Hylke Dijkstra
Biographic Data
| ID | 4085691 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hylke Dijkstra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hylke |
| FAMILY NAME | Dijkstra |
| SIGNATURE | DIJKSTRA H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Maastricht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3637-5296 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 128 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 38 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Second Attempt at America First
The second Trump administration poses an existential challenge to many international organizations (IOs), putting them at risk of no longer being able to perform their core functions. Compared to the first term, the scope of America First is much wider and the speed much faster. Trump no longer sticks to IO rules and is structurally undermining the US domestic agencies that provide input for IOs. At the same time, the academic literature highligh…
The Aiib as an ordinary development bank? China and the design of international institutions
The institutional design of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), established by China, follows best practices for multilateral development banks, thereby challenging the widely held assumption that domestic regime types affect institutional outcomes. Through qualitative content analysis and process tracing, this article argues that China’s design choices for the AIIB nevertheless reflect domestic political needs. To enhance the bank’s…
The Geopoliticisation of International Organisations and Strategic Technologies
International organisations (IOs) are traditionally seen as facilitators of international cooperation between states. Regarding emerging strategic technologies, many observers view IOs as multilateral institutions that can mitigate great power rivalry through regulation. This article argues, however, that IOs are increasingly geopoliticised, which can be defined as the act of making IOs part of global rivalries in world politics with the purpose …
Re-imagining EU Foreign and Security Policy in a Complex and Contested World
The European Union (EU) increasingly formulates and implements foreign and security policy under the constraints of internal contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition. While such contextual challenges can inhibit the EU from adopting an ambitious foreign and security policy, this Special Issue shows that the EU and its member states have developed ways of mitigating their impact. Through institutional, functional and diploma…
Engagement against All Odds? Navigating Member States’ Contestation of EU Policy on Kosovo
Disagreements between European Union (EU) member states constrain the Union's capacity to manage conflicts such as Kosovo-Serbia.While Kosovo has long received EU support, five EU member states do not recognise its independence.How does the EU manage to work around member states' vetoes and mitigate contestation?In contrast to previous scholarship, the analysis of the EU enlargement process and visa liberalisation, the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue …
The UN Summit of the Future
The United Nations ( UN ) Summit of the Future was a once-in-a-decade summit to work on UN reform. This article studies the Summit from the perspective of the broader crisis of liberal international order as well as the lifecycle of international organizations. It identifies the leadership by Secretary-General Guterres as critical in terms of agenda-setting but also preparing the road towards the Summit. It furthermore stresses the embedding of t…
Thank You to Reviewers
Are international organisations in decline? An absolute and relative perspective on institutional change
Many international organisations (IOs) are currently challenged, yet are they also in decline? Despite much debate on the crisis of liberal international order, contestation, loss of legitimacy, gridlock, pathologies and exiting member states, there is little research on IO decline. This article seeks to clarify this concept and argues that decline can be considered in absolute and relative terms. Absolute decline involves a decrease in the numbe…
Governance abhors a vacuum
International organisations have become increasingly contested resulting in worries about their decline and termination. While international organisation termination is indeed a regular event in international relations, this article shows that other institutions carry the legacy of terminated international organisations. We develop the novel concept of international organisation afterlife and suggest indicators to systematically assess it. Our an…
Farewell by the outgoing editor
The 2023 Bernard Brodie Prize
The 2023 Bernard Brodie Prize." Contemporary Security Policy, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
What we got wrong
The show must go on
Multilateralism is in crisis. States increasingly contest, undermine and even withdraw from international organisations and other multilateral institutions. Challenges emanate not only from emerging powers but also from established Western states and civil society. No other actor but the EU is more intimately entangled with multilateralism. This article therefore reviews to what extent and how the EU has actively sustained multilateral institutio…
When an International Organization Fails to Legitimate
Various international organizations have recently faced legitimacy crises, but many have demonstrated resilience and relegitimated their rule. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is an exception. It is clearly an organization in decline and is on the brink of irrelevance. The closure of its Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine in April 2022 in the wake of the Russian attack is only the latest manifestation of the organ…
The 2022 Bernard Brodie prize
War in Ukraine
Donald Trump and the survival strategies of international organisations
