The UN Secretariat's Authority in Peacekeeping

Kseniya Oksamytna

Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate on Globalisation, the EU and Multilateralism LUISS Guido Carli and University of Genevakseniya.oksamytna@erasmusmundus-gem.eu

Paper prepared for the 42nd Joint Sessions of WorkshopsSalamanca, Spain, 10 – 15 April 2014

DraftPlease do not cite or circulate without permission

Comments are welcome

The paper analyses how the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy exercises authority in the field presumed to be dominated by states. While the prerogative to mandate missions rests with the UNSC, the Secretariat is in a position to influence missions' composition, range of activities, and interpretation of the mandate. Furthermore, UN officials serving in the Secretariat or field missions contribute to the debate on the future of peacekeeping through reports and speeches. The paper strives to go beyond the statement that international bureaucracies posses authority by looking at the ways in which it is constructed and practised. Specifically, it discusses how the UN Secretariat exercises authority across the following four functions: setting missions' operational parameters, policy development, reporting, and moral suasion. The first function is perhaps the most straightforward: the Secretariat prepares documents which define how operations approach their mandate, such as budget proposals, planning directives, and rules of engagement. The development of policy and guidance for various aspects of peace operations is another way in which the Secretariat exercises authority. Reports and studies commissioned or researched by UN officials enable it to play three distinct roles: an agenda-setting role (by providing a platform for calling attention to thematic or situation-specific issues); a framing role (by allowing a categorisation of situations facing the UN and thus creating the conditions of possibility for particular types of responses); and an evaluation role (by enabling not only performance assessment but also setting the criteria for such assessment, which may have important consequences in a field of peace operations where "success" and "failure" are elusive). Moral suasion, which is among international bureaucrats' better theorised functions, allows Secretariat and mission officials to play the first of the two abovelisted roles as well as attempt to change minds through argumentation.

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Despite several recent studies demonstrating that IOs are capable of autonomy,1 behavior

and role of international organisations (IOs) remain under-researched in the international relations

literature.2 The present paper hopes to contribute to the filling of this gap by analysing the exercise

of authority by the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy. Barnett and Finnemore define authority as "the

ability of one actor to use institutional and discursive resources to induce deference from others"

and differentiate among rational-legal, delegated, moral, and expert sources of IO authority. 3 The

former two types have been extensively theorised: perspectives on domestic bureaucracy as an

organisational form have been applied to explaining the rational-legal authority of IOs,4 while

liberal institutionalists have put forward a variety of reasons why states choose to delegate tasks to

IOs. IOs' moral and expert authority has received less scholarly attention, although the situation

might be changing.

As for the means of "inducing deference" or influencing state behavior that IOs have,

Barnett and Finnemore suggest their ability to classify the world, fix meanings, and diffuse norms

as three such avenues.5 Subscribing to Weinlich's proposition that authority is "a volatile and

contested good that might be successfully manipulated by international organizations themselves"

and that "[a]uthority needs to be enacted in order to produce social effects",6 the present enquiry

analyses how the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy, through various functions and using various

prerogatives, constructs and practises its authority. Given the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy's

unique nature, namely a high level of missions' independence from headquarters and reliance on the

membership-provided contingents, the Secretariat's authority has to be constructed not only vis-à-

vis the member states but also the field. Its authority vis-à-vis other IOs, global civil society, and

expert communities s well as the construction of authority within missions are both interesting

questions which are, however, beyond the scope of this paper.

The paper theorises the Secretariat's exercise of authority in the field of peacekeeping across

the following four functions: setting missions' operational parameters, policy development,

reporting, and moral suasion. Most examples come from two policy fields examined in the author's

larger work, namely peacekeeping missions' engagement in the protection of civilians under

imminent threat of physical violence (POC) and development of public information campaigns for

local consumption (PI).

1 For a good overview, see Tierney and Weaver under review, 2. 2 Dijkzeul and Beigbeder 2003, 1; Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 1-3.3 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 5, 22.4 Ibid., 17-20.5 Ibid., 31.6 Weinlich 2012, 258, 261.

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Authority Vis-à-vis the Member States

This section looks at how the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy fulfills a number of functions

which allow it to establish and exercise authority vis-à-vis the membership. Specifically, the

instances in which the Secretariat's or missions' prerogatives to engage in a particular type of

activity are either upheld or contested by the membership are analysed with a view to illuminating

the underlying structures of authority, as well as the changes in these structures.

