is the extent to which laws constrain the
powers of the executive. Appendix L operationalizes
this principle using the Polity IV “executive con-
straints” index, which captures “the extent of institu-
tionalized constraints on the decision-making powers
of chief executives.”9 Appendix M operationalizes this
same principle using the Varieties of Democracy
(V-Dem) “judicial constraints on the executive” index,
which captures the extent to which the executive
respects the constitution and complies with the courts.
A second crucial principle is the extent to which laws
are enforced equally and transparently. Appendix M
uses V-Dem’s “equality before the law and individual
liberty” index to operationalize this principle. A third
important principle is the extent to which the judiciary is
independent from the other branches of government,
especially the executive. Appendix N operationalizes
this principle using the Linzer and Staton (2015) index
of judicial independence. (The V-Dem judicial con-
straints index partially captures this principle as well.)
Results using these four indices are similar to those
reported below. Appendix O provides a correlation
matrix for the six indices. Not surprisingly, they are all
positively correlated, but the correlations are not so high
as to suggest they are merely substitutes for one another.
ESTIMATION AND IDENTIFICATION
Changes in UN personnel and activities may be correl-
ated with changing conditions on the ground, which, in
turn, may be correlated with the rule of law. It is not clear
whether we should expect selection effects of this sort to
bias my estimates towards or away from the null. While
the UN has failed to intervene in some of the world’s
most intractable civil wars—Syria, for example—there is
ample quantitative evidence that, in general, peace-
keepers are more likely to deploy to the “hardest” cases,
attenuating the correlation between UN presence and
peace (Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Fortna 2008a; Gilligan
and Stedman 2003). By the same logic, if the number of
personnel deployed to a UN mission increases during
the hardest moments for rule-of-law reform, then we
should expect the relationship between UN personnel
and the rule of law to be biased towards the null.
Similarly, if UN missions are more likely to pursue
rule-of-law-related activities in the hardest cases, then
8
For example, South Sudan’s score fell from 3 in 2012 to 1 in 2016.
Conflict was ongoing throughout this period. Conversely, Burundi’s
score rose from 2 in 2003 to 4 in 2006, while conflict was ongoing. In
other countries—Mali and Chad, for example—scores have fluctu-
ated more widely, even during civil war.
9
See https://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2016.pdf.
58
we should expect the relationship between UN activities
and the rule of law to be biased towards the null as well.
I explore the extent to which UN missions favor the
hard cases for rule-of-law reform in two ways. First,
following my theoretical framework, rule-of-law
reform should be less likely to succeed during periods
of conflict than periods of peace. Yet in my sample, I
find that UN missions are more rather than less likely to
pursue rule-of-law-related activities during periods of
conflict. The UN missions in my sample pursue rule-of-
law-related activities in 15% of all country-years of
conflict, compared with just 9% of all country-years
of peace. This discrepancy holds across three of the four
categories of rule-of-law reform (police, court, and
prison reform, but not legal reform) and across all four
mechanisms of engagement with host states (education,
inducement, persuasion, and oversight). In other
words, peacekeepers appear to be more likely to pur-
sue rule-of-law-related activities at moments when
those activities are less likely to succeed. This should
attenuate the relationship between rule-of-law-related
activities and the rule of law.
UN missions tend to expand in size during periods of
conflict as well. The number of uniformed personnel in
my sample is 28% larger during country-months of
conflict (2,806 on average) than country-months of
peace (2,197). Nor is this discrepancy specific to uni-
formed personnel: the number of civilian personnel is
more than twice as large during country-months of
conflict (799 on average) than country-months of peace
(307). This should attenuate the relationship between
UN personnel and the rule of law. While the number of
personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-law-related
tasks tends to be larger during periods of peace than
periods of conflict, the discrepancy is small, with an
average of 639 personnel assigned specifically to rule-
of-law-related tasks during country-months of conflict,
compared with 732 during country-months of peace.
Second, and again following my theoretical frame-
work, rule-of-law reform should be less likely to suc-
ceed when threats to the rule of law are more severe.
Yet as I show in Appendix I, the UN missions in my
sample are equally or more likely to expand in size
when threats to the rule of law are more severe and
equally or more likely to pursue rule-of-law-related
activities.10 Again, if anything, this should bias my
results towards the null.11 This should also help miti-
gate concerns about trending—that is, the possibility
that any positive correlation I observe between UN
10
I proxy for the severity of threats to the rule of law using lagged
values of the World Bank and Freedom House indices. As scores on
these indices decline, threats to the rule of law become more severe.
11
Alternatively, this could bias my results away from the null if there
are more opportunities for reform, and less risk of ceiling effects,
when threats to the rule of law are more severe. This strikes me as
unlikely, and a similar line of reasoning is rarely applied to other
contexts or outcomes. For example, I am unaware of any scholar who
argues that statebuilding in Somalia is made easier by the fact that the
Somali state has always been weak, or that democracy promotion in
Eritrea is made easier by the fact that Eritrea has always been
autocratic. If anything, scholars tend to expect the opposite.

