A Perturbed Peace: Applying Complexity Theory to UN Peacekeeping

ABSTRACT

This article explores the application of complexity theory to UN peacekeeping. To date, peacekeeping has been dominated by linear models of change, assuming that conflict settings can be addressed by elite-driven peace processes, gradual improvements to state institutional capacity, and development programming. However, this article argues that complexity theory offers a far more accurate and useful lens through which to view the work of peacekeeping: conflict settings represent complex, interdependent socio-political systems with emergent qualities giving them the capacity to self-organize via feedback loops and other adaptive activity. Self-organization means such systems are highly resistant to attempts to change behaviour via top-down or input-output approaches. In fact, peacekeeping itself is endogenous to the systems it is trying to change, often displaying the same kinds of self-organization typical of complex systems elsewhere. Drawing on experience working and conducting fieldwork in the UN peacekeping mission in Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article argues that UN peacekeeping operations should view themselves as actors within the complex conflict ecosystem, looking to enable transformational change from within, rather than impose liberal Western models from without.

KEYWORDS:

• Complexity theory
• UN peacekeeping
• Conflict Systems
• Democratic Republic of the Congo

Introduction

Complexity is not a theory of international relations or political science but is instead an approach to explain how change takes places in complex, interdependent systems.¹ In a complex system, interactions between constituent parts are dynamic and non-linear, displaying emergent, adaptive qualities rather than input-output trajectories. Change may appear unpredictable and difficult to explain in straightforward causal terms, whilst often small, local nodes are able to generate surprisingly large impacts by operating in synergy with each other.² Examples of complex systems include ant colonies, the human nervous system, languages, financial markets, and socio-political communities. Despite the wide range of applications, a common contention of complexity theory is that fixed linear paradigms are limited and distortionary when seeking to understand how causality plays out in complex systems.

Until recently applications of complexity to UN peacekeeping have been rare in academia and essentially non-existent within UN policy-making.³ Instead, peacekeeping has exhibited a strong preference for linear models of change, where the input of a range of activities (e.g. patrolling, infrastructural development, technical support, training) is presumed to result in improved security and prospects for peace. The ever-present results-based-budget defines peacekeeping practice, though much of the time results are far from what was anticipated. Here, scholarship has increasingly called for greater acceptance of the uncertainties and complexities of conflict settings, arguing for greater modesty and realism when it comes to designing external interventions.⁴ In some settings, the language of complexity is beginning to creep in, particularly from the development and humanitarian realms.⁵

In this article we make the case for UN peacekeeping to adopt complexity theory as a way to understand how change takes place in conflict-affected settings. We begin by establishing what we mean by complex systems and how we understand complexity theory and debates around its applicability in the social sciences. The next section canvasses the application of complexity thinking to peacekeeping to date, distils three ways in which complexity theory can help to elucidate and advance understanding of peacekeeping systems, identifying the value-add to peacekeeping in theory and practice. The third section draws on experience working and conducting field research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to illustrate where, when, and how these insights would help in that case. In doing so we demonstrate that complex dynamical systems offer both a meaningful conceptual framework for analysing such situations, and also practical tools for designing interventions. Importantly, complexity theory refuses any claim of exogeneity. We therefore argue that UN peacekeeping is not an external actor in conflict settings but is endogenous to the ecosystem itself, subject to the system’s tendencies and participating in its patterns in a variety of ways. Consequently, complexity theory demands profound conceptual rethinking of peacekeeping with extremely practical ramifications for how missions are designed and executed on the ground. We conclude that peacekeeping provides a dynamic and conceptually challenging test case for the application of complexity, one with significant implications for political science and international relations theory.

What is Complexity?

Thinking of the world in terms of complex systems is not new. Ancient cosmologies such as Daoism and pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus saw the world as composed of the relationships within it.⁶ Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution understood that change in life forms occurs via variations in complex systems, with emergent patterns adapting to new circumstances.⁷ Leading figures in physics, mathematics and economics over the past 100 years have come to embrace some form of complexity thinking.⁸

What is complexity? A complex system involves constituent elements interacting together to create effects different from what each element would produce on its own. Such interactions cannot be reduced to input-output models. They are open, interacting with their environment and changing as new inputs enter into it. They self-organise by feeding activities back onto themselves in a way that allows for adaptation over time, a phenomena called ‘emergent behaviour’.⁹ Here it may be helpful to think of complex systems in contradistinction to complicated ones: airplane engines may have an enormous number of parts that must be fitted perfectly together, but each part performs a discrete function in a linear input-output manner. An engine, therefore, is complicated, not complex. In contrast, our immune system’s individual elements produce something wholly different together than they would if left on their own; they feed back their activities into the system and adapt to new conditions.

