Jessica Di Salvatore
Biographic Data
| ID | 1186264 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jessica Di Salvatore |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jessica |
| FAMILY NAME | Di Salvatore |
| SIGNATURE | DI SALVATORE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7654-9794 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 196 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Rebuilding trust in national police: The case of the UN mission in Mali
International interventions often aim to reinforce both capacity as well as perceived legitimacy of national security forces. However, how peacekeeping operations manage to improve trust in the national police has received limited attention. In this article, we evaluate whether and how UN missions can (re‐)build trust in the national police focusing on the case of Mali. We combine data on UN local deployment and nationally representative survey r…
Gender in International Bureaucracies: Evidence from UN Field Missions
Contemporary international organizations, including the UN, employ tens of thousands of staff outside of their headquarters in field offices around the world. Despite attempts to promote gender equity, significant differences persist in male and female officials’ experiences of working in UN field offices and missions. Drawing on a series of internal surveys of UN field staff, we demonstrate that, relative to men, women report having worse relati…
Introducing the Uncippo (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset
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 informati…
Bad signals? Foreign aid and tax morale across Sub-Saharan Africa
What it Takes to Return: UN Peacekeeping and the Safe Return of Displaced People
We investigate the impact of UN peacekeeping on voluntary returns and negative attitudes towards displaced persons. We posit that peacekeeping missions can have beneficial effects by improving security and alleviating the socio-economic burden imposed by new arrivals on receiving communities. Focusing on the critical case of South Sudan, we combine information on peacekeepers' subnational deployment with high frequency survey data. Our findings s…
Keeping or Building Peace? UN Peace Operations beyond the Security Dilemma
One of the most consistent findings on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they contribute to peace. Existing scholarship argues this is because UNPOs' peacekeeping troops solve the security dilemma that inhibits combatant disarmament and prevents their political leaders from sharing power. We argue that existing scholarship's focus on peacekeeping troops overlooks UNPOs’ role in enabling governments to implement redistributive power‐sharing refo…
Do UN peace operations help forcibly displaced people
Do UN missions reduce forced displacement? Facing insecure environments, civilians are left with three choices: staying; moving to a safer community; or moving outside their country. Their aspiration and ability to move depend on individual characteristics and macro-level factors, such as the social, economic and political context in which these people live. Research shows that UN missions can impact and reset the macro-level context altered by w…
Socio-economic correlates of childhood obesity in urban and rural England
Objective: Physical access to food may affect diet and thus obesity rates. We build upon existing work to better understand how socio-economic characteristics of locations are associated with childhood overweight. Design: Using cross-sectional design and publicly available data, the study specifically compares rural and urban areas, including interactions of distance from supermarkets with income and population density. Setting: We examine cross-…
Mothers at peace: International peacebuilding and post-conflict fertility
A considerable body of empirical evidence indicates that conflict affects reproductive behaviour, often resulting in an increased fertility rate due to higher child mortality and limited access to healthcare services. However, we know much less about the effect of peace in a post-conflict setting. This study explores how the external provision of security affects fertility by focusing on the UN intervention in Liberia. Combining DHS birth history…
UN Peacekeeping and Democratization in Conflict-Affected Countries
Does UN peacekeeping promote democracy in countries wracked by civil war? Existing studies are limited and reach contradictory conclusions. We develop a theory to explain how peacekeepers can help overcome obstacles to democratization in conflict-affected countries, then test our theory by combining three original datasets on UN mandates, personnel, and activities covering all UN missions in Africa since the end of the Cold War. Using fixed effec…
Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (Pema) Dataset
Research on UN peacekeeping operations has established that operations' size and composition affect peacekeeping success. However, we lack systematic data for evaluating whether variation in tasks assigned to UN peacekeeping mandates matters and what explains different configurations of mandated tasks in the first place. Drawing on UN Security Council resolutions that establish, extend, or revise mandates of 27 UN peacekeeping operations in Afric…
When Do UN Peacekeeping Operations Implement Their Mandates