presence and the rule of law is an artifact of improve-
ments in the rule of law that occur endogenously as
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peace consolidates and UN missions expand or deteri-
oration that occurs endogenously as missions contract.
Trending of this sort does not appear to be a cause for
concern, at least in these countries and years.
I address three additional threats to causal inference
in the appendix. First, it is possible that the effects of
UN personnel and activities may spill over from one
country to another, biasing my results. My use of
country fixed effects should mitigate this risk, as I
discuss in Appendix H. Second, even if UN missions
are more likely to pursue rule-of-law-related activities
when threats to the rule of law are more severe, those
activities may require bypassing rather than engaging
the host state—for example, if the local police force is
implicated in ongoing human rights violations. In this
case, the correlation between bypassing and the rule of
law would be biased towards the null, while the correl-
ation between engagement and the rule of law would be
biased away from it. In Appendix I, I show that this is
unlikely, as UN missions in my sample are actually
more likely to engage host states when threats to the
rule of law are more severe.
Third and somewhat less plausibly, it is possible that
any positive association I observe between UN pres-
ence and the rule of law is not a result of police, court,
prison, or legal reform but is rather a byproduct of
other activities that UN missions pursue at the same
time—for example, promotion of public health or eco-
nomic growth. Empirically assessing this possibility is a
challenge, as UN missions typically pursue multiple
political, social, and economic reforms simultaneously.
Nonetheless, as a placebo test, in Appendix P I use
PACT to identify a set of activities that are not likely to
affect the rule of law and only weakly correlated with
activities that are. I focus in particular on the imposition
and enforcement of UN arms embargoes. I find that the
correlation between arms embargo-related activities
and the rule of law is generally null or negative. This
is consistent with the (rather intuitive) proposition that
rule-of-law-related activities are more likely than other
types of activities to promote the rule of law.
I attempt to minimize any remaining bias by using
country fixed effects to eliminate time-invariant con-
founders and by controlling for some of the most prob-
lematic time-varying confounders: population, GDP per
capita, foreign aid, infant mortality, quality of democ-
racy, and an indicator for any violence against the
regime.12 Importantly, my use of country fixed effects
implies that I am estimating off of variation that arises
within rather than between countries. This is advanta-
geous for causal inference but potentially disadvanta-
geous for the scope of my analysis, as I cannot compare
countries that hosted peacekeeping operations with
12
Data on population, GDP, and foreign aid are from the World
Bank’s Worldwide Development Indicators. Data on infant mortality
are from the US Census Bureau’s International Data Base. Data on the
quality of democracy are from the Polity IV project. Data on violence
against the regime are from the Political Instability Task Force.
UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law
those that did not. (There is no variation in any of my
independent variables in countries that did not host at
least one peacekeeping operation.) As a robustness
check, in Appendix S I report results from a random
effects estimator that exploits variation both within and
across countries, and which therefore incorporates coun-
tries that did not host peacekeeping operations. My
results are substantively similar to those reported here.
Ideally I could test the relationship between UN
presence and the rule of law both while UN missions
are on the ground and after they withdraw. Unfortu-
nately, the length of most UN mandates precludes this
option. Instead I run my analyses both during civil war
and one, two, and three years after civil war termin-
ation, using the Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s
(UCDP) armed conflict dataset to code civil war onset
and termination. In some countries, these specifications
do in fact encompass the period after UN withdrawal.
For example, the Burundian civil war ended in 2005,
one year after the UN deployed and one year before it
withdrew. Similarly, the most recent Chadian civil war
ended in 2010, the same year the UN drew down. In
these cases my analysis captures the entire trajectory
from deployment to implementation to withdrawal. For
an approach similar to mine, see Fortna (2008b).
Finally, ideally I could compare UN rule-of-law-
related activities with similar activities undertaken by
other domestic and international organizations—the
World Bank and the Carter Center, for example. While
PACT contains data on these activities, UN Secretary-
General progress reports usually focus on activities
implemented in collaboration with UN missions. As a
result, the correlation between UN and non-UN rule-
of-law promotion in PACT is close to 1.00. This is not as
limiting as it may seem, as many international organ-
izations coordinate with the UN when designing and
implementing rule-of-law programs. Many of these
programs appear in the UN’s progress reports, and
those that do not likely fall under the purview of
relatively small domestic NGOs. Still, some ambiguity
remains, and my analysis is best interpreted as captur-
ing UN rule-of-law reform with assistance from other
international organizations.
RESULTS
Figures 1 and 2 estimate the relationship between UN
personnel and activities and the rule of law. I present
my results graphically for ease of interpretation. My
unit of analysis is the country-year, and in all specifica-
tions I use as many countries and as many years as I
have data for both my independent and dependent
variables. I operationalize my dependent variable using
the World Bank and Freedom House indices in
Figures 1 and 2, respectively. I operationalize UN
presence as the number of uniformed personnel
deployed to each UN mission in Africa since the end
of the Cold War (top left panel), the number of civilian
personnel deployed to each UN mission in Africa (top
right panel), the number of personnel assigned specif-
ically to rule-of-law-related tasks (bottom left panel),
59
 Robert A. Blair

