Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Note: This paper was accepted for publication in Journal of Cooperation and Conflict
on 1st Feb 2014, for publication online in Summer 2014 and hardcopy 2015.
Author Note
Andrew Williams is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Public
Administration at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, and is employed full time
as an analyst for an international organization. His research interests include:
organizational collaboration, peacebuilding, program evaluation and policy theory.
Abstract
fields of public administration and policy, which bring a rich history of studying
interventions.
Keywords
Introduction
Peacebuilding literature has evolved considerably since its inception and has drawn from
and informed many predominately Western interventions in conflicts and the diverse spectrum of
peacebuilding approaches implemented. Yet even given this significant body of knowledge and
expertise, many interventions can hardly be considered a universal success. Research indicates
that 25% to 50% of peace processes fail within five years (Suhrke and Samset, 2007), and that
out of the 18 United Nations (UN) attempts at democratization since the Cold War, 13 have since
suffered some form of authoritarian regime (Call and Cook, 2003). While the peacebuilding and
conflict literatures have examined the sources of failure via a variety of macro-comparative,
institutional, political, economic and cultural lenses, a small body of recent work identifies the
reaction to the technocratic turn (Mac Ginty, 2012: 293, 289) in institutional responses to
complex interventions, referring to the systems and behaviors that prioritize bureaucratic
rationality embedded in the institutional fabric of Western aid, development, and military
organizations.
This issue is critical given that peacebuilding is largely implemented via bureaucratic
organizations and systems, a fact unlikely to change in the near future. While many international
organizations, development agencies and NGOs continually adapt their peacebuilding approach
in response to both academic work and policy-led practitioner involvement, policymakers may
be unaware of the unintentional pathologies that arise from the intrinsic nature of bureaucratic
structure (Barnett and Finnemore, 1999). Only a few studies have focused on the implications of
technocracy for the overall conduct of peacebuilding (Donais, 2009; Goetschel and Hagmann,
2009; Krieger, 2006). Many case studies have analyzed peacebuilding interventions and made
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organizational recommendations (Bensahel et al., 2009; Dijkstra, 2011; Junk, 2012; Piiparinen,
2007; Rathmell, 2009; Simon, 2010), but few have incorporated an organizational framework of
analysis (some exceptions are Herrhausen, 2007; Lipson, 2007, 2012). Peacebuilding studies
generally treat an intervention or conflict as a single unit of analysis and employ narrative or
descriptive analyses that mix together variables such as organizational mission, goals, structures,
policies, culture, historical factors and conflict actors. In some respects, this approach is
understandable given the contextual nature and long duration of interventions, and the large
various organizations implementing the intervention. The fields of public administration and
policy bring ample examples of implementation situations that parallel in many ways complex
peacebuilding interventions, albeit with major differences. This literature has breached some of
multitude of important variables, actors, relationships and networks (Hill and Hupe, 2009).
This study aims to shed light on key questions of implementation: to what extent can
bureaucratic organizations implement the strategies for successful peacebuilding identified in the
current body of peacebuilding literature, and what changes in structure and function may be
The general approach is as follows. First, by drawing from recent literature in third
from the position of the third generation literature, are relatively invariant to context and
using standard approaches from the administrative sciences, in order to prioritize and organize
key variables of importance in bureaucracies. Third, for each variable in the framework, we
Structural and functional deficiencies in organizations are identified. Finally, broad conclusions
about the implementation of peacebuilding by bureaucracies are drawn and a future research
agenda is suggested.
In many ways, our approach reverses the standard way of thinking about the technocracy
problem. Rather than considering the implications of technocracy for peacebuilding as recent
work has done (Mac Ginty, 2012, 2013), this article questions the implications of peacebuilding
for technocracy. In other words, rather than viewing peacebuilding through the lens of
bureaucracy, we view bureaucracy through the lens of peacebuilding. The set of peacebuilding
principles developed in this article are considered as independent variables; while the
technocratic aspects and the implications on organizational structure and function are the
research, this approach is primarily an exercise at conceptual scoping. Consequently, this article
outlines tentative ideas that can stimulate further research on the matter. This approach is a
reverse way to critique the current international system of peacebuilding by showing how far
our institutions are from being able to meet the requirements clearly specified in the conflict
literature.
