A UN official once joked that there are two ways to think about peacekeepers: as Jedi or Jell-O. The Jell-O thesis is that the routines of a large-scale peace operation in a country emerging from war—daily patrols, human rights monitoring and so on—form a gelatinous mass that stifles the urge for violence. Advocates of the Jedi approach have a higher estimate of peacekeepers' virtues, emphasizing their ability to influence local political actors' decisions and shape otherwise-impossible deals between old enemies.