Setting Missions' Operational Parameters

That the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) is responsible for the management of UN

peacekeeping operations has come about "more by serendipity than by design".7 The Charter

envisaged that the Military Staff Committee consisting of the chiefs of staff of the permanent UN

Security Council (UNSC) members would provide "strategic direction of any armed forces placed

at the disposal of the Security Council".8 However, this system has never operated.9 Although calls

for the revival of the Military Staff Committee were voiced in the aftermath of the Cold War, 10 the

UNSG Boutros-Ghali argued that the Committee should have on role in "the planning or conduct of

peace-keeping operations".11 The Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) was created in

March 1992 for those purposes, and attempts "to acquire military expertise" by recruiting staff with

relevant qualifications were made.12

While it not possible to revisit the mid-1990s debates on the command and control of UN

peacekeeping operations here, the Secretariat today retains the responsibility for these operations'

overall management. Among other things, it translates vague UNSC mandates into actionable

directions for heads of missions. When a peacekeeping deployment is contemplated, the UNSG

submits to the UNSC options for a possible UN engagement and thus "provide[s] parameters of the

Council's discussions, shaping which options are given serious or slight consideration".13 The

UNSG often offers an explicit evaluation of the options which are on the table. For example, with

7 Findlay 2002, 10.8 UN 1945 [2009], 31.9 Findlay 2002, 9. 10 See, for instance, Goldman 1990.11 UNSG 1992, 13.12 Findlay 2002, 12.13 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 153.

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regard to the three alternatives considered after the failure of the first UN mission in Somalia (a

continuation under the traditional peacekeeping principles, withdrawal of the military element

leaving aid agencies to negotiate access, and the use of force), Boutros-Ghali has opined that neither

the first nor second option would be "an adequate response to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia".14

The choices are ultimately made by the member states (in Somalia, the third option has been

followed because of the US' willingness to lead a peace enforcement operation) and even in

preparing the options, the UNSG takes member states' views into account.15 Although the UNSG's

proposals are not always accepted, "time and again member states look to the Secretary-General for

a suggestion or a text which can form the basis of discussion".16 The UNSG's authority to present

alternatives and discuss their desirability shapes the colour of the debate within and outside the

Council.

A UNSC resolution is the key document which outlines the objectives and modalities of a

peacekeeping deployment and, where applicable, provides an authorisation for the use of force.

Since such resolutions have until recently remained at a fairly abstract level, DPKO's Office of

Military Affairs is charged with producing "foundational military guidance documents, including

the command directive, military rules of engagement in conjunction with the Office of Legal

Affairs, military-strategic concepts of operation, force requirements and...initial operational

plans".17 In developing the rules of engagement, the Office of Military Affairs may exercise

authority to address issues absent from a UNSC mandate. For example, the rules of engagement for

the UN Mission in Haiti launched in 1993 stipulated that "UNMIH forces may intervene to prevent

death or grievous bodily harm of innocent civilians at the hands of an armed person or group".18

This happened six years before the UNSC mandated the UN Mission in Sierra Leone to afford

protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.

Recently, "the Security Council has become increasingly prescriptive in directing UN

operations to focus on protection",19 which equally applies to missions' other tasks. For example,

"[t]he resolutions relating to the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), authorized in

August 1992, are much less specific than those establishing the UN's presence in Kosovo (UNMIK)

in 1999".20 To give an even more recent example, the 2008 mandate of the UN Mission in the DRC

14 As cited in White 1997, 119. 15 For example, the ill-fated "light" option for the defense of "safe areas" in Bosnia has been based on a French

government's proposal. Honig and Both 1996, 111. See also Annan 2007, xii and a discussion in Allen and Yuen 2013, 3.

16 Annan 2007, xii.17 UNSG 2010, 12.18 As cited in Findlay 2002, 275. 19 Doss 2011, 34.20 Allen and Yuen 2013, 10.

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(MONUC) stipulated that it should attach the highest priority to protecting civilians in the eastern

DRC, thus establishing not only the thematic but also geographic focus of MONUC's efforts. It was

resented by many in the peacekeeping bureaucracy. For example, Patrick Cammaert, former

commander of MONUC's Eastern Division and former military adviser to the UNSG, believes that

"there is no need, in a Security Council resolution, to specifically give the POC task priority" and

that the UNSC should abstain from prescribing how "missions should implement the mandate or

prioritize against other objectives and tasks".21 Another senior MONUC official interpreted the

resolution as "a vote of no confidence in MONUC" and as one "impos[ing] an action plan in the

absence of one being provided by the mission".22

Since political authority is a relationship which "includes actors who claim that they are in

charge for the treatment of a particular problem and actors which accept this claim as rightful", 23 the

calls for mission leadership's greater discretion in determining operational strategies point to the

bureaucrats' desire to protect their authority in this sphere.24 Mission leadership's independence

from both the UNSC and headquarters is widely perceived as a precondition for their successful

implementation of the mandate, a point returned to in the second part of the paper.

