A. & Rob Hehir State Building Theory and Practice Routledge Advances in International Relations and...

File Attachment20011965coverv05b.jpg

State-building

This study brings together internationally renowned academics toprovide a detailed insight into the theory and practice of state-building.

State-building is one of the dominant themes in contemporaryinternational relations. This text addresses both the theoreticallogic behind state-building and key practical manifestations of thisphenomenon. Unlike how-to manuals that seek to identify bestpractice, this book interrogates the normative assumptions inherent inthis practice and the manner in which state-building impacts oncontemporary international relations.

The logic of state-building is explored and analysed providing insightinto the historical context that catalysed this process, the relationshipbetween international law and the practice of internationaladministration and the political ramifications and implications ofexternal governance. Case studies on Bosnia, Kosovo and EastTimor provide practical examples of key contradictions within thestate-building process, highlighting the lack of accountability,democracy and vision manifest in these operations.

Offering a coherent critical analysis of an increasingly importantinternational issue, this unique volume will appeal to students andscholars of International Relations, Comparative Politics and Politicaltheory.

Aidan Hehir is Lecturer in International Relations in the Departmentof Politics at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Neil Robinson is Senior lecturer in the Department of Politics andPublic Administration, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics

1 Foreign Policy andDiscourse AnalysisFrance, Britain and EuropeHenrik Larsen

2 Agency, Structure andInternational PoliticsFrom ontology to empiricalenquiryGil Friedman andHarvey Starr

3 The Political Economy ofRegional Co-operation inthe Middle EastAli Carkoglu, Mine Eder,Kemal Kirisci

4 Peace MaintenanceThe evolution of international politicalauthorityJarat Chopra

5 International Relations andHistorical SociologyBreaking down boundariesStephen Hobden

6 Equivalence in ComparativePoliticsEdited by Jan W. van Deth

7 The Politics of CentralBanksRobert Elgie and HelenThompson

8 Politics and GlobalisationKnowledge, ethics andagencyMartin Shaw

9 History and InternationalRelationsThomas W. Smith

10 Idealism and Realism in International RelationsRobert M. A. Crawford

11 National and InternationalConflicts, 19451995New empirical and theoretical approachesFrank Pfetsch andChristoph Rohloff

12 Party Systems and VoterAlignments RevisitedEdited by Lauri Karvonenand Stein Kuhnle

13 Ethics, Justice &International RelationsConstructing an internationalcommunityPeter Sutch

14 Capturing GlobalizationEdited by James H.Mittelman and NoraniOthman

15 Uncertain EuropeBuilding a new Europeansecurity order?Edited by Martin A. Smithand Graham Timmins

16 Power, Postcolonialism and InternationalRelationsReading race, gender and classEdited by Geeta Chowdhryand Sheila Nair

17 Constituting Human RightsGlobal civil society and the society of democratic statesMervyn Frost

18 US Economic Statecraft forSurvival 19331991Of sanctions, embargoesand economic warfareAlan P. Dobson

19 The EU and NATOEnlargementRichard McAllister andRoland Dannreuther

20 Spatializing InternationalPoliticsAnalysing activism on theinternetJayne Rodgers

21 Ethnonationalism in theContemporary WorldWalker Connor and thestudy of NationalismEdited by Daniele Conversi

22 Meaning and InternationalRelationsEdited by Peter Mandavilleand Andrew Williams

23 Political Loyalty and theNation-StateEdited by Michael Wallerand Andrew Linklater

24 Russian Foreign Policy andthe CISTheories, debates andactionsNicole J. Jackson

25 Asia and EuropeDevelopment and differentdimensions of ASEMYeo Lay Hwee

26 Global Instability andStrategic CrisisNeville Brown

27 Africa in InternationalPoliticsExternal involvement on the continentEdited by Ian Taylor andPaul Williams

28 Global GovernmentalityGoverning InternationalSpacesEdited by Wendy Larnerand William Walters

29 Political Learning andCitizenship EducationUnder ConflictThe political socialization ofIsraeli and PalestinianyoungstersOrit Ichilov

30 Gender and Civil SocietyTranscending boundariesEdited by Jude Howell andDiane Mulligan

31 State Crises, Globalisationand National Movements in North-East AfricaThe Horns dilemmaEdited by Asafa Jalata

32 Diplomacy and DevelopingNationsPost-Cold war foreignpolicy-making structuresand processesEdited by Justin Robertson and Maurice A. East

33 Autonomy, Self-governanceand Conflict ResolutionInnovative approaches toinstitutional design individed societiesEdited by Marc Weller andStefan Wolff

34 Mediating InternationalCrisesJonathan Wilkenfeld,Kathleen J. Young, David M. Quinn and Victor Asal

35 Postcolonial Politics, TheInternet and Everyday LifePacific traversals onlineM. I. Franklin

36 Reconstituting the GlobalLiberal OrderLegitimacy and regulationKanishka Jayasuriya

37 International Relations,Security and JeremyBenthamGunhild Hoogensen

38 Interregionalism andInternational RelationsEdited by Heiner Hnggi,Ralf Roloff and JrgenRland

39 The International CriminalCourtA global civil societyachievementMarlies Glasius

40 A Human Security Doctrinefor EuropeProject, principles, practicalitiesEdited by Marlies Glasiusand Mary Kaldor

41 The History and Politics ofUN Security CouncilReformDimitris Bourantonis

42 Russia and NATO Since1991From cold war through coldpeace to partnership?Martin A. Smith

43 The Politics of ProtectionSites of insecurity and political agencyEdited by Jef Huysmans,Andrew Dobson and RaiaProkhovnik

44 International Relations inEuropeTraditions, perspectives anddestinationsEdited by Knud ErikJrgensen and Tonny Brems Knudsen

45 The Empire of Security andthe Safety of the PeopleEdited by William Bain

46 Globalization and ReligiousNationalism in IndiaThe search for ontologicalsecurityCatrina Kinnvall

47 Culture and InternationalRelationsNarratives, natives andtouristsJulie Reeves

48 Global Civil SocietyContested futuresEdited by Gideon Bakerand David Chandler

49 Rethinking Ethical ForeignPolicyPitfalls, possibilities andparadoxesEdited by David Chandlerand Volker Heins

50 International Cooperationand Arctic GovernanceRegime effectiveness and northern regionbuildingEdited by Olav SchramStokke and Geir Hnneland

51 Human SecurityConcepts and implicationsShahrbanou Tadjbakhshand Anuradha Chenoy

52 International Relations and Security in the Digital AgeEdited by Johan Erikssonand Giampiero Giacomello

53 State-buildingTheory and practiceEdited by Aidan Hehir andNeil Robinson

State-buildingTheory and practice

Edited byAidan Hehir and Neil Robinson

First published 2007 by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2007 Aidan Hehir and Neil Robinson for selection and editorialmatter; individual contributors, for their contributions

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafterinvented, including photocopying and recording, or in anyinformation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataState-building : theory and practice / edited by Aidan Hehir and

Neil Robinson.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Nation-building. I. Hehir, Aidan, 1977

II. Robinson, Neil, 1964

JZ6300.S73 2007327.1'1dc22 2006025434

ISBN10: 041539435X (hbk)ISBN10: 0203964713 (ebk)

ISBN13: 9780415394352 (hbk)ISBN13: 9780203964712 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledgescollection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

ISBN 0-203-96471-3 Master e-book ISBN

Aidan would like to dedicate this volume to Sarah andEsm . . . and Tig

Neil would like to dedicate this volume to Maura, Soirseand Mani

Contents

List of contributors xiiiAcknowledgements xivList of abbreviations xv

1 State-building and international politics: the emergence of a new problem and agenda 1NEIL ROBINSON

2 Colonialism redux? Territorial administration by international organizations, colonial echoes and the legitimacy of the international 29RALPH WILDE

3 State-building: power without responsibility 50PHILIP CUNLIFFE

4 The state-building dilemma: good governance or democratic government? 70DAVID CHANDLER

5 Witnessing the demise of the developing state: problems for humanitarian advocacy 89VANESSA PUPAVAC

6 Who guards the guardians? International accountability in Bosnia 107RICHARD CAPLAN

7 UNMIK facilitating Kosovos final status or its future status? Reconceptualising the problem, changing the solution 125AIDAN HEHIR

8 Building state failure in East Timor 142JARAT CHOPRA

9 In praise of folly: international administration and the corruption of humanity 167WILLIAM BAIN

10 Conclusion: from intervention to administration 184AIDAN HEHIR

Index 193

xii Contents

Contributors

William Bain, Department of International Relations, University ofWales Aberystwyth.

