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Conclusion
Abstract
Institutional designs matter. The concluding chapter discusses the implications of this finding in four sections. The first section summarizes the key findings of the book. The second section outlines recommendations for the three organizations under scrutiny. In particular, peace operations led by the EU urgently require institutional adjustments to become more effective. The last two sections address how this book’s findings can be generalized. There are limitations with respect to the research design underpinning the analysis. After discussing these, the last section elaborates how this book contributes to the literature on peacebuilding and international public administration, respectively. The thesis is put forth that the dynamic nature of complex principals’ political preferences correlates negatively with bureaucratic performance during policy implementation, in peacebuilding and beyond. Institutional designs, in particular decentralization and bureaucratic autonomy, mediate this unwieldy effect. National interests are not going anywhere. But there is increasing bureaucracy in world politics today, and we would do well to learn as much as possible about how it can offset national politics’ unfortunate side effects.
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The literature has generally not grappled with complex decisionmaking structures within organizations like the UN. Special representatives of the Secretary-General can act as norm arbitrators in the UN system, generating new practices by weighing against each other the conflicting norms that guide peacekeeping. Practices from the field, crystallized through the actions of SRSGs, constitute a bottom-up source of influence on UN norm change processes. SRSGs enjoy relative independence and physical distance from UN headquarters. With backgrounds often from diplomatic careers , plus relative autonomy and interpretations of the UN, they can wield influence thanks to a certain level of decentralized authority and their personal prestige.
The expectation that international organizations (IOs) can play a role in the resolution of violent conflict has spawned a process of institutional growth in the post-Second World War period. IOs at all levels have expanded existing instruments of conflict management and have gradually established new ones, such as mediation support units, early warning systems and standby military forces. Empirical research on this process has suffered from a lack of systematic, cross-temporal data. Seeking to rectify this weakness, this article introduces an original dataset on the institutional design of 21 peace-brokering IOs, organizations endowed with standing capabilities for conflict management interventions. The dataset contains yearly observations on 14 institutional variables during the 1945-2010 period, centered around three instruments of IO conflict management: mediation, economic sanctions and peacekeeping. It also includes observations on IO membership characteristics, power polarity and a set of security-related institutional features. This dataset provides scholars with a new source of variables for the study of institutional evolution, institutional heterogeneity and the impact of institutional characteristics on IO performance. A preliminary descriptive analysis shows that IOs display significant variation in terms of mandates, capabilities and rates of change. Using the data, I also perform a re-appraisal of an earlier study on IO dispute resolution, demonstrating the analytic benefits of having disaggregated measures of institutional design.
While formal decision power in most international organizations rests with the member states, the member states often delegate the preparation of decisions to international secretariats. To prepare decisions, secretariats gather and analyze information and subsequently provide the member states with an assessment on the alternative courses of action. In this process, secretariats may accumulate an information surplus over the member states. They can use this advantage to suggest options close to their own interests. This article argues that, to counter such agency problem, the member states unilaterally invest in shadow bureaucracies with the aim to reduce informational asymmetries. Shadow bureaucracies are, however, costly. Member states have to weigh agency costs against the costs of domestic administrative capability. Strong states with outlier preferences are most likely to invest in shadow bureaucracies. They have most to gain. The use of shadow bureaucracies not only reduces agency costs. It also allows states more control over policy in international organizations. This article uses insights from peacekeeping in the United Nations to illustrate the argument.
International bureaucracies--highly visible, far-reaching actors of global governance in areas that range from finance to the environment--are often derided as ineffective, inefficient, and unresponsive. Yet despite their prominence in many debates on world politics, little scholarly attention has been given to their actual influence in recent years. Managers of Global Change fills this gap, offering conceptual analysis and case studies of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies in the area of environmental governance--one of the most institutionally dynamic areas of world politics. The book seeks to resolve a puzzling disparity: although most international bureaucracies resemble each other in terms of their institutional and legal settings (their mandate, the countries to which they report, their general function), the roles they play and their actual influence vary greatly. The chapters investigate the type and degree of influence that international environmental bureaucracies exert and whether external or internal factors account for variations. After a discussion of theoretical context, research design, and empirical methodology, the book presents nine in-depth case studies of bureaucracies ranging from the environment department of the World Bank to the United Nations' climate and desertification secretariats. Managers of Global Change points the way to a better understanding of the role of international bureaucracies, which could improve the legitimacy of global decision making and resolve policy debates about the reform of the United Nations and other bodies.
