African Spaghetti Bowl: Assessing State Rationales in African Peacekeeping Operations, 1999-2016.

Abstract

Within Africa, transnational threats risk eroding the progress made on peace and security efforts during the past two decades. The growing reliance on multidimensional stabilization missions to address these complex challenges requires the cooperation and support of the African Union, the regional economic communities, and its member states. Recent literature has explicated state support for peacekeeping through political, economic, security, institutional, and normative rationales. Here I show that a correlation exists between peacekeeping contributions and good governance, trade integration, and participation in regional institutions. I derive a new panel count model, which combines maximum likelihood estimation with Monte Carlo simulation to predict the likelihood for African peacekeeping contributions. I assess the results through three United Nations peacekeeping case studies within Africa. I find support for political, economic, and institutional rationales while security and normative rationales remain inconclusive. Furthermore, I assess the marginal effect of trade integration and find a 40 percent increase in the likelihood for contributions as a state ranges from closed borders to open trade. My results demonstrate that as African states improve good governance, reduce trade barriers, and participate in regional institutions they are more likely to support collective action to address regional security issues and achieve “African solutions to African problems.”