Under what conditions do UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) implement the tasks in their mandates? Contemporary PKOs are expected to fulfill increasingly fragmented mandates in active conflict zones. We argue that these two trends—increasingly fragmented mandates, increasingly implemented amidst violence—exacerbate delegation and coordination problems that hinder PKOs from pursuing mandated tasks, potentially undermining their legitimacy in the ey…
UN Peacekeeping and Households' Well‐Being in Civil Wars
Civil wars affect the economic conditions of households by disrupting economic transactions and harming their psychological well‐being. To restore basic conditions for local economic recovery in conflict‐torn regions, the international community has only a limited number of tools at its disposal. We ask whether UN peacekeeping is one instrument to mitigate the negative effect of conflict on households' economic well‐being. We argue that, by reduc…
Do UN peace operations lead to more terrorism? Repertoires of rebel violence and third-party interventions
Recent research suggests that UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) reduce conventional violence. However, rebel groups have been increasingly using a combination of conventional and non-conventional violence, for example, terrorism. Little is known about whether and under which conditions PKOs shape rebels’ incentives to resort to more terrorism. At the same time, existing research on the use of terrorism in civil wars primarily focuses on domestic …
Introducing the PeaceKeeping Operations Corpus (PKOC)
Scholars have used United Nations Secretary-General’s (UNSG) reports to extract information on peacekeeping operations (PKOs). As key peacekeeping political documents, UNSG reports contain much more information on the politics of peacekeeping. Furthermore, manually extracting information is costly and time-consuming. By providing a machine-readable collection of the UN Secretary-General’s Reports on PKOs (1994–2020), the PeaceKeeping Operations C…
Spatial analysis for political scientists
How does space matter in our analyses? How can we evaluate diffusion of phenomena or interdependence among units? How biased can our analysis be if we do not consider spatial relationships? All the above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our paper intr…
Tangled up in Blue: The Effect of UN Peacekeeping on Nonviolent Protests in Post–Civil War Countries
Do peacekeeping missions facilitate nonviolent political contention in post–civil war countries? The nonviolent expression of political grievances is a crucial part of the post–civil war peace-building process but is understudied thus far. We claim that the presence of peacekeepers significantly contributes to establishing a secure environment for nonviolent political contention, particularly nonviolent public protest. In addition, we claim that …
The Withdrawal of UN Peace Operations and State Capacity: Descriptive Trends and Research Challenges
The Withdrawal of UN Peace Operations and State Capacity: Descriptive Trends and Research Challenges
Obstacle to Peace? Ethnic Geography and Effectiveness of Peacekeeping
Under what conditions does peacekeeping reduce one-sided violence in civil wars? This article argues that local sources of violence, particularly ethnic geography, affect peacekeeping effectiveness. Existing studies focus on the features of individual missions, yet curbing one-sided violence also depends on peacekeepers’ capacity to reduce the opportunities and incentives for violence. Moving from the idea that territorial control is a function o…
Fraud Is What People Make of It: Election Fraud, Perceived Fraud, and Protesting in Nigeria
Why do fraudulent elections encourage protesting? Scholars suggest that information about fraud shapes individuals’ beliefs and propensity to protest. Yet these accounts neglect the complexity of opinion formation and have not been tested at the individual level. We distinguish between the mobilizing effects of actual incidents of election fraud and individuals’ subjective perceptions of fraud. While rational updating models would imply that both…
Peacekeepers against Criminal Violence—Unintended Effects of Peacekeeping Operations
Research shows that peacekeepers reduce conflict intensity; however, effects of deployment on nonpolitical violence are unknown. This article focuses on criminal violence and proposes a twofold mechanism to explain why peacekeeping missions, even when effectively reducing conflict, can inadvertently increase criminal violence. First, less conflict opens up economic opportunities (so‐called peacekeeping economies) and provides operational security…
Does criminal violence spread? Contagion and counter-contagion mechanisms of piracy
Inherently vulnerable? Ethnic geography and the intensity of violence in the Bosnian civil war
Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (Pema) Dataset
Research on UN peacekeeping operations has established that operations' size and composition affect peacekeeping success. However, we lack systematic data for evaluating whether variation in tasks assigned to UN peacekeeping mandates matters and what explains different configurations of mandated tasks in the first place. Drawing on UN Security Council resolutions that establish, extend, or revise mandates of 27 UN peacekeeping operations in Afric…
Peacekeepers against Criminal Violence—Unintended Effects of Peacekeeping Operations