The Trump administration posed an unprecedented challenge to many international organisations (IOs). This article analyses the ability of IOs to respond and explains variation in the survival strategies pursued by their institutional actors. It argues that leadership, organisational structure, competences and external networks affect whether institutional actors can formulate and implement responses to existential challenges. Providing evidence f…
The Death of Major International Organizations
Major international organizations (IOs) are heavily contested, but they are rarely dissolved. Scholars have focused on their longevity, making institutional arguments about replacement costs and institutional assets as well as IO agency to adapt and resist challenges. This article analyzes the limits of institutional stickiness by focusing on outlier cases. While major IOs are dissolved at considerably lower rates than minor IOs, the article neve…
Covid‐19 and Policy Responses by International Organizations
The liberal international order is being challenged and international organizations (IOs) are a main target of contestation. COVID‐19 seems to exacerbate the situation with many states pursuing domestic strategies at the expense of multilateral cooperation. At the same time, IOs have traditionally benefited from cross‐border crises. This article analyzes the policy responses of IOs to the exogenous COVID‐19 shock by asking why some IOs use this c…
Institutional design for a post-liberal order
Many international organizations (IOs) are currently under pressure and the demise of the liberal international order is the talk of town. We theorize that institutional characteristics help to explain why some IOs survive external pressures where others fail. We test this argument through a survival analysis of 150 IOs (1815–2014). We find that the only significant variable explaining the death of IOs is the size of the secretariat: IOs with lar…
Security research on Covid-19
All hands on deck
The EU seeks extensive partnership with other international organizations when it comes to security challenges. This is puzzling as the EU relies for its resources mostly on its member states. The relations between the EU and other international organizations have thoroughly been studied, yet scholars rarely question the actual rationale for partnership. We start from resource dependency theory which explains that almost all organizations are dep…
Learning to deploy civilian capabilities
International organizations continuously deploy civilian capabilities as part of their peacekeeping and crisis management operations. This presents them with significant challenges. Not only are civilian deployments rapidly increasing in quantity, but civilian missions are also very diverse in nature. This article analyses how international organizations have learned to deploy their civilian capabilities to deal with a growing number and fast evo…
The EU’s partners in crisis response and peacebuilding
A stated aim in the EU Global Strategy is for the EU to work with partners in addressing crises across the world. This article analyses such potential in the area of crisis response and peacebuilding, with an emphasis on the EU’s interaction with the UN and OSCE. It starts off comparatively by examining where the EU, UN and OSCE add value in crisis response and peacebuilding and reach complementarities. It shows that deployments differ across geo…
The 2018 Bernard Brodie Prize
Contemporary Security Policy awards the Bernard Brodie Prize annually to the author(s) of an outstanding article published in the journal the previous year. The award is named after Dr Bernard Brod
Collusion in International Organizations
In the theoretical literature on the authority of international secretariats, academics often dichotomize between states and secretariats. Even when they account for the fact that states are often divided, they normally adopt a two-step approach: states first resolve their own differences before they entertain relations with secretariats. This article provides an alternative perspective. It argues that individual or groups of states may collude w…
The Death of Major International Organizations
Major international organizations (IOs) are heavily contested, but they are rarely dissolved. Scholars have focused on their longevity, making institutional arguments about replacement costs and institutional assets as well as IO agency to adapt and resist challenges. This article analyzes the limits of institutional stickiness by focusing on outlier cases. While major IOs are dissolved at considerably lower rates than minor IOs, the article neve…
Agenda-setting in the Common Security and Defence Policy
The European Union (EU) has launched an impressive number of crisis management missions since its Common Security and Defence Policy became operational in 2003. This article analyses the agenda-setting phase of these civilian and military operations in order to explain why the EU has sent troops, policemen, judges, prosecutors and monitors across three continents. It presents an institutionalist perspective and argues that the former High Represe…
Institutional design for a post-liberal order
Many international organizations (IOs) are currently under pressure and the demise of the liberal international order is the talk of town. We theorize that institutional characteristics help to explain why some IOs survive external pressures where others fail. We test this argument through a survival analysis of 150 IOs (1815–2014). We find that the only significant variable explaining the death of IOs is the size of the secretariat: IOs with lar…
The show must go on
Multilateralism is in crisis. States increasingly contest, undermine and even withdraw from international organisations and other multilateral institutions. Challenges emanate not only from emerging powers but also from established Western states and civil society. No other actor but the EU is more intimately entangled with multilateralism. This article therefore reviews to what extent and how the EU has actively sustained multilateral institutio…
Donald Trump and the survival strategies of international organisations
