![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Commentators and policy-makers stress the need to learn the lessons of EU civilian crisis management. Yet despite numerous case studies on mission performance, we know little about the EU's overall capacity for such learning. The first part of this article outlines a theoretical framework for analyzing organizational learning in the context of peace operations. It recommends focusing on administrative reform and conceptual development in Brussels, and lists various factors that are expected to facilitate or inhibit organizational learning cycles. On this basis, the second part presents a historical survey of the EU's learning efforts in civilian crisis management. Despite a dynamic expansion of mission tasks as well as corresponding review processes, organizational learning has remained haphazard and limited to capacity expansion or mission support requirements. Only since 2009 did the EU invest in more formalized lessons-learning processes, which led to more systematic information gathering and more in-depth conceptual discussions. So far, however, these initiatives could not overcome political constraints to more ambitious reforms of EU peace operations.
Acknowledgements
The article builds on the GPPi research project ‘Learning in EU peace operations?’ that has been supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and has received further funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programe under grant agreement no. 218105 (EUSECON). The author would like to thank Thorsten Benner for valuable comments and Anna Halonen for research assistance.
Notes
1. In 2010 the ESDP has been relabeled into the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The article dominantly uses the old denomination, however, as the main period of investigation falls before that name change.
2. The operating costs of EU civilian missions are directly charged to the EU budget, even though member states continue to pay the personnel costs for seconded staff. In contrast, EU military missions are financed by a mechanisms (ATHENA) whereby participating member states directly share and bear all operating costs (e.g. for military equipment). For an extended discussion, see Grevi et al. (Citation2009).
3. EU development aid alone accounts for approximately €2.5 billion per year, while a similar amount is spent on specific assistance programs to the EU's neighborhood.
4. See, for instance, Germany (http://www.zif-berlin.org/) and Finland (http://www.intermin.fi).
5. Recently, the notion of ‘triple loop learning’, that is, learning to learn, has been added to the mix but remains problematic (Tosey et al. Citation2012).
6. In the case of in EU Foreign and Security Policy, Smith (Citationforthcoming) distinguishes three related outcomes of learning, namely alterations in institutional rules, responsibilities and resources. While a superficial reading would suggest that rule and resource changes are case of single-loop learning and adaptation, whereas changes in political responsibilities constitute double-loop learning about, this need not be the case. In fact, the expansion of EU competences has often been driven by incremental and un-reflected mission creep, whereas minor budgetary questions could give rise to substantial political confrontations.
7. For instance, Dunlop and Radaelli (Citation2010) develop a very extensive typology of different kinds of learning processes, depending on the tractability of knowledge and the level of control of learning participants.
8. This list is not intended to be exhaustive and could benefit from further testing across systematically varied empirical case studies. Moreover, for the purposes of this paper these factors therefore cannot be ranked into necessary and sufficient conditions for organizational learning.
9. Unfortunately, all of these interviews were only granted under the condition of speaking off-the-record.
10. This paper cannot go into the reasons for launching these missions. In some cases, the EU was impelled by political pressures from the US or the UN, whereas in other cases, the leadership of particular states or even individual persons (Javier Solana, Martti Athisaari) was critical (Kurowska Citation2009).