A “Garbage Can Model” of UN Peacekeeping

To explain the post–Cold War transformation of peacekeeping, I employ a “garbage can model” of agenda-setting to explain how peacekeeping came to be considered, in the context of the UN Security Council's agenda, an appropriate solution to problems for which it had previously been regarded as inappropriate. The UN fits the defining criteria of an organized anarchy, to which the garbage can model can be expected to apply: unclear preferences, opaque organizational processes, and fluid participation. Drawing on John Kingdon's adaptation of the garbage can model, I explain changes in peacekeeping as the result of policy entrepreneurs' linking of a solution (peacekeeping) to a problem (intrastate conflicts) in the context of a policy window created by the ending of the Cold War.