Policy Development

Historically, member states have "considered the Secretariat simply a functional,

bureaucratic arm of the UN rather than an initiator of policy".25 While this remains largely true with

regard to polices which regulate member states' behaviour, the Secretariat is increasingly

encouraged to produce guidelines for its own activities. In peacekeeping, the capacities for doing so

have been slowly developing over the past two decades.26 The Policy, Evaluation and Training

Division, a resource shared by DPKO and the Department of Field Support, elaborates formal

policy, informal guidance, and training standards for peacekeeping personnel.27 Sometimes, policy

is requested by member states;28 in other cases, the initiative comes from the Secretariat's staff.29

21 Cammaert 2010, 250-1.22 MONUC senior staff interviewed by Holt, Taylor and Kelly (2009, 166).23 Schneider 2012, 31.24 This can hardly be regarded as a new development: already in 1995 Boutros-Ghali resented "an increasing

tendency...for the Security Council to micro-manage peace-keeping operations". UNSG 1995, 10.25 Findlay 2002, 11.26 Benner, Mergenthaler and Rotmann 2011, 7.27 It has elaborated official policy on civil affairs, formed police units, child protection, prison support, the work of

missions' HIV/AIDS units, quick-impact projects, and a host of other issues.28 For example, the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations in 2010 requested the Secretariat to outline "the

resource and capability requirements related to the implementation of protection of civilians mandates", develop "a strategic framework containing elements and parameters for mission-specific [protection] strategies", and provide "training modules for all mandated tasks, including the protection of civilians". UNGA 2010, 29-30.

29 For example, the initiative to develop policy and guidance for public information components in peacekeeping

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Although it does not have many instruments for ensuring the actual observance of its policies, as

discussed in the paper's second part, the Secretariat has authority to produce guidelines which in

theory should be followed not only by the Secretariat-hired civilian staff but also military and police

contingents supplied by the membership. The development of "manuals" for various peacekeeping

tasks involves portrayissues as technical and apolitical in nature; since technical issues are

bureaucracies' natural remit, such framing is often undertaken by bureaucracies in order to establish

or reinforce their authority over them.

A subset of the Secretariat's policies concerns its internal organisation. Although major

reform, especially expansion, has to be approved by the member states, the UNSG's directives on

the make-up of Secretariat's departments and the division of responsibilities among them have

important consequences for how peacekeeping operations are carried out. IOs' ability to "create

division of labor and specialised units" has been cited among the ways in which bureaucracies fix

meanings.30 Another subset of the Secretariat's policies concerns staffing. Since the UN

peacekeeping bureaucracy is highly politicised,31 an interesting paradox has been observed. Member

states who delegate tasks to bureaucracies in no small part because of their superior expertise can be

expected to support their professionalisation and the recruitment of highly skilled individuals. In the

UN Secretariat, however, fair geographic distribution is a more important criterium, as evidenced

by the decision to abandon the use of gratis personnel in the 1990s: while the ensuing loss of

military expertise could undermine the UN's claim to expert authority in peacekeeping (the

peacekeeping successes of the early to mid-1990s have been associated with "the cogent military

advice" offered by the gratis personnel),32 it made DPKO's activities more acceptable to a vast

proportion of the membership.33

The elaboration of policy, especially when initiated by staff, can also be regarded as an

attempt to promote policy norms regulating the behaviour of peacekeeping operations. Moreover,

by supporting missions' engagement in such thematic areas as human rights, electoral assistance,

and gender mainstreaming through policy and guidance, the Secretariat assists them in diffusing

norms to states in which a peacekeeping deployment is taking place, thus enabling it to have

influence in one of three ways identified by Barnett and Finnemore.

operations belongs to the Peace and Security Section of the Department for Public Information (DPI). Interview with a DPI source (telephone), January 2013.

30 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 30.31 Benner, Mergenthaler and Rotmann 2011, 35; Allen and Yuen 2013, 1.32 McClure and Orlov 1999, 98. 33 As Weinlich (2012, 262) informs, military officers provided free of charge to the Secretariat, mostly by the

industrialised member states and particularly the US, France and the UK, made up 85 per cent of the logistic and military planning staff and nearly a quarter of DPKO's total staff in 1992-1995. The practice was abandoned in 1997 due to the perception of the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy's Western bias among developing countries.

