Deference or Disregard? The Security Council and UN Secretariat’s Recommendations on Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations

It is now well established in the literature that secretariats of international organisations can act autonomously and produce independent effects in world politics. Less is known about the extent of their influence as well as the conditions under which they are likely to exercise it. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of these issues by analysing the variation in the UN Secretariat’s influence on the size and mandates of UN peacekeeping missions. In authorising peacekeeping missions or revising their mandates, the Security Council often follows recommendations contained in reports prepared by the UN Secretariat. However, it can choose to ignore these recommendations. We compare all Security Council resolutions since 1997 establishing new peacekeeping missions or significantly amending the mandates of existing ones with the corresponding reports of the Secretariat, which contain recommendations on the mission’s size and functions. We assess whether there are no, minor, or substantial differences. We hypothesise that the rate of approval of the Secretariat’s recommendations depends on several factors, such as the conflict’s salience and intensity, the mission’s complexity and riskiness, interest heterogeneity in the Council, the resolution’s ‘penholder’, and the Secretariat’s expertise, which has increased over time due to organisational learning. Our research also sheds light on some of the oft-debated questions in the peacekeeping literature, such as whether the Secretariat is behind the recent expansion of peacekeepers’ tasks and responsibilities.