Helhetlig tilnærming – krisehåndteringens universalklister?: En komparativ studie av konseptene til FN, NATO og EU og deres mulige påvirkning på norsk politisk styring
Master thesis

View/ Open
Permanent link
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/99960Issue date
2009Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
- Forsvarets høgskole [239]
Abstract
In this thesis I set out to study the possible influence of decisions taken in international
organisations, on political decisions in member state governments. The main idea behind this is
that members of an international organisation need to follow the decisions agreed upon in the
same organisation, if a comprehensive approach is to be successfully executed.
To do this, I first compared the concepts of comprehensive approach as they appear in UN,
NATO and EU in the spring of 2009. I defined that the degree of cohesion in execution could be
predisposed by the degree of influence member states had on the decision making process, and
by the way the execution was financed. If member states had a low degree of influence on
decisions, and execution was financed indirectly by member states, cohesion could be rather low.
The highest degree of cohesion would be found where influence was high, and if execution was
financed directly by the organisations own budget.
My next step was to find out which resources the organisation could form up itself, and which
resources they were dependent on to coordinate with other actors. My view was that cohesion
would be higher if the resources needed came from within the organisation. With these
standards, EU came out on top, with a high degree of member states’ influence on decisions,
direct financing of civilian operations and a diversity of resources within all instruments of
power. UN, with its low outcome on member states’ influence on decisions, particularly in the
Security Council, had a less positive cohesion in execution. NATO came out with the lowest
score on cohesion, since they were dependent on a number of external actors to be truly
comprehensive.
Based on this, I looked at how the Norwegian government fulfilled its commitments on decisions
taken in UN and NATO, based on Norwegian development aid and military contributions to
Afghanistan in 2005 and 2008. Norway fulfilled all its obligations, except one, UN’s appeal for
training of the Afghan Army in 2005.
My main conclusion in this thesis is that national governments may be influenced by decisions
taken in international organisations of which they are members. This is based on the fact that the
Norwegian government followed the requests from UN and NATO in 2005 and 2008, in all but
one request. Hence, this may be the case for other governments too. And in my world,
governments need to do so, if a comprehensive approach in international crises management
shall be anything but a panacea to be toasted for in political principal speeches.