FIGURE 1. Correlation between World Bank Rule-of-Law Index and UN Personnel and Activities
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Civil war
1+ year of peace
2+ years of peace
3+ years of peace

–.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 –.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Coefficient on # of uniformed personnel Coefficient on # of civilian personnel

–.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 –.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Coefficient on # of personnel assigned to rule-of-law-related tasks Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related activities

Note: Each panel reports coefficients and 95% confidence intervals from four separate OLS regressions with controls and country fixed
effects. Sample is restricted to periods during civil war (denoted by squares) and at least one, two, or three years after civil war (denoted by
triangles, circles, and diamonds, respectively). UN activities are coded as country-year dummies indicating whether the activity was
mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.

and a dummy for any actual rule-of-law-related activ-
ities in the field (bottom right panel).
Because the UN records personnel numbers by fiscal
rather than calendar year, and because UN Secretary-
General progress reports (and the activities described
therein) sometimes span two years, I lag my independ-
ent variables by two periods to avoid reverse causality,
and I lag my controls by three periods to avoid post-
treatment bias. I code personnel numbers in units of
1,000. All specifications include country fixed effects
and controls for population, GDP, foreign aid, infant
mortality, quality of democracy, and violence against
the regime. I test the relationship between UN pres-
ence and the rule of law in countries with ongoing civil
wars (denoted by squares) and in countries that have
experienced at least one, two, or three years of peace
(denoted by triangles, circles, and diamonds, respect-
ively), as defined by UCDP.13 The figures present
13
UCDP defines armed conflict as “a contested incompatibility that
concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force
between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a
state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a calendar year.”
See https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/ucdpprio/ucdp-prio-acd-191.pdf.
marginal effects with all controls held at their means.
The scale of the x-axes is standardized for ease of
comparison.
My theory predicts that the rule of law should
improve as the number of personnel deployed to a
UN mission increases (Hypothesis 1), but that the
magnitude of this relationship should be smaller for
uniformed personnel than for civilian personnel or
personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-law-related
tasks (Hypothesis 2). My theory also predicts that the
rule of law should improve when a UN mission pursues
rule-of-law-related activities in the field (Hypothesis 3),
but that the magnitude of this relationship should be
larger when the mission engages the host state in the
process of reform (Hypothesis 4). Finally, my theory
predicts that the magnitude of the relationship between
UN presence and the rule of law should be larger
during periods of peace than periods of conflict
(Hypothesis 5).
My results in Figure 1 are consistent with these
predictions. The correlation between uniformed per-
sonnel and the rule of law is positive and statistically
significant during periods of peace (Hypothesis 1), but