Research shows that peacekeepers reduce conflict intensity; however, effects of deployment on nonpolitical violence are unknown. This article focuses on criminal violence and proposes a twofold mechanism to explain why peacekeeping missions, even when effectively reducing conflict, can inadvertently increase criminal violence. First, less conflict opens up economic opportunities (so‐called peacekeeping economies) and provides operational security…
Fraud Is What People Make of It: Election Fraud, Perceived Fraud, and Protesting in Nigeria
Why do fraudulent elections encourage protesting? Scholars suggest that information about fraud shapes individuals’ beliefs and propensity to protest. Yet these accounts neglect the complexity of opinion formation and have not been tested at the individual level. We distinguish between the mobilizing effects of actual incidents of election fraud and individuals’ subjective perceptions of fraud. While rational updating models would imply that both…
When Do UN Peacekeeping Operations Implement Their Mandates
Under what conditions do UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) implement the tasks in their mandates? Contemporary PKOs are expected to fulfill increasingly fragmented mandates in active conflict zones. We argue that these two trends—increasingly fragmented mandates, increasingly implemented amidst violence—exacerbate delegation and coordination problems that hinder PKOs from pursuing mandated tasks, potentially undermining their legitimacy in the ey…
Tangled up in Blue: The Effect of UN Peacekeeping on Nonviolent Protests in Post–Civil War Countries
Do peacekeeping missions facilitate nonviolent political contention in post–civil war countries? The nonviolent expression of political grievances is a crucial part of the post–civil war peace-building process but is understudied thus far. We claim that the presence of peacekeepers significantly contributes to establishing a secure environment for nonviolent political contention, particularly nonviolent public protest. In addition, we claim that …
UN Peacekeeping and Democratization in Conflict-Affected Countries
Does UN peacekeeping promote democracy in countries wracked by civil war? Existing studies are limited and reach contradictory conclusions. We develop a theory to explain how peacekeepers can help overcome obstacles to democratization in conflict-affected countries, then test our theory by combining three original datasets on UN mandates, personnel, and activities covering all UN missions in Africa since the end of the Cold War. Using fixed effec…
UN Peacekeeping and Households' Well‐Being in Civil Wars
Civil wars affect the economic conditions of households by disrupting economic transactions and harming their psychological well‐being. To restore basic conditions for local economic recovery in conflict‐torn regions, the international community has only a limited number of tools at its disposal. We ask whether UN peacekeeping is one instrument to mitigate the negative effect of conflict on households' economic well‐being. We argue that, by reduc…
Obstacle to Peace? Ethnic Geography and Effectiveness of Peacekeeping
Under what conditions does peacekeeping reduce one-sided violence in civil wars? This article argues that local sources of violence, particularly ethnic geography, affect peacekeeping effectiveness. Existing studies focus on the features of individual missions, yet curbing one-sided violence also depends on peacekeepers’ capacity to reduce the opportunities and incentives for violence. Moving from the idea that territorial control is a function o…
Keeping or Building Peace? UN Peace Operations beyond the Security Dilemma
One of the most consistent findings on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they contribute to peace. Existing scholarship argues this is because UNPOs' peacekeeping troops solve the security dilemma that inhibits combatant disarmament and prevents their political leaders from sharing power. We argue that existing scholarship's focus on peacekeeping troops overlooks UNPOs’ role in enabling governments to implement redistributive power‐sharing refo…
Inherently vulnerable? Ethnic geography and the intensity of violence in the Bosnian civil war
Introducing the PeaceKeeping Operations Corpus (PKOC)
Scholars have used United Nations Secretary-General’s (UNSG) reports to extract information on peacekeeping operations (PKOs). As key peacekeeping political documents, UNSG reports contain much more information on the politics of peacekeeping. Furthermore, manually extracting information is costly and time-consuming. By providing a machine-readable collection of the UN Secretary-General’s Reports on PKOs (1994–2020), the PeaceKeeping Operations C…
Spatial analysis for political scientists
How does space matter in our analyses? How can we evaluate diffusion of phenomena or interdependence among units? How biased can our analysis be if we do not consider spatial relationships? All the above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our paper intr…
The Withdrawal of UN Peace Operations and State Capacity: Descriptive Trends and Research Challenges
The Withdrawal of UN Peace Operations and State Capacity: Descriptive Trends and Research Challenges
Do UN peace operations lead to more terrorism? Repertoires of rebel violence and third-party interventions
Recent research suggests that UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) reduce conventional violence. However, rebel groups have been increasingly using a combination of conventional and non-conventional violence, for example, terrorism. Little is known about whether and under which conditions PKOs shape rebels’ incentives to resort to more terrorism. At the same time, existing research on the use of terrorism in civil wars primarily focuses on domestic …
