Decorating the ‘Christmas Tree’: The UN Security Council and the Secretariat’s Recommendations on Peacekeeping Operations

Contemporary peacekeeping operations carry out a wide range of disparate tasks, which has triggered a debate about ‘Christmas Tree’ mandates. Did the UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat favor this expansion? Using original data on 19 UN peacekeeping missions, 1998- 2014, we compare peacekeeping tasks recommended by the Secretariat to those mandated by the Council. We find that the two bodies differ regarding the nature, number, and novelty of peacekeeping tasks. First, the Council was equally likely to add a new task as to reject a Secretariat-proposed one. Second, the two bodies disagreed more over peace-building and peacemaking tasks than over peacekeeping tasks. Third, the Council preferred to be the one to introduce tasks that had not appeared in previous mandates. These findings suggest that the Secretariat favored the expansion of peacekeeping when it entailed low risks and the Council when it could set the direction of the expansion itself.