Richard Caplan, Linacre College, University of Oxford.

David Chandler, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University ofWestminster.

Jarat Chopra, The Watson Institute for International Studies, BrownUniversity.

Philip Cunliffe, Department of War Studies, Kings College London.

Aidan Hehir, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield.

Vanessa Pupavac, School of Politics and International Relations,University of Nottingham.

Neil Robinson, Department of Politics and Public Administration,University of Limerick.

Ralph Wilde, Faculty of Laws, University College London.

Acknowledgements

Most of the chapters in this volume started as contributions to aworkshop on state-building and international politics held at theUniversity of Limerick in April 2005. The conference was supportedfinancially by the Department of Politics and Public Administration,the Centre for Peace and Development Studies and the College ofHumanities Research promotion fund at Limerick, and jointly organ-ised under the auspices of the Department of Politics and PublicAdministration and the Centre for Peace and Development Studies.We would like to thank all who participated in the workshop, espe-cially Sinisa Malesevic , Erika Harris and Amalendu Misra, who gavepapers to the workshop that are not included in this volume. Wewould like to thank our families and friends who assisted us in thisprocess.

Richard Caplans article Who Guards the Guardians? InternationalAccountability in Bosnia originally appeared in InternationalPeacekeeping, vol. 12 (3), 2005, pp. 46376. We acknowledge the per-mission granted by Taylor & Francis to reprint this article. Informationon Taylor & Francis is available at www.tandf. co.uk/journals

Jarat Chopras article Building State Failure in East Timor origi-nally appeared in Development and Change, vol. 33 (5), 2002, pp. 9791000. We acknowledge the permission granted by BlackwellPublishers to reprint this article.

William Bains article, is reprinted with permission from WilliamBain, In Praise of Folly: International Administration and theCorruption of Humanity, International Affairs, vol. 82 (3), 2006,pp. 52338, Blackwells.

Abbreviations

ADB Asian Development BankBiH Bosnia-HerzegovinaBIICL British Institute for International Comparative LawCEP Community Empowerment and Local Governance

Project (East Timor)CNRT National Council of Timorese ResistanceCPA Coalition Provisional Authority (Iraq)DA District AdministratorDAC District Advisory Council (East Timor)DFO District Field OfficerESI European Stability InitiativeETTA East Timor Transitional AdministrationEU European UnionEUAM European Union Administration of MostarEUFOR European Union Force in Bosnia and HerzegovinaFRY Federal Republic of YugoslaviaGOBI Growth, Oral Rehydration, Breastfeeding, ImmunizationHR High Representative (BiH)ICB International Commission on the BalkansICG International Crisis GroupIDA International Development AssociationIFI International financial institutionIFOR Implementation Force (Operation Joint Endeavour),

UN force in BiHIISS International Institute for Strategic StudiesINTERFET International Force in East TimorITA international territorial administrationJAM Joint Assessment MissionKFOR Kosovo ForceKLA Kosovo Liberation Army

MIP Mission Implementation PlanMSF Medecins Sans FrontieresNATO North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationNC National Council (East Timor)NCC National Consultative Council (East Timor)NGOs non-governmental organizationsOHR Office of the High Representative (BiH)ONUC United Nations Operation in the Congo (Opration des

Nations Unies au Congo)OSCE Organization for security and Co-operation in EuropePIC Peace Implementation CouncilPMC Permanent Mandates CommissionSFOR Stabilisation Force (BiH)SR Special Representative (Kosovo)TFET Trust Fund for East TimorUN United NationsUNAMET United Nations Mission in East TimorUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUNMIK UN Interim Administration Mission in KosovoUNOSOM United Nations Operation in SomaliaUNTAC United Nations Transitional Authority in CambodiaUNTAE United Nations Temporary Executive AuthorityUNTAES UN Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia,

Baranja and Western SirmiunUNTAET UN Transitional Administration in East TimorUNV UN Volunteer

xvi Abbreviations

1 State-building andinternational politicsThe emergence of a new problemand agenda

Neil Robinson

Introduction

It has become conventional wisdom since the end of the Cold War, andespecially post-9/11 when the problems of Afghanistan came to theforefront of world attention that a major, and perhaps principal, threatto peace and security globally is the breakdown of state power.1

The conventional wisdom is correct to an extent. The breakdown ofpolitical authority within states is a major source of conflict andwarfare,2 and of the humanitarian problems, such as refugee flows, thatstem from conflict. Enfeebled state power has also provided variousforms of armed groups ethnic, religious, criminal, ideological or somecombination thereof to organize and extend their operations beyondnational boundaries, and most famously in the case of Al-Qaedaand insofar as it exists as a coherent organization, globally. Statehoodand peace are thus related; as the International Commission onIntervention and State Sovereignty report, The Responsibility toProtect, put it a cohesive and peaceful international system is farmore likely to be achieved through the cooperation of effective states,confident of their place in the world, than in an environment of fragile,collapsed, fragmenting or generally chaotic state entities.3

Whilst the conventional wisdom might be right to highlight therelationship between state failure and threats to peace and security, ithas not been able to move from this to a clear idea of what might bethe solution to the problems of stateness beyond the obvious obser-vation that if state breakdown is a problem it should be addressed bystate reconstruction. It would be pleasant to be able to claim that thisbook contains such a solution, even if only in outline, but it does not.Instead the essays in this book try to do one of two things. First, theylook at the general problems that the issue of state-building raises ininternational politics, presenting different critical perspectives on the

nature, purpose and general prospects for international involvementin state-building. Second, they look at a very specific aspect of state-building in international politics, namely state-building under theauspices of a transitional administration4 established by the interna-tional community. The contrast between the general and the specificlets us look at how the discourse on state-building is shot throughwith paternalism and downplays the ability and necessity for localpolitical action as the source of state-building. This is not to denythat some form of international assistance in the shape of resourceand knowledge transfers may be necessary. Rather, it highlights someof the dangers that these transfers can bring when they take the formof state-building rather than assistance in state-building. The specificfocus on the relationship between international territorial admin-istrations and state-building throws this in to sharp relief sinceinternational territorial administration directed towards state-building is the most extreme example of externally led state-buildingpractices.

The contrast between the general arguments about state-buildingin the book and the specific instances of international state-buildingthrough transitional international territorial administration togethershow how much work and thinking need to be done in this area. Therest of this chapter seeks to contribute to this discussion by looking atthe way in which state-building has become an issue a newproblem in international politics and how its emergence as anissue at that this time has shaped the state-building agenda. It willargue that a series of changes in international politics globalization,the end of the Cold War, changes in developmental discourse, alongsidethe existence of a larger array of weak states since decolonialization have created a dangerous situation in which the state-building agendahas become simplified and universalized. The chapter will then intro-duce the other contributions to this volume and try to draw out someof the ways that they deal with the aforementioned themes. Anothertake on these issues can be found in the conclusion to the volume.

