Suchergebnisse

International organisations (IOs) like UN, NATO and EU have been tasked with cooperating to provide numerous services that include security, distribution of humanitarian relief and management of reconstruction efforts. These joint operations have triggered the proliferation of scholarship on inter-organisational cooperation with competing theoretical explanations about the factors that facilitate and impede such cooperation. This article compares and contrasts the emergence, dynamics and institutionalisation of such cooperation involving the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in two of the organisations' largest missions – in Kosovo and Afghanistan. It argues that in all stages – emergence, dynamics and institutionalisation – cooperation is more successful when it emerges or is endorsed by officers operating in the field, when IOs overcome 0ureaucratic, resource and environmental constraints for cooperation and finally when the IOs choose a decentralised or informal way to manage their relationship.
The article advances the argument that inter-organisational cooperation is more likely to emerge informally among the field staff because it is more responsive to the surrounding environment and tends to overcome differences of organisational culture in order to divide tasks based on their expertise. To this end, the cases of Kosovo and Afghanistan validate the argument that formal and imposed cooperation driven solely by member-states and IO headquarters is insufficient to overcome 0ureaucratic, resource and environmental constraints. Similarly, centralised attempts to institutionalise inter-governmental cooperation cannot be effective unless they take into account the preferences of field staff, IO partners and mediators.

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v.10, issue 3 (Winter 2011), 39-51. Topic: North Atlantic Treaty Organization ; This study surveys the involvement of NATO's Euro-Atlantic partners (EAPs) and new members in various international operations; it argues that the alliance's success in drawing new participants into international operations is largely determined by three different groups of variables: (1) the prospects for membership; (2) the presence of unresolved disputes with neighboring countries and; (3) the degree of internal political divisions in these transitional societies. This article will examine these three variables. First, it will show that when NATO upgraded its relationship with prospective members and signaled high chances for membership, these nations significantly increased their participation in international operations. Second, it will discuss how the presence of unresolved conflicts could effectively paralyze integration into NATO as was the case of Macedonia and Georgia thus constraining these countries' involvement in Afghanistan. Finally, it will illustrate how deep political divisions in Ukraine led to a plummeting public approval for membership and subsequent withdrawal of support for NATO-led operations. The three variables together point to the conclusion that the alliance was overall fairly effective in persuading the new members to participate more actively in peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and humanitarian missions. At the same time, it has had a mixed record in engaging its Euro-Atlantic partners (EAP) to become involved in various international efforts. Although NATO's incentives have facilitated EAP's contributions to peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and humanitarian missions, these incentives have not always proven sufficient to overcome neighbors' opposition or domestic resistance to membership. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.