The Trump administration posed an unprecedented challenge to many international organisations (IOs). This article analyses the ability of IOs to respond and explains variation in the survival strategies pursued by their institutional actors. It argues that leadership, organisational structure, competences and external networks affect whether institutional actors can formulate and implement responses to existential challenges. Providing evidence f…
War in Ukraine
Functionalism, multiple principals and the reform of the Nato secretariat after the Cold War
The literature on international organizations tells us that diverging member states’ preferences and concerns about the loss of control are major obstacles to institutional reform. But what if changes in the international environment necessitate institutional reform? This article examines such dilemma in the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO has faced functional pressures to adjust its machinery to the post-Cold War era,…
Introduction
EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presented her EU Global Strategy (EUGS) in June 2016. Encircled by security crises, it is difficult to think of something more important for Europe than collective action with the aim of weathering the storm. The EUGS, in this respect, seeks to define common ends and identify means. So what do we make of the EUGS? What does the EUGS tell us about the current role of the EU in global affairs? And how will …
All hands on deck
The EU seeks extensive partnership with other international organizations when it comes to security challenges. This is puzzling as the EU relies for its resources mostly on its member states. The relations between the EU and other international organizations have thoroughly been studied, yet scholars rarely question the actual rationale for partnership. We start from resource dependency theory which explains that almost all organizations are dep…
The Military Operation of the EU in Chad and the Central African Republic
This article evaluates the military operation of the European Union in Chad and the Central African Republic in 2008-09. Despite a promising conceptual approach and close cooperation with the United Nations (UN), the operation created significant political problems between member states. It led to a split - France arguing that it carried too much of the burden and Germany and the United Kingdom sensing that they were sponsoring a pet project. Whe…
Learning to deploy civilian capabilities
International organizations continuously deploy civilian capabilities as part of their peacekeeping and crisis management operations. This presents them with significant challenges. Not only are civilian deployments rapidly increasing in quantity, but civilian missions are also very diverse in nature. This article analyses how international organizations have learned to deploy their civilian capabilities to deal with a growing number and fast evo…
The Changing Politics of Information in European Foreign Policy
This article studies the development of European foreign policy from an informational perspective. It illustrates how since the establishment of European Political Cooperation in 1970, the European Union has gradually evolved from a platform to share foreign policy information into a Brussels‐based system that gathers and processes information autonomously. Building upon the broader literature of delegation in international organisations, it expl…
Explaining variation in the role of the EU Council Secretariat in first and second pillar policy-making
This article explains variation in the role of the Council Secretariat in first and second pillar policy-making. While the Council Secretariat started in both pillars as a facilitator of decision-making, it has been delegated additional tasks in foreign policy: from providing content expertise to representation. Such functions would normally have gone to the European Commission, yet in the sensitive domain of foreign policy the member states have…
What we got wrong
Why study EU foreign policy at all? A response to Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire
In an important article on the state of European Union (EU) foreign policy research, Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire show that academics excessively focus on the study of the EU foreign policy system and EU implementation rather than the consequences of EU foreign policy for recipient countries. While the article is empirical, based on a dataset of 451 published articles on EU foreign policy, the normative message is that it is time to stop 'navel…
The EU’s partners in crisis response and peacebuilding
A stated aim in the EU Global Strategy is for the EU to work with partners in addressing crises across the world. This article analyses such potential in the area of crisis response and peacebuilding, with an emphasis on the EU’s interaction with the UN and OSCE. It starts off comparatively by examining where the EU, UN and OSCE add value in crisis response and peacebuilding and reach complementarities. It shows that deployments differ across geo…
Governance abhors a vacuum
International organisations have become increasingly contested resulting in worries about their decline and termination. While international organisation termination is indeed a regular event in international relations, this article shows that other institutions carry the legacy of terminated international organisations. We develop the novel concept of international organisation afterlife and suggest indicators to systematically assess it. Our an…
When an International Organization Fails to Legitimate
Various international organizations have recently faced legitimacy crises, but many have demonstrated resilience and relegitimated their rule. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is an exception. It is clearly an organization in decline and is on the brink of irrelevance. The closure of its Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine in April 2022 in the wake of the Russian attack is only the latest manifestation of the organ…
Security research on Covid-19
Governing risks in international security
