Comparing how peace operations enable or restrict the influence of national staff: Contestation from within?

Abstract

A large share of civilian staff working in international peace operations are nationals of the host state. Academic research has not yet investigated the effect of these locally recruited bureaucrats on peacebuilding. Theoretically, it is argued that to accomplish their missions in complex environments, peace operations require crucial knowledge about local perceptions, politics, and customs. Local staff can have a positive performance impact by soliciting such knowledge. But information advantages create new principal-agent problems. Peace operations have a hard time scrutinizing their employees’ allegiances, and they risk sabotage from within. Empirically, it is shown that peace operations conducted by the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the European Union (EU) differ significantly in how they navigate the ensuing tension by enabling or restricting the influence of their local staff. A new data set on the staffing of 52 peace operations as well as analysis of internal staff policies yields significant variance in the potential of local staff to influence peacebuilding policy implementation, which is most extensive in the OSCE, followed by the UN and the EU. This finding warrants more attention on the role of local staff as information gatekeepers who could be at the center of potential frictions between international and local norms and knowledge.

Bridging the citizen gap: Bureaucratic representation and knowledge linkage in (international) public administration

“…The national staff, by contrast, consists of local residents with a career linked to the hiring office. National officials “represent” their people, but they also possess local social knowledge that is indispensable for an IPA to adjust to the local context (Eckhard, 2019; Parízek, 2017). National staffers should consequently engage in knowledge linkage.…”

The End of the Liberal World Order and the Future of UN Peace Operations: Lessons Learned

“…To engage a wider spectrum of the ‘local’ in peace interventions, several scholars argue for the need to reduce social and physical barriers between external and internal actors on the ground to enable substantial personal contact, fostering understanding, context awareness, accountability and dialogue with the local population (Autesserre, 2014; Duffield, 2007). Enabling such relationships requires moving away from bunkerization protocols in peace interventions, while still maintaining the safety of soldiers and staff (Eckhard, 2018).…”

Divided loyalties? The role of national IO staff in aid‐funded procurement

“…However, doing so also entails risks because the loyalties of staff working in their home countries might be divided. In the worst case, divided loyalties may lead to national IO staff informally influencing decisions in IOs to benefit cronies in recipient countries-often called capture (Eckhard, 2018). Despite the importance of this potential trade-off, the literature is relatively silent on the matter.…”

“…While authors have long suspected that national IO staff have divided loyalties, we lack systematic evidence on the differences in IO staffs' decisions when working in their home countries or as expatriates. As Eckhard (2018) puts it, although the national staff are "a cornerstone of local-international interaction, their role and policy impact is not well understood." This article studies the potential costs and benefits of employing national IO staff by analyzing the allocation of procurement contracts in World Bank projects.…”