Abstract
This article seeks to unpack the implications of contemporary peacebuilding for technocratic, bureaucratic organizational forms. It argues that if the contemporary peacebuilding literature is taken as given, fundamental alterations are required in predominately Western peacebuilding systems—specifically in the structure and function of bureaucratic organizations that typically fund, manage and execute peacebuilding interventions. The analysis proceeds by matching five ‘peacebuilding principles’ derived from contemporary literature, with an organizational framework that highlights key structural and functional aspects of bureaucracies, thus allowing organizational deficiencies to be identified. The article argues that current peacebuilding scholarship would benefit from theoretically guided organizational research on the various organizations and systems involved in peacebuilding implementation. It concludes that peacebuilding scholars can be informed by the significant body of knowledge in the fields of public administration and policy, which bring a rich history of studying implementation situations that parallel in many ways complex peacebuilding interventions.
Keywords
Introduction
The literature on peacebuilding has evolved considerably since the institutionalization of peace research in the early 20th century, with scholars and practitioners examining a variety of ways to deal with wicked problems, systemic complexity, asymmetry, cultural diversity and intractability (Ramsbotham et al., 2011). This literature 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 25–50% 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 has identified the technocratic aspects of peacebuilding as a potential challenge for practice. This is partly in reaction to the ‘technocratic turn’ (Mac Ginty, 2012: 293) in institutional responses to complex interventions, pointing at the ‘the systems and behaviours that prioritize bureaucratic rationality’ (p. 289) embedded in the institutional fabric of Western aid, development and military organizations. The few studies conducted tend to analyze the implications of technocratic organizational aspects and mission activities for the overall conduct of peacebuilding (see for example, Donais, 2009; Goetschel and Hagmann, 2009; Krieger, 2006).
This issue is critical given that the primary manner in which peacebuilding is implemented is via bureaucratic organizations and systems, a fact which is unlikely to change in the near future. While many international organizations, development agencies and non-governmental organizations (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). Many case studies have analyzed peacebuilding interventions and made organizational recommendations (see, for example, Bensahel et al., 2009; Crocker et al., 2005; Dijkstra, 2011; Durch, 2006; Junk, 2012; Piiparinen, 2007; Rathmell, 2009; Simon, 2010; Weiss, 2005), but few have incorporated an organizational framework of analysis (some exceptions are Herrhausen, 2007; Lipson, 2007, 2012). Peacebuilding and conflict resolution studies tend to treat an intervention or conflict as a single unit of analysis and employ narrative or descriptive investigations that mix together variables such as organizational mission, goals, structures, policies, cultures, nature of the conflict problems, historical factors and conflict actors. In some respects, this approach is understandable given the contextual nature and long duration of interventions, and the large number of possible variables active in a single case study.
We argue, however, that to understand comprehensively the myriad factors affecting peacebuilding interventions requires theoretically informed organizational research on the 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 the challenges of researching complex organizational implementation, which generally feature a multitude of important variables, actors, relationships and networks (Hill and Hupe, 2009).
This study aims to shed light on key questions of implementation, such as 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 required? In analyzing these questions, we aim to bridge a gap in peacebuilding literature by suggesting organizational frames of analysis, while encouraging cross-pollination of concepts and theories from public administration, policy, organizational science and urban planning to the study of peacebuilding and conflict resolution.
The general approach is as follows. Firstly, by drawing from the recent literature in ‘third-generation’ contemporary peacebuilding and conflict resolution, we develop a set of ‘peacebuilding principles,’ which, from the position of the third-generation literature, are relatively invariant to context and assumed to be fundamental for intervention success. Secondly, we define a framework of analysis using standard approaches from the administrative sciences, in order to prioritize and organize key variables of importance in bureaucracies. Thirdly, for each variable in the framework, we analyze how it operates in bureaucracies assuming the peacebuilding principles as given. 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 dependent variables. As a result of the inchoate nature of organization science-informed peacebuilding study, this approach is primarily an exercise at conceptual scoping. Consequently, this article will sketch out tentative ideas that can form the basis for further research on the matter. Although we cannot hope to outline the arguments in full, this approach overall is a ‘reverse’ way to critique the current international system of conflict resolution and peacebuilding by showing how far our institutions are from being able to meet the requirements clearly laid out in much conflict research.
Peacebuilding principles
We begin our analysis by defining peacebuilding, summarizing recent paradigmatic debates in the literature, and developing a set of 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 interventions to establish peace.
While there are multiple definitions of peacebuilding (Goetschel and Hagmann, 2009), we assume the broad conception taken by many scholars, which incorporates parallel elements of transformative conflict resolution to overcome 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 statebuilding are considered as ‘tasks’ within peacebuilding rather than as ends in themselves. While the issue of what to do ‘on the ground’ in interventions and how to do it are highly contextual, generalized conceptions of peacebuilding can be grouped according to the foundational traditions and paradigmatic assumptions about how change occurs in society, and how external agents achieve it. Three such peacebuilding approaches can be discerned.
