Peacebuilding Operations Research Articles

Institutional Amnesia: Sustainability and Peacebuilding in Croatia

This article studies the relationship between sustainability and institutional memory in postwar Croatia. Is institutional memory preserved after interventions end? Is so, how and by whom? What are the causes of loss of institutional memory? What are the consequences for sustainability and accountability? When international organizations pulled out of peacebuilding operations in Croatia in the mid to late 2000s, they quickly lost their institutional memory of their projects. Donors, international nongovernmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations all lost their ability to recall the work they had done in the past. Using interview, ethnographic data, and archival documents gathered over five years (2008–2013), I define three types of memory—archival, human, and electronic—and show how each of these forms of memory eroded as international projects in Croatia ended. The loss of international memory has implications for international organizations' own stated goals of sustainability and their ability to achieve and assess sustainability, and for the downward accountability of donors to their beneficiaries and the countries they worked in.

Political reconciliation in Timor Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville: the dark side of hybridity

ABSTRACTIn recent years, the study and practice of political reconciliation has experienced a turn to hybridity. This turn has been defined by the increased rate at which liberal international and local peacebuilding practices, and their underlying ideas, have become merged, integrated or co-located in time and space. While hybrid approaches to reconciliation have been praised as an effective means of engaging local populations in peacebuilding operations, little attention has been paid to examining whether or not they also bring unintended negative consequences. Drawing on the cases of Timor Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville, this article examines the potentially dark side of hybridity. It demonstrates that, in each of these cases, hybrid approaches to political reconciliation have brought both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side of the equation, hybridity has seen imported international approaches to reconciliation adapted to meet local demands and ensure resonance with local populations. On the negative side, however, the misappropriation and instrumentalisation of local practices within hybrid approaches has served to damage their legitimacy and to jeopardise their contributions to reconciliation. The article thus concludes that the existence and extent of this dark side necessitates a re-evaluation of how hybrid approaches to political reconciliation are planned and implemented.

INTERNAL POLITICAL CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: THE ROOT CAUSES OF CONFLICT DURING TRANSITIONS TO DEMOCRACY

IntroductionDemocracy has been linked to prevalence of peaceful societies. The theory that democracies do not fight each other led to a major push by the int ernational community to expand democracy globally in the wake of the anticommunist struggle of the Cold War era. The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations, for example, routinely include the development of democracy and the rule of law in post-conflict countries. Recent reviews of UN peacebuilding have pointed out however, that peace and stability may not be well served by a too rapid introduction of democracy and other such liberal policy prescriptions.1Indeed, the nexus between democracy and peace has also been examined critically from various angles by scholars in light of internal conflict and violent unrest in states undergoing a democratic transition.2 Experts cautioned against the "dark side of democracy" and the rise of "illiberal democracy" (Mann, 1999; Zakaria 2007). During such transitions, the risk of inter-sate war may increase because emerging democracies typically go through a rocky transition period during which they become more conflict prone than states without a changing regime (Daxecker 2007; Mansfield and Snyder 1995). Daxecker notes that substantial change to democracy significantly lowers the risk of conflictual for eign policy behavior . As democracy deepens and strengthens, rates of conflict initiation decrease (ibid., p. 544).The transition to and deepening of democracy in Southeast Asia is by no means complete, and in fact is a slow, grinding process. Peou's categorization of the 11 polit ical r egimes in Southeast Asia at the end of 2014 clearly revealed the road that democracy had to travel in the region. He classified them as: " undemocratic states " under military dominance (Myanmar, aka Burma, though this may change after the November 2016 election), one under monarchical rule (Brunei), and those with one-communist-party systems (Laos and Vietna m); "more democratic" countr ies such a s those t hat ma intain hegemonic-party regimes, but that are not liberal - Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia; and four out of the 11 that can be considered " unconsolidated liberal democratic"- Indonesia, Thailand (until May 2014), the Philippines, a nd T imor -Leste (a ka East T imor ) (Peou, 2014). T his great variety of regimes, inclusive of dictatorial and one party States belied the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) purposive adoption of democratic governance as a regional norm in its 2007 Charter.Southeast Asia's multiple transitions to democracy in the last 20 years ha ve bor ne out t he linka ge between democratic transitions a nd int er nal political conflict. It is important for ASEAN, individually and collectively, to identify and address the root causes of conflict during democratic transition processes as the region works towards creating a completed security community, a people-center ed community and an economic community.3 The progression of liberal democracy is arguably an important aspect for the consolidation of all of these but it may well be in regression across the region, with the exception of Indonesia.This paper4 proceeds by examining the turbulent uptake in democracy, the risks of conflict and the principal factors giving rise to violent political conflict in democratic transitions.1. The Rocky Uptake in DemocracyThe region has experienced an impressive uptake of democratic governance. The Philippines' "People Power" routing of the dictatorial Marcos regime in 1986 was followed by Thailand's first democratic Constitution in 1997 and, a decade later, by the fall of the Suharto regime and Indonesia's first general elections in 1999. Malaysia's democracy also seemed to have taken a positive turn after the departure of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who was not shy of bending Constitutional rules (Majid, 2009). In Singapore, a slight opening up of political space followed the passing over of power from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong in 1990 and then to Lee Hsien Loong in 2004, though the ruling People's Action Party is assured to win and the opposition remains weak. …

