The Integrated or Whole of Government Approach in Peace Building

Picture a post-conflict country trying to rebuild after years of war. Soldiers are maintaining security, aid agencies are distributing food, diplomats are negotiating power-sharing deals, and engineers are repairing roads. If each of these actors works in isolation, following its own plan and budget, the result is often confusion, duplication, and wasted resources. The Whole of Government (WoG) approach, sometimes called the integrated approach, was developed to solve exactly this problem. It insists that the many arms of government must work as one coordinated body rather than as competing departments.

What is the whole of government approach? 🔗

At its core, the Whole of Government approach is a strategy for coordination. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines it as a method in which a government actively uses its formal and informal networks to coordinate policy across agencies so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their separate efforts. In peace building, this means that the military, development agencies, diplomatic services, intelligence bodies, and civil society partners do not operate in separate silos. Instead, they share information, plan together, and align their goals.

This idea emerged because policymakers learned a hard lesson. Military or diplomatic interventions applied on their own frequently failed to produce lasting peace. The OECD noted that as development and military actors recognised the limits of traditional interventions applied in isolation, greater coherence between security and development policy became the key to effective engagement in fragile states. The European Commission similarly describes the approach as collaboration between public bodies that extends beyond their respective fields of competence to provide a single, combined response.

Why coordination matters in peace building 🔗

Peace building is not a single task. The United Nations describes it as a multidimensional range of activities, from disarming and reintegrating warring factions to rebuilding political, economic, judicial and civil society institutions. No single ministry can handle all of this. Security forces cannot rebuild a justice system. Development experts cannot disarm militias. Diplomats cannot repair roads. Each actor has a distinct skill set, and the WoG approach is designed to make these skills reinforce one another.

The danger of poor coordination is real. The UK government has observed that around 60 percent of armed conflicts resolved in the early 2000s relapsed into violence within five years. When short-term security gains are not connected to long-term development and political reform, peace tends to collapse. An integrated approach tries to ensure that security operations, governance reforms, and economic recovery happen together rather than in a disjointed sequence.

The building blocks of the integrated approach 🔗

The WoG approach is not just about talking to one another. Genuine integration involves several concrete mechanisms that turn good intentions into joint action.

Joint analysis and shared objectives 🔗

Integration begins with a shared understanding of the problem. The OECD recommends that the activities of different actors be linked to a set of broader, joint objectives defined on the basis of joint analyses or assessments. If the foreign ministry, the defence ministry, and the development agency each diagnose the conflict differently, their interventions will pull in different directions. A common assessment creates a common purpose.

Pooled funding and joint planning 🔗

Money often determines whether coordination is real or merely symbolic. When departments control separate budgets, they tend to protect their own turf. Pooled funds force them to cooperate. The OECD highlights the importance of a top-level policy framework, a designated point of leadership, and clear, complementary mandates with shared accountability. These structures prevent agencies from working at cross-purposes.

Strong political leadership 🔗

Coordination rarely happens on its own. It requires sustained political commitment from the top of government. Without leadership willing to knock departmental heads together and resolve disputes, bureaucratic rivalries quickly reassert themselves. This is why most successful WoG systems are anchored in a central decision-making body, such as a national security council, that has the authority to enforce cooperation.

How major countries built integrated structures 🔗

Several governments responded to these lessons by creating specialised units and funding mechanisms dedicated to coordinated peace building. Their experiences offer the clearest picture of how the WoG approach works in practice.

The United Kingdom 🔗

The UK is widely seen as a pioneer. Over the past two decades, it progressively integrated its defence, diplomacy, and development policies. An earlier Labour government established the Stabilisation Unit and created the Conflict Pool, pulling resources from the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development. After 2010, the government added a decision-making mechanism through the National Security Council to give the approach more authority. The Stabilisation Unit, now known as the Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation, works across government to support fragile states where close cooperation between international agencies, the military, and civilian personnel is essential.

The United States 🔗

The United States developed its own version, often called the 3D approach, which integrates Defense, Diplomacy, and Development. To put this into practice, the US established a dedicated coordinating body. As one national security strategy explained, the new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization was created to plan and execute civilian stabilisation efforts, drawing on all agencies of government and integrating its activities with the military. American officials, reviewing their experience, concluded that the State Department needed to embrace conflict prevention, resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction as a core mission rather than an afterthought.