The rise and character of the contemporary state-building agenda

The context in which the contemporary agenda for state-building hasdeveloped is the post-Cold War world. The evolving internationalsystem after the Cold War has both created the perceived need for state-building and has given state-building its particular, simplified character.The boundary between cause what has lead to state-buildings

2 Neil Robinson

increased prominence in international politics and effect whatstate-building is imagined to be in theory and practice is often not allthat distinct. Roughly, however, we can say that state-building hasincreasingly been seen as necessary because of the collapse of thebipolar Cold War order, which gave a measure of artificial stability tosome states in the world and helped to compensate for their weakness.The need for international assistance in state-building has been aproduct of some of the humanitarian problems that this collapsecontributed to, plus certain changes that are associated with the ideaof globalization. These changes have created a belief that the state ingeneral is in crisis and that this crisis is deeper for certain forms ofstate so that intervention to save them is more necessary than in thepast. This in turn has helped to create a simplified view of what state-building should produce. If the crisis of the state afflicts a particularkind of state the obvious solution is to build the other kind, the statethat is less threatened by globalization and more adaptable to itsdemands regardless of circumstance, suitability or practicality. Thesecurity threat that the breakdown of state power is supposed topose globally, rather than to the unfortunate inhabitants of a statewhere power fragments to some form of anarchy, and to that statesneighbours, is not the cause of simplification but has magnified thedangers of breakdown in state power and hyped the simplifiedsolution to it. What we are trying to understand here, then, is howstate weakness, which like the poor has always been with us, has beentransformed into a global problem and, moreover, became an issue forhumanitarian intervention in a particular way. To understand thesethings requires us first to say a few words about what weak andstrong states are historically so that we can look at how the environ-ment in which states are weak changes and how the state-buildingagenda has arisen in response to this changing environment.5

Weak states: a basic outline

A weak state is a state that does not have capacities to penetratesociety, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriateor use resources in determined ways.6 Where these capacities are highstates are, in Manns terms, possessed of infrastructural power.7 Thisform of power exists where there is a cross-penetration of state andsociety so that decision making is not isolated from social concerns. Thestates decisionmaking powers are created by negotiation of its func-tions, rights and responsibilities, with this negotiation carried outthrough the interaction of state officials and social representatives.

State-building and international politics 3

Being neither isolated from society, nor dominated by it, a state withhigh infrastructural power can claim to work for a common good andextract and use resources appropriated from society in a regularized,routinized fashion. It can do this without having to use a large part ofthe revenue that it collects to coerce resources from its subjects, and hasthe ability to redefine bureaucratic and social responsibilities mutuallyand periodically so that state capacity can be increased or decreasedin response to pressure for security, welfare provision and changingforms of international competition. States that are strong and possessinfrastructural power are thus adaptive and organic.8

Weak states, which lack this infrastructural power, are not adaptive.They are based on despotic power, that is, state officials centralize, ortry to centralize, decision making rather than embed it in society. Statepolicy and form are imposed by elites, rather than negotiated, andenforced through the states possession of coercive resources, ratherthan accepted and enacted by society generally. This form of power isrelatively inefficient in comparison to infrastructural power. Whilststate officials may have a high degree of freedom from social pressureto set taxes and decide state expenditure, this freedom does notproduce general social benefits. This is because office-holders need toinsure their power, or because they are uncertainty of it in the absenceof social support and checks on political competition. Where office-holders need to insure their power from rivals they may transferstate resources to supporters and/or buy off opposition. Where office-holders are uncertain of their power and their ability to hold it overtime they may appropriate those resources for personal ends as a sortof pension plan. Either way, the effect is the same. Office holding isproprietary, rather than impersonal, and officials do not have anencompassing interest in their domain, or only have an interestfaintly; like Olsons roving, as opposed to stationary, bandits, theydo not gain from reducing their rate of tax theft since in doing so theymay lose office or may leave behind something for their rivals toplunder at a later date.9 Under these circumstances the rule of law andstable property rights do not develop and power is not institutionalized in the absence of rule-based bureaucratic behaviour or accountable.The supply of public goods is not more important to office-holdersthan the provision of private goods and personal gain. Moreover, thefragile hold that leaders may have on office can further impede theadaptability of weak states. Leaders have to calculate the effect ofchange on their tenure and may decide that reform is not worth it ifthere is a likelihood that it will lead to a loss of political resources asvested interests affected by change defect to opponents.10

4 Neil Robinson

The spread of the weak state and its varieties

We can see from this outline of what constitutes a weak state thatmoving from weakness to strength is a politically fraught and difficultprocess. For much of history this has not mattered. The vast majorityof states in history have been weak in the sense that they did not havelarge reserves of infrastructural power. Weakness was not, however, aproblem for them because they were not necessarily confronted bystronger states (in terms of competitor states being possessed of infra-structural power) so that their security and sovereignty were notthreatened because weakness equalled backwardness. Moreover, whatwas required primarily of a state, securing borders against other statesthat relied also on despotic power, was relatively uncomplicated toorganize financially and administratively in comparison to some of hetasks that states with high degrees of infrastructural power undertake(such as the provision of mass social welfare). Finally, historically,weak states could also be moderately organic. They did not penetratesociety directly or extensively, but some combination of religiousaffiliation or absence of strongly defined or politicized ethnic differ-ences meant they could be organic by default since they could have aspiritual claim on popular allegiance, or else there was no clearalternative state project to which people could attach themselves.11

This situation began to change in the post-Second World War periodwith the proliferation of new states during decolonialization, and thischange accelerated again after the Cold War. Decolonialization saw theemergence of what Jackson has called quasi-states.12 States were builton the foundations of colonial territories that had not always had somepre-colonial experience of statehood and where there was often amixture of ethnic groups, with significant diasporas in neighbouringnew states. These states were supported as sovereign entities by externalpowers and international convention, rather than by their own qualitiesand institutions, and did not develop their infrastructures and institu-tions as a result.13 The bulk of these quasi-states emerged in Africa inthe immediate post-Second World War period, but arguably they havebeen joined by some of the post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav states sincethe late 1980s.14 These quasi-states differed from many previousexamples of weak statehood because their origins and own failingsmade them less organic and weaker than their predecessors. They alsohad the misfortune to be competing with states that were strong due toinfrastructural power.

As a result of all these factors many of the quasi-states that emergedduring decolonialization soon displayed many of the characteristics of


weak. A great number went beyond weakness to develop traits ofwhat have subsequently been termed failed or collapsed states. Thereis an extensive debate in the literature as to what constitutes state failureor collapse and the relative importance of conflict to the definition ofa failed state.15 Much of this debate is generated by the problems ofexplaining state failure what comes first, weakness (failure to deliverpublic goods) that produces civil conflict, or civil conflict that gener-ates weakness? and of seeing the moment at which either weaknessor conflict are sufficient quantitatively to cause a qualitative shift inthe nature of the state to failure or collapse. It is also debatablewhether failure need be total in that it might occur within a part orwhole of a states territory, and what the gradations of failure accord-ing to its geographic spread across a states territory might be.16 At theextreme end of the spectrum of failure collapse the outcome interms of the character of the state is fairly clear. A collapsed state is arare and extreme version of a failed state where the structure,authority (legitimate power), law, and political order have fallen apartand must be reconstituted in some form, old or new.17 However, thedistinction between a weak and failed state generally is not so clear. Theroute to collapse is thus also not clear. A failed state, Rotberg argues, istense, deeply conflicted, dangerous, and contested bitterly by warringfactions. It cannot control its borders and the characteristics of a weakstate are magnified as a failed state exhibits extreme patterns of predationby political authorities and elites, decaying infrastructures and regres-sion rather than economic and civil development.18 This, however, isproblematic. It argues that the difference between a weak and a failedstate is that some power centre exercises control over predation in aweak state so that the damage done is more moderate and as a resultless likely to lead to collapse. This is a slim distinction to make. Thedifference between a weak and a failed state can be eroded by time inpractice; the developmental implications of long-term controlledpredation in a weak state can be as severe as the short-term develop-mental implications of predation in a failed state (as in Zimbabwe).Moreover, weak states where they are authoritarian (as most are), orhave only rudimentary democracy, can lapse quickly from managed tounmanaged elite conflict since they often do not have fully institution-alized and legitimate succession processes. A challenge to a leader or thedeath of a leader can move a weak state from controlled to uncontrolledpredation, quickly (as seems to be happening in Kyrgyzstan).19

The distinction between weak and failed states it is not, therefore,a hard and fast one. Since this is the case a weak state is a form offailed state they are often described as being on a continuum at

6 Neil Robinson

least incipiently. With the line between the two blurred the need forintervention in a weak state is potentially and logically as great as theneed to intervene in a failed one if the object of state-building is globalsecurity: not to intervene runs the risk that the moment at whichweakness becomes failure is reached unchecked and with globalsecurity consequences, especially since that moment might bepromoted by anyone of a number of undetermined and hence unseenfactors. Iraq is a case in point. It was a weak state that did not deliverpublic goods to its citizens in many important respects, it was notgoverned by the rule of law, its leaders were predatory and it hadsome problems managing its territory because of Kurdish revolt in thenorth of the country. However, it was not a failed state in that thesame way as Somalia or Liberia: the militias that terrorized the Iraqipeople were licensed by the state and were guarantors of its monop-oly over coercion, rather than competitors for that monopoly. Yet Iraqwas deemed a global security threat by the US and the coalition of thewilling because of its weapons programme, its instability and itslack of legality and respect for human rights. Absent weapons of massdestruction from this equation for some other security problem andintervention in any weak state becomes possible.