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Peacebuilding principles
We assume that from the perspective of third generation literature, these principles are general to
any context and that, in totality, they represent an overall strategy for proceeding in
peacebuilding (Goetschel and Hagmann, 2009), we assume the broad conception taken by many
structural and cultural violence, conflict settlement peacemaking, and conflict containment
peacekeeping (Pugh et al., 2008; Ramsbotham et al., 2011; Richmond, 2010). Activities such as
post-conflict stabilization, reconstruction, and state building, are considered as tasks within
The debates between liberal, local or bottom-up, and hybrid third generation
peacebuilding are ongoing in the literature. These three ontologically different approaches
conceive the process of peacebuilding and the end state of peace in fundamentally different
ways, contingent upon the particular assumptions in each approach. For the purposes of
proceeding, this article assumes the third generation, local-liberal hybrid approach of
domination and attainment of social justice, and a transformative paradigm that emphasizes
2010; Ramsbotham et al., 2011; Richmond, 2010). This approach attempts to move beyond state-
centric solutions in response to conflict, envisioning instead an emancipatory form of peace that
reflects the interests, identities, and needs of all actors, state and non-state, and aims at the
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recognizes difference (Richmond, 2010: 26). The challenge will be to connect new liberal
political orders and institutions with traditional economies, cultures and values, while
This choice could be a major point of contention given the ongoing debate and valid
objections and criticisms to the recent body of literature. From a theoretical perspective, the third
generation literature has not yet merged basic political theories concerning rights and self-
determination, with the strategies required for conflict management, resolution and
transformation, which may involve temporary suspension of self-determined politics, and elite-
international biases towards certain groups. Furthermore, aside from the organizational
implications addressed in this article, there are deep practical issues with the third generation
literature.
We sidestep these major debates for the purposes of proceeding. We see this as a
necessary route to cumulative development of a discipline: holding certain concepts and theories
as given, thus allowing closer scrutinizing of others and a retrospective look at the concepts held
as given. For this reason it is unhelpful to attempt to address the faults with the third generation
literature, while simultaneously examining the organizational question. Therefore, our analysis
does not enter into this discussion and focuses its investigation into the limitations of
We turn now to the peacebuilding principles. Space considerations do not permit a full
analytical derivation from the literature, however, a brief explanation of the methodology
demonstrates that the peacebuilding principles rest on solid foundations of research and are
representative of key elements of third generation scholarship. First, two main bodies of
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literature were reviewed: research from critical and post-structuralist traditions, conflict
Second, now focusing on the peacebuilding literature and following initial sorting and
reviewing, a theoretical coding iteratively identified and refined key themes (Patton, 2002) until
a typology with nine elements was reached (understanding peace as a process and end-state,
sequenced tasks, political economy). Articles were grouped according to these themes, with
priority placed on review articles and edited books, which typically summarize literature in the
opening or concluding chapters. Articles were cross-checked against these themes, and
redundancies and duplications of concepts identified. By identifying the most common themes, a
We now capture the latest research on third generation peacebuilding in these five
principles that are postulated to hybridize the liberal and transformative traditions. They should
relatively invariant to a particular context. These principles are the basis against which
(Richmond, 2009, 2010), and recognition that the absence of a state does not mean absence of
political power, take for example, Somalia (Chesterman, 2004). There are many sources of peace
in society and the existence of liberal order does not guarantee the resolution or transformation
of centurys old conflict. Moreover, societies should not be pathologized, which fixes
culpability for war on societies in question, rendering the domestic populations dysfunctional
while casting international rescue interventions as functional (Hughes and Pupavac, 2005: 873).