In the late 1970s, Ilya Prigonine’s Nobel Prize-winning research into thermodynamics demonstrated that change in complex systems is the result of the combination of the way in which existing forms and patterns interact with specific events.¹⁰ This insight has enormous implications, challenging longstanding Newtonian assumptions that change can be described in mechanical terms as a predictable series of interactions among discrete objects. Boulton et al called this a ‘dance between detail and structure, between science and history, between form and individualism.’¹¹ Importantly, this allows for human agency when applied to socio-political systems, but places individual actions within a system of rules and strong tendencies.

Whilst complexity scholars across disciplines do not agree on everything, there is broad consensus that complex systems possess particular defining features and display certain systemic behaviours.¹² The first feature is that complex systems are comprised of multiple actors interconnected in ways that create intricate interdependency. The degree of interdependence, often referred to as ‘connectivity’, influences how change occurs in the system: it is constituted relationally.¹³ The second feature is that complex systems are replete with both positive and negative feedback processes. A positive feedback loop reinforces itself; for example, as more soil erodes, the less vegetation can grow, leading to fewer root structures and greater erosion.¹⁴ In contrast, a negative feedback loop is a corrective, working against the process that caused it: when we get hot, the resulting sweat cools us down, bringing us back to the status quo ante. The combination of interdependency and feedback processes mean that complex systems display emergent outcomes, the result of the entire system relating to itself and to new stimuli.

The emergent nature of complex systems means change takes place in a non-linear fashion.¹⁵ Within a complex system, an input may have an uneven or unpredictable impact due to the irregular distribution of system elements and the nature of relations amongst them. This makes complex systems intrinsically hard to control or predict with any certainty. Due to the nonlinear relationships complex systems are particularly sensitive to initial conditions, meaning minor adjustments in one component of a system may lead to major and disproportionate changes in outcomes under observation.¹⁶ Change in complex systems is said to happen when a system moves within and between peculiar ‘phase spaces’: when the range of possible outcomes in a complex system changes and when the underlying relations shift to a new mode of ordering, then new potential outcomes emerge. Complex systems may have multiple equilibria, places where the various relations create long periods of stability, punctuated by sudden and potentially violent shifts to alternate modes.¹⁷ These have been made famous in popular culture by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell referring to ‘tipping points’, where change takes place quickly and often disproportionately to a given input.¹⁸

Whilst it may appear that complex systems are chaotic, they are in fact shaped by repeated patterns of behaviour that tend to stabilise the system over time. Repeated instances of the same behaviour reinforce themselves through feedback loops, acting as ‘attractors’ that tend to direct behaviour towards specific outcomes. An example of this is an intractable conflict between two communities: as a conflict evolves, each party’s thoughts and actions tend to become attached to the idea of the other party as an enemy, thus intensifying the conflict and reinforcing the negative view of the other side.¹⁹ The Israel/Palestine conflict exhibits this form of attractor. The attractor ‘serves as a valley in the psychological landscape into which the psychological elements – thoughts, feelings and actions – begin to slide.’²⁰ Whilst still possessed of free choice, those caught in such a valley need substantial energy to escape, and collective behavioural changes are extremely difficult. Attractors are not always the most visible feature of the social terrain; stereotypes and objectification of others can exert a strong influence within a system whilst remaining largely unseen.²¹

Complexity as a Natural and/or Social Science?

Due to its genesis in the ‘hard’ sciences, some voice methodological, practical and political concerns about the transposing of complexity concepts to human systems and organisations in the social sciences.²²

Hendrick identifies three main methodological issues at stake for the critics.²³ First, there are those who believe it is dangerous to ‘cherry pick’ and apply only convenient concepts in isolation when complexity theory should be applied as a holistic explanatory framework. These critics argue that, like the elements of a complex system itself, we need to recognise that the complex characteristics of a system are closely related and it is them working in concert that creates new order. Second, there are others concerned about the proliferation and diversity of definitions for complexity concepts. The associated fear is that the meaning of terms may become imprecise or distorted, rendering their application arbitrary or even misleading. Finally, theoretical purists are averse to the use of complexity as a vague metaphor or analogy and conjecture that it is not yet fleshed out sufficiently to be useful theory in social science. Whilst these are all valid warnings, such methodological contentions are not alien to the social sciences. Disparate definitions and the corollary assumptions that underpin them are recurrent in research in international relations, political science and peace and conflict studies.²⁴ It is therefore important to proceed prudently and make explicit the delineation of definitions and the scope of what is – and equally what cannot be – expected from their application.

From a more practical perspective, a recurrent criticism of complexity theory is the lack of clarity on how it manifests in practice. This is in part due to the lack of empirical case studies to evidence its utility and leads to the accusation that it does not state explicitly what is to be done. In these scenarios, complexity often leads to perplexity amongst practitioners and policymakers; or worse, to accusations that complexity is ‘just the latest management jargon’ of consultants and complexologists selling their latest nostrum or ‘peddling managerial snake-oil’.²⁵ Given its infancy in the social sciences, applications of complexity theory are vulnerable to this charge like any new paradigm. Moreover, the thrust of complexity theory is about process rather than product. In this sense, the perceived source of weakness should actually be viewed as the source of its strength – the complexity approach is not about providing solutions for problems, but approaches to problems. There remains, however, a need to avoid advocating complexity thinking as a panacea to challenges in analysing human systems.