The first approach is rooted in a modernization paradigm, which assumes a natural evolution from a primitive to a modern liberal democratic system, composed of bureaucratic and centralized government organizations regulating a capitalistic economy in a society populated by rational and secular individuals (Jantzi and Jantzi, 2009). The means to accomplish change, or put society back on track towards modernization after conflict, involves simultaneous action across all domains of society: politics, government, security, economy, infrastructure and civil society. In addition, cross-cutting issues such as conflict resolution, justice and reconciliation need to be integrated into the development of each domain. The delivery mechanism for this approach is via the actions of international and national aid, development and military organizations intervening in the conflict, and the construction, or reconstruction, of strong and functioning ‘host’ governments that are able to resolve political conflicts, provide security and allow functioning markets (Ghani and Lockhart, 2009). This describes, of course, the ‘liberal peace’ approach that is the ‘dominant form of internationally supported peacemaking and peacebuilding…promoted by leading states, leading international organizations and international financial institutions’ (Mac Ginty, 2010: 393).
The second approach adopts a ‘growth with equity’ paradigm, which assumes that peace and development occur when structural barriers are removed to permit local cultures and contexts to be fully expressed in all aspects of society, requiring any external intervention to be neutral and inclusive (Jantzi and Jantzi, 2009). This translates into the notion of local or ‘bottom-up’ peacebuilding, which re-orients the focus of intervention from a ‘toolbox’ of externally imposed generic approaches to one driven by local needs and empowerment of local actors (Donais, 2009). While concepts such as ‘local ownership’ address the criticism that instrumental liberal peacebuilding marginalizes local interests, local communities are also sources of ‘power asymmetry, patriarchy and privilege in which customs and civil society actors and organizations may replicate what external actors are sometime accused of in the international arena’ (Ramsbotham et al., 2011: 236). Furthermore, the concept of third-party conflict resolution that does not take sides, as generally happens in the liberal model, is insufficiently powerful to cope with the vast range of conflict traumas and problems in most situations.
In response to this view a third-generation ‘hybrid’ approach is developing, which combines the essential characteristics of modernization with elements of a critical paradigm rooted in liberation from sources of domination and attainment of social justice, and a transformative paradigm that emphasizes cosmopolitanism, discursive rationality and transcendence of differences (Mac Ginty, 2008, 2010; Ramsbotham et al., 2011; Richmond, 2010). This hybrid peacebuilding 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 creation of a discursive framework of mutual accommodation and social justice which recognizes difference’ (Richmond, 2010: 26). The challenge will be to connect new liberal political orders and institutions with traditional economies, cultures and values, while maintaining the core ideas of transformative conflict resolution (Lederach, 2003).
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 peacebuilding as a given. This could be a major point of contention given that the paradigm debate is still ongoing and there are many 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.
As previously mentioned, 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 bureaucratic organizations in implementing third-generation peacebuilding.
The purpose of the concise paradigm genealogy above was to place the peacebuilding principles explained below in a broader context of the discipline. 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 a solid foundation of research and are a valid representation of the key messages of third-generation scholarship. A first-step literature review engaged with two main bodies of literature: research from critical and post-structuralist traditions, conflict transformation and liberal-local hybridity; and research on organizational aspects of peacebuilding. This initial review quickly revealed a scarcity of work using organizational science approaches to studying peacebuilding, which provided further impetus to conduct this work.
Secondly, now focusing on the peacebuilding literature and following initial sorting and reviewing, a theoretical coding was conducted by iterative identification and refinement of key themes (Patton, 2002; Shields and Tajalli, 2006) until a typology with nine elements was reached (understanding peace as a process and end-state, cultural knowledge, knowledge generation, local–international relationships, local–local relationships, locally adaptive implementation, locally tailored mission objectives, locally 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 some redundancies and duplications of concepts were identified. By identifying the most common themes present in the articles, a further iteration generated a typology of five elements (knowledge of peace, knowledge generation, relationships, implementation, mission objectives and tasks), which subsequently became the five principles.
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 not be thought of as specific prescriptions, but as outlining general ‘peacebuilding requirements’ relatively invariant to a particular context. These principles are the basis against which organizational requirements can be derived, assuming the principles as given.
Principle 1: peacebuilding requires a deep understanding of peace
Peacebuilding requires a deep understanding of peace outside of liberal state mechanisms (Richmond, 2009, 2010), and recognition that the absence of a state does not equal the 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 centuries-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 (Pugh et al., 2008).