the magnitude of the correlation is between six and

60
 UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law

FIGURE 2. Correlation between Freedom House Rule-of-Law Index and UN Personnel and Activities
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Civil war
1+ year of peace
2+ years of peace
3+ years of peace

–1 0 1 2 3 –1 0 1 2 3
Coefficient on # of uniformed personnel Coefficient on # of civilian personnel

–1 0 1 2 3 –1 0 1 2 3
Coefficient on # of personnel assigned to rule-of-law-related tasks Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related activities

Note: Each panel reports coefficients and 95% confidence intervals from four separate OLS regressions with controls and country fixed
effects. Sample is restricted to periods during civil war (denoted by squares) and at least one, two, or three years after civil war (denoted by
triangles, circles, and diamonds, respectively). UN activities are coded as country-year dummies indicating whether the activity was
mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.

14 times larger for civilian personnel and between
16 and 20 times larger for personnel assigned specific-
ally to rule-of-law-related tasks (Hypothesis 2).
Because personnel numbers are so highly correlated,
I cannot test the relationship between the rule of law
and particular categories of personnel conditional on
the others. Nonetheless, the marginal return on uni-
formed personnel appears to be much smaller than the
marginal return on civilian personnel or personnel
assigned specifically to rule-of-law-related tasks.14
The correlation between the rule of law and rule-
of-law-related activities is positive and statistically
significant during periods of peace as well
(Hypothesis 3). These correlations all vary in size
depending on how long the peace process has been
ongoing, but the differences between them are not
statistically significant at conventional levels. The
correlation between UN presence and the rule of
law is, however, consistently smaller during periods
14
The coefficients on uniformed personnel are, however, much more
precisely estimated. This may be because uniformed personnel have
much higher variance than civilian personnel or personnel assigned
specifically to rule-of-law-related tasks.
of conflict than periods of peace (Hypothesis 5).
(I test Hypothesis 4 below.) In Appendix J, I show
that the magnitude of the correlation between uni-
formed personnel and the rule of law is smaller for
UN troops than for UN police officers, as the latter
tend to be more intimately involved in rule-of-law
reform. In Appendix K, I also show that the magni-
tude of the correlation between civilian personnel
and the rule of law is smaller for national personnel
than for international personnel, as the latter tend to
be better paid and enjoy higher status than the
former.
To put these correlations in perspective, the average
postconflict African country scores a -0.85 on the World
Bank index after one year of peace. This falls in the 22nd
percentile worldwide and the 60th percentile of all
country-years in my sample. My models predict that this
score should improve by roughly 0.02 points with 1,000
additional uniformed personnel, 0.09 points with 1,000
additional civilian personnel, 0.24 points with 1,000 add-
itional personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-law-
related tasks, and 0.20 points with any actual rule-of-
law-related activities on the ground. These correlations
are both substantively and statistically significant. For
example, an increase of 0.24 points on the World Bank

