Reforming 21st Century Peacekeeping Operations: Governmentalities of Security, Protection, and Police(Interventions)

This book considers contemporary international interventions with a specific focus on analyzing the frameworks that have guided recent peacekeeping operations led by the United Nations. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault and Foucauldian-inspired approaches in the field of International Relations, it highlights how interventions can be viewed through the lens of governmentality and its key attendant concepts. The book draws from these approaches in order to explore how international interventions are increasingly informed by governmental rationalities of security and policing. Two specific cases are examined: the UN's Security Sector Reform (SSR) approach and the UN's Protection of Civilians agenda. Focusing on the governmental rationalities that are at work in these two central frameworks that have come to guide contemporary UN-led peacekeeping efforts in recent years, the book considers: The use in IR of governmentality and its attendant notions of biopower and sovereign power The recent discussion regarding the concept and practice of international policing and police reform The rise of security as a rationality of government and the manner in which security and police rationalities interconnect and have increasingly come to inform peacekeeping efforts The Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework for peacebuilding and the rise of the UN's Protection of Civilians agenda. This book will be of interest to graduates and scholars of international relations, security studies, critical theory, and conflict and intervention.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Reforming 21st-century peacekeeping operations: governmentalities of security, protection, and police Chapter 2: Governmentality, sovereign Power, and contemporary international peacekeeping operations Introduction The mentality of government Governmentalizing the state Sovereign power, biopower, and state sovereignty Sovereign power and states of emergency Conclusion Chapter 3: Police, security, and resilience Introduction International police and international policing Police as a figuration of sovereign power Police as regulation mania Security and police The police-security project of resilience Conclusion Chapter 4: Local ownership: the police-security project of security sector reform (SSR) Introduction Security Sector Reform (SSR): a summary The governmentality of SSR Operationalizing resilience through local ownership Conclusion Chapter 5: The UN’s protection of civilians agenda Introduction Civilis Civilis legalis The new lawfare of protecting civilians The UN’s PoC agenda Rationalizing protection at its point of application The necropolitics of protection Conclusion Chapter 6: Conclusion: reforming UN peacekeeping operations: security, protection, and police

About the Author :
Marc G. Doucet is an Associate Professor at Saint Mary’s University, Canada. He is the co-editor of Security and Global Governmentality and has published articles in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding; Security Dialogue; Theory & Event; Contemporary Political Theory; Millennium; Alternatives; and Global Society.

Review :
'Marc Doucet’s book, Reforming 21st Century Peacekeeping Operations: Governmentalities of Security, Protection, and Police, drawing from the work of Michel Foucault, theorizes about the relationship between the governmental rationality and the UNPKO reform agenda in recent decades. He chooses two specific cases: the SSR model and the UNSC Protection of Civilians (PoC). In one of the chapters entitled Governmentality, sovereign power, and contemporary international peacekeeping operations, Doucet explores key Foucauldian notions, like governmentality, population, biopower and sovereign power.' Ricardo Oliveira dos Santos, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2019