Orchestrating international action
Teresa Whitfield (2008)
The coordination of various external interventions in a peace process has often proved difficult. Teresa Whitfield explores the ways in which coordination or complementarity between external actors can result in a coherent application of policy instruments, focusing on the obstacles to and potential for informal mechanisms to coordinate diplomatic activity in support of peacemaking. Coordination problems are often rooted in, inter alia , the different interests, agendas and institutional cultures of external actors, often leading to a confusing or contradictory basket of actions. Whitfeld reviews various informal structures and coordination mechanisms (contact groups, groups of friends, friends of a country, implementation and monitoring groups and coordination mechanisms for assistance). She also identifies circumstances within which the potential benefits from the engagement of a small group of states in an ongoing peace process have been achieved, as well as reasons why they may not. She concludes that a group structure or mechanism, however effective, must remain at the service of, and not a substitute for, strategies for international engagement in a peace process.
