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The title of the conference, the subject of the conference, is the Serious Study of Peace and what is strikingly obvious.
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In particular in the area of peace building that this area still heavily under theorised and under conceptualised.
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Why? Because it's still a relatively young subject. Why?
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Because the study of peace has somewhat shifted, speaking with Galtung from a focus on negative peace.
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So basically, absence of war two positive peace, which is far more holistic, addressing the root causes of conflict.
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So addressing this, the question of how to achieve positive peace is a far greater challenge in a
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far more complex undertaking which creates challenges in terms of governance.
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Let me tell you how actually we arrived at this topic, because in a way,
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the paper I'm talking about is an ongoing conversation I have with this gentleman sitting the far left.
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We had to kind of consultancy a few years ago where we brought the kind of background paper,
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which was part and parcel of what's called the consultation of peace in Africa was
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a kind of undertaking to support the implementation of the G8 Africa Action Plan.
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So in the Africa G8 Africa implementation plan,
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there was one line or a kind of call on the international community how we can actually
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improve our collective ability to support the consolidation of peace in Africa,
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especially in countries emerging from conflict. So basically, we looked at various documents and various efforts within organisations,
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institutions and coordination and learning appeared as a kind of policy mantra,
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kind of policy prescription that seemed to be a cure, to achieve better results, to achieve better peace building operations.
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So that's basically how we are.
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We arrived at coordination and learning and and began to struggle with those two policies, prescriptions.
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But as you see, I call those two policy prescriptions misplaced analogies.
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And I hope to make clear at the end of my talk why I think that in a way they are misplaced
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analogies and we perhaps would rather focus on on on far more important elements.
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So basically, the underlying questions of our paper are why has improvement in coordination been so elusive?
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Because despite all these calls for coordination,
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we don't see necessarily very astonishing results where we can see improvements in terms of coordination.
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And then if the underlying problems are actually known, why our lessons are actually not learnt.
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So why our mistakes are repeated.
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So what we actually suggest that there are deeper underlying causes that we should look at are and I think that's important.
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We need to highlight in particular, one, we want to get a better understanding of peacebuilding and want to develop better concepts,
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how peacebuilding actually works or how we can actually achieve better results.
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So we introduce the coordination and learning challenge as a kind of multi level governance problem and conceptualise it as a nested game,
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a nested game, basically, that takes place at multiple levels.
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Let me perhaps perhaps you may see it.
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We don't have PowerPoint here, but illustrate the problems as such.
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We have basically a multiplicity of actors and a large diversity of actors.
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We have NGOs and and firms involved in the building of peace.
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We have states and state it state agencies. We have international institutions, the agencies, funds and programmes.
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And all these actors come together in the building of peace.
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So basically, we have intra agency coordination games going on.
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We have inter. Agency coordination games going on.
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And then we have multiple actor coordination games.
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And that's basically it's part and parcel of a large peace building coordination game.
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So this is basically the challenge we are talking about when we when we look at peace building as a coordination problem.
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And as you may imagine, first of all,
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the large and character of this enterprise and also the diversity of the actors involved creates huge challenges that cannot be easily overcome,
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because it's not only this problem I have talked about, they are so different.
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Another problem adds a problem that this coordination game takes place at multiple levels.
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We have a global level of coordination efforts going on at U.N. headquarters level with an IMF World Bank and so on and so forth.
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Then we have regional and subregional levels. We are a regional organisation address a particular problem and they coordinate amongst each other.
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And then last but certainly not least and most importantly,
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we have the field level where the conflict is basically should be addressed with the peacebuilding operations going on.
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And that's actually the most important level of engagement.
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And once we understand peacebuilding or the challenge of coordination and learning in this peacebuilding exercise as a nested game,
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we learn to appreciate the limits of coordination and this larger game.
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And we come up with very unsurprising findings that that coordination and learning are very
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difficult in large and situations like the one I've just described that another problem refers to.
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Not every peace building games.
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The same changes in the active engagement from one crisis to another basically weakens what we call in the in the game theoretical literature,
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the shadow of the future. So because the different actors do not, they will not basically see a future prospect of cooperation.
