Over the last twenty-five years, an increasing number of peacekeepers have been deployed to an expanding number of missions around the world. This growth in peacekeeping has been accompanied by the development of a substantial literature exploring the effect these missions have. Prominent books and articles have shown that peacekeeping prolongs ceasefires and decreases civilian killing. A recent book (Winning the War on War, Joshua Goldstein, 2011) goes so far as to argue that peacekeeping has caused a worldwide decline in armed conflict.

The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper identifies a significant gap in the literature on peacekeeping. The literature focuses almost entirely on peacekeeping’s effect in the countries to which peacekeepers are deployed. However, most of the world’s peacekeepers come from countries that are not consolidated democracies and which have histories of military intervention in politics. As such, it is important to consider the effect that participation in peacekeeping missions has on the sending, as well as the receiving, countries.

This book does just that. The conventional wisdom is that participating in peacekeeping helps democratizing countries gain greater civilian control over their militaries and improves civil-military relations. Sotomayor puts that wisdom to the test by examining the effect of peacekeeping through detailed qualitative examination of three cases: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay—all three countries among the top twenty-five in deploying the most peacekeepers from 2000 to 2010 (Uruguay was in the top ten). Each democratized as part of the “Third Wave” of democracy that swept much of the world in the 1980s and 1990s. Additionally, their shared geographic location allows for direct comparisons among cases that are similar on a variety of factors that could affect civil-military relations, but that also show divergent results. Finally, all three countries participated in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, allowing for comparisons of the experiences of different sending countries in the same mission.

The book examines three main questions: Does participating in peacekeeping lead to doctrinal changes within a country’s military? Can peacekeeping socialize soldiers to become more liberalized and civilianized? And does peacekeeping lead to greater integration of foreign and defense policy? Sotomayor argues that peacekeeping had divergent effects both between and within Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay but that, on average, participation did not improve civil-military relations.

Participation in peacekeeping could improve civil-military relations if it led to reforms in military organizations through better training and an orientation toward external, as opposed to internal, threats. Sotomayor does find this effect in Argentina under President Menem (1991-1996), where peacekeeping was accompanied by an improvement in training and greater civilian control over the military. However, he does not find the same effect in the second “phase” of Argentinian participation in peacekeeping (after the financial crisis of the late 1990s), nor does he find evidence of doctrinal changes within the military in Brazil or Uruguay.

Even if peacekeeping did not change the overall military doctrine, it could improve civil-military relations by affecting socialization of individual peacekeepers. If participation in peacekeeping missions led uniformed personnel to develop new attitudes and organizational identities, leading to greater professionalization and focus, this could reform the military. This effect is particularly likely in cases like Uruguay, which has more than 10 percent of its military force participating in peacekeeping.

Sotomayor again finds that socialization can happen, but that the effect is not universal or even typical. He argues that socialization is likely to be most effective when soldiers are performing tasks they do not perform at home. Participation in observation or peace enforcement missions can lead to positive socialization through soldiers interacting with other units and obtaining additional training. However, participation in state-building and policing activities can also function as a form of socialization, but with more negative consequences for civil-military relations as it can reinforce a focus on internal threats. Sotomayor shows that the majority of peacekeepers from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay participated in these state-building and policing tasks. This meant that, at best, the soldiers rarely experienced the positive effects of socialization. At worst, participation in activities such as policing and (in Haiti) drug-interdiction served to reinforce a focus on internal security.

A third potential way that participation in peacekeeping could reform civil-military relations is through integration of defense and foreign policy. Again, Sotomayor finds that while this effect can happen, in these three cases it is rare.

The argument and evidence in The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper significantly advances understanding of the effects of participation in peacekeeping on civil-military relations in sending countries. It effectively demonstrates that participation can have beneficial effects, but that whether or not it does depends primarily on two things. First, when civilian governments take participation in peacekeeping as an opportunity to assert greater control over the military, it is more likely to lead to reform than when they delegate control of operations to the armed services. Second, the effect of peacekeeping on individual peacekeepers depends on what tasks they perform.

While this book represents a significant contribution, there are some limitations—primarily its generalizability. The focus on three cases allows for collecting detailed information on military training and doctrine, the professionalization of individual peacekeepers, and the level of integration of foreign and defense policy, which would be nearly impossible to collect on a cross-national basis. Additionally, it allows for holding some factors constant. However, the focus on these cases also limits the generalizability of the argument. Many of the other states that contribute the most peacekeepers—such as Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Ghana, and Kenya (which are all in the top ten contributors) differ substantially from these cases in their levels of economic development and democratization. Additionally, several of them are directly affected by civil conflicts in neighboring states. If these additional factors condition the effect of peacekeeping on civil-military relations, then it is difficult to generalize from the South American cases to this broader set of countries.

The second limitation is that the evaluation of the effect of peacekeeping could focus farther down the causal chain. The book begins with a discussion of why democratizing states participate in peacekeeping and argues that it can be a form of international or domestic signaling, an impetus for domestic reform, or a response to monetary incentives (Chapter 1). There is an analysis about each of these influences in the context of the three cases (Chapter 2). However, too little theoretical or empirical attention is paid to how the motivation for peacekeeping affects the way it is used domestically, and thus the effect that it has on civil-military relations. These links in the causal chain could be tied together more clearly to tell a more coherent story.

These limitations notwithstanding, this book represents a significant contribution to a growing strand of literature. Peacekeeping will continue to be a prominent feature of international politics, and understanding its effects requires examining both sending and receiving countries. The insights in The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper should inspire further scholarly work in this important area.