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"This research paper analyzes the efforts of the past decade to turn the UN peace operations apparatus into a learning organization. It begins by examining a traditional organizational culture of peacekeeping, which is the subject of section 2 of this paper. The traditional culture emerged under the conditions of Cold War peacekeeping operations. It prized maximum political flexibility over professional management practices. After the shock of the UN's catastrophic failures in the face of genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica, this traditional culture came to be challenged by a new generation of peace operations officials. This group of 'reformers' promoted objectives such as critical reflection and organizational learning while the 'traditionalists' sought to protect the organization from excessive bureaucratic standardization. Section 3 details the structural and political constraints to learning that the reform agenda had to deal with in the beginning. The peace operations bureaucracy is a fragile, extremely decentralized and highly politicized organization – and none of these traits have served to promote its capacity to institutionalize learning. Perhaps most importantly, the fact that all but a few civilian staff can only ever receive short-term contracts and have had, in 2009, less than two years of experience in peace operations underscores the adverse career incentives and limited cause to identify strongly with the organization that individuals have. Together with the cultural rift that had begun to emerge in the late 1990s, these structural and political constraints provided the backdrop for the reform efforts that began in 2000 with the so-called Brahimi report, driven by the new generation of managers who gradually came into influential headquarters jobs from the field. Their initial efforts are outlined in section 4, which draws on examples from several in-depth case studies on specific attempts at learning particular lessons in various subject areas of peace operations. After several years of focusing on the nuts and bolts of managing growth, the learning agenda took shape in 2005 as part of 'Peace Operations 2010,' Under-Secretary-General Jean-Marie Guéhenno's central professionalization initiative. Section 5 depicts the 'Peace Operations 2010' agenda that put learning at the center of reform efforts, again with illustrations from our in-depth case studies on the impact of those efforts (published in full detail elsewhere). Two of the key elements of Peace Operations 2010 were a top-down guidance development effort and a bottom-up knowledge sharing toolbox, the products of which could be used as a source of feedback to inform the formulation and improvement of guidance for as long as it would take to establish an effective evaluation capacity as well. Training and evaluation, however, did not receive the same level of attention and political/financial support from member states. As a result, even the lessons that were taken up by the organization, debated, refined and formally adopted often languished for lack of effective institutionalization in practice." (author's abstract)

In den vergangenen drei Jahrzehnten ist das akkumulierte Wissen über die Mechanismen und Funktionen biologischer Systeme durch wissenschaftliche und technologische Entwicklungen explosionsartig gewachsen. Der vorliegende Forschungsbericht untersucht die Wechselwirkung von naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung, insbesondere in der Biotechnologie und Molekularbiologie, und politischem Steuerungshandeln im Bereich der Rüstungskontrolle. Vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen Krise der Genfer Verhandlungen über ein Verifikationsprotokoll zum "Übereinkommen über das Verbot der Entwicklung, Herstellung und Lagerung bakteriologischer (biologischer) Waffen und Toxinwaffen" (BWÜ) ist es dringend erforderlich, den Handlungsbedarf für die Rüstungskontrollpolitik neu zu bestimmen. Die Verfasser untersuchten die Missbrauchsmöglichkeiten neuer Forschungserkenntnisse und Technologieentwicklungen für die Herstellung von Biowaffen auf der Grundlage einer naturwissenschaftlichen Analyse. In der Studie konnten besondere Risikobereiche identifiziert und sichtbar gemacht werden, die für die Rüstungskontrollpolitik und für Verifikationssysteme zu biologischen Waffen von grundlegender Bedeutung sind. Hierbei traten deutliche Hinweise auf einen Paradigmenwechsel bei den Proliferationsgefahren für biologische und chemische Waffen zutage: Lag die Hauptgefahr bisher im Einsatz modifizierter Mikroorganismen, um Infektionskrankheiten auszulösen, so steht nun die Möglichkeit im Vordergrund, biochemische Agenzien als Waffen zu benutzen, um gezielt die Funktionsweise und Interaktion biologischer Systeme im menschlichen Körper anzugreifen. Im Zentrum der Untersuchung standen zwei lebenswichtige, miteinander verbundene physiologische Systeme - das Nerven- und das Immunsystem, die eine doppelte Verletzbarkeit durch Manipulationen aufweisen und somit eine grundsätzliche Relevanz für die biochemische Rüstungskontrolle besitzen. Eine Analyse dieser Systeme im Kontext jüngster Entwicklungen in den Lebenswissenschaften (Life Sciences) verdeutlicht, dass ein Großteil des gestiegenen Wissens einen dual-use-Charakter hat und somit für nicht-friedliche Zwecke missbraucht werden kann, sofern die Verbotsnormen des BWÜ in dem kommenden Jahrzehnten nicht angepasst werden. (ICD2)