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And for that reason, they will rather they will appreciate or see peacebuilding as a one off game.
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So basically, for that reason, issues of turf issues.
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Off, off, off, off, off of parochial interests play a very important role in this peace building game.
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So had the rigidity of relevant actors also reduces the probability that the utility functions of these various actors actually lying,
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then the possibility of defection from international coordination is very high due to the nested quality of the gains I've just referred to.
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And what we can see is, although coordination is likely to prove than hierarchical situations, are it, or in hierarchical institutions.
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This is not how peacebuilding actually evolves. It's a highly decentralised process.
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And when you look at the structure or the quality of the United Nations system, it's a highly decentralised system.
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And coordination is basically done by persuasion rather than imposed on on on on different actors.
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And but we should also keep in mind is that many agencies and programmes, NGOs do not want to be coordinated.
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Independence as part of the mission statement.
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So it's not so easy just to advocate coordination or streamlined engagement of the UN system as a whole.
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Pretending as if the U.N. could deliver as one, delivering as one as the latest of the latest policy statement mission document,
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which was basically produced as a kind of follow up of the World Summit 2005 as a result of another High-Level
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Panel who looked into how coordination between various human turn agent agencies could could be improved.
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So we do have a problem here that need to be addressed.
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We do have its policy relevant.
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So for that reason, it's really important to actively engage with the question.
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While coordination is in essence a good thing, the.
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Limits and achieving coordination and the academic literature on coordination.
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Well, appreciate it. Limit.
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Somehow we could see authors like booze Jones wrote about strategic coordination.
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But in our view, this is not the actual problem,
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because what we can actually see in practise that operations can be successful even without coordination.
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So the real problem here is to deconstruct or to highlight the actual the actual factors that contribute to operation success and failure.
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And our our our point here is it's most of the time it's not coordination.
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Once in the paper, we basically try to deconstruct the strategic coordination label.
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Bruce Jones, see. He introduces of so-called facilitators of strategic coordination,
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basically highlighting the role of special representatives on the ground, resident coordinators,
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the continuous involvement of key actors and informal institutions like groups of friends, core groups, contact groups and so on and so forth.
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But this is not so much talking about strategic coordination in our view.
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It's far more about leadership. It's a long term commitment to to a conflict.
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It's about personalities staying involved or assuming it's very often the engine and ingenuity.
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I mean, once you once you look at various cases, Mozambique, for example, drove under our yellow on the ground,
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how he basically creatively interpreted relatively vague mandate of the Security Council, creating a slush fund and things, things like that.
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So basically then engaged basically the ambassadors of Security Council countries on the ground.
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So basically to have this link between the field level and the and the headquarters
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level to mobilise basically support for ongoing support for the poor,
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the peace operation, then another continuous commitment of key actors, Italy's role very important.
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And in that regard. So it's it's it's less this strategic coordination mantra that matters,
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but more underlying factors like the continued availability of resources basically spent by Bob, but by key actors.
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It's about that so-called veto.
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Players basically support the peace process and then the role of informal institution.
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I haven't touched on that. That's far less about strategic coordination.
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It's far more giving actress a platform where they can basically either influence Security Council decision
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making at headquarters level or basically engage actors on the ground or engage with actors at all,
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with key people at international financial institutions, for example.
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So basically, you're having this institutional mechanism to connect the various levels of engagement.
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For example, the global level with the field level and so on and so forth.
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How does our understanding of peacebuilding as a nested game affect our understanding of learning?
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What we can actually see is that our idea of learning as a holistic exercise doesn't really play out so well.
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When you look at various conflicts, I mean the question why we are why we have the problems in Sierra Leone that we had the
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hostage hostage taking off of the peacekeeping force because although it was so obvious,
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clear that you need a strong mandate, you need a Chapter seven mandate, you need a rather robust peacekeeping minded on the ground to be successful.
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Why do these mistakes happen again? It's basically it's very difficult to know.
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Well, it's perhaps easy to review individual operations.
