Cooperation, information, and keeping the peace

Cultivating cooperation with local populations is necessary for peacekeeping operations to effectively prevent and reduce violence. To accomplish their missions in complex foreign theaters of operation, peacekeepers must solicit information about local political actors, social networks, and violence. Under what conditions do local populations cooperate with United Nations peacekeepers? How does exposure to peacekeeping security activities, relief activities, or abuse – three of the primary ways that local communities experience peacekeepers – affect the likelihood that individuals cooperate with peacekeepers by providing information to them? Using an original survey of a random sample of residents of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we show that people who are exposed to security and relief activities by the United Nations peacekeeping operation, MINUSTAH, have more positive opinions of how effective they are, and are more willing to cooperate with peacekeepers by providing them with information. On the other hand, exposure to abuse dramatically undermines civilian opinions of how effective, benevolent, and abusive peacekeepers are but has a smaller effect on cooperation. These findings present an opportunity and challenge for peacekeepers: if public opinion and cooperation are responsive to peacekeeper policy, then peacekeepers must deliver services and prevent abuse in order to solicit the cooperation that is necessary for mission success.