Principle 2: peacebuilding requires significant understanding of how knowledge is generated in society
Peacebuilding requires not only an exceptional understanding of objective societal components, such as organization and structure, local culture, tradition and history, but also an understanding of the past, current and future of local events from multiple perspectives. Peacebuilders must develop ‘privileged’ knowledge from conflict analysis of the complex dynamics and causal relationships that drive conflict, but be able to distinguish their perspective from local perspectives. In addition to the objective reality of facts, peacebuilders should understand how knowledge is generated in societies, through social construction of narratives. The notion of ‘fact’ should be replaced by a ‘fact–value continuum’ in which empirical statements are always 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 in which contextual knowledge leads to modification of an organization’s underlying norms and mission goals, rather than incremental changes in methods or tools (Argyris and Schön, 1989).
Principle 3: peacebuilding is fundamentally about relationships and must involve all actors
A deep and permanent peace requires a normalization process in relationships between conflict parties that allow inequalities and differences to be addressed, and closer social integration (Kriesberg, 2007). While much of the conflict resolution literature focuses on ways to bring conflict parties together constructively, often the relationships between the interveners and the conflict parties themselves are forgotten. Peacebuilding requires significant external intervention and interference in a conflict; thus, the relationship between the interveners and the conflict parties is equally as 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 aspects of governance and institution building, it is done without introducing ‘hegemony, inequality, conditionality, or dependency’ (Richmond, 2010: 33). Furthermore, while much consideration is given to mission objectives, clear objectives are needed with regard to the relationship between local and international actors and its dynamic over the duration of the mission (Chesterman, 2004). Finally, peacebuilding must consider the relationships 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
Peacebuilders should endeavor to secure quick transfer of responsibilities and power in all areas to local actors (Pugh et al., 2008) such that ownership of peace processes is reconceptualized from international–local elite to local–local, where the ‘geometry of 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 of political economy issues generated by constitutional distribution of power, especially where centralized states are supported by foreign interveners (Myerson, 2011).
Awareness is needed of the fundamental contradictions of peacebuilding, which lead to a 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 the myriad of local cultures; statebuilding requires a clean slate of political order, yet must reaffirm historical cultural identities; and short-term imperatives such as peacekeeping often conflict with longer term objectives such as conflict resolution (Paris and Sisk, 2009: 305–306). A key tension in implementation is between the past and the 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 and reaffirmation of historical cultural identities (Sandole et al., 2009).
These contradictions and tensions lead to various policy dilemmas of finding balance between the following: a heavy international footprint to achieve security or reconstruction versus a light 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 a 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 varying range of dependency 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 requirements, not international priorities
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 (Rathmell, 2010), peacebuilders should recognize security as ‘an intricate, almost unconscious, 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 structures that offer redundancy and balance (Kilcullen, 2010).
Organizational framework of analysis
The five principles (P1–P5 hereafter) we have developed endeavor to capture the essence of contemporary conflict resolution and peacebuilding literature, yet they say little about their realization in practice. The purpose of this article was to examine one key aspect of practice: peacebuilding interventions using bureaucratic organizations. Drawing from elementary principles in the administrative and organizational sciences, we now develop a framework of analysis to highlight key variables important to how bureaucratic organizations function, and thus how they execute peacebuilding interventions. The types of organizations to which this approach applies are also considered. Organizational scholars use a variety of theoretical and paradigmatic lenses to study and understand organizations, which emphasize to differing degrees the importance and relevance of various organizational factors (Lincoln, 1985). It is important to note that there is no ‘best’ approach to study organizations; the key is to choose an approach most suited to the particular research question (Gioia and Pitre, 1990; Haverland and Yanow, 2012).
In the classic organizational theory work, Images of Organization, Morgan (2006) develops a series of metaphors to view organizations as either machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, flux and transformation or instruments of domination. Depending on which metaphor is employed, various features about organizational change, function, behavior, success and problems have very different explanations. The primary approach for analysis of peacebuilding organizations taken in this article is the ‘machine’ metaphor, which fits largely with the existing critiques of technocracy. This approach sees organizations as ‘rational’ bureaucracies with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, hierarchies and procedures, and represents the primary way in which organizations, especially governmental, are described and conceived. As we will see, this metaphor breaks down considerably when applied with the peacebuilding principles in mind.
Other important metaphors related to the ‘machine’ by their assumption of objective reality are the ‘brain,’ which takes an internal perspective on how organizations learn and self-organize, and the ‘organism,’ which analyses the relationship between an organization and its environment. The ‘flux and transformation’ metaphor operates at the paradigmatic edge of objectivism and subjectivism, by conceiving of organizations as indistinguishable from their wider environment other than the subjective interpretations of boundaries by the organization’s members. In many ways, the brain, organism and transformation metaphors are key to understanding how peacebuilding organizations learn, adapt and change in complex interventions; however, their analytical approaches are much more complex and nuanced; thus, we take the machine metaphor as an initial starting point.
