Peacekeeping and the Contagion of Armed Conflict

Abstract

Existing scholarship has characterized the severity of and mechanisms behind the problem of conflict contagion but not how to address it. Although studies of peacekeeping have demonstrated that it can prevent conflict recurrence, we know little about whether international actors can also help prevent conflict from spreading. Using event history analysis that incorporates information from neighboring observations, the empirical findings indicate that the expected risk of armed conflict increases by over 70% when peacekeepers are not deployed to a recent neighboring conflict but does not significantly rise when neighboring peacekeepers are deployed. One of the key means by which peacekeeping helps contain conflict is through addressing problems related to transnational movement of and support for insurgencies, thereby specifically preventing intrastate conflict from increasing the propensity for new intrastate conflict nearby. Moreover, both lighter and more substantial peacekeeping deployments can prevent conflict diffusion.