The Cost of Peace: Understanding Patterns in State Financial and Personnel Contributions to UN Peace Operations

While United Nations peace operations comprise a fairly well-supported public good, they suffer from problems of resource contribution. Since 1990, UN missions have exhibited persistent shortfalls in personnel contributed by states: the average mission receives 21.6% fewer personnel in any given month than what has been mandated by the UN Security Council (Passmore, Shannon, and Hart 2018). Recent data show that missions also suffer from financial shortfalls, where missions lack, on average, 27.7% of the amount budgeted to carry out the operation (Passmore, Nadeau, and Shannon 2022). The under-resourcing of UN missions raises the question: what determines whether some peacekeeping missions are better supported than others? This paper explores the determinants of both personnel and financial support for peacekeeping missions, analyzing what leads some missions to receive more of their mandated resource commitments than others. We point out the surprising fact that major variation exists across missions in both personnel and financial shortfalls, while individual missions often receive inconsistent support throughout their lifespan. Though UN member countries are assessed financial dues for each ongoing UN mission, countries choose to pay their dues to some missions while neglecting others, while also being highly selective in where they contribute uniformed personnel (if at all). We conceive of personnel and financial support for peacekeeping as a collective action effort, and shortfalls in support are indicative of free-riding and other problems of under-provision. We therefore consider a range of public and private incentives as potential determinants of state contributions. We also investigate the relationship between these two phenomena: how financial shortfalls precipitate personnel shortfalls and vice versa. Addressing these questions paves the way for later research investigating the effect of such shortfalls on the operational effectiveness of peace operations. It also demands a reflection on the processes of force generation: those factors that determine a mission’s size and budget in the first place, whether requested resources are sufficient or excessive, the degree to which these processes favor or disadvantage certain countries, and the role that politics plays in this practice. Our preliminary findings indicate that financial shortfalls at the mission level are a significant predictor of personnel shortfalls. We also find that global demands on contributing countries for peacekeeping generally do not inhibit state financial contributions, though financial shortfalls are more likely where the mission host state is relatively powerful and when a greater number of global peacekeeping operations are ongoing. We further find evidence that private economic interests of and benefits to UN members have little effect on the amount states contribute. This research has implications for how well UN peacekeeping missions are supported and what determines this; whether missions face a disadvantage in pursuing peace in conflict zones, and how the state-IGO relationship in this instance encourages or inhibits the effective activities of cooperative global efforts.