One particular approach to organizational analysis is to examine compositional elements (resources, hierarchical structures, personnel, policies, rules and processes) and what the organization actually does—or functional elements (planning, managing, communicating, decision making, producing, evaluating). While a wide variation in compositional elements can be observed across different mission types and sizes, most organizations conduct a core set of functions that are relatively invariant to the mission and size of the organization. In other terms, Mintzberg (1979) described organizations consisting of: an ‘operating core,’ which conducts the key output-focused work; a ‘strategic apex’ of leadership responsible for overall direction, planning and mission; a ‘middle line’ of managers with formalized authority who link the apex to the core; a ‘technostructure’ of staff with specialist skills; and a ‘support staff’ responsible for making the organization less dependent on the outside world.
Given the broad conception of peacebuilding, there is a wide variety of organizational forms involved in the endeavors, such as ‘providing humanitarian relief, protecting human rights, ensuring security, establishing nonviolent modes of resolving conflicts, fostering reconciliation, providing trauma healing services, repatriating refugees and resettling internally displaced persons, supporting broad-based education, and aiding in economic reconstruction’ (Snodderly, 2011: 40). A peacebuilding organization has been described very generally as ‘any organization aiming to impact the causes of peace’ Campbell (2008: 20).
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 vast majority of government agencies, international and large NGOs (Mac Ginty, 2012). As a result of their bureaucratic template, these organizations have several characteristics in common: a hierarchical structure in which departmentalization of functions such as planning 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 (Perrow, 1972; Weber, 1947). This Weberian ‘rational-legal’ bureaucratic form was created to achieve efficiency and is the prevalent form of organization in Western society. The specialization of knowledge, planning, evaluation and production functions is a consequence of the technical rationality of this way of organizing (Morrison, 2006; Weber, 1947). It should be noted, however, that bureaucracies only function well and achieve the intended efficiencies where organizational activities and missions are stable and clearly defined (Perrow, 1972).
Thus our organizational framework of analysis considers core organizational functions that are conducted by the strategic apex, middle line, operating core and technostructure in rational bureaucracies: Knowledge, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation. These functions are chosen because of their centrality to design and conduct an organization’s mission in any peacebuilding intervention (see, for example, Alberts and Hayes, 1995, 2007; Allard, 2005; Wentz, 1998, 2002). These categories are also widely identified in the public administration and management literature as standard functions (see, for example, Gulick, 1937; Mintzberg, 1979; Rainey, 2003; Simon, 1997). Organizational functions conducted by the support staff, such as human resources, public affairs and communications, are excluded from this analysis.
Exploring the organizational requirements for peacebuilding
Having now established the peacebuilding principles and the organizational framework of analysis, the research question of this article is addressed by asking how might technocratic-orientated organizations need to change in order to meet the requirements of the peacebuilding principles. Thus, by matching peacebuilding principles to the organizational typology of knowledge, planning, implementation and evaluation, we generate prescriptions and tentative research ideas for future studies. We acknowledge immediately that there are many obvious political and practical difficulties in the various prescriptions, but for the purposes of not constraining thinking we consider the full range of possibilities rather than only the practicable.
Knowledge requirements for peacebuilding organizations
In rational technocracies it is typical to find formalized knowledge systems and resident or contracted experts who possess objective factual information and much tacit experience. Government and military organizations typically develop vast databases of information on conflict areas. Many international organizations conduct elaborate conflict assessments to produce definitive analyses of conflict drivers or societal ‘needs’ before any intervention starts (UN, 2007, 2012), for which there is a large system of private ‘civilian experts’ and companies with this expertise (De Coning, 2011). These observations reflect the fact that given the complex environments in which peacebuilding organizations operate, the requirements for knowledge are high. While organizations have the intent of following peacebuilding P1 and P2, which call for a deep understanding of the final ‘end’ of peace and significant knowledge as to the ‘means,’ the operationalization of this requirement seems to have generated increasing specialization, bureaucratization and treatment of knowledge as a ‘resource’ rather than process. Rationalized bureaucratic systems 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 created for management plans and knowledge databases, such as ‘locals,’ ‘powerbrokers’ or ‘key leaders,’ 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?
Based on an appreciation of the nature of wicked problems, complexity and interdependent systems (Li et al., 2012; Rittel and Webber, 1973), organizations must develop structural responses to these knowledge requirements that depart from the current designs. One such response is the abandonment of formalized ‘engineering-style’ mission planning for an evolutionary and adaptive approach that seeks generation of knowledge, rather than using a priori knowledge at the start of missions (Watkins and Mohr, 2001). Another response is to consider the deployment time for personnel and the ways in which an organization captures mission-based knowledge. In the military and other government departments, for example, personnel deploy for a period of up to one year, yet the transition time between deployments is recognized as the most disruptive to peacebuilding, as contextual and time-sensitive mission-based knowledge is lost (Rathmell, 2009). Although an unpopular concept, and one that stretches the boundary between diplomatic service and development functions, governments may have to recognize the requirement for extended deployment periods of many years.
