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Abstract
Exploring the historiography of the International Crisis Group (icg), this article looks critically at the narratives surrounding the organisation’s self-declared success. The focus is specifically on the so-called icg methodology, consisting of field-based research and analysis, practical policy recommendations and high-level advocacy. Combining a three-level approach to the analysis of organisational cultures with Yanow’s concept of organisational myths, the article argues that the icg methodology contains a number of organisational myths that are meant to mask tensions and contradictions in the organisation’s underpinning basic assumptions and values, which, if publicly discussed, could have the power to undermine its expert authority. The four myths looked at in detail are the ‘field facts myth’, the ‘myth of flexible pragmatism’, the ‘myth of uniqueness’ and the ‘neutrality/independence myth’.
Acknowledgements
This article was written as part of the research of the cooperative network ‘Knowledge and Power in International Security Governance’, financed by the German Research Foundation (dfg). Thanks are due to my interview partners as well as to Alastair Finlan at Aberystwyth University for extensive discussions and Roland Kostić at Uppsala University for very helpful comments.
Notes
1. icg, “About Crisis Group.”
2. Ibid. Cf. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines.
3. See also Bliesemann de Guevara’s introduction to this issue.
4. On the crucial role of stories in policy making, see Stone, Policy Paradox, 160–168.
5. icg, Annual Report 2014, 5.
6. See also Bliesemann de Guevara’s introduction to this issue.
7. icg, Annual Report 2014, 5.
8. Schein, Organisational Culture; and Yanow, “Silences in Public Policy Discourse.”
9. Schein, Organisational Culture, 1.
10. Ibid., 17.
11. Ibid., 25–37.
15. See the other contributions to this issue.
16. Mort Abramowitz, quoted in icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 6.
17. Schein, Organisational Culture, 133.
18. Ibid., 26.
19. Ibid., 18.
20. Yanow, “Silences in Public Policy Discourse,” 402.
21. Ibid., 401.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 401–402.
24. Ibid., 402.
25. Ibid. In Yanow’s case study there is far more at stake, namely the cohesion of the Israeli nation.
26. Schein, Organisational Culture, 138.
27. See also Bliesemann de Guevara’s introduction to this issue.
28. icg, Annual Report 2014, 5. For a critical discussion, see in detail Kosmatopoulos, this issue.
29. In icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, the word ‘unique’ alone is used five times.
30. icg, Annual Report 2014, 5, 16.
31. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 5, 21, 26. On Liberia and Sierra Leone, see also Bøås, this issue; on Sidney Jones and Indonesia, see also Grigat, this issue.
32. icg, “About Crisis Group.”
33. See especially the contributions by Kostić, Fisher and Kosmatopoulos, this issue.
34. To be sure: academic works do not always adhere to these standards either, and a number of studies deemed ‘academic’ are of far less quality than some ICG research.
35. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 23.
36. Rüb, “Wissenspolitologie,” 350. See also Bliesemann de Guevara’s introduction to this issue. Kostić (this issue), however, shows that problem orientation may not always be what drives field-based knowledge production. In Bosnia around 2000 the icg Balkans director seems to have been part of an informal US-dominated network of policy makers, whose handling of information was clearly success-driven in that is was geared to imposing their view on the ‘right direction’ of the intervention onto other members of the international community in Bosnia.
37. Rüb, ‘Wissenspolitologie’, 350. One could argue that the aim to finally produce policy prescriptions already taints problem-oriented knowledge production. While this is probably true, the main transformation seems to occur in the subsequent process.
38. icg, Annual Report 2014, 4.
39. Interview, senior, long-term icg staff member, advocacy office, March 2012.
40. Cf. Schein, Organisational Culture, 146.
41. Interview, senior, long-term icg staff member, advocacy office, March 2012.
42. Ibid.
43. The discursive or symbolic functions of ‘being in the field’ and ‘witnessing the situation on the ground’ in domestic policy making can also be observed in politicians’ on-site visits in areas of conflict. See Bliesemann de Guevara, “InterventionsTheater”; and Bliesemann de Guevara, “‘Sich ein eigenes Bild machen’.” See also Fisher, this issue; and Beswick, “Aiding State Building.”