Finally, from a political perspective, critics have argued that central tenets of complexity theory such as emergence and self-organisation sound a lot like laissez-faire market ideologies.²⁶ The implication is that complexity is a cloak for a normative neo-liberal agenda. However, as elaborated below, complexity theory notes that not all emergence and self-organisation is objectively ‘good’. For example, complexity theory aids a clearer understanding of how negative events such as financial crises or genocides are also emergent outcomes of complex systems. Its application therefore advocates and attempts to create systems that reside at the ‘edge of chaos’ – i.e. those which are most resilient and robust due to an optimal combination of flexibility and control rather than a dogmatic ideational set of beliefs.

Notwithstanding these contentions, applications of complexity theory across the social sciences reflect common foundational ideas about how we can understand and use empirical sources to evidence change in social systems where interaction and interdependence is high, but predictability of systemic outcomes is low. Importantly, these ideas do not depend upon a rigid and linear Newtonian cause-and-effect logic. As the following section explores, the fledgling scholarship that has begun to apply complexity thinking to conflict settings offers a more profound use, one that we build upon for peacekeeping.

Peacekeeping and Complexity

Whilst complexity thinking was born in the natural sciences, it has gradually spread into other disciplines, including political science and international relations. Robert Jervis’ (1997) landmark application of complexity to political science was a launchpad for other social scientists, which have included David Byrne’s examination health and education systems, amongst others.²⁷ Bousquet and Curtis proposed an application of complexity thinking to international relations, as has Emilian Kavalski.²⁸ Woolcock, Green, Kleinfeld and Ramalingam have similarly drawn from complexity thinking to propose innovative approaches to international development and humanitarian assistance.²⁹ Similar applications of complexity thinking have now been suggested for international policing efforts,³⁰ military operations, and studies of social resilience in conflict.³¹ Other work on the applicability of complexity thinking to conflict prevention and resolution has come close to the peacekeeping field without addressing it such as Brusset et al.’s exploratory volume on the application of complexity thinking to peacebuilding and de Coning’s work on relevance of complexity thinking to local/international relations in peacebuilding.³²

Directly on peacekeeping, our earlier work has applied complexity theory to demonstrate how protection of civilians agendas have evolved in non-linear ways.³³ Elsewhere we have argued that complexity-informed assessments of peacekeeping can lead to a more iterative and adaptive approach to monitoring and evaluation.³⁴ This aligns with Clement and Smith’s argument that complexity theory can help explain the challenges facing multidimensional peace operations,³⁵ Campbell’s proposal that the UN’s post-conflict interventions should be designed with complexity theory in mind,³⁶ and our subsequent argument that complex ecosystems analysis can describe UN stabilisation operations.³⁷ It also resonates with de Coning’s numerous contributions to the field, including his concept of ‘adaptive peace operations.’³⁸ Across this literature, a common theme is the difficulty of imposing models from the outside on complex systems, and the need to understand how a system self organizes.

From this scholarship, we identify three specific ways in which complexity theory can help elucidate and advance peacekeeping. First, it is important to understand that peacekeeping – or any other intervention – cannot control linear change in complex systems. Feedback processes in such systems are multidirectional, the systems are composed of networks of relations, and change occurs through emergent behaviour. For example, peacekeeping operations are mandated to accomplish certain core objectives such as DDR. It is straightforward to identify the overarching goals of such a programme; disarm ex-combatants, demobilise them from their chain of command and provide opportunities for them to reintegrate into civilian society. Here, generic UN guidelines based on previous experiences will inform the design and planning for such a process, including a linear pathway and sequencing for each step. However, it is the local rules of interaction between the constituent parts of the system that dictate how such processes unfold. Implementation of the DDR programme is only one factor among many that will determine whether combatants enter the process, how the local, national and international stakeholders will respond, and how the broader community will engage with the process. As a result, there may be deeply entrenched patterns of behaviour – strong attractors – that make the cycles of violence unlikely to break by merely injecting a DDR process into them. On the contrary, lines of effort may be required across the social and political scales simultaneously in order to account for the reality of non-linear change in peacekeeping systems.

A related second way complexity theory can support peacekeeping is by drawing attention to the many possible unintended consequences of an intervention. Because complex systems respond to stimuli in unpredictable ways, there are significant risks that an intervention will produce something other than the expected outcome. A peacekeeping operation tasked with bolstering rule of law capacities might undertake large-scale police training and capacity building, leading to a dramatic increase in arrests. This, however, could place greater pressure on courts, lead to increased detention periods, drive dissatisfaction amongst local populations, and contribute to greater insecurity. Similarly, an offensive operation against an armed group could incapacitate the group and prevent atrocities, but also cut off an important source of community protection, resources, and international trade.³⁹ There is almost never a sole outcome of an intervention. The likelihood of such externalities has long been recognised by scholars and practitioners alike,⁴⁰ however a clearer understanding of the implications of choices made by decision-makers has often eluded both constituencies. Complex systems analysis demands attention be paid to the interconnectedness of issues, people, and processes as well as how the process itself will impact upon burgeoning peace.

