A discursive institutionalist analysis of global policy ideas in the creation of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission

Abstract

This article examines three levels – policies, programs, and philosophies – and two types – cognitive and normative – of ideas in the policy discourse around the formation of the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), using discursive institutionalism. This study of ideas helped explain this important global policy change and identify causal factors behind it. Underlying the policy ideas for the PBC and several antecedents, failed peacebuilding proposals were programmatic ideas about what peacebuilding was, whether it was relief, development, or security, and whether it should include prevention. A major questioning of ideas at the philosophical level, sparked by the 9/11 attacks and the 2002–2003 Iraq crisis, created the conditions under which the PBC policy idea could be brought forward. Tracing normative as well as cognitive ideas also helped explain policy change, by identifying policy actors’ motivations behind the policy proposals. Normative ideas were about what was wrong in post-conflict countries, including peacekeeping disasters, large-scale refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) situations, a purportedly high rate of relapse into conflict, northern concerns about failed states, and southern concerns about a strong UN Security Council (UNSC). They also drove the particular policy proposals, including that for a small PBC with preventive functions and reporting only to the UNSC, and for the later removal of preventive functions, addition of General Assembly members to the PBC, and reporting to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).