The Comprehensive Approach to Postconflict Reconstruction (RC44.03)

The session on comprehensive approach to postconflict reconstruction was chaired by Prof. Benjamin Zyla, and it consisted of 3 presentations by Dr. Steffen Eckhard on "European Union Crisis Management in Afghanistan and Kosovo: Comprehensive but Still Not Effective," by Mr. Eric Dion on "Synergy – A Theory of the Comprehensive Approach in Practice: A case-study of Canada’s Engagement in Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2014," and by Prof. Benjamin Zyla on "The Comprehensive Approach in Comparison: Canada, US, UK and Norway in Comparison."

The literature suggests that donor countries working in fragile states like Afghanistan adopt a Comprehensive Approach (CA) to post-conflict reconstruction to be effective and coherent in their responses (i.e. Paris, 2004; Patrick & Brown 2007) [the term CA is often used interchangeably with the term ‘whole- of-government approach’]. Specifically, the CA is calling on improving coherence by way of attaining greater interaction, coordination, and understanding among federal agencies and departments to realize policy objectives (especially in the foreign, defence, and development policy domain), recognizing distinct departmental cultures, and overall achieving more coherent decision- and policy-making process (OECD 2006).

While the literature helps us to pinpoint the factors that led to the CA’s incoherence, the analysis of the factors that led to it remains fragmented and lacks a deeper, systematic analysis regarding the factors that causally led to this policy incoherence in the first place, at which bureaucratic level of the government machinery (and why), involving which individuals, interests (or preferences), bureaucratic cultures, and hierarchies etc...