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Reporting

Under this heading, two distinct types of the Secretariat's activity are analysed, namely the

publication of thematic and situation-specific reports by the UNSG and the commissioning of

reports and studies from independent experts. As concerns the former, the UNSG submitted more

than a hundred reports to the UNSC in 2013, ten of which can be classified as thematic and the rest

as situation-specific. In preparing such reports, the Secretariat not only identifies problems, which is

referred to as "diagnostic framing", but also suggests solutions, which is called "prognostic

framing".34 For example, the first UNSG's report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict

presented to the UNSC in 1999 contained forty recommendations and "constituted a rather

courageous move on the part of the Office of the Secretary-General".35 It called attention to "the

intimate connections between systematic and widespread violations of the rights of civilians and

breakdowns in international peace and security",36 thus suggesting that the protection of civilians

should be addressed in the UNSC rather than the General Assembly or the Economic and Social

Council, which some states, most importantly, Russia and China, believed to be the appropriate

venues. By redefining violence against civilians as a threat to the international peace and security,

the UNSG has created a basis for the UNSC's involvement, which is an example of the IOs' ability

to fix meanings through framing.37 In his 1999 report on the protection of civilians, the UNSG also

emphasised that "[t]he Council must act rapidly" to ensure the physical protection of civilians

because "hardly a day goes by" without "the intimidation, brutalization, torture and killing of

helpless civilians in situations of armed conflict".38 This is an example of "motivational framing",39

or the IOs' ability to "galvanize sentiments as a way to mobilize and guide social action".40

While it is difficult to measure the actual effects of the UNSG's thematic reports, they do

keep issues on the UNSC's agenda. According to a representative Canada, which has been the key

advocate of the protection of civilians agenda,

a thing that is not very difficult at the UN is getting reports. The harder part is getting anybody to do anything about what it says in the report. The idea of having a periodic reporting requirement is that the issue is being brought back to the Council and they keep having to look at it, however briefly or indifferently they may do it...There is some value in

34 Snow and Benford 1988, 201.35 Dedring 2004, 62.36 UNSG 1999, 6.37 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 33.38 UNSG 1999, 24, 139 Snow and Benford 1988, 202.40 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 33. See also Ecker-Ehrhardt (2012, 470) who argues that "authorities can give mere

numbers or statistics a normative meaning, for instance, by appealing to one's duty to take action".

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these kinds of reporting requirements.41

Besides thematic reports, the UNSG submits reports on particular crises or missions. During

the Cold War, reporting used to be the key function of traditional peacekeeping missions: by

collecting information on cease-fire violations, the UN engaged in "regulation by revelation", which

involves publicising behaviour in order to prompt remedial action by states.42 As the number and

complexity of missions' responsibilities grew, situation-specific reports became more detailed. In

the past several years, "some peacekeeping missions have developed benchmarks to measure

progress in achieving all mandated tasks",43 a practice subsequently endorsed by the Special

Committee on Peacekeeping Operations.44 Constructing the benchmarks allows for the

differentiation between "success" and "failure" in peacekeeping, which feeds back on the member

states' willingness to use this tool of crisis management. DPKO might be keen on constructing

peacekeeping operations as "successful" for two reasons: while it can be expected to protect and

expand turf like any bureaucracy, UN bureaucrats have been argued to "also pursue altruistic

institutional goals such as reducing human suffering and finding ways to bring about lasting

peace".45

While reporting and the use of benchmarks are conventionally seen as tools of monitoring

and therefore control which member states exercise over bureaucracies,46 the Secretariat uses these

functions to tell the membership what is important in the peacekeeping enterprise: although the

UNSG's reports are requested by the UNSC and, in terms of structure, are closely based on the

corresponding UNSC mandates, the UNSG determines the level of attention that each thematic

issue receives. Even with regard to raw data, the UNSG's reports are among the most trusted

sources of information on a particular crisis47 (often because other actors, like NGOs, lack the

mobility and political access of the UN), despite the obscure metrics that the Secretariat uses to

assess important indicators, such a civilian deaths, and the recently discovered inconsistencies

between the numbers reported by the UNSG and missions.48 Due to the growing recognition of the

peacekeeping bureaucracy's authority to provide data on crisis situations, structures for information

collection and analysis, such as Joint Operations Centres or Joint Mission Analysis Centres, have

been created in missions (but not at the headquarters level due to the enduring suspicion about

41 Interview with Paul Heinbecker, August 2013 (Skype). 42 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 30. For an interesting analysis of the UN's attempts to promote peace with

information, see Lindley 2007.43 UNGA 2011, 36.44 UNGA 2012, 40.45 Allen and Yuen 2013, 3.46 Ibid., 2.47 Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012, 470.48 OIOS 2013.