A second point to note is that since weak and failed states are alikein so many respects it is hard to distinguish the policy response fromone to the other outside of military intervention being an absolutenecessity in a failed/collapsed state as a prelude to state-building. Oncethe military situation has been solved in a failed state, state-buildingwill involve tackling the same range of problems in a failed and weakstate. Indeed, the very act of military intervention in a failed or acollapsed state, if it is successful, turns it into a weak one since itresolves the question of who has a monopoly over coercion that lieswith the intervening powers or force and what we are left with is aweak state with a fragmented elite incapable of forming a government.

The weak state becomes a problem

Ideas about state weakness etc. are thus very problematic as analyticalcategories and as guides to action; they could be taken to indicate aneed for broad-based and common action across a wide range of statesfrom outside and could be (indeed have been) invoked independentlyof total breakdown of order. These problems were not, however,apparent or acted on as they first emerged in the developing worldafter decolonialization. Although many post-colonial states showedsigns of failure or collapse they did not fully develop as failed or


collapsed states because of their quasi-state nature. The Cold Warsystem preserved weak states as simply weak states because the cost ofviolence breaking out within them was potentially too high for thecompeting blocs in the Cold War to bear. Moving from state weaknessto breakdown and reconstruction threatened the balance of powerbetween the US and the USSR and posed the danger of drawing theirlocal proxies, and hence them, into conflict. Moreover, each sidestabilized regimes in their client quasi-states by providing the militaryand economic aid. This had several outcomes. It relieved weak states ofthe pressure of state development.20 Quasi-states recognized externallyand armed through Cold War competition did not have to developstate power in order to provide for their sovereignty. Second, office-holders in weak states had resources to stave of the movement fromweakness to failure and collapse given to them from outside. Armsdeterred the development of any will to challenge the state andeconomic largesse in the form of redistributed aid persuaded against it.The result was what Reno has called shadow states, where personalrule by a strongman existed underneath the cover of de jure sovereigntygenerated by external recognition.21

The shadow states of the post-colonial, Cold War period could not,however, endure beyond it. As the Cold War drew to a close manydeveloped more fully along the weakness/failure/collapse continuum.The reason for this was that the costs of violence in the developingworld became less for advanced industrial nations around the end ofthe Cold War,22 whilst the pay-off of violence increased in some partsof the developing world as resources became either scarcer or harderto access. The cause of this was not simply the end of Cold War fundsto US or Soviet proxies. The climax of the Cold War did not alwaysend economic aid flowing to parts of the developing world. However,it did overlap with changes in the way aid was delivered and conse-quently used. Structural adjustment programmes and aid conditionalityreshaped the way that assistance was administered, weakened ratherthan strengthened reform and narrowed the basis of economic decisionmaking. In the process it allowed patrimonial rulers increased powerover resource distribution at the same time that they diminishedspending on welfare.23 This changed the terms on which economicresources could be accessed and their comparative scarcity madeviolence more attractive for some groups. It also meant that someleaders of shadow states did not have the resources to maintain theirpersonal rule any longer except for what they spent on security.24

The end of the Cold War thus coincided with, and in part caused,crises in weak states; in turn, they could not adapt to resolve these

8 Neil Robinson

crises because of their weakness. The period around the fall of theUSSR and the end of the Cold War was marked by developing statefailure to some degree (including collapse) across the globe in (in noorder) Somalia, Liberia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Rwanda,Zaire, Afghanistan, Moldova, Sierra Leone, Georgia, Sudan, Burundiand Tajikistan with several other states exhibiting some increaseddegree of weakness and in some cases signs of incipient failure(Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Columbia, Russia at least in Chechnya,Uganda and the other states of Central Asia).25

This growing number of cases does not in and of itself fully explainwhy state-building became an issue on the international politicalagenda. The response to state failure could have been to alleviate theworst of humanitarian suffering and to keep warring parties apartwhere necessary. Such a minimalist solution to the problems thatemerged around the end of the Cold War was, however, made lessattractive by three things. The first we have already alluded to: thevery categories of weakness, failure and collapse are so indistinctthat they make intervention more possible once state breakdown isrecognized as a security problem. This recognition followed hard onthe heels of the end of the Cold War.26 The second factor was that theopportunity for international intervention expanded at the end ofthe Cold War since ideological and politico-strategic logjams preventingintervention were removed with the USSRs collapse.27 State weaknessand failure thus became more prominent and were ripe for action atthe same time that action became possible.

The third factor that made state-building an increasingly importantissue was that the problem of state weakness/failure appeared to beintractable without outside interference as the Cold War ended. Thiswas because of a perceived general crisis of the state under condi-tions of globalization. Globalization is supposed to cause a crisis ofthe state because, in different accounts, it limits viable policy options,shifts transnational activity from state level to supra- and sub-statelevels, and thus constrains state activity, its political centrality andresponsibility for welfare and security and its ability to appropriateand direct resources.28 This crisis is experienced differently acrossthe globe and may not even be a crisis in certain states particularlythe wealthy that are able to deal with it coherently and use therelocation of transnational activity to supra- and sub-national levelsto their advantage by ridding themselves of certain tasks and burdensand growing their economies.29 Weak states cannot, of course, dothis with the same efficiency if at all as states that have resources dueto their infrastructural power. Further, globalization can exacerbate


the frail territorial cohesion of weak states, allowing some parts ofthem to become enmeshed in the global economy whilst other partsfloundered.30

The effect of this on weak states has been destabilizing and associatedwith the rise of new forms of conflict that have undermined the stateand which are based at least in part on the ability of belligerents to linkwith the global economy independently of the state.31 Obviously, wherethey can do this rebel regions and factions can sustain conflict.Moreover, the ability of regions and forces to link to the outside worldindependently of the state meant that the very idea of the state becameless important to many people for the first time: the state, underthese conditions, was not the source of security, let alone of welfare,because of its sovereign powers; the global economy and the localpower structures that it supported were. Globalization thus worked insome cases of weak statehood to undermine aspirations to being astate in the international juridical sense (there was still some newlocal monopoly over violence exercised by some local strongman).At an extreme this type of state collapse together with its context globalization made it appear that not only where some weak statesin trouble (which was not new), but that they would not be able to getout of this trouble. This breakdown of states under globalization andthe emergence from within states of regions and forces linked to theglobal economy independently of the state represented to some analystsa breakdown of the state system altogether. It heralded the advent ofa neo-medievalism in parts of the world, with social forces and sub-national units escaping from the Westphalian state system and havingthe resources to remain outside it.32

A universal solution?

Globalization thus worked in two dimensions with regard to stateweakness and failure: it facilitated it in parts of the globe by under-mining weak sovereignty even further, and at the same time it made itless likely that a state could be reconstructed organically since it bothempowered regions and factions that could connect with the globaleconomy to resist the state. This put state-building on the agenda ofinternational politics because it made it a global problem. Wherestates could not self-regenerate and who could tell where they couldand could not easily and without cost to the rest of the world insecurity they would have to be resurrected, or saved as Helman andRatner put it, so that they could once again be able to sustain them-selves as members of the international community.33 The question that

10 Neil Robinson

followed from this was, of course, what kind of state should berebuilt? In the context of globalization, the answer is at least initiallysimple: one that is able to deal with globalization, namely a state thatis flexible and able to draw on social resources to cope with change:in short, some sort of state with infrastructural power.

