It should be recognised, however, that not all the agents in the system need to be engaged in all coordination activities. Barnes reports, in the context of her experiences in Mozambique, that the meaning of coordination often varied depending on which of the stakeholders employed it at a given moment, and that the various stakeholders competed to place their agencies at the forefront of the process to enhance their own legitimacy and subsequent fundraising capacities (Barnes 1998). When evaluating the impact of coherence, one should consider with care the balance that has been struck among the four elements of coherence, the transaction cost in terms of the time and resources invested in coordination, as well as any unintended consequences that may have come about in the process (Aoi et al 2007). First, in some cases short-term political and security considerations may override longer-term development considerations and this may undermine the very socio-economic rehabilitation on which sustainable peacebuilding depends. In the real world, peacebuilding agents, more often than not, have to settle for \u2018second best\u2019 or \u2018partially coherent\u2019 solutions in order to establish a workable foundation for cooperation.22<\/p>\n
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It is impossible to achieve coherence if the framework, with which individual agents have to be coherent, has not been developed and shared with all the agents in the system. Instead, this paper will focus-in on two areas where the lack of coherence has had the most damaging effect on achieving sustainability, and which; correspondingly, hold the most promise for improving peacebuilding coherence, once addressed. If the peace process fails and the conflict resumes, the time and resources invested have been wasted. Whilst there should be coordination between the humanitarian and the peace and security dimensions of a peacebuilding system, the level and intensity of this link do not have to be of the same quality as that of the link between the other dimensions of the system.<\/p>\n
The inability of the external actors to give meaning to their stated policies and principles of alignment is one of the most significant shortcomings in the context of peacebuilding coherence. In this paper \u2018coherence\u2019 is understood as the effort to direct the wide range of activities undertaken in the political, development, human rights, humanitarian, rule of law and security dimensions of a peacebuilding system towards common strategic objectives..21 It is important to recognise, however, that the dynamic and non-linear nature of complex systems means that coherence can never be fully attained (Cilliers 2002). The first defines and analyses peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction in the context of the coherence and coordination deficit. Pursuing coherence helps to manage the interdependencies that bind the peacebuilding system together, and coordination is the means through which individual peacebuilding agents can ensure that they are coherent with the overall strategic framework.<\/p>\n