This article analyses why the UN's members delegate resources to the UN Secretariat in the sensitive field of peacekeeping. It argues that the Secretariat can carry out planning and implementation functions more efficiently, but that the states remain wary of potential sovereignty loss. Through a mixed methods approach, this article provides evidence for such a functional logic of delegation, but shows that it only applies from the late-1990s on. The change in approach of states towards delegation can be explained by feedback from the dramatic failures of peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Somalia.
A review of the policy implementation literature finds the field split into two major schools, top-down and bottom-up. Pre- vious attempts to reconcile these models are described, followed by an alternative model. This model reconciles these approaches by concentrating on the theoretical significance of ambiguity and conflict for policy implementation. A number of factors crucial to the implementation process are identified as varyingty dependent on a policy's ambiguity and conflict level. Four policy implemen- tation paradigms are identified and the relevance of the existing literature to these conditions is discussed. The four paradigms are low conflict-low ambiguity (administrative implementation), high conflict-low ambiguity (political implementation), high con- flict-high ambiguity (symbolic implementation), and low conflict- high ambiguity (experimental implementation).
Western struggles — and failures — to create functioning states in countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan have inspired questions about whether statebuilding projects are at all viable, or whether they make the lives of their intended beneficiaries better or worse. This book asks why statebuilding has been so hard to achieve, and argues that a large part of the problem has been Westerners' failure to understand or engage with what local people actually want and need. It interrogates the liberal peacebuilding industry, asking what it assumes, what it is getting wrong, and how it could be more effective.
First published in 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy received critical acclaim for its insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs. Three decades later, the need to bolster the availability and effectiveness of healthcare, social services, education, and law enforcement is as urgent as ever. In this thirtieth anniversary expanded edition, Michael Lipsky revisits the territory he mapped out in the first edition to reflect on significant policy developments over the last several decades. Despite the difficulties of managing these front-line workers, he shows how street-level bureaucracies can be and regularly are brought into line with public purposes. Street-level bureaucrats-from teachers and police officers to social workers and legal-aid lawyers-interact directly with the public and so represent the frontlines of government policy. In Street-Level Bureaucracy, Lipsky argues that these relatively low-level public service employees labor under huge caseloads, ambiguous agency goals, and inadequate resources. When combined with substantial discretionary authority and the requirement to interpret policy on a case-by-case basis, the difference between government policy in theory and policy in practice can be substantial and troubling. The core dilemma of street-level bureaucrats is that they are supposed to help people or make decisions about them on the basis of individual cases, yet the structure of their jobs makes this impossible. Instead, they are forced to adopt practices such as rationing resources, screening applicants for qualities their organizations favor, "rubberstamping" applications, and routinizing client interactions by imposing the uniformities of mass processing on situations requiring human responsiveness. Occasionally, such strategies work out in favor of the client. But the cumulative effect of street-level decisions made on the basis of routines and simplifications about clients can reroute the intended direction of policy, undermining citizens' expectations of evenhanded treatment. This seminal, award-winning study tells a cautionary tale of how decisions made by overburdened workers translate into ad-hoc policy adaptations that impact peoples' lives and life opportunities. Lipsky maintains, however, that these problems are not insurmountable. Over the years, public managers have developed ways to bring street-level performance more in line with agency goals. This expanded edition of Street-Level Bureaucracy underscores that, despite its challenging nature, street-level work can be made to conform to higher expectations of public service.
Recent literature has argued that a ‘dominant peacebuilding culture’ has precluded the contextualisation of peacebuilding to local dynamics. The article explores the ‘peacekeeping-peacebuilding nexus’ in practice, where civilian peacekeepers are increasingly considered to be early peacebuilders. Drawing on examples from United Nations (UN) civilian peacekeeping involvement in local peacebuilding in South Sudan, this article argues for a less reductionist and more nuanced view of local peacebuilding and the social interactions and dynamics which take place. It recognises the discrepancies between official UN Headquarters (HQ) policy and action in the “field”, and thus explores the relationship between policy and practice and the location of agency and authority in civilian peacekeeping. The article argues that the critique levelled against peacekeeping and peacebuilding for being focused on actors in host country capitals does not sufficiently take into consideration the relationship between capitals and the “field”. Rather, local peacebuilding outcomes depend as much or more on negotiations, bargains and compromises between different actors at the “field” level, than on institutional policy decision-making deriving from headquarters.