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"intelligence-gathering" by the UN).

The issue of information-provision by the Secretariat to the UNSC has always been

controversial. During the Cold War and in its immediate aftermath, the Secretariat has been prone to

"take everything declared by states (and even sub-state actors) at face value", "base all planning on

best-case scenarios", and "shield the Security Council from unsettling information".49 The Brahimi

Report, which insisted that "[t]Secretariat must tell the Security Council what it needs to know, not

what it wants to hear",50 in essence

argued that the UN needs to develop a culture of providing advice that is sound, is based on a thorough assessment of options, independent of what might be politically popular or fits the preconceptions of the decision makers, and is free of fear of consequences for politically neutral officials -- all elements of a professional civil service. 51

Thus, in order to be perceived as a professional bureaucracy and enjoy the associated

authority, the UN Secretariat was encouraged to be more independent and forthcoming when

carrying out its information-provision functions.

The second type of activity which is analysed in this subsection is the commissioning of

reports and studies from independent experts. In so doing, the Secretariat exercises both an agenda-

setting role (by attracting attention to particular issues) and framing role (by having experts identify

deficiencies in the existing systems and practices, suggest solutions, and launch a call for action

which is perceived as informed and impartial).52 Kofi Annan appointed "high-level panels,

composed of men and women of great experience and international repute, representing different

countries and regions, to consider specific topics and to advance the agenda" on the expectation that

...their names lend credibility to an idea which might otherwise have appeared utopian or fanciful. The Secretary-General can then put it before member states with greater authority and confidence than if it had been simply his own. 53

Again, the member states decide the fate of major proposals: out of the many Brahimi

Report's recommendations, several key ones have not been implemented. Much like the Secretariat,

expert panels have to strike a delicate balance between remaining independent and making

recommendations which stand a chance of being accepted. For example, while Lakhdar Brahimi

noted with satisfaction that "members of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping themselves said

49 Findlay 2002, 11.50 UNGA 2000, x.51 Weiss and Thakur 2010, 68.52 See Weinlich (2012, 165) on the effects of the Brahimi panel's "high degree of neutrality that a UN team might have

been perceived to be wanting". See also Busch (2009, 90) for a discussion of OECD Environment Directorate's attempts to utilise external resources, including experts, to "enhance[] the credibility and authority of its output".

53 Annan 2007, xii.

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that around 64 percent of the [Brahimi panel's] recommendations came from their own reports",54

other panel members resented the extent of the consultations with member states and insisted on the

need for greater independence.55 Brahimi's approach has turned out to be effective in the end as the

panel has produced a report which has been "rather well received by states".56

The commissioning of reports from independent experts might be employed not only to

establish a new agenda but also advance an existing one which the Secretariat deems to be

progressing at an insufficient speed. To give an example of the latter, in 2009 there was a feeling

that "ten years of Council involvement in protection of civilians as a thematic issue has yielded

substantial results in establishing a normative framework" but "this progress has not been matched

by a corresponding improvement in actual situations where civilians are affected by conflict". 57

DPKO, jointly with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),

commissioned an extensive study by experts from the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think

tank, whose recommendations spurred the development of policy, guidance, and training standards

on the protection of civilians; several "of the study's findings and recommendations were included

in Security Council Resolution 1894", the fourth and the strongest thematic resolution on the

issue.58

Finally, the UNSG can play an agenda-setting role through the exercise of the power granted

to him by Article 99 of the UN Charter which stipulates that the UNSG may "bring to the attention

of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of

international peace and security".59 While this function has been discussed in the literature,60 it is not

discussed at length here.

Moral Suasion

The role of IO executive heads in general and the UNSG in particular in launching moral

appeals is well-documented.61 The majority of such studies point to the importance of executives

heads' personality as the source of variation in the authority and autonomy of their office. For

54 Brahimi 2001, 37. See also Weinlich 2012, 267-9.55 Interview with an anonymous source, December 2013 (Geneva).56 Tardy 2004, 5.57 Security Council Report 2009, 2. 58 Lilly 2010, para. 7.59 UN 1945 [2009], 60.60 See the essays in Chesterman 2007.61 On the UNSG as a norm entrepreneur, see Weiss and Thakur 2010; Johnstone 2007.

