Networks and Coordination in Peacebuilding (2021)

This brief is an introduction to the use of network structures for organizing peacebuilding groups.

• Networks are a way of setting up collaborative structures.  They don’t have a hierarchy or formal strategy, but instead are based on information sharing and helping individual participating groups or people make the best decisions they can.
• This approach may address some common problems in peacebuilding.  Peacebuilding coordination efforts have been hampered in the past by problems of coordination arising from attempts to have a formal coordinated strategy.  Network structures might get around this.
• When designing networks, organizers should consider questions of how to support self-interested reasons for participants to join and contribute, how to promote information-sharing within the network, and how to establish “backbone support” roles to keep the network moving.

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