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

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.