EU civilian crisis management and organizational learning

Commentators and policy-makers stress the need to learn the lessons of EU civilian crisis management. Yet despite numerous case studies on mission performance, we know little about the EU's overall capacity for such learning. The first part of this article outlines a theoretical framework for analyzing organizational learning in the context of peace operations. It recommends focusing on administrative reform and conceptual development in Brussels, and lists various factors that are expected to facilitate or inhibit organizational learning cycles. On this basis, the second part presents a historical survey of the EU's learning efforts in civilian crisis management. Despite a dynamic expansion of mission tasks as well as corresponding review processes, organizational learning has remained haphazard and limited to capacity expansion or mission support requirements. Only since 2009 did the EU invest in more formalized lessons-learning processes, which led to more systematic information gathering and more in-depth conceptual discussions. So far, however, these initiatives could not overcome political constraints to more ambitious reforms of EU peace operations.