44. Nullmeier and Rüb, Die Transformation der Sozialpolitik; and Rüb, “Wissenspolitologie,” 350.
45. Alain Délétroz, quoted in icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 49 (emphasis added).
46. Alexander, “Cultural Pragmatics”; and Alexander and Mast, “Introduction.”
47. On the icg’s early Liberia and Sierra Leone reporting, see especially Bøås, this issue.
48. Hajer, The Politics of Environmental Discourse, 57.
49. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 5 (emphasis added).
50. Interview, senior, long-term icg staff, March 2012.
51. On Amnesty International, see Hopgood, Keepers of the Flame.
52. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 15.
53. See, for example, Mark Malloch Brown, quoted in ibid., 14.
54. Among the three main sources of organisational culture – founders, learning experiences, and new members – the impact of founders is the most important, as ‘founders not only choose the basic mission and the environmental context in which the new group will operate, but they choose the group members and bias the original responses that the group makes in its efforts to succeed in its environment and to integrate itself’. Schein, Organisational Culture, 226.
55. For different versions and mentions of the icg foundation history, see icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines; Anderson, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, 186; and Soros, “My Philanthropy,” 36. For Soros, supporting the icg feeds into his idea of the ‘network of networks’, his ‘favourite formula of entering new fields of activity’ by cooperating with independent organisations and supporting them with substantial financial means. Soros, “My Philanthropy.” The author also interviewed Mort Abramowitz, Washington, DC, March 2012.
56. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 10. The brochure ‘evidences’ this birth moment with a photo of ‘Lionel Rosenblatt, then head of Refugees International, Mort Abramowitz and Mark Malloch Brown, at Sarajevo airport moments before coming up with the concept of Crisis Group, January 1993’. Ibid., 14.
57. Anderson, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, 103–117.
58. Ibid., 121–128. Unlike Cuny’s Kurdistan plan, however, his Somalia recommendations were never put into practice.
59. Ibid., 128–151; and Soros, “My Philanthropy,” 26–27. Cuny’s biggest project in Sarajevo was a water filtration system meant to make the besieged city autonomous from the costly and dangerous supply via water transporters.
60. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 10.
61. Anderson, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, 192–193.
62. Cf. ibid., 119, 128–131; and Soros, “My Philanthropy,” 23, passim.
63. icg, Annual Report 2014, 5.
64. Anderson, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, 146.
65. George Soros, quoted in icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 11 (emphasis added).
66. Veit, “Figuration of Uncertainty,” 294.
67. From the vast literature, see for example for the case of Congo: Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo; Dunn, Imagining the Congo; and Koddenbrock, “The International Self.” In more general terms, see Stone, Policy Paradox. Kostić, this issue, shows how, because of this, some intervening actors in Bosnia strove to uses strategic narratives, psy-ops and propaganda to frame and deliver dominant interpretations in order to justify their policy solutions over others.
68. For example, Heathershaw, Post-conflict Tajikistan.
69. For example, Goetze and Bliesemann de Guevara, “The ‘Statebuilding Habitus’”, “Cosmopolitanism and the Culture of Peacebuilding”; Hensell, “The International Scramble”; Smirl, “The State We Are(n’t) In”; and Veit and Schlichte, “Three Arenas.”
70. Anderson, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, 149–151.
71. See especially Bøås, Grigat, Hochmüller and Müller, and Koddenbrock, this issue.
72. See the above contributions to this issue, as well as Kosmatopoulos, on the idea of crisis reports as sentinel device.
73. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 23.
74. See in more detail Bliesemann de Guevara’s introduction to this issue; and Kostić, Fisher and Kosmatopoulos, this issue.
75. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 5.
76. See especially Bøås, this issue.
77. With regard to the tools suggested in its policy prescriptions, the icg states that, ‘Some will be within the current marketplace of received ideas; others will be over the horizon but nonetheless the right way forward.’ ICG, Annual Report 2013, 5.