Current research project
Peacekeeping in the Digital Age: Communication Strategies and Local Inclusion
It is now widely recognized that the success of peacekeeping operations depends heavily on the way the mission is perceived and supported by the local population. Whether the population regards the mission as legitimate decides whether they are willing to accept the proposed measures and to cooperate with the armed forces. In order to establish the needed support, secure control over information and win local cooperation, every peacekeeping mission is in need of public diplomacy to communicate with stakeholders and the broader public.
The emergence of social media will offer valuable opportunities in this regard. Today, the UN, its departments and sub-organizations maintain 54 social media accounts on various platforms and nine of the current 12 peacekeeping operations use social media to communicate with the public. Research is needed with regard to the extent to which these new communication channels can contribute to increased interactions between armed forces and local population, which is essential for the success of peace missions. The primary research objective of this project is thus to answer the following two overarching research questions: Which factors explain the variation in social media use by peacekeeping missions? Which communication strategies are mostly used by social media accounts of UN peacekeeping operations?
Pilot Study: #Peacekeeping: Ambivalences of digital communication strategies of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF), 2022-2023.
Associated publications and working papers:
Leib, Julia (2023). Of Peacekeepers and Pandemics: How Covid-19 Changed Strategic Communication of the UN Mission in South Sudan, Global Governance, 29(1), 11-26. (IF: 1.180)
Leib, Julia (2024). Social Media and Strategic Communication in UN Peacekeeping Missions. In: A. Reuß & S. Stetter (eds.). Social Media and Conflict: Exploring the Role of Digital Spaces in Peacebuilding. Forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillan.
‘Let’s Communicate better about What We do in Ways that Everybody understands’: Strategic Digital Communication in United Nations Peace Missions
Becoming an ‘Influencer for Peace’: Strategic Social Media Communication by the UN Verification Mission in Colombia (with Solveig Richter)
Implementing Peace under a Watchful Public Eye: Analyzing the Corrective Function of Online Social Networks in Colombia’s Peace Process (with Solveig Richter & Johannes Schuster)
Book Project
Patterns of Sustaining Peace: The Complex Impact of Peacebuilding Institutions in Post-Conflict Societies
Patterns of Sustaining Peace engages in a central debate in peace and conflict studies and International Relations: how to establish high-quality, sustaining peace in societies recovering from large-scale, armed conflicts. The book’s innovation lies in the introduction of the sustaining peace scale, as a continuous measure for peacebuilding success and the broad analysis of configurations of peacebuilding practices, isolating causal paths that work in settling conflicts with peace agreements.
Patterns of Sustaining Peace is the first major work to move beyond defining peace as the absence of war and to develop a broad conceptualization and explanation for successful peacebuilding after armed conflicts. The conceptualization can be applied in comparative analyses of peacebuilding interventions. The book is also the first to use a set-theoretic, multi-method design to compare peacebuilding episodes in the post-Cold War era. The results of the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) show two equifinal configurations that jointly explain peacebuilding success: (a) the assisted accountability approach, including the presence of international commitment and transitional justice and (b) the integrated approach, combining the presence of power sharing, security sector reform, and transitional justice. The mechanisms behind these two patterns are subsequently studied by means of process tracing in the typical peacebuilding episodes in Sierra Leone (assisted accountability) and South Africa (integrated approach).
Patterns of Sustaining Peace provides a novel understanding of how different combinations of peacebuilding institutions interact to sustain peace and makes exceptional theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to peace and conflict studies. The book speaks to peacebuilding scholars and practitioners and offers insights into the effective planning and implementations of peacebuilding interventions in post-conflict societies.
Associated publications and working papers:
Leib, Julia (2024). Patterns of Sustaining Peace: The Complex Impact of Peacebuilding Institutions in Post-Conflict Societies. Forthcoming with Bristol University Press.
Leib, Julia (2022). How Justice Becomes Part of the Deal: Pre-Conditions for the Inclusion of Transitional Justice Provisions in Peace Agreements, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 16(3), 439-457.
Ruppel, Samantha & Julia Leib (2022). Same but Different: The Role of Local Leaders in the Peace Processes in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Peacebuilding, 10(4), 470-505.
Leib, Julia & Samantha Ruppel (2021). The Dance of Peace and Justice: Local Perceptions of International Peacebuilding in West Africa, International Peacekeeping, 28(5), 783-812.
Leib, Julia (2019). The security and justice approach in Liberia’s peace process: mechanistic evidence and local perception, Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 25(4), 1-6.
Leib, Julia (2016). Shaping peace: an investigation of the mechanisms underlying post-conflict peacebuilding, Peace, Conflict & Development, Issue 22: 25-76.
Other Projects
“The empirical effects of United Nations Simulations in Political Science Classrooms. An empirical study at different level of complexity”. With Samantha Ruppel
Leib, Julia & Samantha Ruppel (2020). The learning effects of United Nations simulations in political science classrooms, European Political Science, 19(3), 336-351.
Leib, Julia & Samantha Ruppel (2019). Studentische Lerneffekte in Simulationen der Vereinten Nationen, Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 8(1), 99-111.
Brühl, Tanja, Julia Leib, Anne Peltner & Samantha Ruppel (2018). Die Vereinten Nationen simulieren: „MainMUN“ als fächerübergreifendes Planspiel der Weltpolitik. In: M. Schedelik, T. Engartner & M.T. Messner (eds.). Planspiele in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Lehre: Theorie und Praxis aus der Hochschule. Schwalbach/Ts: Wochenschau Verlag: 181-191.
Julia Leib 