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example, it has been noted that the UNSG's "voice from his bully pulpit could, in the hands of a fair,

respected person, [could] be of enormous influence".62 Kofi Annan specifically has been noted for

his skillful use of moral suasion tactics:

Kofi Annan was the most effective Secretary-General since Dag Hammarskjöld and maybe ever. The UN Secretary-General has no power. He's got the responsibility of making sure that the Secretariat is paid and the lights are on and the heating works -- the sort of house-keeping -- and he has a pulpit, what they call a "bully pulpit" in England. He was the most effective in invoking the moral dimensions of issues.63

What is clear, however, is that by resorting to moral suasion, international bureaucrats may

both put issues on the agenda, engage in framing (most frequently motivational framing), and

attempt to persuade states and non-state actors of the efficiency or appropriateness of a certain

course of action. Not only the UNSG can play this role. The Under-Secretaries-General for

Peacekeeping (the head of DPKO) and Humanitarian Affairs (the head of OCHA) also speak with

authority on a variety of international issues. For example, the authority of the then head of OCHA,

Jan Egeland, was affirmed by the US Congress when it cited Egeland speaking about Darfur as "the

world's worst humanitarian catastrophe" as evidence for the "urgency of the humanitarian situation"

there.64

Authority Vis-à-vis the Field

Having discussed how the UN Secretariat constructs and practises its authority vis-à-vis the

member states, this section looks at the relationships of authority which exist between New York

and the field. As briefly alluded to above, the policy and guidance produced by the Secretariat are

not always implemented by missions, which often insist on the need for independence from both

decision-making bodies and organisation's headquarters. The UN peacekeeping bureaucracy has

been characterised as fragile (because of the high turnover of civilian staff and troops and police

owing primary allegiance to their home country), extremely decentralised (given that ninety-five

percent of personnel are deployed in missions which are distant from New York and often in a

different time zone), and characterised by the lack of resources headquarters have for supporting

field missions.65 How the Secretariat constructs authority over the field in these highly constraining

62 Moris B. Abram, "The Significant Uses of the Secretary-General", Tribune de Genève, 21-22 March 1998, available from <http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1317489&ct=1747935>, acccessed 16 March 2014.

63 Interview with Paul Heinbecker, August 2013 (Skype). The phrase "bully pulpit" is Theodore Roosevelt's and has been frequently employed to describe this role of the UNSG. See, for instance, Tharoor 2007, 37; Trinh 2007, passim.

64 Ecker-Erhardt 2012, 451.65 Benner, Mergenthaler and Rotmann (2011, 224) report a ratio of headquarters staff to field personnel of nearly 1 to

12

circumstances and how mission contest Secretariat's authority or attempt to establish their own is

therefore an interesting question.

Mission's Operational Activities

The foundational military guidance documents which the Secretariat prepares on the basis of

a UNSC mandate, such as rules of engagement and mission concepts, leave a leeway for mission

leadership to decide on the practicalities of mandate implementation. 66 While this is an operational

necessity -- after all, only mission leadership's profound knowledge of local dynamics and realities

can serve as a basis for a credible engagement with the local parties -- the Secretariat's balances its

roles in directing, supporting, and overseeing missions by establishing a relationship of both

authority and trust with the field. It is often the interpretation of the rules of engagement or concepts

of operations by force or battalion commanders which determines how missions fulfill their military

duties (the same applies to heads of missions' thematic components with regard to civilian tasks).

With regard to the protection of civilians, for example, it has been observed that "[c]onservative,

risk-averse UN officials or commanders (often with the support of their governments) will interpret

the mandate [which can be understood in the broad sense referring both to the UNSC authorisation

and the Secretariat-produced foundational military guidance] as a 'ceiling'", while "creative and

decisive commanders will read the mandate as a 'floor, breaking it down in operational goals and

using all their capabilities to implement the 'intent' of the mandate".67 Interestingly, that "[s]enior

civilian and military mission leaders alike demonstrate no consistency in either their level of

understanding or their relative prioritisation of the issue of protection of civilians"68 has been

presented by peacekeeping experts as a problem to be addressed rather than as a natural outcome of

the delegation of authority to the field.

Given the considerable role that senior mission leadership plays, one of the most significant

UNSG's decisions is the appointment of the head of mission, usually a Special Representative of the

Secretary-General (SRSG), and the force commander.69 SRSGs enjoy delegated authority from the

UNSG but also may have authority in the eyes of member states and local parties in view of their

individual characteristics: their appointment is a highly politicised process and candidates

acceptable to both major powers and the host government have the highest chances of being

100.66 Findlay 2002, 10.67 DPKO, 15-6.68 Holt, Taylor and Kelly 2007, 9.69 As Picco (1994, 16) observes, "the Secretary-General's choice of colleagues and special representatives is crucial".

