Partnership Peacekeeping: The inter-organizational relations of international bureaucracies

In the field of security governance, regional organizations have assumed an important role in peacekeeping operations. In fact, due to an increased demand, the UN is now regularly working together with regional organizations like NATO, the AU and the EU. This paper argues that the international bureaucracies – DPKO, EEAS and the NATO’s international staff – are in a large part responsible for maintaining and shaping these relationships. Conceptually, the paper draws on theories of inter-organizational relations and examines the inter-organizational relations between these secretariats and how they affect the establishment of stable partnership peacekeeping structures. Empirically, the research analyzes how the secretariats are responsible for facilitating the partnership by institutionalizing their relations in relative autonomy from their member states and afterwards operationalize it at the headquarter-level in different areas like planning of peace operations, developing policy guidelines and communicating their agendas and goals. The paper draws its findings from in-depth interviews with UN, EU and NATO officials in New York (2014 -2015) and Brussels (2016).