Levels of Dependence Between the European Union and Other International Organizations in Peacebuilding

With the European Union (EU)’s growing engagement with other international organizations (IOs) on peacebuilding, academic literature has been paying much attention to the reasons for the EU and its partners’ successes and otherwise in their interactions. Such discussions are furthermore often conceptualized around cooperation, competition and conflict.
What much of the literature fails to address are the reasons why the EU consistently interacts with other IOs in peacebuilding, write PETAR PETROV, HYLKE DIJKSTRA, KATARINA ĐOKIĆ, PETER HORNE ZARTSDAHL and EWA MAHR. Indeed, resource dependency theory, the most convincing account in organization theory explaining why organizations interact seems difficult to apply to IOs, they write in the Journal of European Integration.
Whereas this theory stresses the resource dependence of organizations on their environment, IOs tend to rely mostly on their membership. In their article, titled ‘All hands on deck: levels of dependence between the EU and other international organizations in peacebuilding, the authors attempt to expand the scope of the resource dependency perspectives and make them applicable to interactions between the EU and other IOs and thus provide a more nuanced explanation as to the reasons behind the EU’s cooperative preference.
The article argues that one needs to account for macro-level and micro-level dependencies in addition to the more conventional meso-level dependencies. While the EU in Kosovo, for instance, might not be formally dependent on other IOs – apart from NATO’s security provisions and the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)’s information about northern Kosovo – for the implementation of its Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, or EULEX, the EU can only succeed in bringing stability and progress in Kosovo, if the other IOs are also effective in fulfilling their own mandates. Despite the EU’s extensive commitment, the full challenge of Kosovo is too large for the EU to address, which has resulted in a division of labor across IOs.
Similar to such macro-level dependencies, the authors state, “we should neither underestimate the importance of micro-level dependence”. While ad hoc, one-off, contributions by partners might not be essential for IOs to fulfil their core mandate, such contributions are often very welcome. It has been long stressed that particularly on the ground, there tends to be a large degree of practicality to interactions between IOs based on informal and personal relations. Even if not institutionalized through formal and permanent agreements, ad hoc contributions are often the bit of oil that keep the machinery running.
“While this article has given illustrations through insights from Kosovo, Mali and Armenia, the article also triggers new questions,” the authors state. First, while it is useful to distinguish between these levels, a key question is how the levels relate to each other. UNMIK, as originally established, sought to create a formalized division of labor amongst IOs through its pillar structure. This is where the macro and meso levels intersect. Similarly, there are different degrees of formality that may distinguish between the meso and micro levels.
“Second, we have not tried to explain variation across cases within the levels.” For instance, macro-level interaction is more problematic in Kosovo than Mali. At the same time, the pre-accession process in Kosovo provides a macro-level focal point for the international community. The situation is less clear in Armenia where the EU is a secondary actor.
“The new framework we have put forward should facilitate further research into the dependencies of IOs across the different levels,” the authors state.

Petar Petrov, Hylke Dijkstra, Katarina Đokić, Peter Horne Zartsdahl & Ewa Mahr (2019) All hands on deck: levels of dependence between the EU and other international organizations in peacebuilding, Journal of European Integration, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2019.1622542