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appointed. Thus, SRSGs' authority originates both from such acceptance and their personal

standing: SRSGs have been referred to as "eleventh-hour experts" who "only add credibility if they

bring an overwhelming political prestige of their own".70 Recently, there have been calls for SRSGs

with greater expertise (for example, the Brahimi Report has observed that "[a]lthough political and

geographic considerations are legitimate, in the Panel's view managerial talent and experience must

be accorded at least equal priority in choosing mission leadership")71 which points to the UN

bureaucracy's desire to strengthen its claim to expert authority also through field-level

appointments.

SRSGs perform similar roles to the ones played by the UNSG in terms of agenda-setting,

framing, and norm diffusion. For example, SRSGs have reportedly been very enthusiastic about

being invited to brief the UNSC which "enabled them to highlight issues of importance and to go

into much more depth on key topics"72 and thus engage in agenda-setting and framing. As concerns

norm diffusion, SRSGs have been described as being entrepreneurial when they adjudicate between

competing global norms which apply to a particular on-the-ground situation and thus contribute to

the institutionalisation of certain norms but not others.73

The Implementation of Policy and Guidance

While a variety of policy instruments developed by the Secretariat to assist missions with

their duties has been discussed above, the question remains as to how they are received by field

staff and whether they are actually implemented. As a senior Department of Public Information

official reportedly wondered with regard to Standard Operating Procedures and Deployment

Capabilities for Public Information Offices in the Field produced in the early 2000s, "who knows if

anyone reads it anyway?"74 In fact, missions consistently emphasise the need for their

independence: it is only recently that an understanding started to develop that although "[t]here may

be 'no substitute for experience'...in today's dynamic environment of complex peace operations even

experience is devalued in the face of up to date training and proper planning".75 Studies of UN

peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions have demonstrated both "the importance of substantial

70 Picco 1994, 17.71 UNGA 2000, 16.72 Peck 2004, 332.73 Karlsrud 2013.74 Loewenberg 2006, 13.75 International Forum for the Challenges of Peace Operations 2011, 2. Benner, Mergenthaler and Rotmann (2011, 2)

have also documented significant resistance within DPKO, at least in the early 1990s, to the professionalisation and the development of institutional memory.

14

decision autonomy in the 'field' to allow for context-sensitive and flexible interventions"76 as well as

a perception among member states that for a peacekeeping operation to succeed, the UNSC should

issue less specific authorisations to allow DPKO to "innovate or adjust its mandate to achieve that

outcome".77 With regard to public information, the slow bureaucratic culture of the Secretariat has

been often contrasted with "the new developing 'can-do' ethos of United Nations missions staff",78

and in some missions success has been attributed to the "forceful and aware head of mission being

allowed to have his own way in executing an effective public affairs programme".79

Headquarters units charged with producing policy have described their function as guidance

or support rather than direction or oversight. For example, a member of the protection of civilians

team has described the relevance of the team in terms of "having some people at headquarters who

can support [missions in] navigating between all the different challenges and understandings" and

"helping them to connect the policy side of things...and the practical implementation on their end",

which applies especially to working-level staff because senior leadership has more formal channels

for seeking guidance.80 Similarly, when asked how DPKO can exercise authority over missions, a

member of the Peace and Security Section at the Department of Public Information has argued the

following:

DPKO does not really have authority. Missions are quite independent. The better word is support. [Headquarters] cannot really authorise a peacekeeping mission to do something. They can strongly recommend it and the mission will probably do that because headquarters carry a lot of clout, just the idea of headquarters. 81

To balance the desire for consistency across missions with the need to leave mission

leadership space for maneuver, the Secretariat has recently focused on producing frameworks or

model strategies, such as the Framework for Drafting Comprehensive Protection of Civilians

Strategies or the Model Public Information Concept of Operations. Yet missions' willingness to

follow the Secretariat's advice on the elaboration of specific concepts or strategies still depends on

senior leadership:

Everything depends on a missions, on personalities...In a number of missions, such documents [PI strategy and concept of operations] exist and they are implemented; in other missions such documents exist but few pay attention to them; and in some operations such documents do not exist at all because the need for them is not felt. The human factor is very important, and everything depends on the head of mission.82

Overall, while the development of policy and guidance by DPKO has been welcomed by

76 Herrhausen 2009; as cited in Bossong and Benner 2010, 1078.77 Allen and Yuen 2013, 9.78 Azimi 1995, 42.79 Lehmann 1999, 148.80 Interview with Aurelie Proust (New York, January 2013).81 Interview with Susan Manuel (New York, January 2013).82 Interview with Mikhail Seliankin (telephone), January 2013, author's translation.