Consequently, rather than viewing peacebuilding as state-building to fix failed states (Ghani
and Lockhart, 2009), it must be thought of as an emancipatory endeavor that hybridizes political
and institutional order with local concerns by developing a social contract between society and
the polity (Richmond, 2010). Peace must be understood in a holistic manner and constructed by
all parties rather than framed or owned by external agencies that may unintentionally reinforce
neoliberal prescriptions or be insensible to the overall impact of global capitalism or other forces
society
such as organization and structure, local culture, tradition, and history, but also an understanding
of events from multiple perspectives. Peacebuilders must develop privileged knowledge from
analysis of complex dynamics and causal relationships that drive conflict, but be able to
distinguish their perspective from local perspectives. Peacebuilders should understand how
fact should be replaced by a fact-value continuum in which empirical statements are always
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contextual, and values are both emergent and determinable by reasoned processes (Frederickson
et al., 2012; House and Howe, 1999). Peacebuilders should be self-reflective by considering how
interventions are perceived by locals, and should develop the capacity for double-loop learning
mission goals, rather than incremental changes in methods or tools (Argyris and Schn, 1989;
Campbell, 2008).
Principle 3: Peacebuilding is fundamentally about relationships and must involve all actors
conflict parties, which allows inequalities and differences to be addressed, and closer social
integration (Kriesberg, 2007). While much literature focuses on ways to bring conflict parties
together constructively, often the relationships between the interveners and the conflict parties
themselves are often forgotten. Peacebuilding requires significant external intervention and
interference in a conflict, thus the relationship between the interveners and the conflict parties is
equally important as that between the conflict parties, especially in the case of asymmetric and
serious power imbalances between outsiders and insiders (Donais, 2009: 15).
Consequently, principle three calls for a social and psychological contract between
international peacebuilders and local actors that reflects the social contract within the polity.
Practically, this means that while international guidance is offered on, for example, technical
inequality, conditionality, or dependency (Richmond, 2010: 33). Clear objectives are needed
with regard to the relationship between local and international actors and its dynamic over the
duration of mission (Chesterman, 2004). Finally, peacebuilding must consider the relationships
11
with the funders, especially of governmental origin: political will and sustainability is needed in
donor and intervening countries (Menon and Welsh, 2011; Williams, 2011).
Principle 4: Implementation should be locally adaptive and sensitive to the tensions and
dilemmas of peacebuilding
all areas to local actors (Pugh et al., 2008) such that ownership of peace processes is
power(is)in local community structures, which enable a constant feedback of local needs to
decision making (Pugh et al., 2008: 393). Local decision making processes should therefore
determine basic political, economic, and social norms to be institutionalized in any type of
centralized state (Richmond, 2010). Yet this process must be tempered by serious consideration
set of policy dilemmas in implementation. Paris and Sisk summarize the contradictions well:
outside intervention and international control is required for self-government and local
ownership; universal values are roughly applied to myriad of local cultures; statebuilding
requires a clean slate of political order, yet must reaffirm historical cultural identities; and short
term imperatives like peacekeeping often conflict with longer term objectives like conflict
resolution (Paris and Sisk, 2009: 305-306). A key tension in implementation is between past and
future: peacebuilding should balance forward looking aspects of political and economic power in
a future peace, with backward looking issues of reparation for injustice, reconciliation processes,
These contradictions and tensions lead to various policy dilemmas of finding balance
footprint to allow unencumbered development and self-equilibrium of local society; a short term
presence to avoid the occupation syndrome of irritating local population, versus long term
presence to see through the lengthy process of statebuilding; and a peace process that involves
and legitimizes former combatant parties and factional groups versus one that involves the whole
population and does not placate warlords by offering them positions of power. The policy
decisions made around these dilemmas can create a range of dependencies where political and
economic patterns in society are greatly distorted by international peacebuilders (Paris and Sisk,
2009: 307-308).