The contours of what this type of state should be were outlined andprovided for the emerging state-building agenda by changes in devel-opment thinking, which from the early 1990s onwards rediscoveredthe state. The state that was being rediscovered in this shift in develop-ment thinking was not the same as the state that had been promoted byearlier generations of development theorists. Then, the state wascentral to economic processes since it had to plan development in theface of domestic opposition, compensate for backward social structureand inadequate institutions for modernization and ensure that resourceswere sufficiently diverted from consumption to industrialization toovercome late development.34 The state that was rediscovered bydevelopment thinkers in the 1990s was still a vehicle for controllingcertain kinds of activity that inhibit development, but this time devel-opment was market centred and the state was to achieve its endsthrough good governance rather than bureaucratic direction.35

The idea of good governance has two senses: a narrow, technicalsense of sound development management based on a set of rules andinstitutions (that is a legal framework for development) and a systemof public administration which is open, efficient and accountable.Such a system would provide clarity, stability and predictability forthe private sector; and the technical administrative sense plus demo-cratic politics, which is needed to produce accountability.36 Promotinggood governance was seen as a way of dealing with the problemsthat globalization posed for any state taxes, investment rules mustbe ever more responsive to the parameters of a globalized world asthe World Banks 1997 Development Report argued through thepromotion of state effectiveness, with the degree to which a statecould be made effective dependent on local conditions.37 At firstglance both senses of good governance sound admirable. Goodgovernance should destroy some of the things that have made statesweak, like predation by their rulers, by establishing constraints onelite behaviour.

However, there are some problems with the notion. Good governanceis contradictory when placed in its full policy context. It aims topromote stability in which markets can grow and this requires that thestates authority be accepted as legitimate. This legitimacy is supposedto be produced by openness and accountability. However, at the same


time that legitimacy, openness and accountability are being promotedthrough good governance the economic policy does not change, butremains neo-liberal. This means that whilst, on the one hand, a con-tract between state (the good governor) and society is being promotedadministratively (at least), on the other hand there is a continuationof policies that weaken the links between state and citizen: welfarecuts through subsidy reduction, privatization, financial deregulationand the consequent expansion of the power of non-accountablemarket actors over citizens. This has been overlooked in the literatureon state-building, which tends to assume that the rediscovery ofthe state in development thinking was caused by the failure of theWashington Consensus, the neo-liberal policy mix and its sequencingthat were deemed necessary to create growth through economic liber-alization and the extension of the power of markets in the 1980s andearly 1990s. Fukuyama, for example, claims that the failure of theWashington Consensus led to the development agenda of many IFIs[international financial institutions] shifting dramatically in the1990s towards promoting the role of the state.38 In part this is true,but failure of in this instance does not equal end of. What changedwith the rediscovery of the state was not thinking about economicideas, but thinking about the domestic context those ideas should beplaced in, what should anchor them administratively. The state neededattention because what was required, as the title of the World Banks2002 Development Report put it, was a building of institutions formarkets.39 How the market was to be built was not rethought ineconomic policy terms. Critiques from within IFIs that claimed thatthe Washington Consensus had either underplayed the importance ofthe state/institutions, or had actually suggested the wrong institutionalarrangements out of a desire to press ahead with reform, did notsuggest alternatives to economic liberalization based on the samepolicy mix of budget cuts, financial deregulation etc. that the Consensushad originally promoted.40

The logic of the new Washington Consensus (good governance economic liberalization) is thus contradictory: it seeks to buildlegitimacy but at the same time pursues a set of policies that distancethe state and the citizen. To compensate for this the idea that goodgovernance should include democratic politics has become moreimportant in the state-building agenda. Democratic governance as aform of good governance has become a balance to the problems thateconomic policy causes in the short run. In the long run there shouldbe no problem: when economic policy works it will pay-off withgrowth; but whilst waiting for this the citizen should be tied to the

12 Neil Robinson

state by democratic rights. One aspect of this is the tendency ofsome analysts to talk not just of state-building, but also of nationbuilding, the end stage of which is the creation of communities ofshared values, traditions, and historical memory, but which in theshort-run involves political relegitimation.41 Another has been thetendency in the most recent and most full-on interventions(Afghanistan and Iraq) to talk of regime change as much as state-building and to embark of democracy building (elections, conveningof parliaments and government formation) before the state or goodgovernance have been introduced or created.

The influence of globalization and the rethinking of the place ofthe state in development and its nature have together created avery rigid and linear idea of what state-building should involve.State-building is not just the creation of a monopoly over powerin a territory; it is also to develop a particular form of authoritythat will fulfil specific, market-supporting tasks. The blurring ofweak/failed/collapsed states means that this vision can be appliedanywhere: whatever the problem, democratic state-building is thesolution. The problem with this, of course, is that it telescopes statedevelopment, democratic development and market development intosimultaneous, or near simultaneous, processes. Historical experienceseems to indicate that this telescoping is novel. The experience ofsuccessful effective state-building is, as Rueschemeyer has argued, anincremental and slow process . . . full of more of less long periods ofstasis.42 Even when things appear to move quickly in state-buildingit is because of long-term developments in some other area such asthe economy, society or culture that have reached fruition and facil-itated a rapid forward movement. Rueschemeyer notes that therecan be rapid formation of effective states, or rapid adaptation ofstate forms to become more effective, but only where modernity hasalready taken firm root.43 Although some aspects of modernity(some notion of legal procedure, market economy, educated admin-istrators) that lay the foundations for effective state-developmenthave been laid down across the world in short time compared tothe length of time it took to develop them in Europe,44 they are bydefinition still largely absent in weak states, and are declining infailed and collapsed states which are demodernizing as their infra-structures are worn away by predation. Rapid state formation isthus a result of latent supports for the development of infrastruc-tural power delivering at last. It is not something that we shouldexpect to see happen at the same time as basic social structure andeconomic development.


Finally, the three processes of state, democratic and marketdevelopment may well be contradictory when conducted simultane-ously. The development of state, democratic and market developmenthave historically been eased by their non-simultaneous development;where the processes run together the risk is that making a decision onone of them may pervert the others.45 Designing state, democraticregime and market at the same time overburdens decision making andexposes something hidden from view when the processes are separateand drawn out: the advantage that can be gained across the differentprocesses by manipulating one of them. Making decisions on themarket might detract from the development of democracy sincedecisions about allocations of property alters the social balance ofpower; making a decision about the social basis of the state candeform democracy since it influences citizenship and rights to partici-pation and may create exclusion rather than universal citizenship;making decisions about democratic institutions can create anti-marketpopulism or majorities that are not interested in market-supportinginstitutions such as property rights. In short, not only does buildingstate, democracy and market at the same time run the risk of one ormore of the processes corrupting the others, it actually providesincentives for such behaviour and hence for the ruination of all andthe perpetuation of state weakness.

State-building, transitional administration and theinternational community: an outline of the rest of this book

One possible answer to the problems of building good governance/democracy, states and markets simultaneously as dictated by global-ization and good governance is that a disinterested party takes charge.This disinterested party should be able to see where the common goodof a society lies and have no interest other than the construction of aneffective state so that it can avoid the pitfalls of simultaneity. The restof this book addresses what happens when a disinterested party, theinternational community, in the form of the United Nations (UN) andother international organizations, takes up the cause and tries to buildstates. In the process, the chapters address not only the outcome forsome of the states and peoples where this has been attempted, but alsothe effect that this effort might have on the international community.The conclusions are not hopeful. The rest of this chapter willintroduce the chapter themes. Aidan Hehir will draw some generalconclusions briefly in the overall conclusion to the book.

14 Neil Robinson

We start with a chapter by Ralph Wilde. Wilde looks at howinternational territorial administration is legitimated and distinguishedfrom its predecessor, colonialism. Wilde points out that the analogybetween transitional administration under international auspices andcolonialism has been invoked more frequently since the invasions ofAfghanistan and Iraq. However, the distinction between these casesof transitional administration and others is not always that clear interms of intention and some practices. This raises the question of howdistinctions between illegitimate, state-generated colonialism andlegitimate international organization-generated transitional adminis-tration are created and whether they are sustainable. Wilde looks athow ideas of legitimacy associated with international organizationsand international law support a normative distinction between thetwo activities.