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Yes. But it's very difficult to apply lessons from one mission to the other.
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And what we can actually see in. In recent literature is not what you can, in fact, see that within a mission.
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If you have if you have the kind of learning infrastructure, it's it's it's relatively likely that you can achieve learning within a single mission.
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Sierra Leone is, for example, one is is one good example in that regard,
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because there was a review mission led by General Isolda that basically pinpointed problems
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and and and and basically concluded with some forward looking policy prescriptions.
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So information learning is possible. So it's important to have a kind of learning information, learning infrastructure in place.
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And that's basically it. Slowly appreciate it at U.N. headquarters level.
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So one one, in fact, is that, for example, some policy,
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some some officers working on the ground take on additional functions, basically to review the mission on an ongoing basis.
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And if problems arise, they basically try to to adapt the mandate or the terms of reference of the mission while the mission is actually going on.
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So basically, this is a far more promising approach than trying to apply lessons across missions.
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And the difficulty is, I mean, we can talk about the difficulty, even strikingly similar missions like Kosovo and East Timor, for example.
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What we can learn from from from the current perspective is that it's not very easy to just to apply a kind of cookie
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cutter approach that from what we have in Kosovo and the mission we have in Kosovo can be easily applied in East Timor,
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because what we could see there are a lot of ownership problems and so on and so forth.
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So in conclusion, the coordination debate resembles, in a way,
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analogical discourse that has actually emerged in response to the complexities of peacebuilding and humanitarianism in the post-Cold War world.
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In a way, it's a natural reflex, a means to reduce the complexity of the peace building exercise because the discourse is basically undertaken.
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Policymakers, diplomats who don't have the time or even the capacity to deeply penetrate peace building as a whole.
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So labels like Coordination, Learning Our World Come are basically a welcome policy prescription to basically highlight problems.
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But the problem I tried to I tried to.
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What I tried to highlight is that there is a danger that the coordination label basically
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obscures the real factors that contribute to mission success and mission failure.
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And very interesting. Where does it leave us and how do we basically steer peacebuilding as a process?
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It's very interesting that John Manley, you know,
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before he actually assumed the position of Undersecretary General for Peace peacekeeping operation at U.N. headquarters.
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He wrote The Peace and Survival in 99.
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Why are you basically comparing the interdependent post-Cold War world?
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The weather system that needed to be as described by chaos theory?
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And I think he has a really good point, that it's very difficult to steer the process of peace building as a whole.
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In particular, when we talk about positive peace. So applying Germany, great a suggestion.
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I think we could basically compare the role of global institutions, perhaps the actors working at headquarters level,
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perhaps as people who create the right weather conditions, conditions conducive to to facilitate the actual peacekeeping process on the ground.
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And I think this is a far more promising prospect as.
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Hand-wringing over coordination, failure or how to achieve better coordination.
00:00:00,720 --> 00:00:09,810
The title of the conference, the subject of the conference, is the Serious Study of Peace and what is strikingly obvious.
2
00:00:09,810 --> 00:00:19,990
In particular in the area of peace building that this area still heavily under theorised and under conceptualised.
3
00:00:19,990 --> 00:00:25,050
Why? Because it's still a relatively young subject. Why?
4
00:00:25,050 --> 00:00:31,920
Because the study of peace has somewhat shifted, speaking with Galtung from a focus on negative peace.
5
00:00:31,920 --> 00:00:41,010
So basically, absence of war two positive peace, which is far more holistic, addressing the root causes of conflict.
6
00:00:41,010 --> 00:00:49,350
So addressing this, the question of how to achieve positive peace is a far greater challenge in a
7
00:00:49,350 --> 00:00:58,230
far more complex undertaking which creates challenges in terms of governance.
8
00:00:58,230 --> 00:01:07,650
Let me tell you how actually we arrived at this topic, because in a way,
9
00:01:07,650 --> 00:01:17,550
the paper I'm talking about is an ongoing conversation I have with this gentleman sitting the far left.
