 So thank you also for me to our panel organizers, to the audience for coming and to UNU Wider and Helsinki for hosting us. So this presentation draws on research that I've undertaken with colleagues at King's College London, the University of Liverpool City University London, and not least with our discussant for the day, Adam Day at UNU CPR in New York as well as Ahem Al-Male. And I'm drawing specifically on the report that we put together on this bigger project on authoritarianism and peace building. So what are we looking at here? Well most peace operations take place in authoritarian settings, countries with legacies of authoritarian rule. Most peace building missions also have broadly liberal goals. They try to establish democratic or at least kind of inclusive and transparent forms of governance in the host countries. However what we observe is that many countries hosting missions either remain authoritarian or in fact become increasingly authoritarian over the life of the mission. So why does this happen? Well we contend that the UN can inadvertently enable authoritarian rule and we suggest that there are two mechanisms at work here. The first of these is a capacity building mechanism. So capacity building as most of you know is at the heart of most contemporary mandates together with the disbursement of sometimes enormous sums of money to post-conflict countries this can strengthen the ability of the state to engage in repressive or authoritarian exclusionary behavior. The second mechanism is a signalling mechanism. So the UN can through both actions and inactions signal a high degree of tolerance for authoritarian behavior especially where it's balancing among multiple goals and objectives and because it has to work closely with incumbent governments. But to be clear we are not suggesting that the UN is actively or purposefully promoting authoritarianism in these countries or that these countries would do better without a UN presence. But we do think that it's important to be aware of a sort of potentially serious set of unintended consequences and to attempt to mitigate them as much as possible. I'll add one more disclaimer which is that we also don't suggest the UN is the only or even the primary reason for a slide towards authoritarianism. There are many routes to an authoritarian structure in countries and in some countries it's primarily domestic factors and in others there's a large international influence. We undertook this study in sort of two ways. The first was a review of funding mechanisms through the Peace Building Fund and that included looking at nine countries and then we also conducted three in-depth case studies and I'll be focusing on one of those later on in the presentation. Through this empirical work we identified nine key factors that influence governance trajectories in host countries and show how authoritarian enabling through both the capacity building mechanism and the signaling mechanism take place. So I'm going to go through these nine factors right now. So the first of these is what we call the gravitational pull of the state. The bulk of Peace Building funding in post-conflict countries goes to the state, specifically to the category of what's called core government functions or CGF. However this can concentrate resources in the hands of a powerful elite enabling them to consolidate their power and to undertake repressive actions with less concern about repercussions. Now aid can of course be directed away from the state as a kind of form of sanction but we observe that that is in fact exceptional and in fact we see the share of aid going to the state increase over time. The second factor we identify is a focus on the executive. So after conflict and transitions to a new government the executive is often seen as as key to stability and to the UN's ability to operate in the country particularly in the early stages. Missions often therefore tend to focus quite heavily on the executive and to provide particular support to them and I'll add that this support is actually often personalized. It's not just about the office of the president but it's often about the individual in that role. Now this high degree of support however can often come at the expense of building up other institutions that can balance against the executive and it can also signal that the UN is prepared to tolerate a high level of authoritarianism in the interests of maintaining stability and good working relations. The third factor is similar except it's about support to the security services. So training, logistical support, joint operations are often a key part of mandates and in fact part of the UN's broader mandate to maintain international peace and security. But it can also enhance the capacity of the state to engage in repression against its own population to eliminate opponents and to consolidate its power. Next is about preventing overthrow. So the threat of coups in post-conflict countries can compel leaders sometimes to reach out to rival elites or to make concessions to the public. However the presence of a UN mission can also provide implicit protection to leaders and therefore make such concessions less likely. And this provision can tacitly signal tolerance for undemocratic behavior. Next we have what we call the dark side of national ownership. So national ownership as has been mentioned many times today is key to peace operations both in terms of making them legitimate and sustainable. But UN support for national ownership can also inadvertently encourage government elites to sort of hide behind sovereignty and thus enable isolation and repression without triggering a response or sanction from the UN. Next we look at rhetoric with and without teeth. Rhetoric from international actors especially if it's well coordinated can constrain authoritarian behavior through naming and shaming. But it can also easily signal the opposite if it's weak or uncoordinated. So if political elites make authoritarian moves and the UN doesn't react or only reacts in a kind of muted way this signals to elites that this sort of behavior is low