Third, it is useful to consider how peacekeeping as a practice and a community exhibits the core characteristics of a complex adaptive system. The peacekeeping system is comprised of numerous international, national and local level stakeholders. Just like Ramalingam’s description of international aid interventions, peacekeeping operations happen in ‘the context of a dense and globalised web of connections and relationships between individuals, communities, institutions, nations and groups of nations.’⁴¹ As expertly illustrated by de Coning, peacekeeping settings are not closed systems where a mission can be deployed and effectuate an outcome.⁴² Missions are envisioned in the capitals of Security Council member states, negotiated with host governments, shaped by the competing interests within the UN Secretariat, deployed into volatile situations with deeply divided communities, and managed by human beings with their own interests and values. The linkages between these actors matter, not only for how a mission is drawn up, but how it functions and evolves over time. Conceptualising peacekeeping missions as nodes within a complex system, rather than external actors attempting to generate an output, will help position the UN more realistically.

What is Complexity Thinking’s Unique Offer?

As noted above, systems analysis is not a new frame. Indeed, economics and the natural sciences have a long history of systems thinking, whilst the growth of political economy as a dominant field within international relations has adopted many of the core attributes of complex systems analysis. Seeing these parallels, one might question whether complexity thinking offers a sufficiently unique set of analytic tools.

Perhaps the most important aspect of complexity thinking is its value neutrality. There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ systems, no models that offer a starting point, no ‘end of history’ in complexity thinking. Unlike the tendency of political economists to rely on liberal models of governance as the baseline for functioning markets, complexity thinking starts with the characteristics of the system itself and builds a more empirically-based understanding of how systems evolve over time.

Similarly, political economists tend to reduce systems to flows of money as a proxy for the distribution of power within a system. Whilst resources are crucial, complexity thinking remains more open to other forms of influence within a system. For example, the gravitational pull of concepts of citizenship and ethnicity discussed in relation to eastern DRC below demonstrate the important non-monetary forces at play within a system.

And finally, complexity theory is the only analytic frame that takes relationships as the core unit of measurement and area of focus for understanding systems. Whereas economic and international relations approaches tend to examine the structures and systems as a whole, complexity thinking suggests that the quality of relations is determinative to the underlying patterns and rules that drive change in systems. This combination of value neutrality, openness to non-monetary aspects of systems, and relationality means complexity thinking is a uniquely valuable approach that deserves greater attention.

Application to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Space does not allow for a full application of complexity thinking to a case study, but we here hope to show its promise as a construct for understanding peacekeeping by exploring the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the DRC. This section offers a picture of how the insights from complexity theory above would improve analytical engagement and inform more appropriate policy and practice regarding the work of the UN mission there.

1.	Inability to control linear change: Failure of MONUSCO statebuilding

DRC has been called many names, most of them pejorative: collapsed, disintegrated, corrupt, a black hole causing calamity, chaos and confusion.⁴³ In much of this scholarship, the country is put forward as a paradigmatic example of a failed state, unable to govern itself and overwhelmingly prone to high levels of violence. Over its 20 year history in the DRC, the UN’s state-building mandate has largely followed from this logic, attempting to extend state authority into the abyss of governance in Congo’s peripheries, building islands of stability amidst the sea of violent armed groups. In fact, the islands of stability concept that became MONUSCO’s mantra by 2013 embodies the linear, sequential thinking of the UN: armed groups will be cleared from an area, state authorities will ‘hold’ the ground to allow institutions of central government to be built, and the area will then be stabilized as state-society relations gradually improve. This mindset views DRC as a complicated, not complex, system; there are pieces that need to be put in place in the right order to generate the desired outcome of good governance and stable rule of law. The budgeting of the UN mission reflects this, as various inputs – e.g. police training, capacity building in the judiciary, building institutions under the national stabilisation plan – are expected to generate clear and well-defined outcomes. The fact that there has been very little progress on many of MONUSCO’s most important mandate areas is described in vague terms as a lack of political will on behalf of the powerbrokers the DRC, or resulting from insufficient international resources to support the country.

However, when viewed through the lens of complexity theory, Congo’s socio-political system displays the characteristics of a complex system, demonstrating emergent characteristics that do not follow linear patterns of change. This can be seen in how the DRC’s systems of governance have changed over time. During the post-independence period of the country, Mobutu operated a sprawling kleptocracy that was founded upon a withdrawal of state institutions from the peripheries of the country, calling instead on its citizens to fend for themselves. What Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers have called a ‘decentralized centralized state’ meant that public authority became a transactional and competitive process, rather than a power administered by state institutions.⁴⁴ Instead, a range of elite powerbrokers, businesspeople, traditional authorities, and state actors entered into a network of relationships that exploited DRC’s enormous natural resources, generated security for communities, and provided protections and services.

