Comparison: Managing Institutions to Raise Peacebuilding Odds

Abstract

Shifting back to a broader perspective, this chapter compares the answer the book’s four case studies provide for the question: How does variation in institutional designs affect peacebuilding outcomes? The answer falls into two parts. First, comparison of the four missions’ performance shows that EU peace operations—characterized by centralization and a high degree of headquarters supervision—perform worse than the two other missions with relatively decentralized and more autonomous operations. Given Afghanistan’s status as a least-likely case for successful peacebuilding, explaining the failure of operations in this context is a less compelling ‘puzzle’ per se. In Kosovo, however, the negative impact of institutional design becomes more clear. As the case of EULEX Kosovo demonstrates, even when all external conditions are ostensibly ideal, poor organizational design and performance can still prevent meaningful progress in police reform. The second set of findings pertains to the performance of differently designed bureaucracies. The case studies’ inductive analysis yielded four hypotheses, relating to specific methods of mission planning, implementation frameworks, leadership styles, and evaluation systems. Comparison of Germany and the two international organizations further suggests that bureaucracies with ‘complex’ principals require different institutional designs than their domestic counterparts. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.