UN Peace Operations and International Policing - Negotiating Complexity, Assessing Impact and Learning to Learn (Hardcover)

This book addresses the important question of how the UN should monitor and evaluate the impact of police in its peace operations. United Nations (UN) peace operations are a vital component of the international community's conflict management toolkit. They have evolved significantly since the end of the Cold War and one of the foremost developments has been the rise of UN policing (UNPOL), growing dramatically in number and evolving from a passive observation role to include frontline law enforcement activities and an intrusive institutional reform and capacity-building functions.However, attempts to ascertain the impact of UNPOL endeavours towards these goals have proven inadequate for reflecting and capturing the complex change processes at play. This book has two main objectives therefore. First, to investigate the ways in which the effects of peace operations - and UNPOL in particular - are monitored and evaluated. Second, to develop a framework for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) that enables more effective impact assessment in order to contribute to organisational learning in the field and at headquarters.Part 1 of the book explores how UN policing and M&E are currently undertaken and identifies the problems and challenges associated with conventional practice. Part 2 applies insights from complexity theory to develop an innovative framework for holistic M&E designed to overcome those shortcomings. In part 3 the utility and relevance of the framework is tested through case study field research in Liberia with a wide cross-section of stakeholders in the mission area. Empirical evidence is presented to demonstrate a number of strengths with the proposed framework when compared to existing approaches, but also to highlight a number of potential weaknesses that warrant revision and refinement. The central claim of the book is that to realise multiple potentialities M&E needs to be both re-thought and re-positioned. First, new epistemological thinking needs to be brought to bear in the focus and design of an approach and associated selection of methods for its execution; and second, it needs to be embedded in the machinery of peace operations such that it is an intrinsic part of the way they are planned and managed.The book demonstrates that an approach grounded in these principles has the potential to overcome the shortcomings synonymous with extant orthodoxy. Furthermore, it is argued that by enhancing the relationship between field-level M&E and organisational learning, the findings of this research can make an important contribution to the pursuit of more professional and effective UN peace operations. This recognition also constitutes the key contribution of the book as it offers an antidote to the frailties of current orthodoxy and presents the opportunity for improved practice for UNPOL in peace operations as well as related fields. This book will be of much interest to students of peace operations, conflict management, policing, security studies and IR in general.