A "garbage can model" of un peacekeeping

Global Governance

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 79-97

  Lipson, Michael ^a  

^a Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science   (Canada)

Author keywords

Agenda setting; Garbage can model; International organizations; Peacekeeping; United Nations

Indexed keywords

EID: 33947235585     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01301006     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. Figures compiled from United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations web site, www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/home.shtml (accessed 3 March 2004).
2. The 1994 figure included several thousand civilian personnel. United Nations, The Blue Helmets: A Review of United Nations Peace-keeping, 3rd ed. (New York: United Nations, 1996), p. 4.
3. The 1988 figures are from Peter Lewis, "A Short History of United Nations Peacekeeping," in Barbara Benton, ed., Soldiers for Peace: Fifty Years of United Nations Peacekeeping (New York: Facts on File, 1996), p. 27;
4. John Hillen, "Picking Up U.N. Peacekeeping's Pieces: Knowing When to Say When," Foreign Affairs 77, no. 4 (July/August 1998): 96.
5. use the term second-generation peacekeeping to encompass the entire spectrum of what others call multidimensional, second-generation, and third-generation peacekeeping operations. In this article, the term refers to post-Cold War missions that, to a significant extent, undertake peace enforcement or peacebuilding activities in addition to traditional interposition and truce observation functions. Typologies of peacekeeping generations include Michael W. Doyle, UN Peacekeeping in Cambodia: UNTAC's Civil Mandate (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 25-26;
6. Karen A. Mingst and Margaret P. Karns, The United Nations in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), pp. 78-108;
7. Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel, "Cascading Generations of Peacekeeping: Across the Mogadishu Line to Kosovo and Timor," in Thakur and Schnabel, eds., United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Ad Hoc Missions, Permanent Engagement (New York: United Nations University Press, 2001), pp. 3-25;
8. John Mackinlay and Jarat Chopra, "Second Generation Multinational Operations," The Washington Quarterly 15, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 113-131;
9. Marrack Goulding, "The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping," International Affairs 69, no. 3 (July 1993): 451-464.
10. William J. Durch, ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping: Case Studies and Comparative Analysis (New York: St. Martin's, 1993);
11. Paul F. Diehl, International Peacekeeping, updated ed. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994);
12. Steven R. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping: Building Peace in Lands of Conflict After the Cold War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995);
13. Mingst and Karns, The United Nations in the Post-Cold War Era.
14. For a review and critique of the literature, see Jonathan Bendor, Terry M. Moe, and Kenneth W. Shotts, "Recycling the Garbage Can: An Assessment of the Research Program," American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (March 2001): 169-190.
15. For a rebuttal, see Johan P. Olsen, "Garbage Cans, New Institutionalism, and the Study of Politics," American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (March 2001): 191-198.
16. For applications to multilateral settings, see Barbara A. Cherry, "The Irony of Telecommunications Deregulation: Assessing the Role Reversal in U.S. and EU Policy," in Ingo Vogelsang and Bejamin M. Compaine, eds., The Internet Upheaval: Raising Questions, Seeking Answers in Communications Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 355-385;
17. Jeremy J. Richardson, "Policy-Making in the EU: Interests, Ideas, and Garbage Cans of Primeval Soup," in Jeremy J Richardson, ed., European Union: Power and Policy-Making, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 1-26;
18. Brian W. Tomlin, "Negotiating the Inter-American Democratic Charter: A Garbage Can Model of Multilateral Negotiation," paper presented at the Conference on the Inter-American Democratic Charter: Challenges and Opportunities, The Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, 12-13 November 2002.
19. Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen, "A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice," Administrative Science Quarterly 17, no. 1 (March 1972): 1-25;
20. John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York: Harper Collins, 1984);
21. John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1995);
22. Nikoalos Zahariadis, Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003).
23. For variations on this theme, see Mats R. Berdal, Whither UN Peacekeeping? Adelphi Paper 281 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1993);
24. Durch, ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping;
25. Goulding, "The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping";
26. Mingst and Karns, The United Nations in the Post-Cold War Era;
27. Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, and Roger A. Coate, The United Nations and Changing World Politics, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).
28. Peter Viggo Jakobsen, "The Transformation of United Nations Peace Operations in the 1990s: Adding Globalization to the Conventional 'End of the Cold War Explanation,'" Cooperation and Conflict 37, no. 3 (September 2002): 268.
29. United Nations, The Blue Helmets, p. 4.
30. A few studies have acknowledged and addressed the problem of explaining the emergence of second-generation peacekeeping, going beyond what Jakobsen calls the "conventional 'end of the Cold War explanation.'" These analyses fall into three broad categories: normative and ideational explanations, offered by Michael Barnett and Roland Paris; incrementalist and rationalist models of organizational decisionmaking, presented by Christopher Daase and Anna Fosdick; and Peter Viggo Jakobsen's explanation in terms of globalization pressures. The garbage can explanation is complementary to the normative-ideational accounts, identifying causal mechanisms that translated intersubjective factors into changed practices. It represents an alternative explanation to the incrementalist-rationalist and globalization models. See Michael N. Barnett, "The New UN Politics of Peace: From Juridical Sovereignty to Empirical Sovereignty," Global Governance 1, no. 1 (January-March 1995): 79-97;
31. Roland Paris, "Peacekeeping and the Constraints of Global Culture," European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 3 (September 2003): 441-473;
32. Christopher Daase, "Spontaneous Institutions: Peacekeeping as an International Convention," in Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane, and Celeste A. Wallander, eds., Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions Over Time and Space (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 223-258;
33. Anna Watson Fosdick, "Confused, Pragmatic, Ambitious, or Politically Savvy? Examinations of Early Post-Cold War Peacekeeping Decisionmaking" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997);
34. Anna Fosdick, "Using Organization Theory to Understand International Organizations: Four Models of Multilateral Decision Making," International Public Management Journal 2, no. 2 (1999): 327-370;
35. Jakobsen, "The Transformation of United Nations Peace Operations in the 1990s."
36. Cohen et al., "A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice"; Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies.
37. Cohen et al., "A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice," 3. For criticisms of the assumption of relative stream independence.
38. see Gary Mucciaroni, "The Garbage Can Model and the Study of Policy Making: A Critique," Polity 24, no. 3 (Spring 1992): 472-481.
39. and Bendor et al., "Recycling the Garbage Can," p. 172.
40. Olsen and Kingdon defend the relative independence assumption: Olsen, "Garbage Cans, New Institutionalism, and the Study of Politics," pp. 191-192;
41. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd ed., pp. 227-229.
42. Cohen et al., "A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice," p. 3.
43. Ibid.
44. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989), pp. 11-14.
45. Cohen et al., "A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice," p. 2.
46. Lee Sproull, Stephen Weiner, and David Wolf, Organizing an Anarchy: Belief, Bureaucracy, and Politics in the National Institute of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978);
47. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations (Bergen, Norway: Universitetsforlaget, 1979);
48. James G. March and Roger Weissinger-Baylon, eds., Ambiguity and Command: Organizational Perspectives on Military Decision Making (Mansfield, MA: Pitman Publishing, 1986).
49. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies.
50. Ibid., pp. 173-174.
51. Ibid., p. 185.
52. This may partially explain the early 1990s overloading of UN peacekeeping.
53. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, pp. 122-151.
54. Ibid., pp. 138-146.
55. These characteristics should be particularly evident in open system organizations like the UN, which should be especially prone to garbage can processes. On open systems, see W. Richard Scott, Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998).
56. Michael N. Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 32.
57. Marrack Goulding, Peacemonger (London: John Murray, 2002), pp. 10-11.
58. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 13.
59. Espen Barth Eide, Anja Therese Kaspersen, Randolph Kent, and Karen von Hippel, Report on Integrated Missions: Practical Perspectives and Recommendations. Independent Study for the Expanded UN ECHA Core Group May 2005 (New York: United Nations, 2005), p. 35.
60. William J. Durch, "Running the Show: Planning and Implementation," in Durch, ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, pp. 59-75;
61. Thomas G. Weiss, "Humanitarian Shell Games: Whither UN Reform?" Security Dialogue 29, no. 1 (March 1998): 9-23.
62. United Nations, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations A/55/305-S/2000/809. (New York: United Nations, 2000).
63. Zahariadis, Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy, p. 3.
64. In some discussions ambiguity is defined in terms of these characteristics. March and Weissinger-Baylon, eds., Ambiguity and Command, p. 1;
