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Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has increasingly used peacekeeping operations (PKOs) to manage crises between and within states. The mandates of contemporary PKOs are demanding, calling on peacekeeping personnel to separate belligerent parties, enforce ceasefire agreements, and protect the physical security of civilians. The pursuit of these distinct objectives presents a unique challenge for the UN because it relies on member states to volunteer personnel for these missions. Therefore, the achievement of mandated goals depends on the ability of diverse national contingents to overcome coordination problems and function as a cohesive force. Integrating research of PKOs and international military coalitions, we argue that as national contingents share operational experience within a UN mission, they develop common institutional practices, and become more effective at protecting the civilian population. Using monthly data on UN PKOs from 1990 to 2019, we find that increasing operational experience within a peacekeeping coalition reduces civilian fatalities significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon research that found that coalitions are more likely to win wars, recent work has sought to differentiate effective from ineffective coalitions. Much of this work focuses on characteristics of member states and not the coalition itself. This paper takes a first step in exploring how the structure of a coalition contributes to its performance. Specifically, coalitions vary in how much control members must transfer to the coalition. Some coalitions form weak command structures with states maintaining primary control while other coalitions form a strong centralized command. The impact of command structure on coalition performance is vital to understanding the success and failure of coalitions. Highly centralized command structures allow states to overcome the problems associated with coalition warfare and achieve victory. Empirical evidence supports this claim; the odds of victory increase as states surrender more control to the coalition. These findings provide direct advice to policy makers considering forming a coalition. The implications of this research extend to the alliance literature and the war bargaining literature, which tend to assume either that wars are dyadic or that states can seamlessly aggregate military capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately one-third of all interstate conflicts are multilateral, with the majority of these having a coalition of states fighting on at least one side. Despite the frequency of coalition wars, coalitions have not received much attention within the conflict literature. This paper presents the first general study on the effectiveness of coalitions during interstate wars. While there are many drawbacks to fighting as part of a coalition, the benefits of cooperation outweigh the cost, making coalitions more likely to win wars. An empirical examination of war outcomes between 1816 and 2007 confirms this hypothesis; coalitions have greater odds of victory than states fighting outside a coalition. This finding holds after controlling for possible endogeneity and selection bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]