Principle 5: Objectives and tasks of peacebuilding missions should be tailored to fit local
The objectives and tasks of peacebuilding missions should be planned from the outset by
incorporating local political and economic priorities and focusing on the most marginalized
groups (Pugh et al., 2008). Any free-market reform or assistance offered from international
peacebuilders should be by local consensus and knowledge rather than expert or elite input,
which limits democratic potential by undermining the social contract and leading to a counter-
productive class systems. Economic development should be coupled with careful establishment
of a social-economic safety net that supports citizens. Privatization programs stipulated by many
large international donors should be reframed to local geometry to include public, socially owned
and community property that is protected from dispossession by private accumulation (Mengistu
and Vogel, 2009; Richmond, 2010). Rather than only security force assistance projects
network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the
people themselves (Jacobs, 1961: 31) and establish multiple and overlapping community
The five principles (P1 to P5 hereafter) endeavor to capture the essence of contemporary
conflict resolution and peacebuilding literature, yet say little about their practical realization.
This articles purpose is to examine one key aspect of practice: peacebuilding interventions using
Although it is challenging to define the parameters of a distinct sample for study, the
arguments in this research focus primarily on bureaucratic organizations, which constitute the
(Mac Ginty, 2012). As a result of their bureaucratic template, these organizations have several
such as planning, implementation and evaluation occurs; levels of command with clearly defined
responsibilities and authority; a formalized set of legal rules and procedures; a formal process for
the appointment and retention of staff based on competence; and requirements for specialized
expertise (Weber, 1947). This Weberian rational-legal bureaucratic form was created to
achieve efficiency and is the prevalent form of organization in Western society. The
the technical rationality of this way of organizing (Scott, 2003). It should be noted, however, that
14
bureaucracies only function well and achieve the intended efficiencies where organizational
activities and missions are stable and clearly defined (Perrow, 1972).
While compositional elements vary widely across different mission types and
organizational size, most organizations conduct a core set of functions independent of mission
and size (Mintzberg, 1979). Our framework of analysis considers the following organizational
Implementation, and Evaluation. These functions are chosen because of their centrality to design
Wentz, 1998, 2002). These categories are also widely identified in general the public and private
analysis, the research question of this article is now addressed: how might technocratic-
orientated organizations need to change in order to meet the requirements of the peacebuilding
planning, implementation, and evaluation, we generate conclusions and tentative research ideas
for future studies. We acknowledge immediately that there are obvious political and practical
difficulties in the various recommendations, but for the purposes of not constraining thinking we
consider the full range of possibilities rather than only the practicable.
experts who possess objective factual information and much tacit experience. Government and
military organizations often develop vast databases on conflict areas. Many international
15
needs before any intervention starts (UN, 2007, 2012), for which there is a large system of
private civilian experts and companies (de Coning, 2011). These observations reflect the fact
knowledge. While organizations have the intent of following peacebuilding principles one and
two, which call for a deep understanding of the final end of peace and significant knowledge
as the means, the operationalization of this requirement seems to have generated increasing
Rationalized bureaucracies are forced, by their intrinsic nature, to create categories and
classification schemes, which serve to make the transfer of organizational knowledge efficient
and simple. Labels such as locals, powerbrokers or key leaders created for management
plans and knowledge databases often lose their original meaning or begin to mask situational
complexities and socially constructed meanings (Stone, 2002). The key question is how can
organizations translate temporary, localized, mission-based knowledge into both intrinsic tacit
knowledge and formalized explicit knowledge in a manner accordant with the principles?
