Uniting for Peace?

Does the level of democracy of a country incline it toward participation in post-cold war era, United Nations (UN) peace operations? The link between democracy and multilateral peace operations in liberal theory is explored, and the expanding UN global presence and its in debtedness to democracies are examined. Hypotheses drawn from liberal and realist theory are tested on a global set of countries in the period between 1993 and 2001, using cross-sectional, time-series data and a Heckman selection model. The descriptive evidence and robust model results provide strong support for the proposition that the UN peace operations of the post-cold war era relied on democratic contributions. A country’s level of democracy accounts for why and how much countries contributed to these operations when competing with a host of alternative explanations derived from a realist and liberal perspective.