Colonialism as a form of international territorial administrationwas imposed, exploitative, founded on racist ideas about subjectpeoples, and self-serving, and damaged the very idea of internationalterritorial administration. Post-colonial forms of international territo-rial administration are legitimized, Wilde argues, by internationallegal authority and through the identity of the administering actor.Legitimating transitional administration by international legal authorityhas two dimensions. First, the establishment of international territorialadministration is created through either the decision of an internationalbody, the UN Security Council, and sometimes also with the consentof the sovereign power whose territory is to be administered. TheUN Security Council has the authority to impose internationaladministration on a state thanks to its identity as an institution of theorganized international community. This is crucial since the consentof states to subject themselves in whole or part to internationaladministration is often made under some form of duress due to eithercrisis and/or because of foreign military pressure such as the actionsof North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in former Yugoslavia.Second, international legal authority supports international territorialadministration since it seeks to implement one or more aspect of inter-national law. What this might be varies from case to case, but includesin particular transfers of territory to state or groups deemed theirrightful holders, and improving governance so as to uphold humanrights standards. This links post-colonial international administrationto international laws claim to universality, distinguishing it fromthe subjectivity of colonial forms of administration that imposed aculturally specific set of values, policies and administrative systems those of the colonizer on subject peoples (although as we have


pointed out and as later chapters, particularly those by Cunliffe,Chandler, Pupavac and Bain argue, these policies are not unproblem-atic because of their universality). The role of the UN and the fact thatpost-colonial international territorial administration claims to beimplementing policies in accord with international law create thethird factor that Wilde argues legitimizes transitional administration,the identity of the administering actor. Administration under theauspices of the UN is seen as good because of the UNs non-nationalcharacter and working towards policy aims that are created by inter-national law. Unlike states the UN is not self-interested and its actionsas an international administrator, or organizer and facilitator of such,are charitable rather than exploitative. This, as Wilde goes on to pointout, has had an influence on the way that international territorialadministration is conceived and administered in the UN.

Wildes concern in outlining the ways in which transitional admin-istration is legitimated and set apart from its colonial predecessor (andhopefully their baleful legacy in state-building46) is not to assesswhether these claims to legitimacy are sustainable, but to considerhow international territorial administration has become normativelyacceptable according to international policy makers and organiza-tions. He does, however, point out that the claims to legitimacy reston the ability of international organizations to be independentand impartial, and that this is problematic, and questions whetherlegitimating international territorial administration by arguing that itis not like its colonial predecessor is enough if, in effect, the results arethe same, that is if post-colonial transitional administrations like theirpredecessors do not actually improve local capacities for government.Moreover, and this is a point that is picked up in later chapters, thelegitimacy of international territorial administration might be suspectbecause of the divided loyalties of international officials (see also thechapters by Richard Caplan and in particular by Jarat Chopra).

Where Wilde shows that there may be some problems withthe ways in which international territorial administration has beenlegitimated in comparison to the colonial past, the next threechapters, by Cunliffe, Chandler and Pupavac unpick some ofthe problems that such forms of administration create or face as theytry to develop policies that are sanctioned by the international legalnorms that Wilde describes.

Cunliffe and Chandler focus on the problems of good governance.Cunliffe does this by looking at what he calls the historical specificityof contemporary state-building projects, namely where they fit withthe development of international relations in the post-Cold War

16 Neil Robinson

period. He does this to get away from the simple description ofsuch efforts as forms of colonialism, empire and imperialism thatare so promiscuously used in reference to practices of state-building.He argues that the growth of state-building as a practice in contem-porary state-building rests on two basic trends that have dominatedpolitics in the post-Cold War era, the politics of emergency and theexercise of power without responsibility. Cunliffe thus presents analternative view of how developments in the post-Cold War periodinform the agenda and the character of state-building. Cunliffe arguesthat there is a close link between post-Westphalian political devel-opments in the 1990s, mostly the rise to prominence of human rightsand the international political agenda and a corollary development ofnew interventionism and state-building projects. Cunliffe looks athow these aspects of post-Cold War politics developed before 9/11and consolidated after it. He argues that although the claim of state-building projects undertaken by international actors is to build humanrights and democratic governance in fact what occurs is the creationof regimes that are dependent on outside powers. This, he argues, cre-ates a fundamental contradiction. Instead of democratic governancewhat is produced is low-cost domination of non-sovereign politicalentities by their international sponsors. This Cunliffe argues is theexercise of a form of power without responsibility. Internationalsponsors of state-building projects set the terms and conditions underwhich these projects are conducted but at the same time underminethe prerequisites of successful state-building and fail to take directresponsibility for their actions.

The chapter by David Chandler picks up on these themes bylooking at how current international state-building policy practicesrelegate political process to a secondary position in state-building.This occurs Chandler argues because of the diminution of statesovereignty and is in marked contrast to the state-building norms thatwere prevalent in the post-Second World War period of decolonializa-tion. It is debatable whether there is a diminution of state sovereigntyor just a new form of weakened state sovereignty since the nature ofdecolonization, as we have already mentioned following Jackson,created states that were quasi-, semi-sovereign entities, and poorlyorientated towards the tasks of building state capacity because ofinternational factors. However, there may, as Cunliffe also argues, bea new basis for diminished sovereignty in the discourses of humanrights and good governance. It is towards the latter that Chandlerdirects particular criticism since he believes that under internationaldirection this takes precedence over the domestic political process of


government. Chandler builds this argument on earlier observationsby Samuel Huntington that the key to the stabilization of a state isdomestic consensus as the basis of political community and legitimategovernment.47 Good governance, Chandler argues, works against thedevelopment of this consensus and reverses the general order of state-building, positing that political processes are the result of state-buildingrather than the mechanisms through which social forces worktowards a form of state that is acceptable to them. Chandlersargument reinforces the point made earlier about how changes in thediscourses about development have, with the rediscovery of the stateas a vehicle for good governance, foreshortened the period in whichstate development is to take place. Chandler argues that this view onthe sequencing of state-building has developed because of the ideathat institutionalization must precede democratization in interna-tional state-building efforts since democracy is divisive in weakpolities. Chandler argues that this amounts to a form of socialengineering in which good governance is a technical solution to polit-ical problems and conflicts that takes the place of their resolutionthrough native political agency. This, again, is based on a diminutionof sovereignty. Those parties that are intervening in conflict roughlythe West and international organizations are seen as above politics,as the bringers of law and the neutral judges arbitrating solutions toparties who have weak claim to sovereign rights. Such technicalsolutions, however, do not build up connections between the newstate and society. Indeed, in a sense such states that might emergefrom this type of formative process might, in the short run, not evenbe states. They are states in a narrow sense that they are juridicalentities recognized by the international organizations and their mem-bers that have created them and because they may, crudely, possess amonopoly on coercion and control the means to pay for this monop-oly. However, they are not an arena of political resolution and haveno real life to them in the sense, as Gramsci put it, that the life of thestate is conceived as a continuous process of formation and supersed-ing of unstable equilibria (on the juridical plane) between the interestsof the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups.48 Theauthority and true sovereignty of the international administrationsupersede such struggles for equilibrium. This of course, means thatthe states created by international administration are still failures asstates since they cannot have great capacity in the sense of havingdeveloped infrastructural power.

The import of Chandlers argument is that transitional administra-tion is almost certain to fail in its current form. However, through its

18 Neil Robinson

day-to-day failings it recreates the terms for its own endless existence.By building in failure it cannot be dissolved, but has to be sustainedto develop state capacity. Chandler gives some examples from the caseof Bosnia as to how this has happened more examples from thiscase and others follow in the chapters by Richard Caplan, AidanHehir and Jarat Chopra but adds a warning that it contains a threatto the UN itself since the erosion of sovereignty and creation of a hier-archy of states that follows from these developments weakens theUNs authority and has moved it away from its Charter. VanessaPupavac picks up these themes in the next chapter. Pupavac tracesthe problems mentioned by Chandler to a different set of factors,concentrating in particular on the challenges to developmental statesthat have emerged over recent years as a result of changing advocacyfrom humanitarian NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

