Greater synergy and improved collaboration: Do complex partnerships deliver on the promise in countries emerging from armed conflict?

Complex or multi-stakeholder partnerships—those that include several
actors of different types, i.e. public, private or civic—are becoming increasingly
popular in different contexts and across policy domains. This is also the case in
countries emerging from armed conflict, where many donors are actively promoting
partnerships of different kinds that are seen as a solution to a number of concerns
from efficiency and effectiveness to empowerment, trust building and local ownership.
However, the actual evidence supporting these assumptions remains scarce.
This article focuses on several core characteristics of intra-partnership dynamics
through original empirical research on complex partnerships operating in Kosovo,
Afghanistan, and the DRC. It concludes by showing that real existing complex
partnerships in countries emerging from armed conflict demonstrate compositional
characteristics typically attributed to complex partnerships but not the modes of
governance expected of such partnerships, failing to exploit their added value as a
result.