10
00:01:17,550 --> 00:01:26,250
We had to kind of consultancy a few years ago where we brought the kind of background paper,
11
00:01:26,250 --> 00:01:31,650
which was part and parcel of what's called the consultation of peace in Africa was
12
00:01:31,650 --> 00:01:40,440
a kind of undertaking to support the implementation of the G8 Africa Action Plan.
13
00:01:40,440 --> 00:01:44,880
So in the Africa G8 Africa implementation plan,
14
00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:51,390
there was one line or a kind of call on the international community how we can actually
15
00:01:51,390 --> 00:01:58,620
improve our collective ability to support the consolidation of peace in Africa,
16
00:01:58,620 --> 00:02:08,400
especially in countries emerging from conflict. So basically, we looked at various documents and various efforts within organisations,
17
00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:15,720
institutions and coordination and learning appeared as a kind of policy mantra,
18
00:02:15,720 --> 00:02:24,510
kind of policy prescription that seemed to be a cure, to achieve better results, to achieve better peace building operations.
19
00:02:24,510 --> 00:02:27,870
So that's basically how we are.
20
00:02:27,870 --> 00:02:37,200
We arrived at coordination and learning and and began to struggle with those two policies, prescriptions.
21
00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:43,410
But as you see, I call those two policy prescriptions misplaced analogies.
22
00:02:43,410 --> 00:02:50,490
And I hope to make clear at the end of my talk why I think that in a way they are misplaced
23
00:02:50,490 --> 00:02:56,220
analogies and we perhaps would rather focus on on on far more important elements.
24
00:02:56,220 --> 00:03:05,340
So basically, the underlying questions of our paper are why has improvement in coordination been so elusive?
25
00:03:05,340 --> 00:03:08,760
Because despite all these calls for coordination,
26
00:03:08,760 --> 00:03:15,570
we don't see necessarily very astonishing results where we can see improvements in terms of coordination.
27
00:03:15,570 --> 00:03:22,320
And then if the underlying problems are actually known, why our lessons are actually not learnt.
28
00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:25,620
So why our mistakes are repeated.
29
00:03:25,620 --> 00:03:37,170
So what we actually suggest that there are deeper underlying causes that we should look at are and I think that's important.
30
00:03:37,170 --> 00:03:46,770
We need to highlight in particular, one, we want to get a better understanding of peacebuilding and want to develop better concepts,
31
00:03:46,770 --> 00:03:54,120
how peacebuilding actually works or how we can actually achieve better results.
32
00:03:54,120 --> 00:04:12,660
So we introduce the coordination and learning challenge as a kind of multi level governance problem and conceptualise it as a nested game,
33
00:04:12,660 --> 00:04:18,390
a nested game, basically, that takes place at multiple levels.
34
00:04:18,390 --> 00:04:22,800
Let me perhaps perhaps you may see it.
35
00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:31,140
We don't have PowerPoint here, but illustrate the problems as such.
36
00:04:31,140 --> 00:04:35,970
We have basically a multiplicity of actors and a large diversity of actors.
37
00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:40,170
We have NGOs and and firms involved in the building of peace.
38
00:04:40,170 --> 00:04:48,060
We have states and state it state agencies. We have international institutions, the agencies, funds and programmes.
39
00:04:48,060 --> 00:04:53,580
And all these actors come together in the building of peace.
40
00:04:53,580 --> 00:04:58,470
So basically, we have intra agency coordination games going on.
41
00:04:58,470 --> 00:05:02,820
We have inter. Agency coordination games going on.
42
00:05:02,820 --> 00:05:06,930
And then we have multiple actor coordination games.
43
00:05:06,930 --> 00:05:13,770
And that's basically it's part and parcel of a large peace building coordination game.
44
00:05:13,770 --> 00:05:23,620
So this is basically the challenge we are talking about when we when we look at peace building as a coordination problem.
45
00:05:23,620 --> 00:05:26,280
And as you may imagine, first of all,
46
00:05:26,280 --> 00:05:36,450
the large and character of this enterprise and also the diversity of the actors involved creates huge challenges that cannot be easily overcome,
47
00:05:36,450 --> 00:05:41,820
because it's not only this problem I have talked about, they are so different.