Pupavac argues that there has been a dual shift in the relationshipof developing states and the international system over recent years.First, the advocacy role of humanitarian NGOs has worked withinternational economic policies to weaken the states in the developingworld. NGOs have abandoned state-led national development, and inparticular drives for industrialization, in favour of creating sustainabledevelopment and the empowerment of individuals. This new agendaand its focus on human security demonizes the state because the stateis seen as failing the individual in the developing world and often it isthe state that actually violates individuals rights. This new NGOagenda, Pupavac argues, has led to the abandonment of claims toequality between states in economic terms and has weakened theposition of developing states within the international system. Parallelto this there has been an increase in the advocacy of military inter-vention by NGOs so that they have in effect supported the challengeto the sovereign equality of states that has been a feature of thepost-Cold War world. The first source of these changes is the end of theCold War itself. Cold War competition fostered national-developmentprojects in the developing world to some extent since ideological com-petition between the capitalist and state-socialist camps led them topromote, and to a degree fund, distinct models of economicdevelopment. The collapse of the bipolar order did not lead to thetriumph of one model of development, but to an international orderconcerned with crisis management. Development issues thus declinedin importance on the agenda of some parts of the internationalcommunity. Where they did remain in view they did so in a particular,and Pupavac argues, unhelpful fashion. The overall effect of thesechanges has been that state weakness has been addressed only in


certain limited dimensions, particularly as an issue of corruption orbad governance, which fit with the human security agenda. This hashelped to make the issue of human insecurity in the developing worlda moral problem against which developed states can measure them-selves. The results of this measurement can then be used as justificationfor intervention in the developing world. Claims to the sovereignequality of states cannot stand against this especially since theadvocates of the human security agenda include humanitarian NGOs.It has allowed for the interventions and one might argue non-interventions where problems are deemed too intractable or in someoneelses backyard by developed powers that are akin to a form of liberalimperialism and thus has relegitimized international inequality.

In different ways, the chapters by Cunliffe, Chandler and Pupavacaddress at a general level the dangers that state-building might posefor the legitimacy of the international order, and this legitimacy, asWilde argues in the second chapter is crucial for intervention andtransitional administration. The chapters by Caplan, Hehir and Chopralook at three cases of transitional administration and the ways inwhich some of the problems of state-building that we can identify ata general level have played themselves out. Since they are case studiesmuch of the devil is in the detail and they defy simple summary.However, collectively they point to several things.

First, each shows that there is a minimal amount of accountabilityby transitional administrations to the people that they govern.49 Caplanshows that in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) the High Representative andother international bodies are chiefly accountable to the agencies thatappoint them. Partly this is because of the nature of the beast; exter-nally created state-building agencies are there to do a job so to speakrather than to be representative institutions, partly it is because of theclaim that such bodies make to emergency powers to deal with dan-gerous conditions, powers that enable them to ride over local con-cerns in the greater interest of long-term peace and stability. Themechanisms for accountability intrinsic to the bodies that shareresponsibility for state-building in BiH are inward looking (i.e.concerned with justification of activities to their home institutions) orare inaccessible to local people. Mechanisms for creating accountabil-ity that are extrinsic to transitional administration are weak orlacking: local media is underdeveloped, international media is inac-cessible or otherwise engaged; there is no independent ombudspersonto whom BiH citizens can appeal; their own courts have limitedjurisdiction over employees of transitional authorities and NGOsthat monitor the transitional authority are mostly of foreign origin.

20 Neil Robinson

Hehir highlights the lack of accountability of transitional authority inKosovo differently, by arguing that one of the chief problems that thearea faces is the inability of the transitional authority to deal with theissue that is most pressing to Kosovars of all ethnicities: the regionsfuture status with relation to Albania, Serbia or as an independententity. Instead of dealing with this issue, the UN InterimAdministration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has developed anagenda for institutional reform and development of its own despitethe fact that such an agendas implementation is in many waysdependent on resolution of the regions status. The distance betweenUNMIKs and the local populations priorities was highlighted by theoutbreak of violence in Kosovo in March 2004 that was orchestratedby ethnic Albanians, on whose behalf intervention had originally beenplanned, and which was directed in part at UNMIK.

The events of March 2004 in Kosovo were the clearest case of abreach between a transitional authority and its subjects outside ofAfghanistan and Iraq (where peace was never achieved in the first placesince the belligerents against whom military intervention was directedin the first place were not defeated) until May 2006 when unrest brokeout in East Timor. This unrest was caused by the collapse of the nationalsecurity forces and divided political loyalties within it, and led to furtherintervention by Australian and other troops and the resignation ofPrime Minister Alkatiri in June 2006.50 These events took place afterthe completion of the chapter by Chopra, but are not that surprising inlight of it. Chopra is even more damning of the failure of the transi-tional administration to build a relationship to the community it wassupposed to serve than Caplan and Hehir. Like Caplan, Chopra arguesthat part of the failure to develop some form of accountability was aresult of emergency powers and the desire to get things done. This heargues was magnified in the case of East Timor by a feeling that powerneeded to be concentrated in the hands of the administration to insuresuccess after failures in Somalia and Afghanistan. Once again,therefore, a transitional authority was working to its own agenda. Inthis case, however, working to its own agenda had an additional effectof corrupting administration by fostering what Chopra calls malevo-lence on the part of international officials, some of whom worked toexclude Timorese participation in government so that they might usetheir powers. Although the UN Transitional Administration in EastTimor (UNTAET) went through several reorganizations, centralizingand decentralizing administration and reforming its grass-roots itsingularly failed to develop a relationship with the National Councilof Timorese Resistance (CNRT), the umbrella organization of the


Timorese resistance, and so could not moderate its lack of account abil-ity or root its administration in social consensus.

Second, the chapters by Caplan, Hehir and Chopra show howtransitional administration might fail as Chandler indicates in hischapter and how this might create the conditions for a long transition.Hehir and Chopra particularly and strongly sketch this theme out intheir chapters. As has already been noted, in Kosovo, UNMIK hasfailed to resolve the basic problem of the regions final status andhas instead set its own developmental goals. Whilst these are notunimportant, failure to meet them in their first iteration did not leadto UNMIK or its sponsors getting back to basics. Instead the goalswere changed and the fundamental question of the regions status wassubsumed to them. Overtime, the goal has become to link Kosovoto Europe and have it as a part of a wider Balkan integration intoEuropean structures and to resolve the question of status as a corollaryto these developments. This sets a high threshold of state developmentin the region and in neighbouring states before the issue of Kosovosstatus is dealt with finally. Hehir argues that by changing the goal-posts transitional administration in Kosovo can be termed a successeven though it has not actually addressed the regions fundamentalproblem its relationship with its neighbours. Arguably, this worksmost to the advantage of international organizations since they canargue that they have not failed in what many hailed as an importanttest case of new forms of intervention. For Chopra failure in EastTimor has come because the UN has failed to develop the rule oflaw and means of conflict resolution, instead enforcing a one-sidedsettlement amongst local political actors. As a result, East Timor isleft to rely more or less on the goodwill of its people in the face ofunresolved problems and injustices if it is to avoid conflict over thelonger term. This leads him to question whether East Timor mightnot have been better off without a transitional administration. Thetendency in the wake of conflict is for some state form to emerge fromunder the rubble and all that the transitional administration in EastTimor might at best have done is delayed organic state-building andat worst it might have deformed such organic state-building so that itsoutcomes will be much more sub-optimal for the Timorese thanwould otherwise have been the case.

Finally, we can make one observation from the three casespresented by Caplan, Hehir and Chopra. This is that there is no realcommon model of how transitional administration for state-buildingshould take place despite the rhetorical similarity in justifications forit and the common goals that it is supposed to achieve in terms of

22 Neil Robinson

good governance and human security. At one level this might be agood thing since it could facilitate flexibility and responsiveness tolocal conditions that might ameliorate some of the negative effects ofexternally imposed state-building projects. However, it can also causeproblems. As a comparison of the three cases shows, first, flexibilityis less likely than mission creep and an expansion of the power ofthe transitional authority is the most likely outcome of a piecemealapproach to setting up state-building operations. Second, there is adifference between flexibility towards local conditions who toinclude in consultations between transitional authority workers andlocal interests should be variable and flexibility in standards ofaccountability to local populations and to international sponsors.It might be expected that both subject peoples and the internationalcommunity would be better served by some common high standardof accountability. Chopras argument that what is needed now is aconcept of participatory intervention would seem to support thisobservation.

