Interagency and Civil-Military Coordination: Lessons From a Survey of Afghanistan and Liberia

Abstract

Existing field coordination processes commonly have two main outcomes: they result in mere “information sharing” and have no real coordination impact; conversely, they produce a kind of forced, “false coherence”, referring to superficial changes in language and formal adherence to new frameworks, driven by the agenda of the actor with the most power and resources. Some key factors contributing to this problem; coordination processes often assume agreement among actors on strategies and don’t provide opportunities for inclusive and meaningful multi-stakeholder dialogue; power asymmetries block real dialogue; funding relationships and competition limit the ability of existing coordination processes to achieve some level of common intent; groups hold different notions of the purpose of coordination in the first place, ranging widely from greater centralized control, to democratic consensus-building, to credible, reliable information exchange. However, in working “side by side” in such settings and preserving their autonomous mandates and roles, civilian and military agencies can still improve the way their efforts link up and support the bigger peace.