48
00:05:41,820 --> 00:05:49,380
Another problem adds a problem that this coordination game takes place at multiple levels.
49
00:05:49,380 --> 00:05:58,620
We have a global level of coordination efforts going on at U.N. headquarters level with an IMF World Bank and so on and so forth.
50
00:05:58,620 --> 00:06:08,220
Then we have regional and subregional levels. We are a regional organisation address a particular problem and they coordinate amongst each other.
51
00:06:08,220 --> 00:06:12,540
And then last but certainly not least and most importantly,
52
00:06:12,540 --> 00:06:18,750
we have the field level where the conflict is basically should be addressed with the peacebuilding operations going on.
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00:06:18,750 --> 00:06:24,840
And that's actually the most important level of engagement.
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And once we understand peacebuilding or the challenge of coordination and learning in this peacebuilding exercise as a nested game,
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we learn to appreciate the limits of coordination and this larger game.
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And we come up with very unsurprising findings that that coordination and learning are very
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difficult in large and situations like the one I've just described that another problem refers to.
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Not every peace building games.
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The same changes in the active engagement from one crisis to another basically weakens what we call in the in the game theoretical literature,
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the shadow of the future. So because the different actors do not, they will not basically see a future prospect of cooperation.
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And for that reason, they will rather they will appreciate or see peacebuilding as a one off game.
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So basically, for that reason, issues of turf issues.
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Off, off, off, off, off of parochial interests play a very important role in this peace building game.
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So had the rigidity of relevant actors also reduces the probability that the utility functions of these various actors actually lying,
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then the possibility of defection from international coordination is very high due to the nested quality of the gains I've just referred to.
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And what we can see is, although coordination is likely to prove than hierarchical situations, are it, or in hierarchical institutions.
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This is not how peacebuilding actually evolves. It's a highly decentralised process.
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And when you look at the structure or the quality of the United Nations system, it's a highly decentralised system.
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And coordination is basically done by persuasion rather than imposed on on on on different actors.
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And but we should also keep in mind is that many agencies and programmes, NGOs do not want to be coordinated.
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Independence as part of the mission statement.
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So it's not so easy just to advocate coordination or streamlined engagement of the UN system as a whole.
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Pretending as if the U.N. could deliver as one, delivering as one as the latest of the latest policy statement mission document,
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which was basically produced as a kind of follow up of the World Summit 2005 as a result of another High-Level
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Panel who looked into how coordination between various human turn agent agencies could could be improved.
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So we do have a problem here that need to be addressed.
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We do have its policy relevant.
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So for that reason, it's really important to actively engage with the question.
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While coordination is in essence a good thing, the.
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Limits and achieving coordination and the academic literature on coordination.
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Well, appreciate it. Limit.
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Somehow we could see authors like booze Jones wrote about strategic coordination.
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But in our view, this is not the actual problem,
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because what we can actually see in practise that operations can be successful even without coordination.
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So the real problem here is to deconstruct or to highlight the actual the actual factors that contribute to operation success and failure.
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And our our our point here is it's most of the time it's not coordination.
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Once in the paper, we basically try to deconstruct the strategic coordination label.
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Bruce Jones, see. He introduces of so-called facilitators of strategic coordination,
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basically highlighting the role of special representatives on the ground, resident coordinators,
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the continuous involvement of key actors and informal institutions like groups of friends, core groups, contact groups and so on and so forth.
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But this is not so much talking about strategic coordination in our view.
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It's far more about leadership. It's a long term commitment to to a conflict.
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It's about personalities staying involved or assuming it's very often the engine and ingenuity.
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I mean, once you once you look at various cases, Mozambique, for example, drove under our yellow on the ground,
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how he basically creatively interpreted relatively vague mandate of the Security Council, creating a slush fund and things, things like that.
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So basically then engaged basically the ambassadors of Security Council countries on the ground.
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So basically to have this link between the field level and the and the headquarters
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level to mobilise basically support for ongoing support for the poor,
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the peace operation, then another continuous commitment of key actors, Italy's role very important.