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 may entail radical changes in the way in which knowledge is managed and controlled in organizations. For example, knowledge systems must receive input from a wide variety of sources to encourage alternative and contradictory perspectives, yet this conflicts with the basic operative principles of a bureaucracy: that complex task specialization rests upon specialized knowledge of personnel (Perrow, 1972). Organization leadership must also consider that bureaucracies tend to evolve to control information, which requires a strong organizational culture of sharing to overcome (Zelizer, 2013).
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 systemic conflict analysis that considers the conflict environments as a holistic, multi-level system, and links to the wider regional or global context (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 see other perspectives and continual questioning of assumptions to meet the knowledge requirements specified in P1 and P2. The strategic apex must prioritize understanding of the complexities of conflict situations over making quick decisions, and recognize that knowledge of a complex system is inherently limited.
Planning requirements for peacebuilding organizations
The main purpose of organizational planning in a bureaucracy is to reduce complexity and make decision making more rational by formulating clear goals based on assumed objective knowledge, and identifying the means and implementation plans to achieve the goals (March and Simon, 1993). In the field of public policy and urban planning, a core criticism of positivistic planning has been that its underlying rationale, when based on supposedly objective knowledge, is control—and domination—of a situation or environment from a singular perspective, and that the process is not supportive of inclusive or participatory logics, especially given the chain of decision making in complex bureaucracies (Allmendinger, 2002; Habermas, 1973). This criticism is especially relevant in the context of peacebuilding, as highlighted by P3 and P4.
At this stage it is pertinent to raise the important consideration of ‘rationality,’ meaning the normative conception of reasoning employed at an individual level of analysis. The machine metaphor and its technocracy cousin rely upon the assumption of ‘instrumental’ rationality, in which individuals are conceived as reasoning on the basis of 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 ‘planned’ in order to solve social conflict.
Yet there are other possible types of rationality. Many scholars have investigated interpretive rationality: a mode of reasoning based on continual social construction of meaning among involved actors in which the very definition of knowledge is that which causes increased communication. Increased communication between actors opens up the possibility of increased understanding of each person’s reflective viewpoint of the shared constitutive meanings and thus the possibility of changing one’s viewpoint (Bevir, 2010; Fay, 1975; Stone, 2002). Others have expanded Habermas’ (1981) communicative rationality, in which rational reasoning is conceived as a discursive process to uncover realities hidden by socially constructed understandings; thus, 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’ theory is defined by process conditions of a diversity of participants with interdependent interests engaging in authentic dialogue to develop shared meanings and ‘heuristic’ solutions (Innes and Booher, 2010: 35). For our discussion, it is important to note that collaborative rationality is the foundational basis of many conflict resolution strategies important in peacebuilding, such as Alternative Dispute Resolution, in which the dialogue proceeds around discussion of underlying interests rather than instrumental positions, in order to develop mutual gain solutions (Fisher et al., 1991).
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, as a basic starting point, mission plans are framed against ‘locally owned’ and perceived conflict theories that describe the underlying conflict drivers. The process of planning involves moving from a picture of the current situation to an intended future situation by employing instrumental organizational tools. Rational bureaucracies tend to plan by constructing ‘impact’ models, which identify causal assumptions between planned interventions and change. P2, P4 and P5 call for these impact models to be constructed with wide stakeholder participation.
The capacity to undertake this, however, involves a move from the instrumental and systems rationality so common in bureaucratic organizations, to the collaborative rationality described by Fisher and Forester (1993), Forester (1981) and Innes and Booher (2010) in which planners and analysts move from operating within the existing system of power structures and one-sided communications, to changing the existing system by ‘democratizing’ the planning process by questioning and focusing attention. The danger in creating impact models, even if based on broad stakeholder impact, is that they merely represent ‘pragmatism without principles’—a form of incrementalism (Lindblom, 2010). 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).
This requires organizations to have an institutional, explicit understanding of their particular fundamental paradigmatic orientation (e.g. realism, pluralism, etc.), which acutely determines the particular planning strategy adopted by an organization (Jantzi and Jantzi, 2009; Ramsbotham et al., 2011). For example, military planners are explicitly realist: even while going to great lengths in recent doctrine to talk about peacebuilding and local ownership (North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 2011), the underlying assumption remains that external intervention can manipulate a society through ‘instruments of power’ (Hunter et al., 2008). To adopt the peacebuilding principles presented in this paper, organizations need to transform to a cultural and practical paradigm that moves from the assumption of externally driven change to one of externally supported creation of new understandings and ‘transformative learning’ (Affolter et al., 2009).