interdependent systems (Li et al., 2012; Rittel and Webber, 1973), organizations must develop
seeks generation of knowledge, rather than using a-priori knowledge at the start of missions
(Watkins and Mohr, 2001). Another response is to consider personnel deployment durations and
the ways in which an organization captures mission-based knowledge. In the military and other
government departments, for example, personnel deploy for periods of up to one year, yet the
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sensitive mission based knowledge is lost (Rathmell, 2009). Although an unpopular concept and
one that stretches the boundary between diplomatic service and development functions,
Structurally, the importance of incorporating dynamic local needs and perspectives into
all aspects of decision-making, planning and implementation as specified by P4 and P5, require
that organizations have mechanisms and resources to incorporate local views before, or in the
early phases of a mission. This entails radical changes in organizational knowledge management
and control. For example, knowledge systems must receive input from a wide variety of sources
to encourage alternative and contradictory perspectives, yet this conflicts with basic operative
principles of bureaucracy: that complex task specialization rests upon specialized knowledge of
personnel (Perrow, 1972). Given that bureaucracies tend to evolve to control information, a
To meet requirements for P3, understanding of peace must be framed through multiple
lenses including justice, reconciliation, and relationship building, rather than absence of
violence. High levels of expertise and knowledge on various techniques of conflict resolution
must be present. Knowledge systems (e.g. reference databases) required for mission planning
that contain objective facts should also consider interests, needs and perceptions of conflict
parties. Furthermore, knowledge systems should incorporate systems analysis that considers
contexts (Ropers, 2008). Practically, this redefines the success of knowledge systems by
utilization and increased understanding of all stakeholders, rather than accumulation of facts or
data per se. Peacebuilding organizations must encourage constant personal learning, the ability to
17
see other perspectives, and continual questioning of assumptions to meet the knowledge
complexities of conflict situations over making quick decisions, and recognize that knowledge of
through formulation of clear goals based on assumed objective knowledge, and identify the
means and ways to achieve goals (March and Simon, 1993). A core criticism of technocratic
planning has been that its underlying rationale, when based on supposedly objective knowledge,
the process is not supportive of inclusive or participatory logics, especially given the chain of
At this stage it is pertinent to raise the subject of rationality, meaning the normative
objective information to attain clear goals, and true knowledge is defined by that which
permits prediction and thus control (Fay, 1975). The implication of this conception of rationality
for peacebuilding organizations is the prioritization of scientific empirical knowledge over other
forms, the notion of expertise as an accumulation of factual knowledge and experience, and the
tendency to create the impression that solutions can be engineered or discovered and thus
Yet other types of rationality are possible. Many scholars have investigated interpretive
involved actors in which the very definition of knowledge is that which causes increased
understanding of each persons reflective viewpoint of the shared constitutive meanings and thus
the possibility of changing ones viewpoint (Bevir, 2010; Fay, 1975; Stone, 2002). Others have
rationality is defined by process rather than knowledge outcome. In their landmark text on urban
planning, Innes and Booher (2010) argue for collaborative rationality, which like Habermas
engaging in authentic dialogue to develop shared meanings and heuristic solutions (Innes and
Booher, 2010: 35). It is relevant to note that collaborative rationality is foundational to many
in which the dialogue proceeds around discussion of underlying interests rather than instrumental
Any type of planning in any paradigmatic lens assumes an intention to change something
in the world; yet P2, P4, and P5 require that this change is determined primarily by affected local
actors rather than by external agents. Consequently, peacebuilding organizations must ensure
that mission plans are framed against locally-owned conflict theories that describe underlying
conflict drivers. The process of planning involves moving from a picture of the current situation,
often plan using impact models, which identify causal assumptions between planned
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interventions and change. P2, P4, and P5 require that impact models are constructed with wide
stakeholder participation.
The capacity to undertake this, however, involves a move from the instrumental and
Forester (1993); Forester (1981), and Innes and Booher (2010). Planners and analysts move from
operating within the existing system of power structures and one-sided communications, to
changing the existing system through collaborative planning, questioning and focusing attention.
