| Summary/Abstract |
This article provides the first comprehensive account of Albania’s contribution to international peacekeeping and explores its inward-looking rationales for providing peacekeepers. Specifically, we examine why Albania has energetically supported NATO- and EU-led military and crisis management operations and less so UN peacekeeping missions. We find that Albania’s contribution to peacekeeping operations has been primarily shaped by its inward-looking interests for accelerating membership in NATO, fostering integration in the EU, as well as reducing domestic and regional insecurities. Pinpointing accurately the motivations among troop-contributing states helps recover the true hierarchical order of rationales and explain why, in some cases, the performance and impact of peacekeeping operations for some contributing states is secondary. Overall, disentangling the inward-looking utility of peacekeeping by a small state such as Albania provides useful insights for understanding how regional integration dynamics affect peacekeeping.
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