Denounce or Downplay? UN Peacekeeping Officials and Responses to Norm Violations

UN peacekeeping missions may have to work with host governments that violate democratic norms or broader UN principles. Such violations present UN peacekeeping officials with a dilemma. They can either respond robustly to such situations or prioritize competing normative and operational goals and offer only limited response to norm violations. The choices that UN peacekeeping officials make in resolving this dilemma have a considerable influence on how UN Security Council mandates are implemented in practice. We conceptualize the response of mission officials in terms of a spectrum of robustness, ranging from no response to strong and public condemnation, curtailment of interactions with the host government, and, where the mandate permits, enforcement action. We also investigate what officials’ characteristics incline them to respond more or less robustly, such as organizational culture of their mission component, their background and career trajectory, or the length of service in a particular post, as well as their perceptions of the local and global organizational environment. Through this analysis, we contribute to the literature on the variation in norm enforcement by international organizations, which has so far not accounted for the role of international bureaucracies in this process.