The World Bank's Health Projects in Timor-Leste: The Political Economy of Effective Aid

The World Bank's health sector projects in Timor-Leste have been among the few operations it has funded in that country that have achieved any sort of positive results. This paper examines the factors underpinning their relative success and considers the wider lessons for the delivery of effective aid in the context of peace-building operations in fragile contexts. We argue that political economy factors played an important role in shaping the relative success of these projects, extending and revising an earlier analysis by Rosser. In terms of wider lessons, we argue for a more political understanding of the determinants of aid effectiveness. Specifically we suggest that aid effectiveness needs to be seen as a function not just of the technical quality of project design and the administrative competence of project managers but also the extent to which there is congruence between donor and local elites’ agendas.

Informality and Peacebuilding: Field Notes on the Intrinsic Reproductive Principles of Informal Economic Practices in Post-Conflict Kosovo

Informal economies' relevance for peacebuilding is widely acknowledged. By providing an alternative interpretation in relation to the view that informality emerges in post-conflict environments due to the state's institutional weakness, this article contends that in Kosovo the principles of informality and its reproduction are inherent to informality itself. The article turns to the analytics of Pierre Bourdieu in order to reveal aspects of Kosovar informality left unexamined by established approaches. It illustrates how intrinsic inequalities and power relations constitute and reproduce informal economic practices throughout a circular rationale. Rather than a direct function of state weakness, informality in Kosovo is an effect of agents' engagement in knowledgeable and everyday practices. Agents' susceptibility contributes to the temporary fixing of meanings and doings that enable differentiations yet also interdependencies between relatively powerful and relatively powerless businesses. The article reflects on the implications of an intrinsic rationale for the politics of informality within peacebuilding operations.

Constructing civil society: Gender, power and legitimacy in United Nations peacebuilding discourse

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission was created in 2005 to have oversight of United Nations peacebuilding operations. In the foundational resolution, adopted simultaneously by the United Nations Security Council (S/RES/1645) and the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/60/180), the Peacebuilding Commission is mandated to encourage meaningful participation in peacebuilding-related activities by civil society actors. This article investigates the construction of ‘civil society’ as a subject of United Nations peacebuilding discourse, drawing on both policy documents and interview data. The inclusion of civil society actors in peacebuilding-related activities is currently considered central to the success of these activities; if it is taken for granted that the meaningful participation of civil society actors ensures that United Nations programmes build better peace, and I argue that it is, then it is important to understand what is meant by ‘civil society’ and to comprehend the kinds of actions that are prescribed and proscribed by the meanings attached to the concept. Specifically, I map out a peacebuilding discourse that (re)produces the United Nations — as representative of ‘the international community’ — as the architect/legitimate knower of peacebuilding practice, and the communities working on building peace as the labourers/known objects. This has significant implications for the ways in which civil society organisations, and the forms of knowledge that these organisations represent, are encountered and engaged in peacebuilding practices; ‘local’ knowledge is at once valued (in the process of extraction) and yet subordinated.

An Architectural Framework for Nation States in Support of Peace-Building Operations

The complex, adaptive environment that government organizations, international partners, and non-government organizations must operate within requires an understanding of the conditions that exist in the partner nation to make smart investments in peace building. The social, governance, and economic implications of these investments in the partner nation and the resulting effects can often lead to unforeseen second- or third-order effects. These complex qualitative assessment schemes and analysis based on a single modeling approach have had limited success. The use of multiple models creates challenges of information management, consistency, and traceability. In addition, there is the challenge of analyzing stakeholder goals and their validity. The authors advocate application of an architecture framework and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) tools and techniques to manage the information and to model the complexities in peace operation capability development decisions. This brings a powerful set of ...

