Building sovereigns? The UN peacekeeping and strengthening the authority of the state in Lebanon and Mali
Abstract
This paper contributes to the debate on the recent 'stabilization turn' in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping by inquiring into a changing set of practices by which the UN intends to 'strengthen the authority of the state.' Drawing on Piiparinen's notion of sovereignty-building as an emerging paradigm of conflict management, the study analyses the support for state authority and sovereignty in two modalities of contemporary UN peace operations - UNIFIL II and MINUSMA. While the two analysed missions significantly differ when it comes to the extent of their tasks, or the rules for the use of force, they both highlight the importance of local politics and agency in the implementations of their mandates and the need to strike a compromise between the contending visions on what form of sovereignty should be supported.
By doing so, the paper points out the importance of 'local' and contextual emergence of the practices of sovereignty-building.