Learning to Build the Rule of Law?

The Evolution of Police and Judicial Reform in EU Peace Operations

Project Context

In less than 10 years after the birth of European Security and Defense Policy, the EU has developed into a leading player in multidimensional peace operations. ESDP crisis management missions put a special emphasis on police and judicial reform programs – reflecting the EU’s long-standing ambition to promote the rule of law.

The growing number of ever more ambitious missions has presented the EU with serious challenges. As the High Representative Javier Solana pointed out, operations needed to be established “even before our doctrines and structures had caught up completely.” Moreover, police and judicial reform missions are particularly complex, not only in terms of the achieving the desired transformations in third countries, but also in terms of coordinating a wide range of actors across all “pillars” of the EU. Already when launching the first ESDP police mission in 2003, the Council stressed “the importance of the EU learning lessons from all ESDP operations”. However, we currently lack a comprehensive analysis of knowledge management, doctrine development and learning in the ESDP civilian crisis management apparatus.  

Project Objectives

Accordingly, the two-year research project “Learning to Build the Rule of Law” seeks to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive picture of doctrine development and organizational learning in ESDP operations with regard to police and judicial reform. The project addresses the following questions: How have the EU’s doctrines, guidelines and the institutions for knowledge management on police and judicial reform operations evolved? How has the EU (not) learned from past experience and new knowledge? Which factors facilitate or hinder organizational learning?

Conceptually, the project employs a multi-disciplinary framework for analyzing organizational learning in international bureaucracies. The project builds on GPPi’s previous work on organizational learning in the UN peace operations apparatus while tailoring its approach to the special features of the EU, in cooperation with the new GPPi research project on the emergence of a European strategic culture. Empirically, the study will provide deeper insights into the EU civilian crisis management bureaucracy by means of an empirically rich process-tracing of (non-)learning. This will be based on in-depth research in both Brussels and theatres of operation, particularly in the Balkans. In addition, the project will build on GPPi’s established networks of academics and practitioners in the area of global peace operations.