61
 Robert A. Blair

TABLE 1. Correlation between World Bank Rule-of-Law Index and UN Activities Disaggregated by
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Engagement with Host State

Rule of law (World Bank)

Any rule-of-law-related engagement with host state –0.02 0.25 0.22 0.29
[0.06] [0.06]*** [0.07]*** [0.07]***
Any rule-of-law-related bypassing of host state –0.00 –0.10 –0.13 –0.24
[0.07] [0.06]* [0.06]** [0.07]***

Observations 191 314 271 240

Controls Y Y Y Y
Country FE Y Y Y Y
Years of peace 0 ≥1 ≥2 ≥3

Note: Table reports results from OLS regressions with controls and country fixed effects. UN activities are coded as country-year dummies
indicating whether the activity was mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.
∗∗∗
p < 0:01, ∗∗ p < 0:05, ∗ p < 0:10.

TABLE 2. Correlation between Freedom House Rule-of-Law Index and UN Activities Disaggregated
by Engagement with Host State

Rule of law (Freedom House)

Any rule-of-law-related engagement with host state 0.33 2.29 1.92 1.98
[0.37] [0.46]*** [0.60]*** [0.71]***
Any rule-of-law-related bypassing of host state –0.46 –0.44 –0.52 –0.96
[0.36] [0.36] [0.36] [0.40]**

Observations 137 260 228 202

Controls Y Y Y Y
Country FE Y Y Y Y
Years of peace 0 ≥1 ≥2 ≥3

Note: Table reports results from OLS regressions with controls and country fixed effects. UN activities are coded as country-year dummies
indicating whether the activity was mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.
∗∗∗
p < 0:01, ∗∗ p < 0:05, ∗ p < 0:10.

index would place the average postconflict African coun-
try in the 32nd percentile worldwide and the 74th per-
centile in my sample. This improvement is roughly four-
fifths the size of the improvement we would expect to
observe in a country that transitions from civil war to at
least one year of peace and roughly seven times the size
of the improvement we would expect to observe from
each additional year of peace thereafter. While adding
1,000 personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-law-
related tasks may be unrealistic for many UN missions,
even smaller additions predict substantively significant
improvements in the rule of law.
My results are similar when I use the Freedom House
index to operationalize the rule of law. The average
score on the Freedom House index is about 5.68 after at
least one year of peace. My model predicts that this
score should improve by 0.20 points with 1,000 add-
itional uniformed personnel, by 0.99 points with 1,000
additional civilian personnel, by 1.63 points with 1,000
additional personnel assigned specifically to rule-of-
law-related tasks, and by 2.02 points with any actual
rule-of-law-related activities in the field. This latter
correlation is more than seven times the magnitude of
the improvement we would expect to observe from
each additional year of peace. As I show in Appendix
L through N, my results are similar when I use the
Polity, V-Dem, or Linzer and Staton (2015) indices to
operationalize the rule of law instead.
Another way to understand these results is to com-
pare scores on the World Bank and Freedom House
indices at the time the UN deployed with those at the
time it withdrew (or, for UN missions that were ongoing
at the end of my panel, to scores in 2016). While these
comparisons are not causally identified, they are none-
theless illuminating. Consider, for example, the case of
Côte d’Ivoire. When UNOCI deployed in 2004, Côte
d’Ivoire scored a -1.37 on the World Bank index and a
3 on the Freedom House index. Only nine other coun-
tries scored a 3 or below on the Freedom House index
in 2004, and only 16 other countries scored a -1.37 or
below on the World Bank index. By 2016, however,
Côte d’Ivoire’s scores had improved to -0.67 on the

62
 UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law

FIGURE 3. Correlation between World Bank Rule-of-Law Index and UN Activities Disaggregated by
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Target

Civil war
1+ year of peace
2+ years of peace
3+ years of peace

–.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 –.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Coefficient on any police reform Coefficient on any court reform

–.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 –.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Coefficient on any prison reform Coefficient on any legal reform

Note: Each panel reports coefficients and 95% confidence intervals from four separate OLS regressions with controls and country fixed
effects. Sample is restricted to periods during civil war (denoted by squares) and at least one, two, or three years after civil war (denoted by
triangles, circles, and diamonds, respectively). UN activities are coded as country-year dummies indicating whether the activity was
mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.

