Content area
United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping has been in use since 1948, and over the past 73 years, significant amounts of research have been done on the topic. However, at this time, despite adaptation by the UN, there lacks a holistic view of the scholarship of peacekeeping. Scholars have repeatedly called for increased standardization and measurement in peacekeeping (Bajraktari et al., 2006; Call, 2008a; Copeland, 2012; Diehl & Druckman, 2015; Garb, 2014; Gorur, 2019; Martin-Brûlé, 2016; Peake & Marenin, 2008; Thakur, 2013), and while UN Peacekeeping has adjusted to worldwide changes, and even began implementing the Comprehensive Planning and Performance Assessment System (CPAS), a standardized system of evaluation for UN Peacekeeping missions, in 2018, there has not been, to date, a broad systematic review of the literature on UN Peacekeeping. This makes it hard to know the strength of this or other suggested evaluation systems. Additionally, most research is focused on disciplines outside of Criminal Justice and Criminology. As much of the UN Peacekeeping work is police-type work, utilizing a Criminal Justice and Criminology lens can provide new insights. A systematic review can address what is known about UN Peacekeeping now and fill this gap in the literature. This systematic review addresses three main questions. First, what is the state of the peer-reviewed scholarship on UN Police in UN Peacekeeping missions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste? Second, how are the UN Police in UN Peacekeeping missions Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste studied? And third, how is research about UN Police in UN Peacekeeping missions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste associated with the Police Reform Indicators and Measurement Evaluation (PRIME) system. The findings of this dissertation will inform the strength of current and suggested evaluation measures and provide practical steps forward for both researchers, the UN, and the world.
