Description
The peacekeeping literature is often divided into two broad categories of scholarship: quantitative versus qualitative. Quantitative approaches have tended to measure the success and failure of peace operations; whereas qualitative scholarship has focused on the impact of peace operations at national and subnational levels. In this article we identify and introduce a flourishing, yet barely visible research agenda in the study of peacekeeping: interpreting peacekeeping, which has remained obscured by its very lack of definition. This scholarship examines peace operations at the meso level, i.e. at the level of peace operations in-country and mediates between micro (national and sub-national) and macro (international) levels. This approach has been mostly qualitative, interpretive, and teleological in nature, in that it examines the purpose, intention and design of activities within peacekeeping missions and organisations and is less interested in identifying causal mechanisms. In this article we define the interpreting peacekeeping approach, review the research located within this genre, and specify its contribution to the peacekeeping and IR literatures. Furthermore, we explicate how meso level research has the potential to produce broad theories applicable beyond peacekeeping itself by helping us better understand how key facets of global governance such as legitimacy, accountability, authority and credibility function in a militarised space. We contend that the siloed nature of academic disciplines, and the increased quantification of the peacekeeping literature has helped to obscure this body of scholarship despite its valuable contribution to improving our knowledge of how global governance, international organizations and militarised multilateralism functions.