Australia and other donors 🔗

Australia, Canada, and other donor nations adopted similar models, building cross-government frameworks to link their aid, defence, and foreign affairs work. The OECD studied seven such administrations and found a common pattern of donors trying to coordinate defence, diplomacy, development and beyond to secure lasting peace. These efforts were eventually reinforced internationally through the DAC Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States, which made coordinated action a shared standard among donor governments.

The challenges of making integration work 🔗

Despite its logic, the Whole of Government approach is far from easy to implement. Coordination is demanding, and the obstacles are significant.

The problem of fragile states 🔗

The most serious limitation appears precisely where peace building is most needed. The WoG approach assumes that functional government departments and established bureaucratic processes already exist. In states emerging from complete collapse, the local government may simply lack the capacity to act as a meaningful partner in coordination. When formal structures are absent or illegitimate, international actors often end up coordinating mainly among themselves rather than building genuine local ownership. This is a deep irony: the approach works best where strong institutions already exist, yet the countries that need it most are those whose institutions have broken down.

Competing mandates and transaction costs 🔗

Even among well-functioning governments, integration is costly. The OECD identified several recurring problems, including differences in mandates, approaches, resources and considerable transaction costs. A defence ministry, a development agency, and a foreign ministry each have distinct cultures, timelines, and definitions of success. The military may prioritise stability and quick results, while development agencies focus on long-term institution building. Reconciling these perspectives takes time and energy, and the effort itself can slow down action.

Tension with humanitarian principles 🔗

A further difficulty arises when peace building is mixed with humanitarian aid. Humanitarian assistance is guided by principles of neutrality and impartiality, which can sit at odds with the principles of development effectiveness and the political objectives of stabilisation. If aid becomes too closely linked to a government’s security agenda, it risks losing the neutrality that allows humanitarian workers to operate safely. Critics warn that integration must not lead to the politicisation of relief work.

The pressure for quick results 🔗

Finally, political pressure can distort the approach. After a peace deal, governments often want to show rapid “peace dividends.” The OECD has noted that this pressure can lead to projects designed with limited regard for long-term impact. Short-term wins may look good politically but can undermine the patient institution building that sustainable peace requires.

Why the approach still matters 🔗

For all its difficulties, the integrated approach remains the dominant framework for serious peace building. The reason is simple: the alternative is worse. Fragmented interventions, where each agency pursues its own goals, have a poor track record. The OECD’s recommendations point toward the solution, emphasising the need for political commitment, the engagement of a wide range of actors, joint analysis, and country-specific joint planning. International bodies have embraced the same logic. The UN’s Peacebuilding Commission was created to bring together all relevant actors to marshal resources and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding.

The lesson from two decades of experience is that peace is not built by any single instrument. It requires security and development, diplomacy and reconstruction, the state and civil society, all moving in the same direction. The Whole of Government approach is the attempt to make that coordination systematic rather than accidental. It does not guarantee success, but it improves the odds, and in the difficult work of rebuilding societies after conflict, better odds matter a great deal.

What do you think? If the Whole of Government approach works best where strong institutions already exist, how should the international community build peace in states whose governments have completely collapsed? And could a similar integrated model be useful for tackling other complex national challenges, such as disaster management or internal security?

References

1. https://gsdrc.org/document-library/whole-of-government-approaches-to-fragile-states/
2. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/glossary-item/whole-government-approach%C2%A0_en
3. https://www.womenpeacesecurity.org/issue/peace-building/
4. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c7ff073ed915d17b68b2b0e/The_UK_Government_s_Approach_to_Stabilisation_A_guide_for_policy_makers_and_practitioners.pdf
5. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2021/03/development-co-operation-tips-tools-insights-practices_d307b396/whole-of-government-development-co-operation_01bbe9cc/9a51a6f6-en.pdf
6. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2020-01-30/debates/F5BAD536-C010-437B-AAF7-14F8D6DA64C7/DefenceDiplomacyAndDevelopmentPolicy
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Conflict,_Stabilisation_and_Mediation
8. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2006/text/sectionIV.html
9. https://peacealliance.org/peacebuilding-structures-growing-in-federal-government/
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilization_of_fragile_states
11. https://ideas.repec.org/a/oec/dcdkaa/5kz990g1x247.html
12. https://one.oecd.org/document/DCD/DAC(2023)40/en/pdf