A challenge faced by bureaucratic systems is to respond to rapid change and deal with uncertain inputs and outputs (Perrow, 1972). P1 calls for the final goal of peace to be clearly operationalized via a process that involves wide participation from all stakeholders, yet P3 and P4 indicate that both understandings and context will change as the understandings of parties involved in the conflict evolve. Organizationally, this requires that goals, underlying planning assumptions and conflict theories are continually reassessed and adapted if needed, 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 classical engineering approach (Clement and Smith, 2009; Rittel and Webber, 1973).
P3 requires that peacebuilding organizations place relationships with local actors at a focal point of all activity. Consequently, an organization’s planning activities should be framed from the perspective of a social contract with local actors, rather than from the perspectives of Western governments or donor wishes. In defining this relationship contract, 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 strategies of conflict transformation, based on dynamic construction of different perspectives amongst stakeholders (Lederach, 2003; Zelizer, 2013).
Given the strong emphasis on locally sourced knowledge and local involvement in all the peacebuilding principles, it is an obvious conclusion that mission knowledge, theories of conflict and theories of change should be developed in an open and transparent process with the ability to identify where management, leadership or donors have had influence. In this vein, strategic, budgetary and management planning should be responsive to mission contexts and evaluation knowledge, 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 decoupled from mission-based planning, implying adaptability to changes in goals or mission scope. These factors require a fundamental move away from the traditional bureaucratic structure: fixed specializations in fixed departments must yield to a flexible, networked-based organization in which short-term mission-based expertise is balanced against long-term management experience that has a tendency to focus on organizational priorities rather than immediate mission concerns.
P3 calls for consideration of relationships and coordination with other peacebuilding organizations. This is important to achieve both overall policy coherence between actors (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2003) and to ensure operational coordination and appropriate division of labor and responsibility between actors (De Coning, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2010). The implications for organizational planning are significant. Firstly, organizations must establish the extent to which other organizations are impacting their operations. Secondly, planning must involve a process of interorganizational communication and decision making, which vastly complexifies the process, making the dangers of instrumental planning harder to avoid with the increase in actors.
A common response to the coherence and coordination challenge is a centralized approach such as the UN integrated mission concept and the newly established Peacebuilding Commission. Yet, participation in these systems by peacebuilding organizations comes at a high price: forging comprehensive working relationships with a variety of actors represents a formidable administrative task of unparalleled complexity; and traditional principles of bureaucratic systems are subtly altered as organizational boundaries are blurred and questions of legal-rational authority, responsibility and accountability arise (Williams, 2010). In a single hierarchical structure, the ability to plan and take ownership of goals usually implies authority to commit resources towards that goal. Collaborative planning scenarios in which organizations attempt to develop coordinated or common impact models with classical means–end project plans, requires that the level of organization engaging in the coordination has the authority to commit resources. Yet the typical place of coordination—on the ground in a mission—is not where senior level staff tend to operate. Consequently, the high-level planning authority may need to be decentralized in the organization to ground-level units; however, there are multiple administrative issues in terms of accountability and responsibility (Provan and Kenis, 2007).
A final issue for strategic and budgetary planners—to meet the requirements of P3—is to establish organizational sustainability by securing a long-term commitment from donors, owners and taxpayers to support interventions of years or decades, if required. This requires organizations to take on a significant amount of risk in planning resources and budgets.
Implementation requirements for peacebuilding organizations
Implementation considers the execution of an organization’s mission, or as Ferman (1990: 39) describes, ‘what happens between policy expectations and (perceived) policy results.’ While there is a high degree of variation in what this specifically means depending on the type, mission and size of organization, there are two key challenge areas in organizational implementation.
Firstly, implementation involves a delicate balance between top-down control over an organization’s activities versus required adaptation during a mission. A ‘top-down’ perspective considers that mission plans should identify goals against which performance can be measured, and appropriate organizational tools can be selected. An ‘implementation chain’ (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1984) then moves from planned goals to actual impacts, via inputs and outputs. Key reasons for plan failure lie in implementation failure, which is seen as due to 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 especially prevalent in the military and some government agencies (Caforio, 2006). Conversely, a ‘bottom-up’ perspective considers how to incorporate and adapt to local conditions as the plan is implemented. In this approach, mission and goals are seen as ambiguous and often conflicting with other goals of other organizations involved in implementation. Depending on the context, staff ‘on the ground’ interpret the meaning of goals in different ways, or realize that they are no longer relevant or appropriate; thus, implementation is a series of continual compromises, conflicts and adaptation. There is a fundamental tension between the top-down need for control, and the contextual needs of the mission for adaptation and flexibility (Frederickson et al., 2012).
