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22 September 2010
GPPi publishes article on public administration turn in study of EU peace operations
GPPi Associate Director Thorsten Benner and GPPi fellow Raphael Bossong published a piece arguing for a “public administration turn in the study of the EU’s civilian crisis management” in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of European Public Policy. The article is a core product of the two-year project Learning in EU Peace Operations?, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
The article argues for research to take a closer look at the institutions and doctrines that guide EU civilian crisis management operations. EU Council conclusions claim that EU foreign policy “has steadily been developed and adapted to an increasingly complex global environment. … We have reformed our structures; elaborated and refined our planning capability; improved our crisis management and rapid response capabilities; and increased our cooperation with key partners” (Council of the European Union, 17 Nov. 2009). Yet academic research has little to say about the development of bureaucratic structures or the professional knowledge base of that apparatus running EU civilian crisis management missions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Congo.
The first part of the article reviews three major strands of literature on the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to highlight a research gap with regard to the institutional infrastructure and professional knowledge base for civilian crisis management. The second part presents the possible contribution of public administration and organization theory to analyzing administrative capacity development and information-processing in civilian CSDP. This mainly concerns internal reforms and growing executive tasks of the Council Secretariat, and possible feedback loops from CSDP missions on processes of organizational learning and conceptual development in Brussels. On a wider theoretical level, this research agenda complements new institutionalist approaches in EU studies and should stimulate more comparative work on international organizations involved in peace operations.
Readers can access the article here (subscription required).
For more information, please contact Thorsten Benner