Can Institutions Cause Peace?

About this book

This dissertation investigates the research question: Can an international institution alter state behavior and thereby contribute to the peaceful resolution of a conflict? It focuses on the series of interrelated peacekeeping efforts undertaken to help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948-1994. By employing qualitative regime analysis to analyze these sequential operations over a forty-six year period, this study provides evidence as to the relative importance of institutions in a state-centric international system. This dissertation offers an alternative approach to the analysis of international peacekeeping by evaluating the long-term effects of peacekeeping on state behavior, and concomitantly, the effects of varying state behavior on an international regime. The findings of this study offer new perspectives on the relative importance of regimes and the utility of regime analysis in explaining the importance of international institutions. The thesis of this dissertation is that the individual peacekeeping missions conducted in the Middle East in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be conceptualized as components of a broader Middle East peacekeeping regime, whi…