Risks are omnipresent in contemporary international security. Despite a long tradition in security studies going at least back to Von Clausewitz, we consider that the topic of risk remains under-examined. This forum seeks to advance the research agenda on risk in security studies by showcasing work of scholars using advanced concepts of risk, based on insights from sociology, biology, psychology, and safety studies, to better understand the role …
Efficiency versus Sovereignty
This article analyses why the UN's members delegate resources to the UN Secretariat in the sensitive field of peacekeeping. It argues that the Secretariat can carry out planning and implementation functions more efficiently, but that the states remain wary of potential sovereignty loss. Through a mixed methods approach, this article provides evidence for such a functional logic of delegation, but shows that it only applies from the late-1990s on.…
The Planning and Implementation of the Rule of Law Mission of the European Union in Kosovo
This article evaluates the planning process and initial implementation of the Rule of Law Mission of the European Union in Kosovo (EULEX). It shows that the original intention was to have a smaller presence than the predecessor United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Yet as a result of a lack of settlement on the international status of Kosovo, the European Union ended up with a robust mandate and it was unable to make a fresh start in order to…
The Military Operation of the EU in Chad and the Central African Republic
This article evaluates the military operation of the European Union in Chad and the Central African Republic in 2008-09. Despite a promising conceptual approach and close cooperation with the United Nations (UN), the operation created significant political problems between member states. It led to a split - France arguing that it carried too much of the burden and Germany and the United Kingdom sensing that they were sponsoring a pet project. Whe…
Explaining variation in the role of the EU Council Secretariat in first and second pillar policy-making
This article explains variation in the role of the Council Secretariat in first and second pillar policy-making. While the Council Secretariat started in both pillars as a facilitator of decision-making, it has been delegated additional tasks in foreign policy: from providing content expertise to representation. Such functions would normally have gone to the European Commission, yet in the sensitive domain of foreign policy the member states have…
The Planning and Implementation of the Rule of Law Mission of the European Union in Kosovo
This article evaluates the planning process and initial implementation of the Rule of Law Mission of the European Union in Kosovo (EULEX). It shows that the original intention was to have a smaller presence than the predecessor United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Yet as a result of a lack of settlement on the international status of Kosovo, the European Union ended up with a robust mandate and it was unable to make a fresh start in order to…
The Changing Politics of Information in European Foreign Policy
This article studies the development of European foreign policy from an informational perspective. It illustrates how since the establishment of European Political Cooperation in 1970, the European Union has gradually evolved from a platform to share foreign policy information into a Brussels‐based system that gathers and processes information autonomously. Building upon the broader literature of delegation in international organisations, it expl…
Efficiency versus Sovereignty
This article analyses why the UN's members delegate resources to the UN Secretariat in the sensitive field of peacekeeping. It argues that the Secretariat can carry out planning and implementation functions more efficiently, but that the states remain wary of potential sovereignty loss. Through a mixed methods approach, this article provides evidence for such a functional logic of delegation, but shows that it only applies from the late-1990s on.…
Agenda-setting in the Common Security and Defence Policy
The European Union (EU) has launched an impressive number of crisis management missions since its Common Security and Defence Policy became operational in 2003. This article analyses the agenda-setting phase of these civilian and military operations in order to explain why the EU has sent troops, policemen, judges, prosecutors and monitors across three continents. It presents an institutionalist perspective and argues that the former High Represe…
Functionalism, multiple principals and the reform of the Nato secretariat after the Cold War
The literature on international organizations tells us that diverging member states’ preferences and concerns about the loss of control are major obstacles to institutional reform. But what if changes in the international environment necessitate institutional reform? This article examines such dilemma in the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO has faced functional pressures to adjust its machinery to the post-Cold War era,…
Introduction
EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presented her EU Global Strategy (EUGS) in June 2016. Encircled by security crises, it is difficult to think of something more important for Europe than collective action with the aim of weathering the storm. The EUGS, in this respect, seeks to define common ends and identify means. So what do we make of the EUGS? What does the EUGS tell us about the current role of the EU in global affairs? And how will …
From the new editor
Why study EU foreign policy at all? A response to Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire
In an important article on the state of European Union (EU) foreign policy research, Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire show that academics excessively focus on the study of the EU foreign policy system and EU implementation rather than the consequences of EU foreign policy for recipient countries. While the article is empirical, based on a dataset of 451 published articles on EU foreign policy, the normative message is that it is time to stop 'navel…
