Notwithstanding the growing consensus on benefits associated with collaborations among intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) in peace operations, academic research has thus far neglected pressing questions of why and how IGOs collaborate within a network context in peace operations and how these inter-organizational collaborations among IGOs, IGO networks, might account for the success/failure of these operations. More specifically, this dissertation concentrates on how structural properties of IGO networks, such as the extensiveness of ties between network partners, and the cohesiveness of such networks, may account for peace operations’ performance in accomplishing their core goals: violence abatement, conflict containment and conflict settlement (Diehl and Druckman 2010). Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework bringing together insights from international relations, social network analysis and organizational studies, I argued, consistent with the extant literature, centralized and closed IGO networks—whether formally structured through time or ad hoc in each conflict—will have a moderating effect on network effectiveness. Particularly, I hypothesized that since they will improve and facilitate coordination in peace operations and achieve a more coherent IGO presence, dense and centralized inter-organizational networks formed by IGOs would be more likely to be successful in implementing the core tasks of peace missions.

This study uses newly collected relational data of inter-organizational collaborations among IGOs in peace operations deployed in internal armed conflicts and covers the period 1990 to 2013 to examine and assess the role of these collaborations, and their structural characteristics in peace operations outcomes. My hypotheses are tested using inferential network analysis and logit models to capture the effect of inter-organizational networks on peace operations outcomes. Though I found strong evidence that dense IGO networks are more likely to succeed in abating violence and containing conflicts in peace operations, my findings demonstrate that centralization, i.e., whether the network cohesion is centered around focal organization(s), does not matter for the performance of such missions, and the effectiveness of collaborations. I found mixed evidence regarding the role of the host country and the conflict characteristics associated with the success of peace operations.