The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of bureaucratic power and politics within United Nations (UN) peacekeeping and its influence on UN driven processes of peace consolidation and conflict resolution. The UN and their peacekeeping operations are omnipresent within the debate on post-war recovery and reconciliation. Despite this prominence, there is a considerable gap in research concerning the bureaucratic organisation of UN interventions into post-war situations, which serves with all its complexities and ambiguities as the background for the daily work of many persons involved in the peacekeeping process. In many ways the organisation of UN peacekeeping gravely differs from the Weberian bureaucratic ideal of professional specialisation and differentiation of knowledge and repetitive tasks. Rather, peacekeeping is arguably the most political field of UN administration. It is directly dependent on decisions made by the member states in the Security Council, thus aligned to standards of political participation rather than administrative efficiency, culturally divers like no other organisation in the world, and characterised by a high degree of temporality and short-term decision making. Personality plays a crucial role within the organisation of peacekeeping, which is surrounded by a personality based web of authorities, claims and interests. This does not necessarily mean that peacekeeping is dysfunctional. Rather, the UN may even do quite well, as “reasonable people make reasonable decisions”. But a personality centred professional culture of “gifted amateurism” makes professionalism in the sense of long-term strategic selection and specification of knowledge difficult. UN officials nevertheless not only are expected to work according to the rules and procedures provided by the Security Council mandate, but they are also frequently confronted with highly precarious local conditions, which rarely match the organizational requirements of the UN. The question here is how the complex and diffuse organisation of UN peacekeeping influences the daily work of the UN officials that are involved in the peacekeeping enterprise on various administrative levels. What sort of framework do bureaucratic power and politics of UN Peacekeeping provide for a sustainable process of keeping and consolidating peace in post-war situations? This question will be discussed especially by looking at the case of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). For this purpose, the paper will draw on results of two research trips to Liberia (September 2010 and March 2011) as well as a visit to the UN Headquarters in New York (October 2010).
