ABSTRACT
A common critique of postwar statebuilding operations is that they suffer from a lack of coordination among the myriad international actors involved in these missions. Stories abound of international agencies duplicating efforts or even working at cross-purposes, sometimes with limited knowledge of each other’s activities; and calls for improved coordination have become something of a mantra among scholars and practitioners of statebuilding.1
But these oft-repeated calls may conceal as much as they reveal about the dilemmas of statebuilding. Like other mantras, this one offers soothing simplicity in the face of disturbing complexity. Lurking behind the organizational discontinuities of statebuilding are deeper disagreements and uncertainties about the means and ends of this enterprise, many of which are described in the other chapters of this volume. Getting statebuilding agencies to work smoothly together is, of course, a necessary condition for successful international action (however the goals of that action may be defined), but it is too easy to prescribe improved coordination as a remedy for the shortcomings and contradictions of statebuilding, which run much deeper. Understanding the nature of the coordination problem-what it reveals,
and what it hides-is a first step in this analysis. The second step is to explore the challenges of actually improving coordination among international statebuilders. Calls for greater coordination rarely delve into the details: Who will do the coordinating? How, when, and under what auspices? Just starting to answer these questions reveals the complexities of coordination. While there are compelling reasons to strengthen cooperation among the main international actors involved in statebuilding, there are also many pitfalls to avoid. Rather than conceiving of “more coordination” as an absolute good, this chapter argues that effective coordination requires striking a balance between competing imperatives, which are shaped by the characteristics of the environment and of the actors to be coordinated. Indeed, in the environment of statebuilding, there is a real risk that too little, too much, or the wrong type of coordination could do more harm than good. In making this argument, I draw upon organizational theory-in particular, the distinction between markets, hierarchies, and networks.2
