Local Support for Military Interventions in Conflict-Ridden Countries: A Survey Experiment in Mali

International interventions represent a crucial instrument employed by the international community to uphold security and restore peace in states affected by armed conflict and violence. Numerous studies have shown that peacekeeping operations – a particular type of military intervention - on average achieve significant results (Fortna 2004; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon 2020; Walter, Howard, and Fortna 2021). However, since 2014, the United Nations (UN) has not created any new peacekeeping mission. The literature explains this development by referring to a growing reluctance among Western actors traditionally promoting them, systemic changes toward an increasingly multipolar international system, and a concomitant crisis of multilateralism (Karlsrud 2023; Duursma et al. 2023; Hellmüller 2022). In the context of a growing contestation of the liberal peace paradigm applied to international intervention, older debates about which actors can conduct these operations most effectively (Bellamy and Williams 2005) regain relevance as the field of intervention becomes increasingly competitive. Besides the UN, regional organizations such as the European Union or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and individual states, including Western and non-Western ones such as the United States, France and Russia have recently operated in conflict-affected contexts, leveraging distinct objectives and approaches on the ground. While literature is addressing whether peace operations are transitioning towards a post-Western and liberal phase (Paris 2024; de Coning 2019), there is currently limited evidence about how these changes are ultimately received at the local level. In this sense, although local support is widely acknowledged as a crucial component for an effective peace mission, our understanding of the relations between local population and foreign troops remains limited (Pouligny 2006; Autesserre 2014; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis 2017). In particular, we lack a clear picture of the mechanisms that drive local support for foreign troops. This study aims to fill this further literature gap by examining local perceptions of foreign actors, categorized into three dichotomies: international organizations versus states, universal versus regional international organizations, Western versus non-Western states. We assess the standalone effect of identification of the local population with these actors on support for military interventions. Moreover, we examine the impact of identification conditioned to mission effectiveness and troops integrity on the ground, two established determinants of local support on the ground (Bakaki and Dorussen 2023). To test our theoretical arguments, we conduct a survey experiment in Mali, a country that since the outbreak of the civil war in 2012 has experienced several military interventions from different actors, including the UN, ECOWAS, France, and Russia.