15

some officials (for example, a mission planner has reported "us[ing] very much the different

guidelines and the policy framework produced by DPKO"83 in the work on a protection of civilians

strategy for an African peacekeeping mission), others have emphasised that operations "need to

have a degree of flexibility to adapt to the circumstances within the overall guiding principles

established by the legislative bodies, the Council and eventually the General Assembly".84

Missions' opposition to standardisation has interesting theoretical implications. The basis of

bureaucracies' rational-legal authority is their ability to make and implement "general, impersonal

rules"85 which reduce arbitrariness. However, this applies to the UN peacekeeping authority only to

a certain extent. Among staff, the emphasis on individual agency rather than structures and

procedures has always been substantial, as evidenced by a quote from Giandomenico Picco, former

UN Assistant Secretary for General Political Affairs and UN hostage negotiator in Lebanon, that

"[s]tructures are useful but subsidiary. They do not solve problems, people do, individuals do,

starting from an idea and a vision".86

Reporting

While the Secretariat and the SRSG are in touch on a daily basis, there are few formal

reporting requirements that missions are expected to fulfill. Since the early 2000s, heads of mission

(and sometimes other senior leaders as well) submit an end-of-mission report with a view to

institutionalising lessons learned. Like in the case with the UNSG's reporting function, mission

leadership may highlight certain issues in their end-of-mission reports while paying less attention to

others. For example, to promote a more consistent engagement in the protection of civilians, the

UNSG and the heads of OCHA and DPKO have been called upon to "ensure that the end-of-

mission report format include a section on POC for all senior staff".87 Missions also submit annual

budget performance reports to the General Assembly where they also decide how much attention to

devote to a particular issue. For example, it has been recently observed that "missions have made

considerable progress in incorporating information related to the protection of civilians into their

performance reports, although this has been uneven and, likely, influenced by the missions' specific

contexts and challenges".88

83 Interview with Francois Grignon (New York, January 2013).84 Interview with Alan Doss (Geneva, November 2013).85 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 21.86 Picco 1994, 17.87 Holt, Taylor and Kelly 2009, 221.88 OIOS 2013, 2.

16

Conclusion

Having discussed how the UN peacekeeping bureaucracy exercises authority across the four

functions, this paper concludes with a discussion of current enquiry's limitations and direction for

further research. For example, its important weakness is that informal roles played by bureaucrats --

in forging coalitions, transmitting information, and exerting behind-the-scenes influence -- are not

accounted for. Another interesting avenue for future research is the analysis of the interaction

effects among different sources of IO authority. For instance, it would be intuitive to expect an

increase in bureaucracy's perceived expert authority to lead to an increase in delegated authority (as

discussed above, an important reason behind delegating tasks to IOs is the latter's expertise in

managing complexity). However, the return to peacekeeping in the early 2000s has preceded rather

than followed the increase in the Secretariat's ability to learn lessons and produce policy and

guidance. In fact, Allen and Yuen observe that as peacekeeping operations' tasks "have become

more complex, the UNSC has required an expanded vocabulary as well as clearer chains of

command, more detailed descriptions of responsibilities, and more opportunities for external review

of mission activities",89 thus suggesting the opposite dynamics.

How an increase in expert authority impacts upon IOs' moral authority is less clear. The

development of in-depth expertise in one issue area might be suspected to lead to excessive affinity

with a particular agenda and therefore compromise bureaucrats' impartiality. Similarly, growing

expertise might have consequences for IOs' rational-legal authority: since experts can be

hypothesised to rely less on rules and standardised procedures but deploy knowledge to produce

innovative solutions, staff activism might become detrimental to IO's claim to rational-legal

authority, as briefly alluded to above.

The fact that this discussion generates more questions than answers points to the need for a

more nuanced understanding of the construction of authority in IOs in general and the UN

Secretariat in particular. It also illustrates the multifacetedness of the concept of IO authority: the

UN Secretariat's authority is constructed vis-à-vis various audiences (the membership, the field, and

perhaps also parties to the conflict), is practised across various functions (setting missions'

operational parameters, policy development, reporting, and moral suasion), and stems from various

sources with a potential for interaction among them. Future research on the issue will require an in-

depth knowledge of the institution combined with methodological creativity.

89 Allen and Yuen 2013, 10.

17

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