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And in that regard. So it's it's it's less this strategic coordination mantra that matters,
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but more underlying factors like the continued availability of resources basically spent by Bob, but by key actors.
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It's about that so-called veto.
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Players basically support the peace process and then the role of informal institution.
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I haven't touched on that. That's far less about strategic coordination.
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It's far more giving actress a platform where they can basically either influence Security Council decision
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making at headquarters level or basically engage actors on the ground or engage with actors at all,
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with key people at international financial institutions, for example.
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So basically, you're having this institutional mechanism to connect the various levels of engagement.
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For example, the global level with the field level and so on and so forth.
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How does our understanding of peacebuilding as a nested game affect our understanding of learning?
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What we can actually see is that our idea of learning as a holistic exercise doesn't really play out so well.
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When you look at various conflicts, I mean the question why we are why we have the problems in Sierra Leone that we had the
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hostage hostage taking off of the peacekeeping force because although it was so obvious,
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clear that you need a strong mandate, you need a Chapter seven mandate, you need a rather robust peacekeeping minded on the ground to be successful.
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Why do these mistakes happen again? It's basically it's very difficult to know.
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Well, it's perhaps easy to review individual operations.
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Yes. But it's very difficult to apply lessons from one mission to the other.
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And what we can actually see in. In recent literature is not what you can, in fact, see that within a mission.
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If you have if you have the kind of learning infrastructure, it's it's it's relatively likely that you can achieve learning within a single mission.
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Sierra Leone is, for example, one is is one good example in that regard,
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because there was a review mission led by General Isolda that basically pinpointed problems
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and and and and basically concluded with some forward looking policy prescriptions.
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So information learning is possible. So it's important to have a kind of learning information, learning infrastructure in place.
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And that's basically it. Slowly appreciate it at U.N. headquarters level.
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So one one, in fact, is that, for example, some policy,
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some some officers working on the ground take on additional functions, basically to review the mission on an ongoing basis.
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And if problems arise, they basically try to to adapt the mandate or the terms of reference of the mission while the mission is actually going on.
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So basically, this is a far more promising approach than trying to apply lessons across missions.
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And the difficulty is, I mean, we can talk about the difficulty, even strikingly similar missions like Kosovo and East Timor, for example.
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What we can learn from from from the current perspective is that it's not very easy to just to apply a kind of cookie
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cutter approach that from what we have in Kosovo and the mission we have in Kosovo can be easily applied in East Timor,
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because what we could see there are a lot of ownership problems and so on and so forth.
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So in conclusion, the coordination debate resembles, in a way,
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analogical discourse that has actually emerged in response to the complexities of peacebuilding and humanitarianism in the post-Cold War world.
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In a way, it's a natural reflex, a means to reduce the complexity of the peace building exercise because the discourse is basically undertaken.
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Policymakers, diplomats who don't have the time or even the capacity to deeply penetrate peace building as a whole.
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So labels like Coordination, Learning Our World Come are basically a welcome policy prescription to basically highlight problems.
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But the problem I tried to I tried to.
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What I tried to highlight is that there is a danger that the coordination label basically
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obscures the real factors that contribute to mission success and mission failure.
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And very interesting. Where does it leave us and how do we basically steer peacebuilding as a process?
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It's very interesting that John Manley, you know,
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before he actually assumed the position of Undersecretary General for Peace peacekeeping operation at U.N. headquarters.
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He wrote The Peace and Survival in 99.
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Why are you basically comparing the interdependent post-Cold War world?
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The weather system that needed to be as described by chaos theory?
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And I think he has a really good point, that it's very difficult to steer the process of peace building as a whole.
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In particular, when we talk about positive peace. So applying Germany, great a suggestion.
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I think we could basically compare the role of global institutions, perhaps the actors working at headquarters level,
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perhaps as people who create the right weather conditions, conditions conducive to to facilitate the actual peacekeeping process on the ground.
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And I think this is a far more promising prospect as.
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Hand-wringing over coordination, failure or how to achieve better coordination.
