Paper presented at seminar UAM april 2012

Time for a bit of a summary about what I have been doing the past 6 months. On the 20th of April 2012 I presented a first version of my theoretical framework in the Seminar for PhD Students (Seminario de Investigadores en Formación) at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Besides being an opportunity to get some feedback on my work, it was a great way to get to know some of the other PhD students at the department. 

The paper I presented was a summary of the first two (preliminary) chapters of my dissertation. The first chapter is called "International Relations, the Role of UN Peace Operations, and UN sanctions", and is a history of the role of UN sanctions throughout history and their connection to International Relations. The second chapter focuses more on the different theories on sanctions and the effects of commodity sanctions. 

Chapter 1: The first chapter regards the role of the UN throughout its history. In the chapter, I divide this role in three parts: traditional peacekeeper, liberal peacekeeper, and liberal peace builder. From its establishment to the end of the cold war, the UN can be described as a traditional peacekeeper, concerned with Westphalian interstate conflict, but hesitant when it comes to internal conflict. Similarly, traditional comprehensive economic sanctions would be applied on countries as a whole, rather than on sub-state groups or individuals.

The 1990´s brought along a more liberalist world view, in which states would still be the central actors, but in which international institutions, sub-state groups, and transnational capital flows also played an important role. The ideas of liberal democracy and liberal peace became an important issue, also within the UN, intervening in internal issues such as coup d’états in Togo and civil conflicts in Rwanda and Angola, among others.  Sanctions, too, changed in this era, imposing sanctions on sub-state groups such as rebel movements or government officials. The idea of respecting sovereignty had lost to that of liberal peace.

The liberal peace ideal however also brought along of post-conflict peace building. It was not only about UN intervention to deal with the breach of peace. The UN also took on the responsibility to create the right institutions to prevent renewed warfare and to ensure development and stability according to liberal democratic guidelines.

However unexpected, sanctions can also be part of post-conflict peace building. Although sanctions normally have the objective of ending conflicts, the post-conflict sanctions regime on Liberia had objectives that went much further. Looking at the conditions stated for the lifting of the timber embargo that was imposed on Liberia between 2003 and 2006, we can clearly identify liberal peace building objectives. For example, some of the conditions regard the creation of institutions to safeguard the transparent and fair governance of the timber sector, and the implementation of a legal framework to ensure good governance.

Feedback: The main criticism of the audience regarded the simplification of these three roles of the UN as a peacekeeper and peace builder throughout its history. On the one hand, people argued that in order to understand and explain the roles of the UN, much more detail would be needed. On the other hand, other people seemed to find a division of three distinct roles a dangerous exercise, as it tries to simplify a complex institution which in reality has no clear objectives that can be put into boxes. The agency of the UN as an organization is merely a result of many political factors in ever changing countries that vote along their own political and economical interests.

So what are we to make of this? How do I use this feedback to improve my theoretical framework? It is obviously true that simplifying the historical roles of the UN leads to a simplification of reality. But isn´t that the whole point? My thesis is not about the history of the UN; it´s about the role of sanctions in post-conflict situations. The first theoretical chapter is merely an introduction to the real topic of my dissertation. So what am I going to do with this feedback? I will use it in my dissertation as a sort of disclaimer. In a few paragraphs, I will explain that the chapter is obviously a simplification of a much more complicated reality, but that that doesn´t make it an incorrect generalization. It is difficult and perhaps even dangerous to distill objectives from UN reports, but that doesn´t make it impossible. The changes in UN agency that I describe are real, even if they are the result of many external factors.  

Chapter 2: The second chapter goes deeper into the theory of sanctions. Again I divided the chapter in sub-chapters, each of them representing an important theoretical issue regarding sanctions, namely targets, objectives, strategies, effects, external variables, and unintended consequences. 

The idea is that these six issues are not stable over time. As the role of UN peace operations changes, so do sanctions. For example, the objective of traditional comprehensive economic sanctions are very different from the objectives of targeted sanctions in a post-conflict peace building operation. Similarly, the effects and consequences of sanctions are very different. Since nobody has ever done research on the post-conflict timber embargo on Liberia, it seems relevant that someone does so. 

For a more detailed explanation of the theoretical issues on sanctions discussed in chapter 2, have a look at the paper, which counts about 35 pages. 

Feedback: Again, the main feedback I received concerned the dangers of simplification, or rather categorization. I realized that it will be important to be very precise on specifying what the objective of a sanctions regime is, and on who the exact target is. Again, I think that taking in mind this feedback and being cautious when pulling my conclusions, I will be able to avoid the pitfalls and deliver good results.

*For those who took part in the seminar, thanks very much for listening to the presentation and for sharing your thoughts. For those that are going to read the paper, I would very much appreciate more feedback, as I know that there is plenty of space for improvement. 

*PDF version of the paper