Peace operations work to enable lasting peace in countries torn by conflict. For decades, the United Nations (UN) and others have been sending soldiers, police officers, and civilian staff to conflict-ravaged societies around the globe. In early 2015, almost 200,000 such individuals served in seventy-five peace operations. Their assignment: to monitor cease-fires, moderate between warring parties, and reduce the risk of renewed violence by addressing key issues that affect the functioning of society.
The chances for effective peacebuilding differ from country to country. It is much easier to work in a small and relatively well-developed state than in a large country that has been torn apart by violent conflict for decades. Yet the very nature of peacebuilding operations means that peacebuilders rarely get to choose âidealâ locations. But while they cannot change the conflicts or the people they face, there is a whole range of other factors that peacebuilding organizations can control: in addition to deciding on personnel, resources, and strategy, they choose their own institutional design. How quickly to deploy personnel, how flexible to be in adapting to new operational challenges, and whether and how to alter strategies when they falterâall these questions affect whether peacebuilders achieve their goals or not. This book thus turns to an often overlooked yet critical tension in modern peacebuilding: the disjuncture between what peacebuilders desire to do and what they can do, given the organizational structures, rules, and resources that enable or constrain their activities. Peace operations will always face complex conditions and limited odds, but their design and management is one thing that can be changed.
The aim of this book is to study how bureaucratic dynamics and variation in institutional designs affect peacebuilding outcomesâirrespective of the operational environment. Unraveling the trajectories that pertain to the management of peacebuilding matters for several reasons. Peace operations provide a rare chance for conflict-ridden societies to break vicious cycles of violence and desperation. Toward this end, peacebuilding, âespecially in its liberal guise, focuses on external support for liberally oriented, rights-based institutions with a focus on norms, civil society, and a social contract via representative institutions embedded in a rule of lawâ (Richmond 2014, p. 383). Institution-building within liberal peacebuilding addresses those parts of the local state system that are key to a stable, peaceful, and sustainable society: good governance, basic public administration, economic development, education, health, energy, water, rule of law, and security (USIP 2009). Learning how peace operations actually work promises to raise their odds for success. With their critical impact on the lives of those living in conflict societies and the billions of Euros of public money funding peace operations, there is a democratic imperative to see that these funds are invested effectively. This bookâs title, Managing Peacebuilding, not only refers to its research agenda, but should also be understood as an imperative for policy-makers to question and seek to improve the design of peace operations, rather than simply operating per âbusiness as usual.â
Theoretically, the book is part of a broader empirically driven research agenda in the context of global security governance. Traditionally, most studies on international peacebuilding have fallen into one of three broad camps. The first asks about the causes, actors, and goals of interventions, finding explanations in domestic politics, public opinion, and ideology (Fukuyama 2004; Paris 2000, 2004; Paris and Sisk 2009; Stedman et al. 2002). A second camp of scholars has begun to challenge the core assumptions of the liberal peacebuilding paradigm (Chandler 2006; Richmond 2014). These scholars question peacebuilding strategy at a very fundamental level, criticizing, for example, the incommensurateness of the normative universe from which peacebuilders operate with the context where peacebuilding interventions are actually applied (Richmond 2014, p. 379). Studies in the third camp take the goals and shape of an intervention as given and focus on operation effectiveness and consequences. Observing daunting gaps between ambition and reality in peacebuilding operations in places such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia, among others, researchers have identified critical dilemmas such as liberal paternalism and mismatches between ends and means (Aoi et al. 2007; Caplan 2005; Daase and Friesendorf 2010; Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Schneckener 2008; Seibel 2012). Recent studies have also begun to consider what happens âinside peacebuilding,â raising questions regarding institutional designs and peacebuilding performance (Allen and Yuen 2014; Autesserre 2010, 2014; Benner and Bossong 2010; Benner et al. 2011; Breakey and Dekker 2014; de Coning 2009; Dijkstra 2012; Junk 2012; Karlsrud 2013; Lundgren 2015; Winckler 2015). Although these studies are empirically rich, many lack theoretical grounding and comparative perspectives remain exceptional.
To advance the scholarly debate, this book applies a public administration perspective to peace operations. With international organizations such as the UN, European Union (EU), or the Organization for Security and Co-Operation (OSCE) dominating the field, this approach presents an opportunity to advance theory on international public administration more generally. As such, the book is part of a broader academic literature cutting across international relations and public administration that explores the inner working of international organizations as bureaucracies. Around a decade ago, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore (1999, 2004) were instrumental in shaping this agenda. A first wave of studies treated international bureaucracies as dependent variables, asking about their organizational styles and cultures (Knill et al. 2016; Momani 2007), preferences (Bauer 2012; Trondal 2010; Weaver 2008), autonomy (Ege and Bauer 2013), learning ability (Benner et al. 2013; Benner et al. 2011), reform processes (Knill and Balint 2008), cooperation with other actors (Liese 2010), and diffusion of international organization (IO) policies and institutions (Börzel and Risse 2011; Schimmelfennig 2012). A second generation of studies now addresses the nexus between administrative features of international organizations and their effects on policy-making and implementation (Dijkstra 2013, 2015; Hawkins et al. 2006a; Larsson and Trondal 2006; Trondal 2010). This is precisely the kind of question approached here.
This book identifies policy determinants rooted in peacebuilding operationsâ institutional designâin other words, their structures, rules, and the decision-making routines of the peacebuilding bureaucracy. There is growing acknowledgment that bureaucratic organizations exert autonomous influence on global public policy (for an overview see Eckhard and Ege 2016). Unpacking the black box of international secretariats responds to a key question raised by Darren G. Hawkins and colleagues (2006b, p. 4) regarding the nature of international public administrations as actors: Are they best understood as agents that merely attempt to manage imperfectionâthat is, entities whose member states deprive them of the authority and capacity to act? Or should we consider them as independent actors who have slipped their mastersâ chains, lack democratic legitimacy, and terrorize the global countryside as institutional âFrankensteinsâ? Hawkins and colleagues focused on delegation contracts and interests at the nexus of member state principals and their agents. By contrast, this book applies a public administration perspective. Its analytical attention to institutional designs and performance better captures the processes actually taking place within these peacebuilding bureaucracies.
Subsequent sections address two other ways in which the bookâs focus is defined. The first explains why this book focuses at international assistance to police reform as one dimension of peacebuilding. And the second section elaborates why the case studies address the work carried out by the OSCE, the EU and Germany in Kosovo and Afghanistan since 1999 and 2001, respectively. Subsequent sections briefly elaborate on my key findings and the outline of the book.
1.1 Police Reform as one dimension of peacebuilding
From the large number of tasks and activities involved in postconflict peacebuilding, this book focuses on institution-building in the security sector. Even more specifically, the book looks at international assistance to domestic police establishment or reform. Practically speaking, it was necessary to restrict the empirical scope of the study. Assistance to police reform lends itself well to comparison as the challenges for external peacebuilders are fairly similar across countries: establishing a new police force on the basis of existing traditions, building or refurbishing facilities, training of staff, and developing policies, among other tasks. Empirical evidence in the academic peacebuilding literature suggests that âwithout a secure environment and a security system that ensures security even after the departure of international peace operations, political, economic, and cultural rebuilding are impossibleâ (Schnabel and Ehrhart 2006, p. 1). Similarly, the World Bankâs recent World Development Report (2011, p. 2) underlines âthat strengthening legitimate institutions and governance to provide citizen security, justice, and jobs is crucial to break cycles of violence.â Reform of the security sector, therefore, is a peacebuilding priority as a democratically controlled police service that protects the rights of the citizens in everyday life is crucial for the long-term stability of a society. Findings on the design of police reform assistance operations thus are representative for the management of peacebuilding interventions in general.
Police reform in peacebuilding follows a security sector reform model carved out by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), among others (OECD-DAC 20...