Bureaucracy

This chapter explores the origins of the bureaucratic confrontation between DPA and DPKO in the early 1990s. It argues that while both Pérez de Cuéllar and Boutros-Ghali wanted to strengthen their role as Secretary-General, they used different bureaucratic tools to achieve it. Pérez de Cuéllar kept peacekeeping and peacebuilding under the tight control of his Executive Office, whereas Boutros-Ghali created DPA and DPKO. In October 1993, Boutros-Ghali also abruptly redefined the roles of these two departments, so that DPA was charged with substantive decision-making responsibility, whereas DPKO was to be downgraded to ‘operational’ tasks. Fresh documents also suggest that the DPA–DPKO competition was partly the result of the Secretary-General’s attempt to disenfranchise himself from the UN membership through what Boutros-Ghali saw as a powerful ‘political’ office to be opposed to the ‘operational’—and, in his view, US-dominated—DPKO.