Operationalisation
As already mentioned, the autonomy that the German constitution confers on the federal ministries unquestionably has an impact on how they work together. Rather than replacing established practices, the networked approach as well as the new structures and procedures that it has created merely complement them. Indeed, they are intended to intensify the exchange of information and to facilitate collaboration and coordination. However, they do not create joint offices, joint training or new joint decision-making procedures that would influence established ministerial prerogatives. This is explicitly highlighted in the introduction of the Operations Manual (Federal Government of Germany 2019d), where we read that the agreed-upon practises and procedures do not invalidate either the departmental principle (Ressortprinzip) or the long-established guidelines under which the BMZ (BMZ 2008) operates in development cooperation. In particular, it says (Federal Government of Germany 2019d: 4): “The principle of ministries, as enshrined in the Basic Law, remains intact. In other words, each federal minister self-sufficiently directs and is accountable for his or her own area of operations.” Thus, the greater part of Germany’s crisis- and conflict-management policies will continue to be formulated and implemented outside the newly created structures. This concerns day-to-day work as well as dealing with the issue at the highest political level.
The institutional building block of Germany’s coherence approach is the Interministerial Steering Group for Civilian Crisis Prevention (Ressortkreis), which was formed in 2004 and is open to all ministries. Also under the new guidelines, this steering group continues to be the working body at the ministerial level of heads of units for information exchange and coordination on all relevant crisis-prevention and conflict-management issues. However, the steering group does not have any operational powers, as the relevant ministries retain their authority to decide on and support the development of respective crisis-prevention capacities within the framework of their respective jurisdictions. Thus, day-to-day business is carried out not within the steering group, but rather by units in the ministries responsible for individual crisis countries or regions, which are usually chaired by the responsible country department or the regional representative of the AA. In addition, the body forms the interface to the roughly 20-person Advisory Board for Civilian Crisis Prevention, which is composed of representatives drawn from civil society, academia and the business community.
In 2012, with the adoption of the first-ever interministerial guidelines ‘for a coherent policy of the Federal Government towards fragile states’ (AA, BMVg and BMZ 2012), special task forces were set up among the AA, the BMVg and the BMZ. Meetings of these task forces are convened and chaired by the responsible regional commissioner/ envoy of the AA rather than by the recently established D-G S. This is done in coordination with counterparts from the BMVg, the BMZ or other relevant ministries in individual cases. The task forces perform context analyses and coordinate policies for Iraq/Syria/Anti-IS, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, the Sahel and the Lake Chad region while remaining in close contact with the diplomatic missions on the ground. For Afghanistan and Pakistan, such interministerial working groups already existed beforehand. Rather than having set meeting dates, they convene when doing so is deemed appropriate.
A new body, introduced with the 2017 guidelines (Federal Government of Germany 2017), were the interministerial working groups tasked with developing joint strategies for promoting the rule of law, supporting security-sector reform and dealing with the past/reconciliation. Their respective strategy reports were published in autumn 2019 (Federal Government of Germany 2019a-c). One of the results of this strategy-development process is that the three previous sectoral strategy working groups are to be merged into a cross-strategy working group, which is to begin its work in the course of 2019. It is not yet known whether further interministerial strategy groups are planned to deal with other relevant topics in the field of crisis prevention, conflict management and peacebuilding.
According to the Operations Manual (Federal Government of Germany 2019d: 6), early warning and crisis detection shall be taken care of in a newly established special interministerial ‘Horizon Scanning’ working group that shall be able to draw on all analytical capacities, including those of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Likewise, in the future, departmental analyses are to be regularly shared with other departments and, where this exchange does not lead to a sufficiently shared evaluation of the situation, joint analyses are to be commissioned.
In addition to the above-mentioned formations and on the next-higher ministerial level, the guidelines (Federal Government of Germany 2017) establish the ‘Preventing Crises, Resolving Conflicts, Building Peace’ interministerial coordinating group, which is composed of the heads of the relevant directorate-generals in the various ministries and is tasked with dealing with the results and recommendations of the Horizon Scanning working group as well as with other outstanding issues that the Interministerial Steering Group for Civilian Crisis Prevention or the task forces and strategy groups could not reach agreement on. The body meets on a quarterly basis as well as when required. In this case, the chair rotates between the Federal Chancellery, the BMVg, the BMZ and the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs (BMI).
Outside the framework defined by the guidelines, at the highest level of interministerial coordination, the state secretaries and the head of the Federal Chancellery’s Directorate-General 2 (Foreign, Security and Development Policy) meet in various formats to deal with crisis-management issues. One of these formats is the so-called weekly security policy jour fixe, which brings together representatives of the Chancellery with the state secretaries of the AA, the BMI and the BMVg. Another such jour fixe deals with foreign and development policy issues and brings together representatives of the Chancellery, the AA, the BMVg and the BMZ. Additional formats include the Round Table of State Secretaries on Afghanistan and Mali (with representatives from the Chancellery, the Federal Ministry of Finance, the BMI, the AA, the BMVg, the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, the BMZ and the Foreign Intelligence Service) and the Interministerial Steering Group on Africa at the level of state secretaries and heads of the directorate-generals.
Above all stands the federal cabinet, which has overall responsibility for overseeing coherence policies. The cabinet’s Federal Security Council (Bundessicherheitsrat) coordinates the government’s security and defence policies and is responsible for approving arms exports. Although its meetings are secret, all publicly visible indications are that the council’s efforts are predominantly geared towards arms- export controls rather than coordinating German foreign and security policy. A separate cabinet formation, such as the one recently established for climate protection, does not yet exist for the area of crisis and conflict management.
