Department of International Relations

This article argues that the participation of the Bangladeshi armed forces in UN peacekeeping has produced positive benefits for civil-military relations in the country and that this process is best explained by reference to concordance theory, as propagated by Rebecca Schiff. Unlike traditional theories of civil-military relations, concordance theory highlights dialogue, accommodation and shared values or objectives held by the military, the political elites and society. We argue in this paper that peacekeeping has gradually emerged in Bangladesh as an issue where all three partners are converging and prone to hold similar views. This may have a profound impact upon Bangladeshi politics whereby the chances of military intervention in domestic politics will lessen. This paper helps in understanding the implications of Bangladesh's involvement in UN peace missions, an issue on which little work has been conducted until now despite the fact that it has important implications for both the Bangladesh state and its armed forces.

This paper attempts to discuss a major research question—to what extent and why a national peacekeeping policy is significant for a top peacekeeping contributing nation, such as Bangladesh, to address the global and local challenges of UN peacekeeping missions? In doing so, the paper offers a review of the national policies of different states and its importance in the international peacekeeping discourse. Later, it unfolds the trends of Bangladesh's contribution to UN peacekeeping missions and analyzes the challenges in the changing patterns of global peacekeeping. In the final section, the paper prescribes the critical aspects that a prospective national policy may need to address in the context of Bangladesh. The paper argues that Bangladesh will eventually need a national policy to effectively utilize its resources, to coordinate the role of different institutions, and to fulfill its normative visions in international peacekeeping endeavours. It suggests that the process of formulating a national policy needs to be inclusive of actors and issues relevant to the changing future patterns of global peacekeeping.