Help or Keep Out: Personalist Regimes and External Actors in Internal Conflicts

• In Event: New Directions in Understanding Peacekeeping

Abstract

Who accepts international actors to deal with domestic security problems? Using the framework of sovereignty costs and security benefits, we argue that personalist regimes, characterized by centralized decisionmaking and frequent instability, are likely to accept international measures such as peacekeeping or mediation. On the one hand, sovereignty costs of personalist regimes are lower than non-personalist regimes. Personalist regimes not only can impose their decisions having few veto players concerned with autonomy, but they would also be able to get around reputational problems by getting around international actors once they accept them. On the other hand, security benefits of personalist regimes are higher than non-personalist regimes. Personalist regimes usually suffer from frequent regime turnovers. With little internal security options or apparatus available for use, such as strong military or established paramilitaries, personalist regimes are likely to seek out security benefits by delegating peacekeeping or mediation to outside actors. Using the regime classification (Geddes, Wright and Franz 2014) and the expanded data of international measures of peacekeeping and mediation, 1990-2020 (Jo, Hultman, and Park 2023), we test the hypothesis and receive support for the claim. The result has implications for the erosion of liberal international order where strongmen politics takes foothold in many parts of the world.

Authors

• Hyeran Jo, Texas A&M University

• Devin Brown, Texas A&M University