The danger of impact models, even if based on broad stakeholder impact, is that they merely
Instead, impact models should pattern attention selectively to meaningful parts of (the) world
and bring together the ways of knowing and ways of deciding to correct distorted
communications about the problem, and the solutions (Forester, 1981: 167).
particular fundamental paradigmatic orientation (e.g. realism, pluralism etc.), which determines
the particular planning strategy adopted by an organization (Jantzi and Jantzi, 2009;
Ramsbotham et al., 2011). For example, military planners are explicitly realist: although recent
doctrine mentions peacebuilding and local ownership (NATO, 2011), the underlying assumption
remains that external intervention can manipulate society through instruments of power
(Hunter et al., 2008). To adopt the peacebuilding principles presented in this article,
supported creation of new understandings in interventions, rather than the assumption that
Bureaucracies do not cope well with rapid change and uncertain inputs and outputs
(Perrow, 1972). P1 calls for the final goal of peace to be clearly operationalized via a process
involving wide participation from all stakeholders, yet P3 and P4 indicate that both
understandings and context will change as situations and conflict parties understandings evolve.
Organizationally, this requires that goals, underlying planning assumptions, and conflict theories
are continually reassessed and adapted, and may not even be specified before the start of a
mission. Mission planning should be conducted via an evolutionary approach, where goals are
adapted and refined as peacebuilders gain on the ground experience, rather than in a linear
engineering approach (Clement and Smith, 2009; Rittel and Webber, 1973).
focal point of all activity. Consequently, planning should be framed from the perspective of a
social contract with local actors, rather than Western governments or donors. Organizations
should plan their relationships with conflict parties at all levels and consider how they might or
should evolve over the duration of a mission. Consequently, mission planning should incorporate
Given the strong emphasis on locally sourced knowledge and local involvement in all the
peacebuilding principles, it is evident that mission knowledge, theories of conflict, and theories
of change require an open and transparent development process with the ability to identify where
management, leadership, or donors have had influence. In this vein, strategic, budgetary and
rather than vice versa. Organization budget processes must be flexible and not based on fixed
annual allocations or mission success. Political or high level decision-making must be not
21
scope. These factors require a fundamental shift from traditional bureaucratic structure:
which short term mission-based expertise is balanced against long term management experience,
peacebuilding organizations. This is important to achieve both for overall policy coherence
between actors (OECD, 2003) and to ensure operational coordination and appropriate division of
labor and responsibility between actors (de Coning, 2008, 2009). The implications for planning
are significant. First, organizations must establish the extent to which their operations are
communication and decision-making, which vastly complexifies the process, making the dangers
approach such as the UN integrated mission concept and the Peacebuilding Commission. Yet
administrative task of unparalleled complexity; and traditional bureaucratic principles are subtly
ability to plan and take ownership of goals usually implies authority to commit resources towards
that goal. For organizations to develop coordinated impact models with classical means-end
project plans requires that the level of organization engaging in coordination has the authority to
22
commit resources. Yet the typical place of coordinationon the ground in a missionis not
where senior level staff with authority operates. Consequently, high level planning authority may
need to be decentralized to ground level units, which generates challenging administrative issues
A final issue for strategic and budgetary plannersto meet the requirements of P3is to
establish organizational sustainability by securing long term commitments from donors, owners
and taxpayers to support interventions of years or decades. This requires organizations to assume
39) describes, what happens between policy expectations and (perceived) policy results. A
activities versus bottom-up adaptation. A top-down perspective assumes that plans identify
goals against which performance can be measured and appropriate organizational tools selected.
An implementation chain (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1984) then moves from planned goals to
actual impacts, via inputs and outputs. If the plan fails, it is due to implementation failure
resulting from lack of resources, lack of commitment, or lack of ability of the top to control the
process (Mazmanian and Sabatier, 1983). Top-down control is necessary for accountability,
financial control, or to meet the instrumental rationality that governs an organization, which is
Missions and goals are seen as ambiguous and often conflicting with goals of other of
interpret the meaning of goals in different ways, or realize that they are no longer relevant or
A fundamental tension exists between the top-down need for control, and the contextual needs of
The implications of this challenge when viewed through the peacebuilding principles are
significant. P1 and P2 call for both a deep understanding of peace and a broad knowledge of the
conflict environment. Yet considering the theme developed so far in this discussion, knowledge
knowledge development during implementation. To meet P3 and P5, decisions and plans have to
in conflict with locally generated perspectives. This requires exceptional flexibility in decision-
making. Bureaucracies tend to desire clear and objective policy goals and plans, yet as P4 shows,
defining a clear strategy is challenging given the various peacebuilding policy dilemmas.