Does criminal violence spread? Contagion and counter-contagion mechanisms of piracy
Mothers at peace: International peacebuilding and post-conflict fertility
A considerable body of empirical evidence indicates that conflict affects reproductive behaviour, often resulting in an increased fertility rate due to higher child mortality and limited access to healthcare services. However, we know much less about the effect of peace in a post-conflict setting. This study explores how the external provision of security affects fertility by focusing on the UN intervention in Liberia. Combining DHS birth history…
Inherently vulnerable? Ethnic geography and the intensity of violence in the Bosnian civil war
Does criminal violence spread? Contagion and counter-contagion mechanisms of piracy
Fraud Is What People Make of It: Election Fraud, Perceived Fraud, and Protesting in Nigeria
Why do fraudulent elections encourage protesting? Scholars suggest that information about fraud shapes individuals’ beliefs and propensity to protest. Yet these accounts neglect the complexity of opinion formation and have not been tested at the individual level. We distinguish between the mobilizing effects of actual incidents of election fraud and individuals’ subjective perceptions of fraud. While rational updating models would imply that both…
Peacekeepers against Criminal Violence—Unintended Effects of Peacekeeping Operations
Research shows that peacekeepers reduce conflict intensity; however, effects of deployment on nonpolitical violence are unknown. This article focuses on criminal violence and proposes a twofold mechanism to explain why peacekeeping missions, even when effectively reducing conflict, can inadvertently increase criminal violence. First, less conflict opens up economic opportunities (so‐called peacekeeping economies) and provides operational security…
The Withdrawal of UN Peace Operations and State Capacity: Descriptive Trends and Research Challenges
The Withdrawal of UN Peace Operations and State Capacity: Descriptive Trends and Research Challenges
Obstacle to Peace? Ethnic Geography and Effectiveness of Peacekeeping
Under what conditions does peacekeeping reduce one-sided violence in civil wars? This article argues that local sources of violence, particularly ethnic geography, affect peacekeeping effectiveness. Existing studies focus on the features of individual missions, yet curbing one-sided violence also depends on peacekeepers’ capacity to reduce the opportunities and incentives for violence. Moving from the idea that territorial control is a function o…
Introducing the PeaceKeeping Operations Corpus (PKOC)
Scholars have used United Nations Secretary-General’s (UNSG) reports to extract information on peacekeeping operations (PKOs). As key peacekeeping political documents, UNSG reports contain much more information on the politics of peacekeeping. Furthermore, manually extracting information is costly and time-consuming. By providing a machine-readable collection of the UN Secretary-General’s Reports on PKOs (1994–2020), the PeaceKeeping Operations C…
Spatial analysis for political scientists
How does space matter in our analyses? How can we evaluate diffusion of phenomena or interdependence among units? How biased can our analysis be if we do not consider spatial relationships? All the above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our paper intr…
Tangled up in Blue: The Effect of UN Peacekeeping on Nonviolent Protests in Post–Civil War Countries
Do peacekeeping missions facilitate nonviolent political contention in post–civil war countries? The nonviolent expression of political grievances is a crucial part of the post–civil war peace-building process but is understudied thus far. We claim that the presence of peacekeepers significantly contributes to establishing a secure environment for nonviolent political contention, particularly nonviolent public protest. In addition, we claim that …
Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (Pema) Dataset
Research on UN peacekeeping operations has established that operations' size and composition affect peacekeeping success. However, we lack systematic data for evaluating whether variation in tasks assigned to UN peacekeeping mandates matters and what explains different configurations of mandated tasks in the first place. Drawing on UN Security Council resolutions that establish, extend, or revise mandates of 27 UN peacekeeping operations in Afric…
When Do UN Peacekeeping Operations Implement Their Mandates
Under what conditions do UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) implement the tasks in their mandates? Contemporary PKOs are expected to fulfill increasingly fragmented mandates in active conflict zones. We argue that these two trends—increasingly fragmented mandates, increasingly implemented amidst violence—exacerbate delegation and coordination problems that hinder PKOs from pursuing mandated tasks, potentially undermining their legitimacy in the ey…
UN Peacekeeping and Households' Well‐Being in Civil Wars
Civil wars affect the economic conditions of households by disrupting economic transactions and harming their psychological well‐being. To restore basic conditions for local economic recovery in conflict‐torn regions, the international community has only a limited number of tools at its disposal. We ask whether UN peacekeeping is one instrument to mitigate the negative effect of conflict on households' economic well‐being. We argue that, by reduc…
