International Society and the Coordination Conundrum.

This paper highlights the structural impediments to effective coordination in responding to contemporary conflict, and to learning within the diverse community of actors in international society. While the post Cold-War security environment fostered the merger of the peace and development agendas and seemed to call for stronger multilateral and multi-level (IGOs, states, NGOS, beneficiaries) partnerships to meet the challenges of managing conflict and building peace, the record has been underwhelming thus far. Review of lessons-learned exercises focusing on coordination illustrates that similar errors and weaknesses are identified in various conflicts, similar lessons are drawn from them, and the same errors and weaknesses re-emerge in later conflicts. This pattern suggests a deeper underlying problem. In addressing those structural impediments, we start from the observation that cooperation theory generally focuses on homogeneous sets of actors. We go on to consider the multilevel nature of cooperation and coordination in response to conflict, and the heterogeneity of the actors engaged. The paper hypothesizes that prospects for effective coordination in such circumstances and where a hierarchy of power is lacking or is weakly expressed are distinctly limited. The analysis then proceeds to a qualitative assessment of the implications of actor heterogeneity for coordination in complex coalitions through the examination of a number of cases of coordination failure within governments, between governments and non-governmental actors, and between external actors and beneficiary authorities. We argue that if one wants to be serious about improvements in the performance of international society to transform conflicts, a sea-change is in order. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]