During Mobutu’s reign, this network largely fed resources upwards, consolidating wealth in a small circle of elite without ever resulting in strong state institutions in the country. However, during the two Congolese wars (1996–2002), this governance network became militarized: the national armies of Uganda and Rwanda occupied Congolese soil, whilst dozens of armed groups sprung up to defend their communities’ interests in the eastern part of the country. The result was that the Congolese governance system evolved to rely upon use of force as a stabilising factor: armed groups secured artisanal mining sites, ensured the predictable export of natural resources beyond Congo’s borders, in many cases acted as service providers for their communities, and emerged as crucial tools for elite powerbrokers in Kinshasa to secure influence. The near total lack of state institutions in the periphery was both the cause and the result of this dynamic, as armed groups took over state-like functions and further deprived the central government of resources and legitimacy. In complexity terms, this created a positive feedback loop in the Congolese system: the more armed groups came to act as a crucial node, the less the system depended upon the state, further strengthening armed groups.

In fact, seen through the lens of complexity theory, the UN’s inability to build up the institutional capacity of the Congolese state over the past 20 years makes sense. The Congolese system has evolved to depend upon a lack of state institutional capacity, relying instead on a network of other relationships to keep it stable. In the Kivus, for example, dozens of armed groups ensure that natural resources are extracted and transported beyond Congo’s borders to the East, generating revenues that feed into communities and ensure the continued relevance and legitimacy of armed actors. This symbiotic relationship is but one of many in the Congolese network: powerbrokers instrumentalize armed groups to gain leverage over political groupings in Kinshasa, providing political cover in exchange; state security actors extract rents from local populations to feed their hierarchies, offering protection from the state in exchange. Within this network, the presence of viable, effective state institutions is largely irrelevant, or indeed might be seen as a threat to the careful (often violent) balance across eastern Congo.

This reading of the DRC runs directly against the prevailing wisdom of international pundits who tend to explain the shortcomings of progress towards a more functioning liberal state as the result of a venal political class unwilling to change, or insufficient resources dedicated to institution-building.⁴⁵ Whilst corruption and shortfalls in donor support may explain some elements of the dynamics in Congo, they cannot offer a systemic understanding to what appears as built-in resistance to the kinds of change envisaged in the UN’s intervention in the DRC. Here, we argue that resistance is the outcome of the self-adaptation of a complex socio-political system that has strong tendencies away from the kind of liberal state structures envisaged by the UN. In fact, a complexity lens might reveal the illogic of trying to ‘restore’ or ‘extend’ the authority of a state that has, for the past 60 years, played little role in the governance of its citizens.⁴⁶ But it would also demand a deeper analysis and engagement with those empirical realities, mapping the networks and underlying relations that form the Congolese system, to understand how change takes place in it. As such, complexity theory provides the tools to challenge the set of assumptions that underpin the linear change theories and logics on which UN missions like MONUSCO have been predicated, and a more empirically grounded basis for intervening in the future. This might lead to less ambitious, more realistic, understandings of how and where the UN can intervene to influence the trajectory of the system. It would also liberate mission officials from the counterproductive dogma of linear log-frame models that do little to reflect the sort of institutional transformation and social change being sought. The following two subsections explore some of the ways complexity theory could elucidate MONUSCO’s neutralisation and stabilisation activities.

2.	The unintended consequences of use of force

Following the 2012 takeover of Goma by the M23 armed group, MONUSCO was given an offensive use of force mandate and new resources to proactively seek out and militarily confront armed groups in eastern Congo. The underlying concept was that greater capacity to attack armed groups would take the UN off its back foot, allowing MONUSCO to more rapidly degrade the capacities of the groups that posed the most direct risk to civilians and allow for the state security services to assume control of previously ungoverned spaces.

In some respects, MONUSCO’s offensive campaigns in the years following M23 appeared to live up to that promise. A series of joint operations against a group called the FRPI in Ituri temporarily led to a significant weakening of the group and pushed it towards the negotiating table. Likewise, sustained attacks on the ADF in the Beni area of North Kivu resulted in hundreds of militia members killed. However, rather than evaporating or assuming civilian life, the FRPI quickly reconstituted itself and continued to carry out armed attacks in the Ituri area, insecurity which has continued to this day. Similarly, the ADF has not only retained its fighting strength, but appeared to carry out reprisal attacks and kidnappings in the wake of MONUSCO operations, directly undermining the overall goal of reducing the risks to civilians.⁴⁷ The result is that, nearly eight years after its formation, the FIB has not overseen the neutralisation of any of its priority armed groups, whilst the overall number of armed groups in eastern Congo has continued to proliferate.⁴⁸