PATERNALISM AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Abstract:Contemporary global governance is organized around an odd pairing: care and control. On the one hand, much of global governance is designed to reduce human suffering and improve human flourishing, with the important caveat that individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want to live their lives. On the other hand, these global practices of care are also entangled with acts of control. Peacebuilding, public health, emergency aid, human rights, and development are expressions of this tension between care and control. There is a concept that captures this tension: paternalism. Drawing on our moral intuitions, I argue that paternalism is the attempt by one actor to substitute his judgment for another actor's on the grounds that such an imposition will improve the welfare of the target actor. After discussing and defending this definition, I note how our unease with paternalism seems to grow as we scale up from the interpersonal to the international, which I argue owes to the evaporation of community and equality. After exploring the implications of this definition and distinguishing it from other forms of intervention, I consider how different elements of paternalism combine to generate different configurations. Specifically, I point to five dimensions that are most relevant for examining the paternalism found in contemporary global and humanitarian governance: the tools used to restrict another actor’s liberty (force versus information); the scope of the interference (wide versus narrow); the purpose of the intervention (prevention of harm versus emancipation); the source of the paternalizer’s confidence (faith versus evidence); and the mechanisms of accountability (internal versus external). These different elements often correlate historically, suggestive of two ideal types of global paternalism: strong and weak. Contemporary global and humanitarian governance is largely the weak variety: force is severely proscribed, interference is relatively restricted, the paternalizer’s confidence has epistemic roots, and accountability to local populations remains a noble but rarely practiced goal. I further speculate that a major reason for this difference is the effects of liberalism and rationalization. I use this taxonomy to suggest how two different global efforts to improve the lives of those peoples living in what were perceived to be unstable and illiberal territories — the civilizing missions of the nineteenth century and the peacebuilding operations of the post-Cold War period — exhibited different kinds of paternalism. I conclude by reflecting on the ethics of international paternalism.

Compromised Peacebuilding

There is considerable evidence that peacebuilding operations are more likely to reproduce important elements of the status quo than they are to propel post-conflict states toward a liberal democracy. In contrast to existing theories that focus on the resources available to peacebuilders or the degree of damage caused by the war to explain the outcome, we highlight the interaction between international and domestic actors. Specifically, we conceive of peacebuilding as a strategic process involving peacebuilders, a postwar government, and other local elites. The equilibrium results show that this process typically concludes in a compromised peacebuilding outcome. This is not surprising when the policy preferences of the actors diverge, but the results also hold when domestic elites prefer a liberal democracy to the status quo. Why? Primarily, because postwar governments are rewarded by relatively impatient peacebuilders with more resources than they would otherwise receive. Additionally, if there exists a secondary elite with veto power, a compromised outcome becomes even more likely. We illustrate these findings with reference to post-1989 peacebuilding operations. Although peacebuilding might not work as it is intended, in the conclusion, we argue that it is better than the alternatives and propose a more realistic measure of peacebuilding success.

Leadership and team identification: Exploring the followers' perspective

This study investigates the influence of leadership on followers' identification with their work group. Adopting a qualitative research approach, it takes on the followers' perspective for inductively deriving leadership behaviors that pertain to the development of team identification. Based on in-depth data from members of seven teams in the context of UN peacebuilding operations, four aggregate leadership dimensions can be identified that are conducive to members' team identification: providing guidance, encouraging involvement, role modeling, and administering teamwork. Accordingly, this study adds to the exploration of leadership behaviors relevant for team identification that have not been considered by extant research. The results may lay the foundations for future investigations on complementary effects of different leadership behaviors for fostering followers' identification with their work group.

Integrating climate change into peacebuilding

Peacebuilding countries are concentrated in areas of heightened vulnerability to climate change impacts, and almost certainly lack the capacity to manage these impacts. In spite of this overlap, climate change adaptation and mitigation projects are typically excluded from peacebuilding activities. This is particularly alarming given that many analysts believe climate change will trigger, amplify or perpetuate humanitarian crises, population displacement, political extremism and violent conflict in the regions in which most peacebuilding operations take place. This paper investigates opportunities for integrating climate change into peacebuilding. It identifies three obstacles to this integration—the lack of climate change tools and policies that can be easily introduced into typical peacebuilding programming; the skepticism and complacency of the donor community; and tensions between the objectives and timeframes of peacebuilding and those of climate change response. The paper then examines opportunities to integrate climate change into four principal programmatic areas of peacebuilding—socio-economic recovery, politics and governance, security and rule of law, and human rights—and concludes that more attention needs to be given to these opportunities in order to build resilience and reduce the likelihood of more daunting and costly challenges in the future.