Implementation takes place in the context of active or latent conflict, which requires that
regardless of the particular mission of the organization (aid, development, security etc.) all
The source of these issues lies in the inherent wickedness of conflict problems.
Experience has shown that wicked problems are solved by evolution rather than engineering, and
bureaucracies are ill-matched for the localized adaptation required. De Coning notes that
peacebuilding should not be understood as an activity that generates a specific outcome, but as
an activity that facilitates and stimulates the processes that enable local self-organisation to
emerge (de Coning, 2012: 293). In terms of implementation, peacebuilding is squarely in the
bottom-up perspective. Therefore, top-down control should facilitate resources and expand
24
political space, rather than enforce fixed visions about achievement of specific, externally
defined goals.
other organizations (de Coning, 2008). Defining boundaries of responsibility for achievement of
goals is challenging when no one organization has the capability to achieve them independently,
collaboration are extensively addressed in public administration, public policy, and management
literature (Ansel and Gash, 2007), but receives little attention peacebuilding and conflict
resolution studiesa peculiar fact considering the repeated observation of the importance of
coherence and collaboration (de Coning, 2008, 2009; OECD, 2003; Paris and Sisk, 2009). There
are several key implications that occur with increasing organizational collaboration.
First, to achieve high levels of coherence, organizations must align overarching mission
goals, and increase coordination throughout the structure. This requires allowing lower level staff
more flexibility in defining outputs and goals and the appropriate authority and knowledge to
make decisions about building relationships with local actors (Chisholm, 1992). A tension exists,
however, between the level of collaboration and organisational independence. As the shift from
hierarchical to more flexible network based structures occurs, some organizational autonomy
must be conceded and risk assumed. Accountability dilemmas become more complex with closer
integration between organizations (Thomson et al., 2009). Furthermore, hybrid decision making
Huxham and Vangen (2005: 37) were clear on this subject: Dont do it unless you have to! Joint
25
working with other organizations is inherently difficult and resource consuming (p.37). Thus in
addition to considering the various peacebuilding dilemmas of P4, leadership and management
have another dilemma in deciding the level of cooperation with interdependent organizations.
Evaluation has gained in importance in recent decades with the increasing call for
conduct or contract out evaluations (OECD, 2010), while military organizations generally have
their own personnel in operations assessment departments. From the many purposes for
evaluations, this analysis focuses on summative evaluations that monitor inputs and outputs to
assume the form of rational input/output monitoring, with focused post-facto impact
assessment (Williams and Morris, 2009). While intended uses vary, evaluations tend to feed
measurement (Mac Ginty, 2013). The implications of the peacebuilding principles for evaluation
interventions must continue focus on impacts, but their planning must involve participatory
designs to reduce the likelihood that evaluations are framed with an instrumental logic.
findings, and utilization of results, to give those who are often powerless a voice in both
26
evaluation process and program implementation (Cousins and Earl, 1992). The organizational
based adjustments to plans; in the scientific logic of bureaucracy these functions are technical
specializations that can be departmentalized and separated by time (Williams and Morris, 2009).
Indeed, every development agency of OECD member states has a centralized evaluation unit that
Participatory evaluations invoke an entirely different logic and require a blurring of the planning
and evaluation roles, in direct conflict with the traditional notions of evaluation independence
and accountability. Furthermore, organizational units responsible for evaluations must be highly
coordinated or merged with organizational units generating knowledge for conflict analysis and
planning.