65. March and Olsen, Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations, p. 12.
66. Zahariadis, Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy, pp. 4-5.
67. Barnett, "The New UN Politics of Peace."
68. On frequency of ethnic conflicts, see Yahya Sadowski, "Think Again: Ethnic Conflict," Foreign Policy No. 111 (Summer 1998): 12-21.
69. On humanitarian norms and media influence, see Peter Viggo Jakobsen, "National Interest, Humanitarianism, or CNN: What Triggers UN Peace Enforcement After the Cold War?" Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 2 (May 1996): 205-215.
70. Roland Paris, "Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism," International Security 22, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 54-89.
71. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping, pp. 91-95;
72. Thomas F. Arnold and Heather R. Ruland, "The 'Prehistory' of Peacekeeping," in Benton, ed., Soldiers for Peace, pp. 10-23.
73. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping, pp. 98-102.
74. Daase, "Spontaneous Institutions," p. 246.
75. Urquhart, "Beyond the Sheriff's Posse," p. 201.
76. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 143.
77. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping, pp. 118-119;
78. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 175.
79. Page Fortna argues, however, that the UN failed to take full advantage of the information it gathered in this period, and that operational plans grew "stale" during the long delay. See Virginia Page Fortna, "United Nations Transition Assistance Group," in Durch, ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, pp. 363-364.
80. Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War," International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 185-214.
81. The incorporation of normative-ideational factors within a garbage can model points to the connections between the GCM and social constructivist theories. Intersubjective environments, within which garbage can processes operate, can constitute actors as empowered to couple streams, constrain which streams may be appropriately coupled, and socialize actors in ways that reduce the randomness characteristic of garbage can processes. I thank Matthew Hoffmann for suggesting the last point. The others are discussed by Charles R. Perrow, Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), pp. 137-140;
82. Charles R. Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies, updated ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 373-380;
83. Carol A. Heimer and Arthur L. Stinchcombe, "Remodeling the Garbage Can: Implications of the Origins of Items in Decision Streams," in Morten Egeberg and Per Lægrid, eds., Organizing Political Institutions: Essays for Johan P. Olsen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget AS, 1999), pp. 27-57;
84. Paris, "Peacekeeping and the Constraints of Global Culture."
85. Barnett, "The New UN Politics of Peace"; Paris, "Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism."
86. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to the statement adopted by the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992, UN Doc. A/47/277-S/24111 (17 June 1992), available at www.un.org/docs/SG/agpeace.html.
87. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping, p. 144;
88. Richard Solomon, Exiting Indochina: U.S. Leadership of the Cambodia Settlement and Normalization with Vietnam (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2000), p. 34.
89. Jin Song, "The Political Dynamics of the Peacemaking Process in Cambodia," in Michael W. Doyle, Ian Johnstone, and Robert C. Orr, eds., Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 69-70.
90. Margaret P. Karns, "Ad Hoc Multilateral Diplomacy: The United States, the Contact Group, and Namibia," International Organization 41, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 100;
91. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), p. 276.
92. Vance, Hard Choices, p. 279.
93. Lise Morjé Howard, "UN Peace Implementation in Namibia: The Causes of Success," International Peacekeeping 9, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 110-111.
94. William J. Durch, "Getting Involved: The Political-Military Context," in Durch, ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping, pp. 17-22.
95. Fortna, "United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia"; Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping, pp. 138-155;
96. James A. Schear, "Riding the Tiger: The United Nations and Cambodia's Struggle for Peace," in Durch, ed., UN Peacekeeping, American Policy, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s, pp. 135-192.
97. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping, pp. 124-126.
98. Ibid., pp. 126-132.
99. Alexskandr M. Belongov, "Soviet Peace-keeping Proposals," Survival 32, no. 3 (May/June 1990): 206-211;
100. Norton and Weiss, "Superpowers and Peace-keepers."
101. Belongov, "Soviet Peace-keeping Proposals";
102. Uruquhart, "Beyond the Sheriff's Posse," p. 201.
103. William J. Durch, Victoria K. Holt, Caroline R. Earle, and Moira K. Shanahan, The Brahimi Report and the Future of UN Peace Operations (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003).