"While there is an increasing number of articles and studies identifying lessons from the record of UN peacebuilding operations, it is striking how little we know about the UN's very capacity for organizational learning on peacebuilding, and about learning in international organizations in general. This pilot study seeks to lay the foundations for an in-depth investigation of the UN's record on organizational learning. Our study is motivated by both, a research and a policy imperative. On the research front, studying organizational learning within the UN peacebuilding bureaucracy contributes to opening up the 'black box' of international organizations. So far, mainstream work in the discipline of International Relations (IR) has produced surprisingly few studies on the everyday workings of international organizations, let alone their ability to learn. Studying organizational learning calls for an interdisciplinary approach bringing together IR (including peace and conflict studies), public management and the sociology of organizations. This has the potential of advancing conceptual debates within the discipline of IR. The study proceeds in three steps. The first step surveys the relevant literature from different disciplines and concludes that peace research, IR and organization theory do not offer ready-made frameworks for the analysis of organizational learning in international organizations. Building on existing research, we identify key elements of a new framework starting with a definition of the key term, organizational learning: We define organizational learning "as a process of cognitive change through the questioning of the means and/or ends of addressing problems. The process manifests itself in the development and implementation of new rules and routines guiding the organization's actions." In a second step, we survey the evolution of the "infrastructure of learning" in the UN peacebuilding bureaucracy over the past 15 years. We hold that a number of factors (lack of will both within member states and the UN Secretariat as well as the lack of resources and appropriate incentive structures) contributed to the very slow recognition of the UN's learning needs. Major crises (such as the soul-searching after Rwanda and Srebrenica) plus the Brahimi Report in 2000 provided a certain momentum that brought the need to build up the UN's learning capacity higher on the agenda. Still, a lot of work remains to be done. In a third step, we present a list of variables that influence learning that need to be considered in a future in-depth study. This list of factors includes power, organizational culture, leadership, human capital, staff mobility, knowledge management systems, as well as access to external knowledge. Outlining an agenda for future research, we present a draft model of the learning process that includes 1) knowledge acquisition, 2) advocacy/ decision- making, and 3) institutionalization." (excerpt)

"During post-conflict periods, institutions and patterns of action are challenged and renegotiated – processes that have long gone largely unrecognized. There continues to be a lack
of empirical research on the constellations of authority following the cessation of conflict.
This lack corresponds to deficiencies on the level of policy-making: It appears that Western
donors, until today, base their approaches to post-conflict reconstruction on the wholly
unchallenged assumption that the state is the only legitimate actor in this area. This research
project focused on core questions in post-conflict security provision by and beyond
the state. The central question of the project was to determine which actors (such as traditional
authorities, the remnants of state security organs, private entrepreneurs, international
peacekeeping missions etc.) provide security in a situation of fragmented authority, i.e.
sanctioning violence and crime. Moreover, the project sought to analyze under which conditions
these actors are considered legitimate by different groups within society: some
actors might protect specific groups among the population while representing a threat to
others. These questions were addressed in empirical case studies of Liberia and Sierra
Leone. The project worked under the basic assumption that oligopolies of violence exist in
periods directly preceded by conflict, comprising a limited number of actors that produce
violence and provide security, who both compete and cooperate with each other. It was
also assumed that oligopolies exhibited significant variation, with one important sub-type
being an 'oligopoly with market leader'. (...)" (author's abstract)

"The absence of war between democracies is regarded as one of the few law-like correlations in international relations. The causation of this empirical phenomenon, however, remains contested; and the democratic peace in search of its cause. The project tries to fill this theoretical gap by arguing that inter-democratic institutions are causally responsible for the remarkable stability between democracies. Furthermore, the project contributes to the ongoing debate on the effects of international institutions. While most scholars have recently agreed that some institutions, due to their specific form, are more effective than others, it remains contested which form characteristics contribute to the peace-building effects of institutions. By combining liberal theories on the democratic peace and research on the effects of international institutions, the project is able to identify trans-national and trans-governmental networks as crucial features of inter-democratic institutions. The main hypothesis of the project asserts that a) these characteristics distinguish inter-democratic from traditional institutions between non-democratic states or with a mixed membership, and b) explain their distinct peace-building effect. The project is designed as a controlled case comparison. We analyse the level of stability of five pairs of states. With regard to comparability, we restrict our cases to the group of strategic rivals, i.e. pairs of states which look back to a history of conflict and violence and hence, are more prone to military confrontation than average dyads. From the sample of strategic rivals, we select dyads of endangered states which a) are located in highly institutionalized regional settings, and b) differ with regard to their political regime. We explore the peace-building effect of relevant regional security institutions on the level of stability of the following five dyads: France - Germany; Greece - Turkey; Indonesia - Malaysia and Argentina - Brazil as well as Argentina - Chile. Concerning the South American cases, we also compare the level of stability before and after the wave of democratisation in this region. In addition, we incorporate the relationship between Japan and South Korea into our research. This odd case of a democratic dyad of rivals, whose security relationship is only minimally institutionalized, allows us to assess alternative explanations of the democratic peace. The results of our research confirm our main hypothesis. Firstly, our work demonstrates that inter-democratic institutions differ with regard to their embedment in trans-national and trans-governmental networks. Secondly, we show that these institutional differences are responsible for the observed differences in the level of stability of our dyads. Moreover, our case selection allows us to undermine alternative explanations. The surprisingly low level of stability of the Japanese - South Korean dyad reinforces theoretical doubts concerning the liberal assumption that the democratic peace is caused by state properties. The high level of tensions between Greece and Turkey, both NATO member states, invalidates realist as well as neo-institutional explanations which attribute the effectiveness of institutions to the presence of a hegemonic leader or to their level of institutionalisation." (author's abstract)