Making War and Building Peace examines how well United Nations peacekeeping missions work after civil war. Statistically analyzing all civil wars since 1945, the book compares peace processes that had UN involvement to those that didn't. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis argue that each mission must be designed to fit the conflict, with the right authority and adequate resources. UN missions can be effective by supporting new actors committed to the peace, building governing institutions, and monitoring and policing implementation of peace settlements. But the UN is not good at intervening in ongoing wars. If the conflict is controlled by spoilers or if the parties are not ready to make peace, the UN cannot play an effective enforcement role. It can, however, offer its technical expertise in multidimensional peacekeeping operations that follow enforcement missions undertaken by states or regional organizations such as NATO. Finding that UN missions are most effective in the first few years after the end of war, and that economic development is the best way to decrease the risk of new fighting in the long run, the authors also argue that the UN's role in launching development projects after civil war should be expanded.
This paper is the first chapter of a book on U. S. federal resource allocation in the field of outdoor recreation. Line-item budgeting turned out to be sensitive politically but did not lead to analysis of agency activities. Program budgeting was politically insensitive but did not lead to evaluation either. This turned attention to the question of why organizations resist evaluation. The thesis of the article is that evaluation is primarily an organizational problem. The needs of the organization and the people within it conflict with the desire to continuously monitor activities and change policies when they are found wanting. By considering how an organization whole-heartedly devoted to evaluation might function, and how people might survive whose major purpose was to maintain resources and objectives in a creative tension, the article suggests that it will be difficult to marry evaluation and organization. The article includes suggestions for bringing together substantive evaluation of policy and the imperatives of organizational life. But the degree of trust among social groups is seen as a critical regulator facilitating or depressing evaluation and conditioning the uses to which it is put.
United Nations peacekeeping is implemented by a complex bureaucratic organization, which itself can be a source of dysfunction and failure. This article empirically explores the strategies officials within the United Nations Mission in Liberia and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations apply in order to continue to do their job as effectively as possible despite the limitations of the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy. The findings demonstrate that internal acknowledgement and relevance of work are core strategic goals of UN officials. However, as the actual practices of achieving these objectives vary at different levels and locations of the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy, these strategies contribute to a significant diversity of local and decentralized decision-making frameworks rather than a rationalized effective bureaucracy.
In 1999, few people would have predicted that the EU would send ships to Somalia, police to Afghanistan, judges to Kosovo and soldiers to Chad. Yet, that is exactly what the EU has been doing. The European Security and Defence policy (ESDP) –since renamed the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) – was launched shortly after NATO’s war in Kosovo in June 1999, to ensure that Europeans could respond to international crises, including launching operations, without depending on the US (via NATO). Since 2003 the EU has initiated some 24 peace-support operations in Europe, Africa and Asia, using both civil and military resources, and some of these missions have had impressive results. However, at times there have been some real difficulties with CSDP operations, ranging from resource shortages, intermittent political support from Member States, and a lack of coordination between EU actors. Lessons already identified in the crisis management debate point to two fundamental factors of success. First, a comprehensive approach that brings together the different actors deployed in the field. Second, the resilience of the political and material commitment of crisis management actors, possibly over many years. Both these factors pose important questions for the future of EU peace operations.