Rational evaluation systems also rely on stable goals and objectives against which
progress can be measured, yet the reality of peacebuilding interventions, and even the
implementation of many government projects, shows that fixed objectives are notoriously hard to
achieve. Peacebuilding organizations locally adapt as needed and respond to constraints and
opportunities as they arise, thus many aspects of missions cannot be planned in advance. This
in evaluations (Brusset, 2012). Thus objectives and end-states are informal and socially
constructed, with views not equally shared by all stakeholders. In response to this situation, the
evaluations, which avoid rationalistic template approaches (Patton, 2011; Scriven, 1991)
27
Conclusions
This article developed a set of peacebuilding principles drawn from recent work on
hybrid peacebuilding and transformative conflict resolution, and considered which aspects of
peacebuilding principles as given. The tentative results indicate that profound changes in
an obvious challenge; a consistent lesson from organizational change literature is that traditional
structures do not easily yield to new ones (Lawler and Worley, 2006).
authority needs to be more horizontally distributed rather than vertically. This would change the
though a process of continuous debate, rather than through centralized command system where
orders are transmitted downwards. The traditional bureaucratic impartial system of staffing based
culture that valued long term field experience above all may provide counterbalance.
Second, the idea of rational, organized knowledge databases that can be accessed when
required needs considerable modification, replaced instead with a system of continual knowledge
generation and the abandonment of objective truth. The underlying operating assumption of
culture of assuming incomplete knowledge as a starting point, and the idea that knowledge only
can exist when it is co-created with all stakeholders affected by an organizations actions.
28
a linear stream of events, in which plans are formed, then approved and then executed, with
Decision making would instead need to accommodate simultaneous processes of goal planning,
activity planning, and implementation, and much higher coordination with other related
certainty about mission scope and resource commitments due to budgetary cycles and
accountability requirements.
all aspects of their operations. The peacebuilding principles clearly require organizations to
reframe their operations from the perspective of locally-derived justice, fairness and equity.
liberal generationthat this was lacking. Organizations need to continuously evaluate their
accountability to all stakeholders affected by their actions, and take measures to establish
legitimacy, ideally through a framework involving regional compacts (Brown, 2008; Williams
and Taylor, 2013). This is fundamentally about the question of what to do in peacebuilding,
rather than the means used, as described in this article; however, this issue is likely to reduce
significantly the efficiency of peacebuilding organizations, given the high resource and time
In addition to the structural and functional aspects of organizations, this analysis hints
that hybrid peacebuilding is hard to operationalize, raising several challenging questions about
whether the peacebuilding principles can realistically be met. Peacebuilding runs into the same
29
foundational questions found in political science, or even urban planning: how to establish
political legitimacy following conflict; how to establish legitimacy of intervention without some
anchor of legitimate power in the region of operation; how to achieve transformation in the mind
of an entire population rather than just leadership and elites; how to scale up local approaches to
regions and nations without a national government? In this vein, peacebuilding scholars should
review analogous debates about participatory local approaches versus instrumental external
A limitation to this analysis and a broader implication for the study of peacebuilding is
the potential bias that stems from attempting to fix the identified issues with bureaucracies.
While this explicitly was not the aim of this article, we must acknowledge the potential biases
that may result from our Western-orientated training in organizational science and peacebuilding,
and our normative assumptions about the wider role of Western institutions in peacebuilding.
Future researchers would be well-advised to consider seriously the question that even genuine
attempts to reform organizations based on recommendations from third generation literature may
unintentionally blind us to the fact that we are still operating from within the liberal disciplinary
matrix of assumptions and beliefs, and even worse, that these attempts may serve to
unintentionally reinforce the systems from which we are trying to break free.
This article intentionally steered away from these wider debates in peacebuilding,
focusing instead on the more objective features of peacebuilding organizations. Yet even within
this scope, the analysis was limited. The coverage of each organizational function could easily
deserve an entire article, and the analytical framework was simplistic and didnt consider a
holistic view of how organizations operate; however, research on these topics was limited. A
major empirical project is needed on the organizational structures of peacebuilding to allow close
30
scrutiny of operating problems, principles, and structures. With these ideas in mind, the closing
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