Shifting Shadows: The Impact of International Accountability on Repertoires of Violence Dynamics in Conflict Zones

Summary

International monitoring is expected to deter visible violence, but it may also change how violence is used. Where attribution becomes more likely, some actors may avoid overt abuse, while others may rely on more concealed forms such as enforced disappearances. This study examines whether local United Nations peacekeeping presence is associated with the composition of observed violence and whether that association differs across perpetrators. Using ACLED together with the RADPKO and GeoPKO datasets, we analyse event-level patterns, conflict-history extensions, reporting checks, balanced perpetrator panels, nearby-base opening designs, and militia recoding. The results do not support a general increase in clandestine violence near United Nations deployments. Instead, they show heterogeneity across actors. Stronger troop exposure is associated with a lower relative likelihood that rebel violence takes clandestine form. A positive militia association appears in the benchmark event-level models, but it becomes more contingent once zero-violence cells and local timing are restored. When militias are recoded, the remaining positive association is more consistent with pro-government-leaning militias in the RADPKO troop models, though not uniformly across datasets. The findings suggest that peacekeeping is linked less to a single covert-violence effect than to shifts in the composition of observed violence across actors.