The United Nations Security Council mandates peacekeeping operations to protect civilians, and regularly authorizes operations to use force to achieve this objective. Yet in the challenging situations facing contemporary peacekeeping operations, local civilians remain vulnerable to extreme violence. One set of reasons for this unwelcome result surrounds the decisions to protect civilians forcefully in any given context. This paper describes how peacekeeping operations vest discretion over the use of robust force across multiple agents. Using signal detection theory to model the decision-making of these agents, our analysis shows how the iterative nature of the decision-making process gives rise to a chain of authority where the most conservative decision-maker tends to prove decisive. With this analysis in tow, we turn our attention to recent protection initiatives, including Security Council Resolution 2098 (2013) and its controversial mandate for the new ‘Intervention Brigade’ in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Why do states delegate certain tasks and responsibilities to international organizations rather than acting unilaterally or cooperating directly? Furthermore, to what extent do states continue to control IOs once authority has been delegated? Examining a variety of different institutions, including the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the European Commission, this book explores the different methods that states employ to ensure their interests are being served and identifies the problems involved with monitoring and managing IOs. The contributors suggest that it is not inherently more difficult to design effective delegation mechanisms at the international level than at the domestic level. Drawing on principal-agent theory, they explain the variations that exist in the extent to which states are willing to delegate to IOs. They argue that IOs are neither all evil nor all virtuous, but are better understood as bureaucracies that can be controlled to varying degrees by their political masters.
How is the United States able to control the IMF with only 17 per cent of the votes? How are the rules of the global economy made? This book shows how a combination of formal and informal rules explain how international organizations really work. Randall W. Stone argues that formal rules apply in ordinary times, while informal power allows leading states to exert control when the stakes are high. International organizations are therefore best understood as equilibrium outcomes that balance the power and interests of the leading state and the member countries. Presenting a new model of institutional design and comparing the IMF, WTO and EU, Stone argues that institutional variations reflect the distribution of power and interests. He shows that US interests influence the size, terms and enforcement of IMF programs, and new data, archival documents and interviews reveal the shortcomings of IMF programs in Mexico, Russia, Korea, Indonesia and Argentina.
Why are some peacekeeping mandates broad and expansive while others are narrow and well defined? Does variation in mandate flexibility reflect the needs inherent in resolving the conflict or the political interests of powerful states? The modern thread of debate surrounding UN action focuses on whether the political interests of the Permanent Five (P5) members in the Security Council or the stated goals of the institution as a whole drive UN behavior. While most analyses focus on where the UN intervenes to assess the political “pull” that member states exert on the institution, we examine variation in operational latitude across UN peacekeeping in war-torn states. Our analysis offers three main results. Powerful states do constrain international bureaucracies; however, bureaucratic independence varies with the intrinsic interests of the P5. Further, heterogeneity across powerful state preferences systematically affects bureaucratic flexibility in peacekeeping.
This article challenges the view that peace operations are rationally designed to select an optimal organizational structure for operational performance. Instead, two dynamics lead to the adoption of dysfunctional organizational structures. First, different preferences among state and organizational actors involved in planning a peace operation (‘heterogeneity of the sponsoring coalition’) lead to diffused authority (‘heterarchical design’) in peace operations structures. Second, characteristics of the organizational environment (‘ambiguity’ and ‘stickiness’) in which peace operations are authorized and planned cause the adoption of dysfunctional organizational structures. Investigating briefly the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), and the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), the article finds the hypothesized relationships consistent with the finding of the cases. While function does not always follow form there are strong indications that it often does in the international context.
Crisis management has become a defining feature of contemporary governance. In times of crisis, communities and members of organizations expect their leaders to minimize the impact of the crisis at hand, while critics and bureaucratic competitors try to seize the moment to blame incumbent rulers and their policies. In this extreme environment, policy makers must somehow establish a sense of normality, and foster collective learning from the crisis experience. In this uniquely comprehensive analysis, the authors examine how leaders deal with the strategic challenges they face, the political risks and opportunities they encounter, the errors they make, the pitfalls they need to avoid, and the paths away from crisis they may pursue. This book is grounded in over a decade of collaborative, cross-national case study research, and offers an invaluable multidisciplinary perspective. This is an original and important contribution from experts in public policy and international security.
Do international organizations really do what their creators intend them to do? In the past century the number of international organizations (IOs) has increased exponentially, and we have a variety of vigorous theories to explain why they have been created. Most of these theories explain IO creation as a response to problems of incomplete information, transaction costs, and other barriers to Pareto efficiency and welfare improvement for their members. Research owing from these theories, however, has paid little attention to how IOs actually behave after they are created. Closer scrutiny would reveal that many IOs stray from the efficiency goals these theories impute and that many IOs exercise power autonomously in ways unintended and unanticipated by states at their creation. Understanding how this is so requires a reconsideration of IOs and what they do.
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