Furthermore, as explicitly highlighted in the guidelines (Federal Government of Germany 2017) and the sectoral strategy reports (Federal Government of Germany 2019a-c), there are the diplomatic missions abroad, which reportedly play an important role in assessing situations as well as in planning and implementing measures. German embassies have long been staffed with personnel from other ministries. What’s more, as the conception of security becomes broader and more cross-cutting, the number of such staff members is growing and the ministries are increasing their involvement in the activities listed above.
Turning now to the issue of culture and training, one can say that the experience which government staff have gained while on assignments abroad has undoubtedly boosted their eagerness and ability to cooperate at home. The exchange of civil servants between ministries also contributes to the latter, as was called for in the 2006 white paper (BMVg 2006) and again underlined in the Operations Manual (Federal Government of Germany 2019d). However, to date, the number of liaison officers exchanged between ministries each year has remained in the single digits.
In the field of training and deploying civilian, police and military personnel, no uniform training schedule or interministerial facilities exist. However, the respective academies of the AA and BMVg appear to have included the networked approach in their curricula, and their future role is highlighted in the Operations Manual as well as by the three sectoral strategy reports (Federal Government of Germany 2019a-d), which echo the need to establish good practices and promote interministerial learning by including the topics of SSR, rule of law and transitional justice in ministry-specific and interministerial training measures. In addition, the AA has added mediation courses to its attaché training, which are provided by the Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF).
Regarding advanced training, the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS), in particular, offers courses designed to meet these requirements. However, these courses are not compulsory. Together with the BMZ, the BMVg and the BMI, the AA organises an annual seminar for junior staff entitled ‘Joint Action in Fragile Contexts’. Training in the field of civil-military cooperation and mission preparation is especially provided by BMVg institutions, such as the aforementioned Centre for Civil-Military Cooperation of the Bundeswehr in Nienburg and the German Armed Forces United Nations Training Centre in Hammelburg, Bavaria, where a two-week course on post- crisis preparation was held for the first time in 2019.
In terms of procedures and budgets, the 2012 interministerial guidelines on fragile states (AA, BMVg and BMZ 2012) set out the first rules of procedure applying to the working level. As a follow-up, the 2017 guidelines (Federal Government of Germany 2017) obliged the government to issue an interministerial practical guide, which was published in autumn 2019 as the Operational Manual (Federal Government of Germany 2019d). The latter stipulates that better coordination is mainly to be achieved in the areas of early warning, policy planning and steering, and monitoring and evaluation. What’s more, the procedure for developing future strategies (e.g. via scenario workshops and retreats) was also further elaborated, and decision criteria for dealing with other potential crisis countries and regions were adopted. Nevertheless, all the many procedural improvements for interministerial cooperation set forth in the Operations Manual – whether concerning analysis and needs assessment, joint strategy development, planning, exchange with partner institutions and international organisations, mutual information-sharing and participation in departmental planning, financial contributions to international funds and facilities, or cooperation in government negotiations and international conferences – are still dependent on the discretion and (voluntary) willingness of the respective ministries.
Although under discussion for quite some time and repeatedly demanded by the parliamentary Subcommittee on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Management and Integrated Action, the Operations Manual did not introduce a common or pooled budget for crisis and conflict management. The only exception relates to the Enhance and Enable Initiative, whose measures are almost exclusively dedicated to SSR as well as jointly financed and administered by the AA and the BMVg on the basis of a framework agreement concluded in 2015 (BMVg and AA 2019). Nevertheless, the pressure to better harmonise instruments and to pool funding is growing. For example, the first- ever spending review of the Federal Ministry of Finance conducted on the policy area ‘Humanitarian aid and transitional aid including the interfaces crisis prevention, crisis response, stabilisation and development cooperation’ (BMF 2018) has revealed the many duplications and overlaps between measures implemented by the AA and the BMZ. This inefficient use of budget funds prompted these two ministries to develop a concept for joint analysis and coordinated planning. Whether additional spending reviews will lead to better coordination in other fields is anybody’s guess. For now, however, the Operations Manual (Federal Government of Germany 2019d) at least suggests a systematic recording of measures in countries in which several ministries are active. Such a database already exists for Afghanistan. In addition, in accordance with Chapter 5.1 of the Federal Government’s Joint Rules of Procedure of the Federal Ministries (GGO) (BMI 2011), it is now envisaged that, in the case of payments to international organisations, the ministry responsible for the organisation in question will involve the other contributing ministries in the preliminary stages.
Furthermore, when it comes to implementation reports and scrutiny, the guidelines (Federal Government of Germany 2017) have established a review process that could serve as a lessons learned process and help to improve policy coherence. This offers parliament and civil society a chance to measure the government by its words and deeds. The parliamentary Subcommittee on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Management and Integrated Action has already stated that it sees monitoring the implementation of the Operations Manual as one of its primary tasks in the current legislative term. The first implementation report is expected in 2021, and a fundamental overhaul is due four years later. Regarding parliamentary scrutiny, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) launched a governmental inquiry in February 2019 titled ‘Strengthening networked action in foreign, security and development’ (Deutscher Bundestag 2019). With over 160 questions, the inquiry will force Germany’s government to take a position on its performance regarding the entire networked approach. The government’s response is expected in late autumn 2019.