Peacekeeping: Organized Hypocrisy?

To what extent are recent UN peacekeeping reforms instances of organized hypocrisy? Organization theorists have demonstrated that the formal structures and organizational behavior of bureaucracies are often only loosely coupled. Organizations must often respond to conflicting environmental pressures to both produce efficiently and conform with standards of legitimacy in their field. Formal structures are established to symbolically conform to standards of legitimacy. At the same time, bureaucratic behavior largely disconnected from such structures is driven by the interests of organizational actors and constituencies. This produces inconsistencies between organizational expressions of commitment to norms that are violated in practice. Stephen Krasner has recently argued that organized hypocrisy accounts for the enduring nature of sovereignty norms that are routinely violated in practice. Through a case study of developments in peacekeeping doctrine, this paper explores the extent to which peacekeeping is characterized by organized hypocrisy. The findings, though preliminary, support the organized hypocrisy model.