Here, the demand of complexity theory to think in terms of relationships and networks offers an explanation for these dynamics. The FRPI, for example, is not merely an armed group: it is a community-based self-defence force that is crucial for local politicians to exert pressure on powerbrokers in Kinshasa. It is also instrumental in the extraction and marketing of natural resources, and in the provision of basic protections to many communities in the Ituri area. Similarly, whilst the ADF is often described solely in terms of its Islamist origins or predatory behaviours in Beni, it is also a key player in the local political landscape of North Kivu, a participant in the illicit timber trade, and an important element in the land disputes amongst the different ethnic groups in the area. The ways in which communities, political classes, business interests, and other actors all enter into symbiotic relationships with these armed groups helps to explain why they do not merely disappear in the face of military pressure. They are part of a system, and when they are affected the entire system responds. In some cases, military pressure may in fact incentivize the groups to increase their own violence, to ensure they are able to exert leverage and guarantee their own relevance in the system.⁴⁹

This analysis reaffirms the argument that peacekeeping models based on a concept of ‘clearing out’ armed groups and replacing them with state capacities may well have negative externalities that could undermine the UN’s objectives.⁵⁰ Rather than reduce armed group activity to a non-state threat, complexity theory allows us to define armed groups by their relations with other key actors, and by the roles they adopt in these relations.

We do not argue that a complexity lens is the only one that can arrive at such insights. Von Billerbeck & Tansey, for example, have shown how the UN in the DRC has unwittingly bolstered the Congolese government’s authoritarianism.⁵¹ Similarly, de Heredia has highlighted the reproduction of colonial relations through repeated intervention.⁵² Rather, we argue that complexity provides a way of incorporating discrete and often disconnected insights into a holistic analytical frame. An important part of that is endogenizing peacekeeping missions within their intervention eco-system, discussed further below.

3.	Peacekeeping as part of the complex system: MONUSCO entangled in stabilisation bargains

A complexity approach refuses the notion of ‘outside’ influences and treats all actors in terms of their relationships within a given marketplace. This holds true of the UN as well, which is at times an influential player in the Congo. In fact, MONUSCO is deeply implicated in the symbiotic relationships that comprise networks governance in eastern DRC, particularly through its stabilisation-related activities. Rather than think of MONUSCO as an external actor intervening in the Congolese socio-political landscape, complexity thinking encourages the analyst to see MONUSCO’s activities as part of the system, subject to its tendencies, and actively participating in its patterns.

An example of this can be drawn from MONUSCO’s operations in eastern Congo. Typically, the mission undertakes its military operations jointly with the Congolese army, whilst it also partners closely with the government in implementing a $40 million national stabilisation strategy designed to increase state capacity in conflict-prone areas. This has led much of the Congolese population to consider MONUSCO a parastatal organisation, operating hand in glove with an army that many see as the most direct threat to their safety. According to a recent survey, more than 60 per cent of the Congolese interviewees thought negatively of the UN’s partnership with the Congolese army.⁵³ But this relationship with the state is but one of many that the UN has in eastern Congo: the mission employs thousands of Congolese citizens who have depended on the UN for their daily livelihood for 20 years; MONUSCO also participates in a wide range of inter-communal reconciliation processes, bringing civil society actors together to address underlying tensions. In some of its activities (including on human rights), the mission is actually positioned against those state actors responsible for serious crimes and/or corruption.

MONUSCO has thus become an important node in the Congolese governance system, though often in unseen ways. How the mission impacts the local economies will have an impact on citizens’ willingness to participate in illicit trade (potentially limiting the impact of disruptive groups), but it also injects new monies into a system that tends to channel resources into a patronage network stretching across the country. Similarly, the UN’s role alongside the state may appear to be bolstering an important set of institutions needed for good governance in a traditional Western mindset, but that proximity to the state has other effects, alienating some populations that are threatened by state security services, or potentially enabling state actors to manipulate the UN in various ways.

Other scholars have identified the endogenous features nature of UN peacekeeping missions in some settings though these tend to focus more on the UN substituting for government public service provision,⁵⁴ or distorting local economies.⁵⁵ Going beyond these, complexity theory requires moving towards analytically including the UN and its peacekeeping missions within the holistic system they are sent to address. Doing so would allow for the more finely grained analysis above to be factored into research findings and policy advice relating to how the UN’s interventions reverberate through conflict-affected societies. It would also increase the chances that the lessons from these engagements would lead to adaptations in the peacekeeping system as a whole and influence the shape of future missions. The need to conduct this type of research is only likely to become more important as stabilisation missions with exit strategies contingent on effective states are involved in making intrusive decisions that can ‘tip the scales’ in favour of one part of another.

