The Structural Transformation Case For Peacekeeping

Lauren Gilbert

This is a linkpost for https://laurenpolicy.substack.com/p/the-structural-transformation-case

As time goes on, the world’s poorest - those who live below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day - are increasingly concentrated not in stable countries, but in unstable ones.

Without stabilizing fragile states, all our progress at reducing global poverty will soon stall out, leaving hundreds of millions living on less than $2 a day.

Peace allows countries at least the prospect of growth. It is not a guarantee - growth is not always easy, even for countries at peace - but when there’s a civil war, it’s virtually impossible for a country to grow. For poverty to decrease, to health to improve, for life to get better, for countries to grow - there must be peace.

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LizkaNov 127

Before looking at what you wrote, I was most skeptical of the existence of (plausibly) cost-effective interventions on this front. In particular, I had a vague background view that some interventions work but are extremely costly (financially, politically, etc.), and that other interventions either haven't been tried or don't seem promising. I was probably expecting your post to be an argument that we/most people undervalue the importance of peace (and therefore costly interventions actually look better than they might) or an argument that there are some new ideas to explore.

So I was pretty surprised by what you write about UN peacekeeping:

...[UN] peacekeeping - no matter how useless individual peacekeepers seem - has been shown to work. The academic literature is very clear on this:
Walter 2002 finds that if a third party is willing to enforce a signed agreement, warring parties are much more likely to make a bargain (5% vs. 50%) and the settlement is much more likely to hold (0.4% vs. 20%). 20% is not an amazing probability for sustained peace, but it sure beats 0.5%.
...

I haven't actually looked at linked papers to check how how convincing I think they are, but thought it was interesting! And I wanted to highlight this in a comment in case any Forum users aren't sure if they want to click through to the post but would be interested to read more with this context.

Another point that was new to me:

The UN Security Council seems to believe the endless articles about how useless peacekeepers are, and doesn’t seem all that enthusiastic about sending peacekeepers to new conflicts. Since 2010, the number of deployed peacekeepers has been largely flat, even as conflict deaths have increased

(Thanks for writing & sharing your post!)

Lauren GilbertNov 125

I should note - I don't think peacekeeping is anywhere near as cost-effective as GiveWell's top interventions!

My (very quick, rough) BOTEC on peacekeeping in 2022 had it about half as good as GiveDirectly (see the civil conflict shallow and associated BOTEC). Peacekeeping should not be an EA cause area. Getting the UN to focus more on peacekeeping and less on other functions? That might pencil, since it's leveraged (though I am very uncertain on that).

LizkaNov 124

That makes sense and is roughly how I was interpreting what you wrote (sorry for potentially implying otherwise in my comment) — this is still a lot more positive on peacekeeping than I was expecting it to be :)

Lauren GilbertNov 123

Yes, I thought that was what you meant but wanted to be clear - I very much don't think that GiveWell should start recommending the UN. ;)

EffectiveAdvocate🔸Nov 131

Could you say a bit more about your uncertainty regarding this?
After reading this, it sounds to me like shifting some government spending to peacekeeping would be money much better spent than on other themes.

Or do you mean it more from an outsider/activist perspective—that the work of running an organization focused on convincing policymakers to do this would be very costly and might make it much less effective than other interventions?

Lauren GilbertNov 132

More the latter - I think it's hard to influence the UN, especially if you need security council sign off. Really, you have to influence every country on the security council to agree to more peacekeeping, and also come up with more funding somewhere, and UN bureaucracy is famously difficult and impenetrable.

Would I love to redesign UN peacekeeping to focus more on rule of law and less on soldiers? Absolutely. Do I think there's much possibility to do that? Not really no.

EffectiveAdvocate🔸Nov 133

Hi Lauren!

Thank you for another excellent post! I’m becoming a big fan of the Substack and have been recommending it.

Quick question you may have come across in the literature, but I didn’t see it in your article: Not all peacekeeping missions are UN missions; there are also missions from ECOWAS, the AU, EU, and NATO.

Is the data you presented exclusively true for UN missions, or does it apply to other peacekeeping operations as well?

I’d be curious to know, since those institutions seem more flexible and less entangled in geopolitical conflicts than the UN. However, I can imagine they may not be seen as neutral as the UN and therefore may be less effective.

Lauren GilbertNov 131

I haven't seen a lot of evidence on other kinds of peacekeepers, so I don't know that I can say with confidence how effective they are! I would guess it depends on how much they are seen as a neutral third party.

James HerbertNov 131

Interesting take! Thanks for sharing :)