World Bank index and 6 on the Freedom House index.
Only five other countries witnessed larger improve-
ments on the World Bank index over this 12-year
period: Haiti, Myanmar, French Guiana, Rwanda,
and Georgia. Only one other country—Togo—wit-
nessed an equally large improvement on the Freedom
House index, and only one, Liberia, witnessed a larger
improvement.
Or consider the case of Liberia. In 2003, the year the
civil war ended and UNMIL’s mandate began, Liberia
scored a -1.65 on the World Bank index and a 0 on the
Freedom House index. The only other countries to score
below a -1.65 on the World Bank index that year were
DRC, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Haiti, and Somalia; the
only other countries to score a 0 on the Freedom House
index were DRC, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and
Sudan. By 2016, however, Liberia’s World Bank score
had improved to a -0.97, and its Freedom House score
had improved to a 7. Only seven countries experienced a
more dramatic improvement on the World Bank index
over these years: Myanmar, Serbia, Haiti, Cuba,
Rwanda, Georgia, and, not coincidentally, Côte
d’Ivoire. No other country experienced a similarly dra-
matic improvement on the Freedom House index.
Again, these trends should not be interpreted caus-
ally, and they are not uniform across settings. In gen-
eral, however, the rule of law improved in African
countries that hosted a UN mission over these years,
sometimes dramatically so. Trends in African countries
that experienced a civil war but did not host a UN
mission were more mixed. In Niger, for example,
UCDP records episodes of civil war from 2007 to
2008 and 2015 to 2016, the end of my panel.15 Niger
scored a -0.60 on the World Bank index in 2007, and a
9 on the Freedom House index. Niger’s score on the
Freedom House index declined monotonically there-
after, to 8 in 2008, 6 in 2009, and 5 in 2010. Niger’s score
on the World Bank index was more idiosyncratic. In
Nigeria, UCDP records episodes of civil war in 2004
and 2009 and again from 2011 to 2016. Nigeria’s score
on the Freedom House index rose from 4 in 2004 to 5 in
2007 before falling back to 4 in 2012. On the World
Bank index, Nigeria’s score increased from 2004 to
15
UCDP also records civil wars in Niger from 1991–1992, 1994–1995,
and in 1997. Unfortunately neither the World Bank nor the Freedom
House index is available for these years.

63
 Robert A. Blair

FIGURE 4. Correlation between Freedom House Rule-of-Law Index and UN Activities Disaggregated
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by Target

Civil war
1+ year of peace
2+ years of peace
3+ years of peace

–1 0 1 2 3 –1 0 1 2 3
Coefficient on any police reform Coefficient on any court reform

–1 0 1 2 3 –1 0 1 2 3
Coefficient on any prison reform Coefficient on any legal reform

Note: Each panel reports coefficients and 95% confidence intervals from four separate OLS regressions with controls and country fixed
effects. Sample is restricted to periods during civil war (denoted by squares) and at least one, two, or three years after civil war (denoted by
triangles, circles, and diamonds, respectively). UN activities are coded as country-year dummies indicating whether the activity was
mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.