There are many reasons why MONUSCO has failed to fulfil its mandate or achieve its aims over its existence.⁵⁶ This section has touched on some of the ways that the three key insights revealed through a complexity lens can help to make sense of these. By illuminating: first, the impediments to UN efforts to engineer good governance through statebuilding; second, the anticipable negative externalities associated with UN actions; and, third, the ways that the UN has become ensconced in the conflict system of (eastern) DRC, this brief case study illustrates the value-add of complexity theory for understanding and informing peacekeeping. It demonstrates how a complexity lens not only encourages a mapping all key actors – state and non-state – as nodes in the system, but also focuses attention on the power relations between them and the reality that not all nodes are equal.⁵⁷ Insights flowing from complexity can feed important aspects of peacekeeping such as integrated mission planning and the Comprehensive Performance Assessment System (CPAS).⁵⁸ In doing so, a complexity-oriented approach has the potential to inform more appropriate peacekeeping policy, practice and ultimately shape outcomes.

Conclusion

This article has illustrated how complexity theory offers a great to deal to the study and practice of UN peacekeeping. Having examined how peacekeeping environments operate akin to complex systems, we proceeded to highlight three specific ways in which complexity theory can help elucidate and advance peacekeeping. Drawing on examples from one of the UN’s long-standing and largest multidimensional peacekeeping missions in the DRC, we demonstrated where these three aspects are very much in play and analysed how a complexity-oriented approach promises improvements and advancements in the way we understand these settings but also for planning and acting within them. Complexity theory offers insights and perspectives on processes in the peacekeeping system that orthodox social science struggles to reveal, and insufficiently explains.⁵⁹ Based on this short examination it is apparent that if peacekeeping systems (i.e. the missions and the places they operate) display the features of complex systems and behave/change accordingly then there is a great deal of potential in the future application of this thinking and theorising to the scholarship and praxis of peacekeeping. Yet, as mentioned in the introduction, complexity is not presented here as a panacea. Action based on the insights gleaned from complexity-influenced analysis will still need to overcome the resistance to changing established practices and procedures within peacekeeping and the high-level bureaucratic politics at the UN that give rise to it.⁶⁰

There is much that could be said beyond the scope of this paper, for example, on the analytical tools and methodologies available for operationalising the potential of complexity thinking. Some of this work has begun,⁶¹ but further research is also necessary here. Beyond elevating the importance of relations to peacekeeping outcomes at the micro-level, another fruitful avenue would be to look at the peacekeeping system from a macro perspective. Conducting complex systems analysis to augment existing understandings of: political relations between states that pay and those troop-contributing countries that ‘play’;⁶² relations between deployed peacekeeping personnel and local populations;⁶³ and, even relations of coloniality between states that decide to intervene and countries on the receiving end of interventions.⁶⁴

Looking ahead, one of the major implications of our argument is that UN peacekeeping must be understood as endogenous to the conflict-affected ecosystems it seeks to stabilise and transform. In debunking claims to exogeneity, complexity theory demands profound conceptual rethinking of peacekeeping with extremely practical ramifications for how missions are designed and executed on the ground. UN peacekeeping operations should view themselves as actors within the complex conflict ecosystem, looking to enable transformational change from within, rather than impose liberal Western models from without.

Peacekeeping provides a dynamic and conceptually challenging test case for the application of complexity, that – by extension – has significant implications for political science and international relations theory.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant numbers DE170100138, DP160102429].

Notes on contributors

Adam Day

Adam Day is head of the Geneva Office of United Nations University Centre for Policy Research where he oversees programming on peacebuilding, human rights, peacekeeping, climate-security, sanctions, and global governance and Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs. His research is focused on conflict prevention, peace operations, climate-security, and armed group dynamics. His work has been published by Stability Journal, Global Governance, Ethics and International Affairs, Oxford University Press, and Routledge.

Charles T. Hunt

Charles T. Hunt is Associate Professor of Global Security in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research and honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. He is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal Global Responsibility to Protect and on the editorial board of International Peacekeeping and the Journal of International Peacekeeping. His research is focused on UN peace operations and peacebuilding in conflict-affected states with recent articles published in Survival, Cooperation and Conflict, Civil Wars and Global Governance.

Notes

1 Johnson, Simply Complexity; Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour.

2 Conveney and Highfield, Frontiers of Complexity, 5–10.

3 NB: While the language of complexity is increasingly used by practitioners, the real implications of complexity are poorly understood or applied.

4 Brusset, de Coning, and Hughes, Complexity Thinking for Peacebuilding Practice and Evaluation.

5 Kleinfeld, Improving Development Aid Design and Implementation; Ramalingam, Aid on the Edge of Chaos; de Coning, “Adaptive Peacebuilding”.

6 Veblen and Boulton, “Why is economics not an evolutionary science?” 8–9.

7 Bonner, The Evolution of Complexity, 3–25.

8 Mitchell Complexity: A Guided Tour; Veblen and Boulton, “Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science”; Boulding, Evolutionary Economics.

9 Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism, 15.

