All means necessary? Local legitimacy of peacekeepers' use of force for civilian protection in Haiti and the DRC

Recent popular protests against peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Mali have raised concerns about a legitimacy crisis that goes to the heart of peacekeeping practice—the protection of civilians (PoC). In this article, I provide an exploratory, qualitative examination of the relationship between peacekeepers' use of force and local legitimacy perceptions in the context of PoC. While previous work has established the causal connection between local legitimacy perceptions and the effectiveness of peacekeeping, I focus on the preceding causal step, asking the question: how do local legitimacy perceptions arise from peacekeepers' use of force for civilian protection? Employing a new analytical framework which disaggregates two objects of legitimacy—the ends for which peacekeepers use force and the means they use—I trace local communities' performance and procedural legitimacy perceptions. Based on two case-studies, the MINUSTAH peacekeeping mission in Haiti and MONUC/MONUSCO in the DRC, the empirical analysis finds that local legitimacy perceptions do arise from both the ends and the means of peacekeepers' use of force for PoC, positively and negatively. Despite the importance of peacekeeper performance for PoC, it also matters how peacekeepers use force, including its responsiveness, impartiality, proportionality and the degree of democratic consent. Local perceptions are also fluid, suggesting peacekeepers may reclaim lost legitimacy after failures, if they can demonstrate responsiveness to local priorities.