ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the different approaches, policies and tools that have been employed by the United Nations (UN) peace operations to better understand and analyse the political economy of armed conflicts, and to translate this understanding into strategies and day-to-day operations, as well as assesses the successes and limitations of these efforts, whether due to internal or external constraints. It offers a set of pragmatic policy recommendations to the UN Security Council, the secretariat that backstops these missions, and the missions themselves. The recommendations are framed by an understanding that UN peace operations can improve the tools at their disposal – their expertise, analysis, information sharing and strategies. Yet the overriding lesson for the UN is that the value of a political economy lens is not to enable missions to transform well-established power structures and their basis of support, but rather to provide insight into how its presence and activities influence these structures, where they may offer an opportunity to address drivers of conflict, where they are unlikely to do so and where they may make matters worse. In fact, the aim of peace operations should not be to transform states and their societies, but to mitigate their worst tendencies, nudge them towards less insecure, less violent places, thus preparing the ground for internally driven change in the direction of lasting peace.
