Abstract
Power matters in inter-organisational relations. Relations between the EU, NATO and UN have grown in importance, and this chapter argues that these relations are quite consequential. Thus far, interaction between these and similar organisations has been studied by looking at different mechanisms of interaction, such as emulation, or else it has focussed on concrete achievements and functioning of their cooperation in different missions or operations. Here, power is brought in. The chapter starts from the claim that the performance of an organisation can be crucially impacted by another organisation. It may then need power over that other organisation to ensure that it is not losing, but perhaps even getting stronger. What would such “power over” consist of in practice? Where would it stem from? The chapter looks at the forms and sources of power manifest in relations between the EU, NATO and the UN, using some elements of the literature on power in inter-organisational relations. In this field, power is a central concept and a natural part of relations between organisations: they need to assure survival and thus need resources from their environment, an environment that includes other organisations. The sources of power might here include, for example, information, expertise, resources, position and legitimacy. The question raised in the chapter is why these would not apply even to international organisations. Indeed, they do apply: there are signs of an increasing need of legitimacy, and the importance of knowledge emerges. The EU-NATO-UN relations, when examined with these tools, lead to the question of relevance. It is in the context of relevance that power becomes necessary to understand. What crucially matters for the organisations is what happens to their task description, their image and their relations with one another. Tasks, image and hierarchies are found to be key to their relevance, and thus, the following chapters look at these in more detail.
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Notes
- 1.
See Berenskoetter (2007) and the link between the first dimension of power and winning conflicts: there is a power analogy and a security analogy.
- 2.
Or three categories of authority : delegation, moral and expertise, as in Barnett and Finnemore (2004: 21–29).
- 3.
Compulsory power means direct control over another; institutional means indirect control such as when states design international organisations; structural means the constitution of social capacities and interests of actors; productive is the production of subjectivity in systems of meaning and signification, for instance, defining “development” in a certain way.
- 4.
Note that, for instance, for Wrong (1979), these would be forms of power rather than means of power (he finds four of these forms : force, manipulation, persuasion and authority , the latter further divided into different categories).
- 5.
In the subsequent chapters, these will be linked to what is said about the EU’s goals at the UN; PR activities of NATO; general recipes for success in international relations (while Nye 2004 is a guide to success for states from 10 years ago, the paper by Kenna (2011) on organisations and social media could be seen as one for today’s needs a current one).
- 6.
Cf. Bouchard and Drieskens (2013: 115): the EU’s representation and functioning within the UNSC as well as within the UNGA is shaped by UN rules and realities.
- 7.
Note also Wallander (2000) on “persistence”.
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Ojanen, H. (2018). Analysing Power in Inter-organisational Relations. In: The EU's Power in Inter-Organisational Relations. The European Union in International Affairs. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40908-9_4
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