2008, decreased from 2008 to 2011, increased again
from 2011 to 2015, and decreased again in 2016.
Figures A.5 and A.6 in the appendix plot these trends
over time.
Finally, my theory predicts that the magnitude of the
relationship between the rule of law and UN activities
should be larger when UN missions engage host states
in the process of reform rather than bypassing them
altogether (Hypothesis 4). Tables 1 and 2 test this
prediction by distinguishing mechanisms that require
engagement with the host state—education, induce-
ment, persuasion, and oversight—from those that do
not, using the coding rules discussed in Appendix
D. Since engagement and bypassing are not highly
correlated in my sample, I can include them both in
the same models. Tables 1 and 2 report results using the
World Bank and Freedom House index, respectively.
Consistent with my theory, the correlation between
engagement and the rule of law is positive and statis-
tically significant in all periods of peace, while the
correlation with bypassing is weak or even negative.
The difference between the two coefficients is also
statistically significant during all periods of peace.
In Figures 3 through 6, I use PACT to explore these
correlations between engagement and the rule of law in
further detail. In Figures 3 and 4, I disaggregate rule-of-
law-related activities by target—police forces, courts,
prisons, and laws—using the World Bank and Freedom
House indices, respectively. In Figures 5 and 6, I disag-
gregate by mechanism of engagement with the host
state: education, inducement, persuasion, and over-
sight. My results are again consistent with those above.
I do find some evidence of potential diminishing mar-
ginal returns: the correlation between UN activities and
the Freedom House index is generally null after three
years of peace, though it is also statistically indistin-
guishable from the correlation after one or two years of
peace, suggesting that the differences may not be
important for practical purposes. In Appendix Q, I
show that my results are similar when I use more
restrictive coding rules for PACT, and in
Appendix R, I show that my results are again similar
when I use indices instead of dummies to operationalize
rule-of-law-related activities. The robustness of my
results to these alternative specifications suggests they
are unlikely to be artifacts of particular coding rules.

64
 UN Peacekeeping and the Rule of Law

FIGURE 5. Correlation between World Bank Rule-of-Law Index and UN Activities Disaggregated by
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, on 03 Jan 2022 at 00:49:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000738

Mechanism of Engagement

Civil war
1+ year of peace
2+ years of peace
3+ years of peace

–.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 –.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related education Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related inducement

–.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 –.2 –.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related persuasion Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related oversight

Note: Each panel reports coefficients and 95% confidence intervals from four separate OLS regressions with controls and country fixed
effects. Sample is restricted to periods during civil war (denoted by squares) and at least one, two, or three years after civil war (denoted by
triangles, circles, and diamonds, respectively). UN activities are coded as country-year dummies indicating whether the activity was
mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.

CONCLUSION mission increases, but the magnitude of the correlation

The UN is at the forefront of efforts to restore the rule
of law in countries experiencing or recovering from civil
war. Research on the impact of these efforts, however,
remains limited and speculative. In this paper I develop
and test a theory to explain when, where, and how UN
rule-of-law promotion is likely to succeed. My theory
focuses on reforms targeting the host state’s justice
chain: police forces, courts, prisons, and laws. UN
missions pursue these reforms through a combination
of education, inducement, persuasion, and oversight. I
identify three sources of variation in the efficacy of
these reforms, related to UN personnel, activities, and
timing. I test my theory by combining existing data on
the number of uniformed personnel deployed to each
UN mission in Africa with three original datasets on the
number of civilian personnel, the number of personnel
assigned specifically to rule-of-law-related tasks, and
the extent to which UN missions actually pursue rule-
of-law-related activities on the ground.
Consistent with my theory, I find that the rule of law
improves as the number of personnel deployed to a UN
is smaller for uniformed personnel than for civilian
personnel or personnel assigned specifically to rule-
of-law-related tasks. Among uniformed personnel,
the correlation is smaller for UN troops than UN police
officers; among civilian personnel, the correlation is
smaller for national than international staff. I also find
that the rule of law improves when UN missions actu-
ally pursue rule-of-law-related activities in the field, but
the magnitude of the correlation is larger when they
engage host states in the process of reform rather than
bypassing them altogether. Finally, I find that the
magnitude of all of these correlations is larger during
periods of peace than periods of civil war. Importantly,
these correlations do not appear to be artifacts of
selection into “easy” cases, nor do they appear to be
byproducts of other, more “traditional” activities that
UN missions pursue on the ground. Taken together, my
results suggest that UN intervention may be a more
effective mechanism for restoring the rule of law than
the prevailing pessimism would lead us to believe
(Clunan and Trinkunas 2010; Janse 2013; Lake 2010;
Ledwidge 2017).