Do UN peace operations lead to more terrorism? Repertoires of rebel violence and third-party interventions
Recent research suggests that UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) reduce conventional violence. However, rebel groups have been increasingly using a combination of conventional and non-conventional violence, for example, terrorism. Little is known about whether and under which conditions PKOs shape rebels’ incentives to resort to more terrorism. At the same time, existing research on the use of terrorism in civil wars primarily focuses on domestic …
Socio-economic correlates of childhood obesity in urban and rural England
Objective: Physical access to food may affect diet and thus obesity rates. We build upon existing work to better understand how socio-economic characteristics of locations are associated with childhood overweight. Design: Using cross-sectional design and publicly available data, the study specifically compares rural and urban areas, including interactions of distance from supermarkets with income and population density. Setting: We examine cross-…
Mothers at peace: International peacebuilding and post-conflict fertility
A considerable body of empirical evidence indicates that conflict affects reproductive behaviour, often resulting in an increased fertility rate due to higher child mortality and limited access to healthcare services. However, we know much less about the effect of peace in a post-conflict setting. This study explores how the external provision of security affects fertility by focusing on the UN intervention in Liberia. Combining DHS birth history…
UN Peacekeeping and Democratization in Conflict-Affected Countries
Does UN peacekeeping promote democracy in countries wracked by civil war? Existing studies are limited and reach contradictory conclusions. We develop a theory to explain how peacekeepers can help overcome obstacles to democratization in conflict-affected countries, then test our theory by combining three original datasets on UN mandates, personnel, and activities covering all UN missions in Africa since the end of the Cold War. Using fixed effec…
What it Takes to Return: UN Peacekeeping and the Safe Return of Displaced People
We investigate the impact of UN peacekeeping on voluntary returns and negative attitudes towards displaced persons. We posit that peacekeeping missions can have beneficial effects by improving security and alleviating the socio-economic burden imposed by new arrivals on receiving communities. Focusing on the critical case of South Sudan, we combine information on peacekeepers' subnational deployment with high frequency survey data. Our findings s…
Keeping or Building Peace? UN Peace Operations beyond the Security Dilemma
One of the most consistent findings on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they contribute to peace. Existing scholarship argues this is because UNPOs' peacekeeping troops solve the security dilemma that inhibits combatant disarmament and prevents their political leaders from sharing power. We argue that existing scholarship's focus on peacekeeping troops overlooks UNPOs’ role in enabling governments to implement redistributive power‐sharing refo…
Do UN peace operations help forcibly displaced people
Do UN missions reduce forced displacement? Facing insecure environments, civilians are left with three choices: staying; moving to a safer community; or moving outside their country. Their aspiration and ability to move depend on individual characteristics and macro-level factors, such as the social, economic and political context in which these people live. Research shows that UN missions can impact and reset the macro-level context altered by w…
Gender in International Bureaucracies: Evidence from UN Field Missions
Contemporary international organizations, including the UN, employ tens of thousands of staff outside of their headquarters in field offices around the world. Despite attempts to promote gender equity, significant differences persist in male and female officials’ experiences of working in UN field offices and missions. Drawing on a series of internal surveys of UN field staff, we demonstrate that, relative to men, women report having worse relati…
Introducing the Uncippo (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset
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 informati…
Bad signals? Foreign aid and tax morale across Sub-Saharan Africa
Rebuilding trust in national police: The case of the UN mission in Mali
International interventions often aim to reinforce both capacity as well as perceived legitimacy of national security forces. However, how peacekeeping operations manage to improve trust in the national police has received limited attention. In this article, we evaluate whether and how UN missions can (re‐)build trust in the national police focusing on the case of Mali. We combine data on UN local deployment and nationally representative survey r…
Political science (20 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (17 works) · Peacekeeping (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (14 works) · Economics (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · International Development and Aid (10 works) · Public Administration (10 works)