Turning to the South: Civilian Capacity in the Aftermath of Conflict

SINCE THE END OF THE COLD WAR, THE UNITED NATIONS HAS EXPERIENCED a massive quantitative increase in the number of operations as well as a qualitative shift from military intervention toward state- and peacebuilding support. In their September 2010 submission to the Special Committee on Peacekeeping (the Committee of 34, or C-34), the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) and Department of Field Support (DFS) noted that peacekeeping has evolved from a primarily military model of observing ceasefires and separating forces to incorporate a mix of military, police, and civilian capabilities to support the implementation of comprehensive peace agreements and help lay the foundations for sustainable peace and legitimate government. (1) UN has become multidimensional and integrated, aimed at assisting countries recovering from conflict and at laying the foundations for peace- and statebuilding. (2) Currently, ten out of a total of fourteen UN operations are multidimensional in nature and have been mandated by the Security Council to perform a broad range of peacebuilding activities. (3) In addition, there are thirteen UN special political missions performing a range of functions in prevention, peacemaking, and postconflict peacebuilding. (4) With the change in mandates and focus on peacebuilding, the role of civilians has shifted from a peripheral support role to that of military peacekeepers; civilians are now at the core of and peacebuilding operations. Today, civilians have responsibility for many of the mandated tasks in missions. For instance, the UNDPKO and DFS Operational Concept on Protection of Civilians provides for (1) protection through political process; (2) protection from physical violence; and (3) establishment of a protective environment. Whereas uniformed peacekeepers have a key role to play in protection from physical violence, civilian peacekeepers are primarily responsible for protection through political process and the establishment of a protective environment. With this shift in roles, the demand for specialized civilian capacity and expertise has increased significantly. (5) However, these significant and substantive changes in the mandates and tasks of UN and special political missions have not been adequately reflected in how the UN system approaches the recruitment, deployment, and management of its civilian capacity or in how the UN's and special political missions are funded. (6) The effectiveness of the UN has been constrained by its traditional and conservative approach to human resources management. The Secretariat in New York was originally set up for conference management, and member states have been slow to adapt to the changing needs of the UN system. As a result, today's and special political missions suffer from high vacancy rates and slow rates of deploying civilian staff to the field. In this article, we argue that there is a need for a new focus on Southern capacity. Due to the financial crisis, capacity delivery from the North has basically reached its maximum. In contrast, many countries in the Global South, especially some of the emerging powers, have continued to grow at impressive rates. Steady economic growth in many countries of the South means that a new generation of civilian experts is now available from which the UN and other actors may draw. In addition, as many of these countries themselves have undergone dramatic changes in the past few decades (e.g., through conflict and transformation), the civilian expertise they may offer is particularly relevant. Moreover, as the increasingly specialized tasks of UN and peacebuilding missions often require unique expertise specific to a country, the need for staff with contextual understanding has become more pressing. More efficient use and development of national capacities is also vital for ensuring long-term sustainability and local ownership in countries emerging from conflict. …

Organized Crime and the Dilemmas of Democratic Peace-Building in Kosovo

Based on a theoretical concept that distinguishes different dilemma types, the article identifies and analyses dilemma situations that arose for the international UN-led peace-building operation in its efforts to combat organised crime in post-war Kosovo. In order to cope with the various dilemmas that arose, the international peace-building operation engaged in compromises that entailed strategic trade-offs. Dilemmas and respective trade-offs in decision-making pertain to the fields of post-conflict security, political inclusion of post-conflict stakeholders, disarmament and demobilization, transfer of ownership, rule of law and local economy.

Peacebuilding, the local and the international: a colonial or a postcolonial rationality?

There is much debate in the peacebuilding literature on the question of agency and its locations. Given the interventionist context of peacebuilding operations and the overwhelming presence of ‘internationals’ on the scene, the ‘local’ factor might easily be seen as being subsumed at best and totally negated at worst. Operations of peacebuilding can be interpreted as being driven by a colonial rationality wherein the imperative to govern precedes and informs practices on the ground. One response is to suggest ‘hybrid agency’ as a form of articulation that questions a dichotomous representation of the local and the liberal/universal. Another is to suggest that peacebuilding practices aim towards capacity-building and hence the enablement of agency in the post-conflict context. The article argues for a conceptualisation of agency that takes its starting point from the ‘international’ as a distinctive location of politics. Doing so enables a differentiation; on the one hand the colonial rationality that places primacy in the governing potentials of external intervention, and on the other a postcolonial rationality that derives its discourse from the postcolonial international and that hence places primacy on the politics of self-determination. How ‘the international’ is invoked hence makes a difference to practices constitutive of responses to conflict: practices of peacebuilding tend towards a focus on the government of populations and remain driven by a late modern form of colonial rationality; while practices that focus on conflict resolution recognise the political subject of postcoloniality and hence focus on the politics of conflict and not its government.

The Policy for Women in Peacebuilding Operations by the United Nations

The Policy for Women in Peacebuilding Operations by the United Nations

A Sequence Analysis of International Peace Operations: Japan’s Contribution to Human Security of East Timor

Japan’s commitments to the UN-authorized peace operations in East Timor were the largest contribution the country has made in the history of its international peace operations. Notably, Japan’s participation in the peacebuilding operations in East Timor was based on “human security” as one of the pillars of its diplomatic policy. Moreover, Japan’s participation in the peace operations in East Timor was a touchstone issue for its human security policy. Yet, one simple but important question arises. How consistent were Japan’s commitments to the peace operations? In an attempt to answer to this question, this paper systematically examines Japan’s contributions to the international peace operations for East Timor. In order to investigate long-term and complicated activities in the peace operations, this paper employs timeline “sequence analysis” as a research method which combines and simplifies analytical models suggested in earlier scholarship. Through the application of sequence analysis, this paper investigates four stages of Japan’s contributions to the peace operations in East Timor: 1) preventive deployment (UNAMET), 2) peace-enforcement (INTERFET), 3) peacekeeping (UNTAET), and 4) peacebuilding (e.g. UNMISET). The findings of this research reveal to what extent Japan’s commitments to the peace operations were consistent and for human security of East Timor.

Brazil’s Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Policies in Africa

This article analyses the peacekeeping efforts of Brazil, an emerging power for which peacebuilding is a key element of its international presence, and which has been strongly critical of the dominant liberal paradigm. Peacebuilding is key to Brazil’s approach, as the country by tradition participates (with the contested exception of MINUSTAH) only in Chapter VI peace operations, abjuring the robust use of force. An activity such as peacebuilding which marries development and security concerns is an ideal setting for Brazil’s foreign policy aims; in order to gain a seat in global decisionmaking bodies, in the absence of hard power and the will to use it Brazil turns to peacebuilding to transform its domestic development successes into action in the security arena. The South American giant has also placed significant emphasis on Africa in part as a means to the end of underscoring – as a voice for the global South – its claim to greater international influence. This article will examine the motivations that underpin Brazil’s commitment to peacebuilding operations, as well as its commitment to that practice in Africa, which has taken place largely on a bilateral basis.

A Hybrid Peace through Locally Owned and Externally Financed ssr–ddr in Rwanda?

This article aims to critically examine Rwanda's security sector reform and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (ssr–ddr) process through a theoretical framework outlining four different models of peace processes in order to identify the sort of peace that can emerge from Rwanda's ssr–ddr approach. The author analyses how the Rwandan government has managed to keep the process ‘locally’ owned, while largely financed by external actors, despite strong criticism of its apparent lack of democratisation. The ‘genocide credit’, the Rwandan government's preference for national, rather than international solutions and its recent troop contribution to peacebuilding operations in the region are identified as the main reasons for this development. The paper argues that the peace emanating from the ssr–ddr process may be considered a hybrid form of state formation and state building, because of the local agency's preference for security and stability while simultaneously enjoying financial and technocratic support for its ‘liberal’ peacebuilding actions in the region.

Responsible reconstruction after war: meeting local needs for building peace

AbstractContemporary peacebuilding operations are often mandated to rebuild ‘collapsed’ or weak states and provide unique opportunities for internationals to exert far reaching influence in their reconstruction. The responsibility to help secure peaceful transformations and longer term stability is profound. This article explores the issue of efficacy and propriety in reconstruction programming and draws from field work in Sierra Leone – a rare example of ‘success’ for international partners in peacebuilding missions. The assertion is made that, despite the euphoria over the mission in Sierra Leone, the peacebuilding operations were more about the mechanics of statebuilding than the local politics of building peace, and that there was a distinct disconnect between the policy rhetoric and the policy practice. The argument is put that the pressing local concern of giving citizens a stake in government was not best served in the reconstruction project because the wider and more influential objectives of the peacebuilding mission were about meeting international goals not local aspirations. This reality has come at the cost of exploiting a unique opportunity for creative thinking about the kind of state structures which can better address the main challenges for sustainable peace facing post-war states like Sierra Leone.

Миротворчество по-британски в 1990–2000-х годах

The subjects of the article are the doctrine and the practice of the British participation in international peace-keeping, peace-building and peace-making operations. The article also highlights peculiarities of this participation in 1990-2000 years, which is closely interconnected with significant changes in the international relations system as a whole, political objectives and opportunities in this system for US, EU, NATO and UN.