Conclusion

Enhancing aid, peace, or state stability around the world is often conducted by a bewildering multitude of IGOs, NGOs, and state agencies. The dense institutional space resulting from the ‘Babel’ of these organisations has also given rise to the problem of coordination.

One central feature of the coordination problem is that it usually reflects more fundamental political conflicts such as competition for resources, dis­agreement about strategic objectives, or lack of trust in institutions. These issues, however, are rarely mentioned and represented in the coordina­tion game. This is so because of the depoliticising effects of the coordina­tion myth. Rationalised myths define new domains of activity and suggest appropriate procedures to deal rationally with an organising situation. Thus, the usual approach to tackle the lack of coordination has been the creation of coordinating bureaucracies. As a result, political problems are proceduralised or framed by the participating actors in procedural terms, namely as the ‘coordination problem’ (Paris 2009, 59). This represen­tation is mainly produced by the agencies themselves, because organisa­tions tend to define solutions to problems in ways that favour formal and procedural action—values that legitimise them (Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 9).

Thus, the rule of coordination has become something of a ‘happy peace formula’ for a consensual approach that tends to disguise more conten­tious and controversial issues by seeking rationalised solutions through the technical jargon of coordination. The emphasis on coordination across policy fields can be seen as yet another stage in the global rationalisation of relations among actors. The effect, however, is a denial of the political and conflictive dimension underlying the coordination problem in interven­tion. Chantal Mouffe has interpreted the attempt at reconciling conflict­ing interests and values as a post-political vision and a misguided search for a rational consensus. If this is to be avoided, there must be space that allows for contestation and the confrontation of different political projects (Mouffe 2005, 3-4). Acknowledging the deeply political dimension of intervention means that its inherent conflicts also need to be provided with a legitimate form of expression:

We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground (Wittgenstein 1953, 46e).

Acknowledgements This is a shortened and revised version of my article “Coordinating intervention: International actors and local ‘partners’ between rit­ual and decoupling.” Journal of Intervention and State-building, 2015, 9 (1):89-111.

Notes

1. On the relevance of sociological institutionalism for IR, see Finnemore (1996) and Buhari-Gulmez (2010). On the development of sociological institutionalism as a research program, see Jepperson (2002).

2. I use the terms ‘institutional rule’ and ‘rationalised myth’ or ‘institution­alised myth’ synonymously. See the following section for a clarification of the meaning of these terms.

3. For other approaches on the role of myths and organisations, see Brown (1994) and Yanow (1992); cf. Bliesemann de Guevara, Chap. 2.

4. However, these organisations are also special cases as they are multifunc­tional and need to coordinate internally and externally.

5. Accra Agenda, p. 3. Available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ ACCRAEXT/Resources/4 70 0790-1217425 8 660 3 8/AAA-4- SEPTEMBER-FINAL-16h00.pdf (accessed May 14, 2013).

6. Available at http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/busanpartnership. htm (accessed July 14, 2013).

7. Data compiled from the Calendar of Sector Working Group Meetings. Available at http://www.dsdc.gov.al (Accessed May 7, 2013).

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