Secondly, in any complex environment, a major part of organizational implementation is interaction with other organizations (O’Toole, 1986, 1988, 1993). Specifically, organizations working together in the same space must cooperate to achieve overall policy coherence, and to deconflict their activities and coordinate on the ground (De Coning, 2008a, 2008b, 2009). In terms of these coordination requirements, and for internal organizational processes, decision making is a key process; many organizational scholars have considered the centrality of this to organizations (Simon, 1997).
The implications of these challenges 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 is never stable and continually evolves; thus, organizations require significant resource commitment to knowledge development during implementation. To meet P3 and P5, decisions and plans have to be synchronized on the basis of local decision making, and an organization’s knowledge may be in conflict with locally generated perspectives. This requires exceptional flexibility in decision making. Bureaucratic organizations tend to desire clear policy objectives and objective plans, yet as P4 shows, defining a clear strategy is challenging given the various peacebuilding policy dilemmas. All 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 activities must be conducted around a framework of conflict resolution (United States Institute of Peace (USIP), 2010).
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 design, and technocratic systems 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, this view places peacebuilding squarely in the ‘bottom-up’ perspective. Therefore, any top-down control should be directed towards facilitating resources and expanding political space, rather than enforcing a fixed vision about achievement of specific, externally defined goals.
Peacebuilding organizations operate in a complex system with high interdependence with other organizations (De Coning, 2008a). Achieving coherence between organizations is an important condition to reduce duplication, inconsistent or contradictory policies, and increase chances of success (OECD, 2003). A fact well understood and researched in the public policy literature is the difficulty in defining boundaries of responsibility for achievement of goals, given that no one organization has the capability to achieve them independently (Kettl, 2003, 2006). The implications of multi-organizational collaboration have been extensively studied in public administration, public policy and management literatures (Ansel and Gash, 2007; Herranz, 2010; Thomson and Perry, 2006), but receive little attention in the peacebuilding and conflict resolution—a peculiar fact considering the repeated observation of the importance of coherence and coordination (De Coning, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2010; Friis and Jarmyr, 2008; OECD, 2003; Paris and Sisk, 2009; Picciotto, 2005). There are several key organizational implications that occur with increasing interaction.
Firstly, to achieve high levels of coherence, organizations must align overarching mission goals, and increase coordination through 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 cooperation and organizational independence (Eikenberry et al., 2007). As the shift away from hierarchical structures towards more flexible network-based designs occurs, some organizational independence must be conceded and risk assumed, as accountability dilemmas become more complex with closer integration between organizations (Thomson et al., 2009). Furthermore, more complex hybrid decision-making structures—committees, meeting and management boards—must be set up to implement the coordination between organizations (McNamara, 2012).
Secondly, organizations require extra resources devoted to the task of coordination. Huxham and Vangen (2005: 37) were clear on this subject: ‘Don’t do it unless you have to! Joint working with other organizations is inherently difficult and resource consuming’ (p. 37). Thus, in addition to considering the various peacebuilding dilemmas of P4, organizations’ leadership and management have another dilemma—to decide the level of cooperation with other highly interdependent organizations.
Evaluation requirements for peacebuilding organizations
Evaluation has gained in importance in recent decades with the increasing call for transparency and accountability in international interventions (Picciotto, 2003). Many peacebuilding organizations have independent departments to manage, conduct or contract out evaluations (OECD, 2010). Military organizations generally have their own personnel in ‘operations assessment’ departments, while most of the international aid and development institutions contract out evaluation functions. From the many purposes for evaluations, this analysis focuses on summative evaluations that monitor inputs and outputs and determine program improvement, and knowledge generation evaluations for organizational lessons learned (Patton, 1997).
Evaluation systems in major international and governmental organizations tend to assume the form of ‘rational’ monitoring of inputs and outputs, with focused post-facto assessments of impact (Williams and Morris, 2009). While there is a wide variation in intended utilizations, evaluations tend to feed rational bureaucratic systems for either accountability, mission knowledge or measurement of progress (Mac Ginty, 2013). The implications of the peacebuilding principles for evaluation in peacebuilding organizations are very similar to those of planning. Evaluations of peacebuilding interventions must continue to incorporate the standard impact assessment methodologies, but their planning must involve participatory designs to reduce the likelihood that evaluations are framed with an instrumental logic. Participatory designs emphasize local ownership of evaluation methods, development of findings and utilization of results to give those who are most frequently powerless a voice in both the evaluation process and program implementation (Cousins and Earl, 1992; Lawrenz and Huffman, 2003; Papineau and Kiely, 1996). The organizational implications are profound.
