Learning to deploy civilian capabilities: How the United Nations, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and European Union have changed their crisis management institutions
| Author | Ewa Mahr,Hylke Dijkstra,Petar Petrov |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718823814 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718823814
Cooperation and Conflict
2019, Vol. 54(4) 524 –543
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836718823814
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Learning to deploy civilian
capabilities: How the United
Nations, Organization for
Security and Co-operation
in Europe and European
Union have changed their
crisis management institutions
Hylke Dijkstra , Petar Petrov
and Ewa Mahr
Abstract
International organizations continuously deploy civilian capabilities as part of their
peacekeeping and crisis management operations. This presents them with significant
challenges. Not only are civilian deployments rapidly increasing in quantity, but civilian
missions are also very diverse in nature. This article analyses how international organizations
have learned to deploy their civilian capabilities to deal with a growing number and fast
evolving types of operations. Whereas the previous literature has addressed this question
for individual international organizations, this article uniquely compares developments in
the United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and Organization for Security and Co-
operation in Europe (OSCE), three of the largest civilian actors. Drawing on the concept of
organizational learning, it shows that all three organizations have made significant changes
over the last decade in their civilian capabilities. The extent of these changes, however, varies
across these organizations. The article highlights that the EU, despite its more homogeneous
and wealthier membership, has not been able to better learn to deploy its civilian capabilities
than the UN or OSCE. We show that the ability of these organizations to learn is, instead,
highly dependent on institutional factors.
Keywords
Civilian capabilities, European Union, international organizations, Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, security, United Nations
Corresponding author:
Hylke Dijkstra, Maastricht University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, P.O. Box 616, Maastricht, 6200
MD, The Netherlands.
Email: h.dijkstra@maastrichtuniversity.nl
823814CAC0010.1177/0010836718823814Cooperation and ConflictDijkstra et al.
research-article2019
Article
Dijkstra et al. 525
Introduction
International organizations increasingly deploy civilian capabilities as part of their
peacekeeping and crisis management operations. While there were, for example, only 44
civilian police officers involved in United Nations (UN) missions in 1990, their number
averaged over 10,000 in 2018 (United Nations, 1990, 2018). Regional organizations also
deploy significant civilian capabilities. The European Union (EU), for instance, deployed
more than 1600 civilian experts to Kosovo in 2008 as part of its Common Security and
Defence Policy (CSDP) (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2009,
Appendix 3A). This policy now includes 10 ongoing civilian missions. The Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) similarly has a wide range of civilian
missions, including a large-scale monitoring mission in Ukraine consisting of over 850
international staff (OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, 2018).
Because deploying civilian capabilities is a relatively new activity for international
organizations and their member states, it poses significant challenges. For instance,
while soldiers are recruited for expeditionary missions, the career path of an average
police agent or judge does not include a stint abroad (Korski and Gowan, 2009: 44).
Furthermore, civilian officials are normally deployed on the basis of their individual
expertise, which requires thorough selection procedures. It is not always clear what type
of equipment civilians require to do their job. Finally, the mandates of civilian missions
vary widely, from riot control to monitoring peace agreements.
This article asks how international organizations have learned to deploy their civilian
capabilities to deal with a growing number and fast evolving types of operations. It draws
on the concept of organizational learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Levitt and March,
1988; Levy, 1994), which can be defined as institutional change resulting from new infor-
mation, observation and experience with the objective of increasing performance (cf.
Smith, 2017). The article compares changes in the UN, OSCE and the EU, three of the
largest civilian actors, since the late 2000s.1 It shows that these organizations have made
significant changes. Yet, surprisingly, despite its more homogeneous and wealthier mem-
bership, the EU has not been able to deploy its civilian capabilities more easily than the UN
or OSCE. We argue, therefore, that it is critical to consider the institutional context – par-
ticularly the number of veto points and the involvement of member states in everyday
management – to understand how learning takes place. The less-institutionalized context in
the UN and OSCE has provided staff with more opportunities to learn.
This is not the first article on learning in international organizations. Yet, both the
comparative focus and the empirical study of civilian capabilities make it unique. Much
of the existing literature tends to address this research question for individual interna-
tional organizations engaged in military tasks (e.g. Benner et al., 2011; Faleg, 2017;
Hardt, 2018; Junk et al., 2017; Smith, 2017). The advantage of a comparative approach
is that it provides a benchmark (Smith, 2017: 40) to measure the extent to which inter-
national organizations have changed their civilian capabilities. We thus explicitly focus
on external validity in this article – how international organizations in the area of crisis
management fare in comparison to others. The contribution of this article, however,
goes further. Through the comparative approach, we show the theoretical significance
of the institutional context.
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