cost and they therefore may be emboldened to continue. Next we look at elections. Elections do remain central to UN peace building efforts because they're a kind of key entry point for the UN and opportunity to transition from exclusionary governance to more open and inclusive ones. However concerns about security surrounding elections may lead to a tendency to either favor certain candidates or to look the other way when there's electoral malpractice. Next we look at security council mandates as a kind of double edged sword. Mandates are of course crucial in signaling international commitment to ending a conflict. But mandates also constrain missions in their ability to resist authoritarian moves by host countries because even under chapter seven missions do usually need to maintain the consent of the host country to their deployment. So missions may respond only in a kind of lax way to authoritarian behavior by host governments and that can of course signal tolerance for this kind of behavior and indeed over the life of the mission we do observe that the UN tends to generally lose leverage over the government. And finally what we call the corruption blind spot. Evidence shows that corruption is usually quite endemic in authoritarian regimes. By pouring funding and resources into them the UN can enable patronage in ways that are characteristic of authoritarian regimes. Yet corruption rarely features in the activities of UN missions, in their mandates or in reporting from missions. And this signals a high degree of tolerance for this type of behavior. So I will, I'm getting low on time but I am going to very quickly illustrate this with one of our case studies using Congo. So the two missions Monuc and then Monusco. So like other missions the mandates here have been liberal in nature. But during the UN's time there the country has seen a slide towards authoritarianism particularly under the former president Joseph Cavira. And we find evidence of both of the mechanisms of enabling that we identified. So first on the capacity building of institutions, the transitional government of 2003 to 2006 was set up in a way that favored a strong presidency. Now a strong presidency in and of itself is not authoritarian but it came at the expense of other institutions that could have provided checks and balances against the executive. In addition it wasn't just the presidency but it was actually Cavira himself. He was seen as critical to stability, to consent and he was a particularly close interlocutor for the mission at that time. And of course this signal to him that the UN might be willing to accept lower levels of kind of democratic fairness and transparency and accountability in the interests of maintaining stability. Second capacity building also entailed support to the security forces through joint ops, logistical support and eventually the creation of the Force Intervention Brigade. And these enhanced Cavira's position by boosting the regime's coercive capacity. Helping to, sorry, just hit a button on the screen here, sorry about that. Helping to eliminate threats to his power and signaling robust support for his rule even when he was sort of behaving less than democratically. In addition the UN has also signaled tolerance for authoritarian behavior through mild responses to electoral misconduct. And repression and weak interaction with alternate institutions. So during the elections in 2006 and 2011 the mission broadly supported Cavira largely because he was seen as a source of continuity and it was perceived that a risk to him could be a risk to stability. When he engaged in authoritarian strategies during the elections, including intimidating the opposition and eliminating critics and so on. The UN's response was relatively muted in 2018. Though there was some condemnation of efforts to remove term limits. The UN's response was again generally quite mild and the UN eventually accepted the results with pretty minimal protests, even though they were widely declared quite flawed. And then of course through the life of the mission the UN interacted. Relatively less with civil society, opposition parties, other political parties and others who could counterbalance the state and the executive. And when there was kind of outright repression against the population, the response was often on the milder side. Again, signaling the low cost of this kind of behavior. So just briefly to conclude, I hope I have confused you further. So the UN faces a key dilemma of needing to build state capacity and yet the risk that that capacity can be abused. Equally it needs to maintain host country consent and decent working relationships with national actors. And yet there's a risk that support the scene as a kind of permission to circumvent democratic processes. So in the report we highlight a number of policy recommendations and so on. But here I'll just sum up a couple of them. The first is to really map out power relations and the bargains behind political settlements and to do this on an ongoing basis and see how they evolve over time. And this will also enable the better tracking of resources that are coming into the country. In addition, and this is a bit cliched, but I think it is just highlighted here again, coordinate. Building peace involves a multiplicity of actors. And managing the risks that we've identified here means coordinating the signaling and support that goes to countries hosting missions. With key member states and donors, other peace building partners and organizations, neighboring countries, key constituencies and partners in the countries. So it could be that messaging is a kind of good cop, bad cop. Where the UN says one thing and others say something a little bit more robustly. But again, it needs coordination. And then finally, I would just highlight the importance of supporting the UN leadership in country when they do push back against repressive or exclusionary behavior and having New York sort of fully back up the leadership in the country. I will leave it there and apologies, I think I also went slightly over time. Thank you very much.