Civil wars have become more prevalent in modern times and present unique challenges to conflict resolution. Third parties often intervene in civil wars attempting to insure that peace is imposed and will persist. However, the impact of third parties on intrastate conflicts remains incomplete. The civil conflict literature does not sufficiently distinguish how third parties promote peaceful outcomes during a peacekeeping operation and why a state remains stable after the peacekeepers leave. By examining data on third party interventions from 1946-2006 and individually examining the case of Sierra Leone, this research concludes that peacekeeping missions promoting transparency, credible information sharing, and strong signals of commitment present the best possibilities for peace during and after the mission. Analysis from empirical tests and case study support that peacekeeping missions are most effective when they allow for credible and reliable communication between domestic adversaries. Ultimately, third parties must promote a political solution between rebel and government factions in civil wars so that peaceful methods of dispute resolution are promoted in the absence of a third party preventing the recurrence of war.

The main focus of this study is to explore Swedish soldiers’ experiences of the transition back to everyday life after international service missions. This includes the help and support that they have received and also what barriers to care they have experienced during the transition back to everyday life. The theoretical perspectives of this study are social identity and stigma theory. This study was performed using a qualitative method and includes six individual interviews with active duty officers within the Swedish armed forces. All of them have participated in international service missions. The results of this study show that the soldiers experience barriers to care during the transition back to everyday life in Sweden. What emerged is that they are experiencing mental depression and a need for a recovery period. It’s also revealed that the stigma surrounding mental illness in the military and in society precludes a good reintegration into everyday life. The study concludes that more research is needed on what support soldiers need when they return home, and that the responsibility for veterans support efforts need to be clearer between all responsible parties in Swedish society.

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This thesis seeks to explain how democracies emerge out of the ashes of civil wars. This paper envisions transitions to democracy after a civil war largely as a function of the peace process. Democracy is thought of as a medium through which solutions to the problems and issues over which the civil war was fought can be solved without violence. Transitions to democracy are more likely if there is a large bargaining space and the problems of credible commitments to democratization can be solved. Democratization is more likely if four conditions exist in a state after the civil war: a negotiated settlement, credible commitments via international enforcement, demobilization, and a cooperative international environment. The hypotheses derived are tested through an event history analysis for two different standards of democracy. The results suggest that factors indicative of all four theoretical concepts contribute to the likelihood of democratization after a civil war.

<p>\abstract</p><p>This dissertation seeks to explain the role of governmental and non-governmental actors in increasing/reducing the emergence of intergroup conflict after war, when group differences have been a salient aspect of group mobilization. This question emerges from several interrelated branches of scholarship on self-enforcing institutions and power-sharing arrangements, group fragmentation and demographic change, collective mobilization for collectively-targeted violence, and conflict termination and the post-conflict quality of peace. This question is investigated through quantitative analyses performed at the sub-national, national, and cross-national level on the effect of elite competition on the likelihood of violence committed on the basis of group difference after war. These quantitative analyses are each accompanied by qualitative, case study analyses drawn from the American Reconstruction South, Iraq, and Cote d'Ivoire that illustrate and clarify the mechanisms evaluated through quantitative analysis. </p><p>Shared findings suggest the correlation of reduced political competition with the increased likelihood of violence committed on the basis of group difference. Separate findings shed light on how covariates related to control over rent extraction and armed forces, decentralization, and citizenship can lead to a reduction in violence. However, these same quantitative analyses and case study analysis suggest that the control of the state can be perceived as a threat after the end of conflict. Further, together these findings suggest the political nature of violence committed on the basis of group difference as opposed to ethnic identity or resource scarcity alone. </p><p>Together, these combined analyses shed light on how and why political identities are formed and mobilized for the purpose of committing political violence after war. In this sense, they shed light on the factors that constrain post-conflict violence in deeply divided societies, and contribute to relevant academic, policy, and normative questions.</p> / Dissertation

