Introducing the UNCIPPO (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset

Abstract

This research note presents a dataset on budgeted civilian personnel posts in UN peacekeeping operations by mission, unit, rank, and staff category in the 1991–2020 period: the UNCIPPO (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset. Civilian staff in UN peacekeeping operations include specialists in political affairs, human rights, gender, child protection, electoral support, security sector reform, strategic communications, and information analysis, among others. Our coding of almost three hundred UN budget documents reveals what kinds of civilian posts member states agree to fund. UNCIPPO data also permit more nuanced analyses of the impact of civilian personnel on mission effectiveness. We illustrate this by re-examining Blair, Di Salvatore, and Smidt's (2023) study of the effect of civilian staff on host country democratization, showing that the observed effect is driven by international staff—countering a surprising negative national staff effect—and that staff in units with democracy-related tasks contribute more significantly to this effect than staff in other units. The dataset opens new avenues for research on peacekeeping operations (for example, on peacekeeping resourcing and effectiveness) and IOs more generally (for instance, on the politics of budgeting, the growth of transnational expertise, and the profiles of international bureaucrats).