Evaluations in ‘rational’ results-based management systems focus on objective truth and provide evidence-based adjustments to planning; 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 conducts independent evaluations, separated from program implementation (OECD, 2010). 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 measuring, 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 adaptivity coupled with the typical departmentalization of organizations in a mission contributes to a situation where objectives are either continuously interpreted or retrospectively reconstructed 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 evaluation scholars and practitioners have developed ‘goal-free’ or ‘developmental’ evaluations, which do not rely on rationalistic template approaches (Patton, 2011; Scriven, 1991).
One of the key uses for evaluations is for organizational learning (Patton, 1997). Given the complexities of peacebuilding and assuming the radical organizational changes postulated in this paper, organizations must be designed for second-loop learning in which leadership expects goals, structures and missions to change based on experience (Campbell, 2008). Second-loop learning must focus internally by constantly reassessing organizational structures, processes and techniques, and externally to missions by constantly considering unintended impacts of an organization’s activities.
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 bureaucratically structured peacebuilding organizations would need to change, assuming the peacebuilding principles as given. The tentative results indicate several profound changes in bureaucratic structures and functions would be required to meet seriously the ambitions of a deep and lasting peace. Implementation of these conclusions is an obvious challenge, as a consistent lesson from the literature on organizational change is that traditional structures do not easily yield to new ones (Lawler and Worley, 2006).
Firstly, hierarchical structures in organizations need considerable flattening or, conversely, authority needs to be more horizontally distributed rather than vertically. This would change the operating controlling mechanism to a collaborative-democratic system of power where organizational direction is achieved by understanding the competing requirements of different departments through a process of continuous debate, rather than through a centralized command system where orders are transmitted downwards. The traditional bureaucratic impartial system of staffing based on experience rather than patronage may be hard to implement; however, an organizational culture that values long-term field experience above all may provide counterbalance.
Secondly, the idea of rational, organized knowledge ‘databases’ that can be dipped into 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 privileged externalized knowledge, especially prevalent in militaries, must be abandoned to a culture of assuming complete ignorance as a starting point, and the idea that knowledge only can exist when it is co-created with all stakeholders affected by an organization’s actions.
Thirdly, the ‘classical engineering’ approach to planning and implementation needs rethinking to give organizations considerable flexibility. Most decision-making processes assume a linear stream of events in which plans are formed, then approved and then executed, with senior decision makers reviewing and approving as necessary as implementation proceeds. Decision making would instead need to accommodate simultaneous processes of goal planning, activity planning and implementation, and much higher coordination with other related peacebuilding organizations. This is significantly challenging in governmental organizations that have budgetary cycles and accountability requirements, which require some certainty about the scope of missions and resource commitments.
Finally, organizations need to consider the concepts of accountability and legitimacy in 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. There is an implicit criticism of other peacebuilding generations—especially the modernist liberal generation—that this was lacking. Organizations need to continuously evaluate their accountability to all stakeholders affected by their actions, and take measures to establish legitimacy (Brown, 2008; Williams and Taylor, 2013), ideally through a framework involving regional compacts (Galtung, 2012). 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 requirements for deliberative discourse.
In addition to the structural and functional aspects of organizations, this analysis demonstrates that the transformative paradigm of peacebuilding is hard to operationalize, raising several challenging questions about whether or not the peacebuilding principles can realistically be met. Peacebuilding runs into the same foundational questions found in political science, or even urban planning: how to establish political legitimacy, especially after destructive conflict; how to establish legitimacy of intervention, without some anchor of legitimate power in the region or country of operations; 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 means in the fields of urban planning and public administration.
A limitation to this analysis and a broader implication for the study of peacebuilding is the potential bias that stems from attempting to ‘fix’ bureaucratic organizations to conduct peacebuilding more effectively. While this explicitly was not the aim of this article, we must acknowledge the potential biases that may be present as a result of 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 whether 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 outright, and the analytical framework was simplistic and did not 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 scrutiny of operating problems, principles and structures.
A valuable comparison can be to the policy implementation literature, in which scholars have developed three approaches to analyze complex implementation processes. Firstly, by categorizing and analyzing all the variables of importance in implementation processes, scholars have a map to guide research and diagnostics. The obvious downside to this approach is that there is no easy way to determine the relative importance of any one variable (O’Toole, 1986). Secondly, in response to the multi-variable problem and the debates about top-down versus bottom-up perspectives, scholars have developed frameworks to model in an integrative fashion the planning and implementation activities occurring in policy systems. The advocacy coalition framework has promising potential to be adapted to peacebuilding interventions (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). Finally, many researchers have developed typology approaches to avoid the various problems inherent in causal frameworks and theories (Matland, 1995). Such typologies map situation context to implementation style, and could be a useful tool for peacebuilding scholars to better organize research. With these ideas in mind, the closing recommendation is that peacebuilding scholars should consider partnerships with organizational, public administration and urban planning researchers as a worthy endeavor.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.