10 Prigonine, “Long Term Trends and the Evolution of Complexity”; Prigonine, “Time, Structure and Fluctuations”.

11 Boulton, Allen, and Bowman, Embracing Complexity, 32.

12 The features and properties discussed here are a synthesised list drawing on numerous attempts across different disciplines to summarise the core characteristics of complex systems. See: Hendrick, “Complexity Theory and Conflict Transformation,” 6–7; Ramalingam, “Exploring the Science of Complexity”; Mitleton-Kelly, “Ten Principles of Complexity”.

13 Hunt, “Beyond the Binaries”.

14 Meadows, “Leverage Points”.

15 Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton, Getting to Maybe.

16 McGlade and Garnsey, “The Nature of Complexity,” 5.

17 Conveney and Highfield, Frontiers of Complexity, 232.

18 Gladwell, The Tipping Point.

19 Coleman, “Navigating the Landscape of Conflict”.

20 Ibid.

21 Cramer, “Trajectories of Accumulation,” 130.

22 The arguments in the passages below were first made in Hunt, UN Peace Operations and International Policing, 109-111.

23 Hendrick, “Complexity Theory and Conflict Transformation,” 17–21.

24 Frei and Ramalingam, “Foreign Policy and Complex Adaptive Systems”.

25 Sorenson, “‘Book Review’”; Paley, “Complex Adaptive Systems,” 234.

26 Ramalingam, “Exploring the Science of Complexity,” 78.

27 Byrne, Complexity Theory. See also: Geyer and Rihani, Complexity and Public Policy; Room, Complexity, Institutions and Public Policy; Morçöl, A Complexity Theory for Public Policy; Rhodes et al., Public Management and Complexity Theory.

28 Bousquet and Curtis, “Beyond Models and Metaphors”; Kavalski, World Politics at the Edge of Chaos.

29 Woolcock, “Towards a Plurality of Methods in Project Evaluation”; Green, How Change Happens, Kleinfeld, “Improving Development Aid; Ramalingam, Aid on the Edge of Chaos.

30 Hughes, Hunt, and Curth-Bibb, Forging New Conventional Wisdom Beyond International Policing.

31 Richardson, Mathieson, and Cilliers, “Complexity Thinking and Military Operational Analysis”; Wiuff Moe and Müller, Reconfiguring Intervention.

32 Brusset, de Coning, and Hughes, Complexity Thinking for Peacebuilding; de Coning, “From Peacebuilding to Sustaining Peace”.

33 Hunt, “Emerging Powers”.

34 Hunt, “Avoiding Perplexity”; Hunt, “Complexity Theory”.

35 Clement and Smith, “Managing Complexity”.

36 Campbell, “(Dis)Integration, Incoherence and Complexity”.

37 Day and Hunt, “UN Stabilisation Operations”.

38 de Coning, “From Peacebuilding to Sustaining Peace”; “Adaptive Peace Operations”; “Insights from Complexity Theory for Peace and Conflict Studies”; “The Future of UN Peace Operations”.

39 Day and Hunt, “UN Stabilisation Operations”.

40 See, for example, Aoi, de Coning, and Thakur, Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping Operations.

41 Ramalingam, “Exploring the Science of Complexity,” 12.

42 See Note 35 above.

43 Raeymakers, Violent Capitalism; Trefon, Reinventing Order in the Congo; Turner, The Congo Wars; Prunier, Africa's World War; Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters.

44 Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers, “New political order in the DR Congo?” 39–52.

45 Oxfam America, “No Will, No Way”; Melmot, “Candide au Congo”.

46 This is not to say such insights have not been made previously. See for example, Tull, "A Reconfiguration of Political Order?”

47 Tull, “The Limits and Unintended Consequences of UN Peace Enforcement”.

48 Stearns and Vogel, “The Landscape of Armed Groups”.

49 Verweijen, “Stable Instability”.

50 Hunt, “All Necessary Means to What Ends?”

51 Von Billerbeck and Tansey, “Enabling Autocracy?”

52 de Heredia, “Militarism, States and Resistance in Africa”.

53 Congo Research Group, Impasse in the Congo.

54 Blair, Peacekeeping, Policing, and the Rule of Law after Civil War; Whalan, How Peace Operations Work.

55 Jennings and Boas, “Transactions and Interactions”.

56 See, for example, Novosseloff, “Assessing the Effectiveness”.

57 The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for emphasising this point.

58 Forti, “UN Peacekeeping and CPAS”.

59 Lacayo, “What Complexity Science Teaches Us”.

60 Autesserre, Peaceland; Finnemore and Barnett, Rules for the World.

61 See, for example, Brusset, de Coning, and Hughes, Complexity Thinking for Peacebuilding; Hughes, Hunt, and Curth-Bibb, Forging New Conventional Wisdom.

62 Cunliffe, “The Politics of Global Governance in UN Peacekeeping”.

63 Autesserre, Peaceland.

64 Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention.