Description
Over the last two decades, dominant critiques of UN peace operations have emphasized their role in forcefully disseminating a liberal democratic peace into post-conflict states. While peace operations in the 1990s and early 2000s prioritized the creation of democratic states through strong election support mandates, the 2010s have been dominated by a new form of UN intervention: stabilization missions designed to create strong security states capable of managing insurgencies and repelling international threats. This paper aims to challenge the assumed stability of the UN’s liberal international peace and security project during the era of stabilization. It does so by operationalizing post-structuralist discourse theory to analyse the articulatory practices of actors involved in stabilization mission discourses around national elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and the Central African Republic between 2016 and 2019. Drawing on interviews with Security Council members and mission officials, this paper argues that a liberal peace predicated on the consolidation of democracy is no longer viewed as essential by UN actors. Instead, these actors have turned to more pragmatic aims, particularly strengthening state authority and security capacity as the most effective means of maintaining international peace and security in stabilization contexts.
