One of the most surprising findings in research on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they work. Scholarship has focused on how UNPOs solve the security dilemma but overlooked their role in maintaining parties’ political commitment to reforms, which we conceptualize as the implementation...

This Policy Insight suggests the UN must account for a diverse range of conflict drivers, including health insecurity, and that UN peace operations can play a role in countries of deployment to counter health crises. Insecurity is experienced in a variety of different ways in a complex world...

We consider a dynamic setting in which two sovereign states with overlapping ownership claims on a resource/asset first arm and then choose whether to resolve their dispute violently through war or peacefully through settlement. Both approaches depend on the states' military capacities, but...

Rebuilding state legitimacy is a thorny challenge in the aftermath of civil wars. The international community has stepped in to support post-conflict states in rebuilding state capacity, sometimes replacing governments in providing public goods. Most notably, research shows that UN peacekeepers...

The study has endeavored to expand the reach of the UN Security Council, both in size and in content. The UN, though often criticized, is an important and unique international body as a platform for diplomacy and debate. Whether UN Security Council can be improved through effective control by...