New directions for African security
African security, particularly conflict-related political violence, is a key concern in international relations. This forum seeks to advance existing research agendas by addressing four key themes: domestic politics and peacekeeping; security sector reform programs; peace enforcement; and the protection of civilians. Each of the articles in this forum makes a case for analyzing African agency when it comes to African security. As a way of introdu…
Collusion in International Organizations
In the theoretical literature on the authority of international secretariats, academics often dichotomize between states and secretariats. Even when they account for the fact that states are often divided, they normally adopt a two-step approach: states first resolve their own differences before they entertain relations with secretariats. This article provides an alternative perspective. It argues that individual or groups of states may collude w…
The EU’s partners in crisis response and peacebuilding
A stated aim in the EU Global Strategy is for the EU to work with partners in addressing crises across the world. This article analyses such potential in the area of crisis response and peacebuilding, with an emphasis on the EU’s interaction with the UN and OSCE. It starts off comparatively by examining where the EU, UN and OSCE add value in crisis response and peacebuilding and reach complementarities. It shows that deployments differ across geo…
The 2018 Bernard Brodie Prize
Contemporary Security Policy awards the Bernard Brodie Prize annually to the author(s) of an outstanding article published in the journal the previous year. The award is named after Dr Bernard Brod
Governing risks in international security
Risks are omnipresent in contemporary international security. Despite a long tradition in security studies going at least back to Von Clausewitz, we consider that the topic of risk remains under-examined. This forum seeks to advance the research agenda on risk in security studies by showcasing work of scholars using advanced concepts of risk, based on insights from sociology, biology, psychology, and safety studies, to better understand the role …
All hands on deck
The EU seeks extensive partnership with other international organizations when it comes to security challenges. This is puzzling as the EU relies for its resources mostly on its member states. The relations between the EU and other international organizations have thoroughly been studied, yet scholars rarely question the actual rationale for partnership. We start from resource dependency theory which explains that almost all organizations are dep…
Learning to deploy civilian capabilities
International organizations continuously deploy civilian capabilities as part of their peacekeeping and crisis management operations. This presents them with significant challenges. Not only are civilian deployments rapidly increasing in quantity, but civilian missions are also very diverse in nature. This article analyses how international organizations have learned to deploy their civilian capabilities to deal with a growing number and fast evo…
Security research on Covid-19
Covid‐19 and Policy Responses by International Organizations
The liberal international order is being challenged and international organizations (IOs) are a main target of contestation. COVID‐19 seems to exacerbate the situation with many states pursuing domestic strategies at the expense of multilateral cooperation. At the same time, IOs have traditionally benefited from cross‐border crises. This article analyzes the policy responses of IOs to the exogenous COVID‐19 shock by asking why some IOs use this c…
Institutional design for a post-liberal order
Many international organizations (IOs) are currently under pressure and the demise of the liberal international order is the talk of town. We theorize that institutional characteristics help to explain why some IOs survive external pressures where others fail. We test this argument through a survival analysis of 150 IOs (1815–2014). We find that the only significant variable explaining the death of IOs is the size of the secretariat: IOs with lar…
The 2022 Bernard Brodie prize
War in Ukraine
Donald Trump and the survival strategies of international organisations
The Trump administration posed an unprecedented challenge to many international organisations (IOs). This article analyses the ability of IOs to respond and explains variation in the survival strategies pursued by their institutional actors. It argues that leadership, organisational structure, competences and external networks affect whether institutional actors can formulate and implement responses to existential challenges. Providing evidence f…
The Death of Major International Organizations
Major international organizations (IOs) are heavily contested, but they are rarely dissolved. Scholars have focused on their longevity, making institutional arguments about replacement costs and institutional assets as well as IO agency to adapt and resist challenges. This article analyzes the limits of institutional stickiness by focusing on outlier cases. While major IOs are dissolved at considerably lower rates than minor IOs, the article neve…
Are international organisations in decline? An absolute and relative perspective on institutional change
Many international organisations (IOs) are currently challenged, yet are they also in decline? Despite much debate on the crisis of liberal international order, contestation, loss of legitimacy, gridlock, pathologies and exiting member states, there is little research on IO decline. This article seeks to clarify this concept and argues that decline can be considered in absolute and relative terms. Absolute decline involves a decrease in the numbe…
Political science (31 works) · Law (24 works) · Law (21 works) · Politics (20 works) · Economics (18 works) · Public Administration (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Public Administration (15 works) · International Development and Aid (14 works)