This chapter tests observable implications of localized peace enforcement theory at the individual level using two experiments conducted in Mali. First, the chapter presents the results of a study designed to measure willingness to cooperate using a trust game where participants send money to an anonymous partner from a different ethnic group. A randomly assigned group of participants is told that two patrolling officers (from either the UN or France) will punish any low partner contributions with a fine. While the UN treatment increased participants’ willingness to cooperate, the France treatment had no effect. Follow-up interviews confirmed the importance of perceptions of the UN’s impartiality. Second, the chapter outlines the results of a survey that presents respondents with a vignette describing a communal dispute. Respondents were then randomly assigned to a control, UN, or French treatment group. Assignment to the UN treatment group – but not the French treatment group – reduced the likelihood that respondents said a communal dispute would escalate. To probe the plausibility of localized peace enforcement theory specifically, the chapter concludes with an analysis of specific questions about individuals’ perceptions of peacekeepers from the survey.

This chapter applies localized peace enforcement theory to a subnational analysis of patterns of dispute escalation in Mali. In order to investigate whether the previous chapters’ experimental findings generalize to real-world operations, the chapter presents the results of two analyses of UN peacekeeping efforts to prevent the onset of communal violence in the central Malian region of Mopti. The first study leverages a geographic regression discontinuity design to compare dispute escalation on either side of the Burkina Faso–Mali border. The border splits similar areas into those “treated” with UN peacekeeping patrols (on the Mali side) and “control” areas without peacekeeping (on the Burkina Faso side). The findings indicate that peacekeeping reduces the likelihood of communal violence. The second study delves deeper into the data with an analysis of UN peacekeepers from different countries deployed to the same regions of Mali and uncovers further evidence in line with the predictions of the theory. Rather than comparing UN peacekeeping in countries with against those without a peacekeeping operation, the study compares UN peacekeepers from different contributing countries – Togo and Senegal – deployed to the same area.

This chapter begins the second part of the book, which tests the main empirical implications of localized peace enforcement theory using data from Mali, a land-locked country in West Africa. Though Mali experienced three coups, a separatist civil war, and an Islamist extremist insurgency from 2012 to 2024, no source of conflict has been more fatal or detrimental to Malian society than communal violence. The chapter starts by providing a very brief history of identity-based conflict in the country. It also places Mali within a broader historical context and demonstrates that its experience of interethnic tensions is representative of countries with colonial legacies. The chapter then draws on detailed interviews with forty-eight local leaders to describe what communal violence and peacekeeping look like in Mali from the residents’ perspective. Given the theoretical importance domestic perceptions of peacekeepers, these interviews offer crucial insights into the plausibility of localized peace enforcement theory. There are distinct advantages of studying the Malian case, which the chapter describes in a brief overview of international interventions by the UN and France from 2012 to 2024.