65
 Robert A. Blair

FIGURE 6. Correlation between Freedom House Rule-of-Law Index and UN Activities Disaggregated
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by Mechanism of Engagement

Civil war
1+ year of peace
2+ years of peace
3+ years of peace

–1 0 1 2 3 –1 0 1 2 3
Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related education Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related inducement

–1 0 1 2 3 –1 0 1 2 3
Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related persuasion Coefficient on any rule-of-law-related oversight

Note: Each panel reports coefficients and 95% confidence intervals from four separate OLS regressions with controls and country fixed
effects. Sample is restricted to periods during civil war (denoted by squares) and at least one, two, or three years after civil war (denoted by
triangles, circles, and diamonds, respectively). UN activities are coded as country-year dummies indicating whether the activity was
mentioned at least once in a UN Secretary-General progress report from the corresponding year.

My results have at least three important implications
for the practice of UN rule-of-law promotion. First,
they suggest that the UN should expand the civilian
components of most UN missions. While UN troops
and military observers may help create the conditions
in which the rule of law can emerge, it is the UN’s
civilian and police contingents that are most directly
responsible for rule-of-law reform—retraining police
officers and judges, monitoring prisons, amending laws,
etc. While I am unable to estimate the relationship
between the rule of law and civilian personnel condi-
tional on uniformed personnel, given the UN’s ten-
dency to underinvest in civilian contingents
(UN Security Council 2000), for most UN missions
the marginal return on civilian personnel likely exceeds
the marginal return on uniformed personnel, at least
for purposes of restoring the rule of law.
My results also suggest that UN missions should not
expect to fulfill their rule-of-law mandates in settings
where there is no peace to keep. Scholars have long
argued that the UN is more effective at building peace
than fighting wars (Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Fortna
2008a; Gilligan and Sergenti 2008), and policy makers
have criticized the UN’s increasing tendency to deploy
complex, multidimensional peacekeeping operations to
active conflict zones, such as Mali and South Sudan
(HIPPO 2015). My results lend additional credence to
these concerns. My results also suggest, however, that
UN missions should avoid bypassing host states in the
process of reform, even in settings where host states are
weak or predatory. While bypassing may sometimes be
necessary for practical or normative reasons, it may
also have adverse unintended consequences for the
rule of law—which, in turn, may undermine the pros-
pects for peace in the long term.
How likely are my results to generalize to other
settings or to other types of international intervention?
Threats to the rule of law are endemic to many devel-
oping (and developed) countries, and restoring the rule
of law is integral to the mandates of current and recent
UN missions around the world. While no other inter-
national organization has pursued rule-of-law reform
as aggressively or “holistically” as the UN (Trenkov-
Wermuth 2010), the UN’s approach is not altogether
unique. The US government, for example, continues to
fund a variety of security and justice sector reform

66

initiatives in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin
America, and the Middle East. UN missions are atyp-
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ical in ways that may make them especially likely to
succeed. (For example, unlike the US government, the
UN is rarely implicated in igniting the civil wars that
necessitate international intervention in the first place.)
But the elements of my theory are not specific to the
UN, and other bilateral or multilateral institutions may
prove similarly effective in promoting the rule of law. I
view this as a promising possibility for future research
to explore.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
To view supplementary material for this article, please
visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000738.
Replication materials can be found on Dataverse at:
https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NRRVJ3.
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