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This thesis investigates how peace operations work. It contributes to the larger study of peace operation effectiveness by analysing the processes through which these institutions influence local actors in postconflict societies. Looking beyond traditional concerns with mandates and resources, it aims to understand how a peace operation seeks to achieve its goals, focusing on why local populations might cooperate with or obstruct its activities. The thesis draws on theories of social power, compliance and legitimation to answer four central questions: what power do peace operations have to achieve their objectives? From where do peace operations derive power? How do local perceptions of an operation enable or constrain its effectiveness? How are peace operations legitimised at the local level, and with what effect? It begins by critically reviewing the academic literature, arguing that existing approaches are unable to account for important dimensions of peace operation effectiveness because they neglect the local setting in which operations pursue their goals, and the extent to which the achievement of those goals requires local cooperation. It then develops an analytical framework to examine the processes of coercion, inducement and legitimacy through which peace operations seek to shape the decisions and actions of local actors. This power-legitimacy framework is applied to study the effectiveness of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and the Regional Assistance Mission in Solomon Islands (RAMSI). By comparing variation in local cooperation between and within these cases, the thesis shows that the way a peace operation is locally perceived is an important but often overlooked determinant of its effectiveness. In particular, when local actors perceive a peace operation to be legitimate, they are more likely to behave in ways that assist the operation to achieve its goals. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of this finding for the future study and practice of peace operations.

This research seeks to explore the behavior of international and regional organizations within conflict management. Previous research on conflict management primarily examines UN peacekeeping as the primary actor and lumps all non-UN actors into a single category. I disaggregate this category, examining how international and regional organizations interact when deciding to establish a peace mission, coordinate a peace mission with multiple organizations, and finally, how this interaction affects the success of peace missions. I propose a collective action theoretical framework in which organizations would rather another actor undertake the burden and costs of implementing a peace mission. I find the United Nations is motivated to overcome the collective action problem through an increase in the severity of the conflict. Regional organizations are motivated to establish a peace mission as the economic and political salience of the conflict increases, increasing the possibility of the regional organization acquiring club goods for its member states. The presence of a regional hegemon within a regional organization also significantly increases the likelihood of an organization both establishing a peace mission and taking on the primary role when coordinating a joint mission. I argue this is because a regional hegemon allows the organization to more easily overcome the collective action problem between its own member states due to the presence of a privileged actor.

1 Peacekeeping Operations within the System of Collective Security Summary The purpose of this thesis is to provide the reader not only with the basic overview of the formation of the peacekeeping missions and evolution of these missions to present form, but also to introduce him direction of present globalized (or globalizing) world in relation with the future development of international organizations and relations of its member states. The reason of my interest in this topic is my interest in history and what does existence of these organizations mean for our future. Are we stronger because of them or do they lead to more problems than they solve? This thesis is composed from chapters focused on history and organizational structure of international organizations, present state of peacekeeping operations, case studies of chosen peacekeeping operations, Czech Republic's involvement in the international structures and final chapter inspired by the Brahimi report which is focused on technological progress and its effect on present and future of peacekeeping operations and other conflicts. International organizations are global or regional, are distinguished by their focus and reason of their existence. Ideas, on which they are based, often have to give in to new realities of the world. It is not possible to...

(anglický jazyk) The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the activities of United Nations' peacekeep-ing operations and thus provide an answer to the question of how and with what results they contribute to providing international peace and security. The work deals with peace-keeping operations appointed under UN Security Council resolutions. I chose this topic because of the great importance of peacekeeping operations status within UN activities and because of the interest in clarifying the role of their impact on world peace and security. This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first one deals with the role of the United Nations and its position within the international peace and security. The second chapter focuses on the definition of basic terminology that most often occurs in relation to the characteristics of UN peacekeeping operations and distinguishes them from each other. The third chapter defines their types and provides the role of peacekeeping operations by showing the essential characteristics of their development, mandate, and working princi-ples. The fourth chapter presents the issue of formation of the peacekeeping operation start-ing with the process of its establishment, continuing with the law applicable to the opera-tion, ending with its financing. The fifth chapter...