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.