Prioritizing Institutional Drivers of Graduate Peacekeeping Education: An Integrated DEMATEL–ANP and Mixed-Methods Study from Indonesia

Abstract

Graduate peacekeeping education is institutionally complex because regulatory authority, professional capability, curriculum design, inter-agency integration, and international positioning are mutually dependent. Yet research on peace education and peace operations rarely specifies which institutional conditions should be activated first when a university creates a multidisciplinary graduate programme. This study develops and tests a prioritisation architecture for a proposed Master’s Programme in Peacekeeping in Indonesia. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design integrated Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Analytic Network Process (ANP), 17 semi-structured key-informant interviews, a focus-group discussion, and document review. The quantitative phase analysed 150 completed questionnaires across eight institutional drivers. DEMATEL identified policy and regulation (F1), integrative curriculum (F3), facilities and infrastructure (F6), and institutional governance (F7) as net perceived causes. ANP assigned the greatest priority to policy and regulation (0.1579), followed by peacekeeper human resources (0.1455), integrative curriculum (0.1286), and institutional governance (0.1236). Aggregate pairwise consistency was excellent (CR = 0.0040), although only 36% of individual matrices met CR ≤ 0.10; consistency-screened estimates therefore flattened the priorities. Qualitative evidence explained the pattern: formal authorization unlocks resources and inter-agency commitments, whereas qualified faculty-practitioners convert those commitments into credible teaching and operational learning. Robustness analyses preserved the DEMATEL cause–effect classification across less repetitive, non-student, and experienced subsamples. The study contributes a regulation-to-capability chain and a four-layer implementation sequence: enabling governance, academic design and infrastructure, integrated professional capability, and outward diplomatic effects. The model informs evidence-based programme development while demonstrating how sensitivity analysis can strengthen DEMATEL–ANP applications in higher-education strategy.