%0 PDF %T Organizational Barriers to Peace: Agency and Structure in International Peacebuilding %A Campbell, Susanna. %D 2017-04-18T12:45:42.935Z %8 2017-04-18 %R http://localhost/files/0z7097999 %X Abstract: The peacebuilding literature agrees that international peacebuilding should be sustained over several years and adapted to the specific institutions and capacities in each post-conflict country. To do this IOs, INGOs, and bilateral donors doing peacebuilding work would have to adapt their aims, approaches, and programming to each country context and to changes in that context. Organizational theory finds that this type of adaptation and learning is very difficult for most organizations. This dissertation asks whether this holds true for peacebuilding organizations. Can IOs, INGOs, and bilateral donors doing peacebuilding work adapt to and learn from a post-conflict context? If so, why? If not, why not? This dissertation tests a hypothesis that three characteristics - non-defensive and valid learning behavior, downward accountability routines, and peacebuilding knowledge-laden routines and frames - are necessary and jointly sufficient for an IO, INGO, or bilateral aid agency to take significant and systematic action to reduce the gap between its peacebuilding aims and outcomes in a post-conflict country. It tests this hypothesis with five diverse organizations (two IOs, two INGOs, one bilateral donor) at six critical junctures in Burundi's thirteen-year war-to-peace transition. One of these organizational case studies falsifies this hypothesis, showing that while the three independent variables were necessary and sufficient for consecutive adaptation over two critical junctures, they were insufficient for the organization to sustain its relevance with Burundi's war-to-peace trajectory over each of the six critical junctures. This dissertation then builds a new typological theory from the five detailed ethnographic case studies that describes how the three initial independent variables combine with three other factors - entrepreneurial leadership committed to peacebuilding, readily available peacebuilding funds, and organizational change processes - to achieve varying degrees of alignment with Burundi's war-to-peace transition. The findings from this dissertation indicate that most IOs, INGOs, and bilateral donors are likely to be unable to repeatedly adapt to big shifts in a country's war-to-peace transition. The changes in the post-conflict context are too big and happen too fast for most international actors to keep pace. The conclusion identifies the factors that determine why different types of organizations adapt to differing degrees. The least adaptive organizations had two characteristics in common: 1) incentive structures that rewarded feedback to headquarters, not dialogue with the state or society concerned (i.e., upward accountability), and 2) they did not believe that peacebuilding was the most important thing that they were doing, but instead prioritized development aims and programming (i.e., peacebuilding frame not predominant). The most adaptive organizations, on the other hand, were 1) focused on peacebuilding as the most important thing that they were doing in Burundi (i.e., predominant peacebuilding frame); 2) they had teams that combined technical knowledge of the specific peacebuilding activity and local knowledge of the specific institutions that the organization aimed to change (i.e., sufficient peacebuilding knowledge-laden routines); and 3) they were guided by entrepreneurial leaders who were committed to peacebuilding and willing to coerce the organization into pursuing its peacebuilding aims. To develop a fully specified typological theory, the findings from this dissertation will be tested in other countries. Nonetheless, interviews with headquarters staff, interviews with staff from other organizations in Burundi, and document review indicate that the patterns observed with the case study organizations provide at least part of the explanation for the behavior of the larger universe of IOs, INGOs, and bilateral aid agencies engaged in peacebuilding in different conflict-torn countries around the world.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2012.; Submitted to the Dept. of Diplomacy, History, and Politics.; Advisor: Peter Uvin.; Committee: Antonia Chayes, and Karen Jacobsen.; Keywords: Political Science, and International relations. %[ 2022-10-11 %9 Text %~ Tufts Digital Library %W Institution