The final substantive chapter in the book before Aidan Hehirsconclusion is a very different creature to what goes before it.William Bains chapter returns to some of the general questions withwhich we began. Bains approach is, however, very different to theother general chapters in this book. Where they call for changes tothe state-building approach by questioning contemporary approachesand include calls like Pupavacs for a return to universal values aroundwhich development can take place, Bain provides a critique of thewhole enterprise of international administration that rejects univer-salism. Legitimating state-building through reference to the UN orsuch things as human rights is not sufficient, he argues, because thewhole enterprise might be morally objectionable; it is not goodenough that transitional administration is claimed for the good. Baindoubts that there is a good way to intervene and create state-buildingadministrations and that we can find such a way by extrapolationfrom any single case or even from the collection of such. Lookingat transitional administration not for what it supposed to do, but aswhat he calls a mode of conduct, Bain argues that transitionaladministration is an empty category since it conflates and conjoinsnotions of contract and trust. Very (very) crudely, contract impliesconsenting parties and mutual obligation; trust implies no suchmutual obligation or reciprocal recognition of rights, but involves oneparty creating a second as a trustee for the benefit of a third party thatis incapable of entering into a contract because of some incapacity onits part. In the case of international administration, the first party is


international society, the trustee the transitional administration andthe beneficiary is the territory and peoples that are to be administered.The confusion of the two terms in the case of territorial administrationmakes them impossible to judge. For example, Bain argues, it makesno sense to hold transitional administrations as failures because oftheir lack of accountability since they are trusts (and hence cannot beaccountable to their beneficiaries), not contractual relations betweenresponsible parties. But we do so and so do most of our otherchapters since transitional administrations are also contracted tocreate such things as good governance and that implies some form ofaccountability.

One retort to this would be that if we (as the non-beneficiaries of atrust, the commissioning party) invest a trustee with power to dosomething then we have a right to hold the trustee to account for itsactions in achieving the goal we commissioned it to achieve. In otherwords, if transitional administrations are trusts they should beaccountable to the states and international organizations that formthem for some of their actions (although then, as other chapters pointout, these might be incoherent and unattainable, and, moreover, asBain and others have pointed out elsewhere, trustees are less account-able today than they have been historically).51 But Bains argumentgoes further than this critique to develop what some might call aliberal conservative argument against state-building forms of interna-tional territorial administration. This supports his argument basedon the trust/contract distinction, and indeed in his argument runsparallel to it so that my separation of the two strands of argument isa disservice to both, albeit for the sake of simplification. The thrust ofthis liberal conservative argument is that liberty, in this case thefreedom of societies to make choices within the bounds of their ownself-determined traditions and norms, is more important and a betterbasis for their organization than the imposition of ideals aboutbehaviour and governance that are imposed by an external power, nomatter how well meaning. Personally, I am not sure that I agree withthis instinctively or for all the possible ways that intervention couldhappen (as opposed to ways in which it has actually happened).However, it is an argument grounded in a considered reading ofpolitical philosophy that has to be addressed if in the long run thereis to be an adequate legitimation of state-building as a form ofintervention and territorial administration, and if some of the practicalproblems and contemporary contradictions that other chapters high-light are to be addressed in systematically. Bains chapter, therefore, isa very challenging argument to be confronted as we progress to think

24 Neil Robinson

more about state-building as a practice of international politics. Andthere is a lot of thinking still to be done.

Notes

1 See the chapter by Cunliffe for a more extensive treatment of the conven-tional wisdoms articulation by politicians. Further record of changingperspectives on state-building before and after 9/11 can be found inYannis, A., State collapse and its implications for peace-building andreconstruction, Development and Change, vol. 33, no. 5, 2002, pp. 81735;Fukuyama, F., Nation-building and the failure of institutional memory andEkbladh, D. From consensus to crisis: the postwar career of nation-building,both in Fukuyama, F. (ed.), Nation-building. Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq,Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

2 For example, at the end of the 1990s all but two of the twenty-sevenmajor conflicts in the world recorded in a study for the World Bank tookthe form of civil wars. See Collier, P., Economic causes of civil conflict andtheir implications for policy, World Bank, 2000, available at http://www.worldbank.org/research/conflict/papers/civilconflict.pdf

3 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa: International DevelopmentResearch Centre, December 2001, available at www.iciss.gc.ca

4 The terms international territorial administration (sometimes abbreviatedto ITA) and transitional administration are both used in this book,although strictly speaking the former is a broader term that incorporatesforms of administration that are not imagined by their creators as imper-manent (colonialism would be a case in point).

5 For an alternative review of many of the ideas and concepts discussed latersee Heilbrun, J., Paying the price of failure: reconstructing failed andcollapsed states in Africa and Central Asia, Perspectives on Politics,vol. 4, no. 1, 2006, pp. 13550.

6 Migdal, J., Strong Societies and Weak States. State-society Relations andState Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1988, p. 4.

7 Mann, M., The autonomous power of the state, in Mann, M. (ed.),States, War and Capitalism. Essays in Political Sociology, Oxford:Blackwell, 1988.

8 Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power. A History of Power from theBeginning to AD 1760. Volume 1, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, chapter 14.

9 Olson, M., Power and Prosperity. Outgrowing Communist and CapitalistDictatorships, New York: Basic Books, especially pp. 612.

10 For a longer discussion of the logic of this see Geddes, B., PoliticiansDilemma. Building State Capacity in Latin America, Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 1994.

11 An example of this type of organic weak state would be the Tsaristempire. For a large part of its history it was organic in the sense that manyof its subject people, whilst not ethnically Russian, were attached to it byshared religious outlook (Orthodox Christianity), and had no alternativesense of themselves as Ukrainian or Belorussian because there was no


nationalist-statist project to which they could easily attach themselvesbecause of the absence of mechanisms for developing such a project(a strong nationalist intelligentsia, mechanisms for mobilizing ethnicity,a literate populace ready to receive nationalist ideas etc.).

12 Jackson, R.H., Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and theThird World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

13 See, inter alia, Mayall, J., The legacy of colonialism, in Chesterman, S.,Ignatieff, M. and Thakur, R. (eds), Making states work. State failure and thecrisis of governance, Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2005. For ageneral discussion of the issues in Africa see Meredith, M., The State ofAfrica. A history of fifty years of independence, London: Free Press, 2005.We should be careful, however, to distinguish cases of success and failure inpost-colonial states, which in part can be traced back to the form taken bycolonialism. See, Lange, M., British colonial state legacies and developmenttrajectories: a statistical analysis of direct and indirect rule, in Lange, M. andRueschemeyer, D. (eds), States and Development. Historical Antecedents ofStagnation and Advance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

14 Beissinger, M.R. and Young, C., Convergence to crisis: pre-independencestate legacies and post-independence state breakdown in Africa andEurasia, in Beissinger, M.R. and Young, C. (eds), Beyond State Crisis?Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective,Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002.

15 Baseline definitions generally equate failure with either an inability tomaintain the provision of public goods to society so that there is no socialcontract between state and people or with a challenge to the statesmonopoly over coercion on its claimed territory. See von Einsiedel, S.,Policy responses to state failure, in Chesterman, et al., Making stateswork, pp. 1516 for discussion and relation of these definitions to basictheories of the state. These definitions cut across what we have alreadydescribed as state weakness and, in the case of the challenges to the statesmonopoly over coercion, could be used to describe states that are gener-ally viewed as strong: Italy, for example, in the anni di piombo (years oflead), the UK during the conflict in Northern Ireland or Spain during theconflict in the Basque country all saw the states monopoly over coercionchallenged by armed groups but were a long way from failure.

16 Gros, J.G., Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order:Decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti, Third World Quarterly,vol. 37, no. 3, 1996, pp. 45661. Rotberg, R.I., The failure and collapseof nation-states: breakdown, prevention and repair, in Rotberg, R.I. (ed.),When States Fail. Causes and Consequences, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 2004 argues that states can lose control of a part of their territoryand merely be weak, rather than failed, and gives examples.

17 Rotberg, R.I., The failure and collapse of nation-states: break down,prevention and repair, op.cit., p. 9; Zartman, I.W., Introduction: posingthe problem of state collapse, in Zartman, I.W. (ed.), Collapsed States. TheDisintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, Boulder, CO: LynneReiner, 1995, p. 1.

18 Rotberg, R.I., Failed states, collapsed states, weak states: causes andindicators, in Rotberg, R.I. (ed.), State Failure and State Weakness in aTime of Terror, Cambridge, MA, Washington, DC: World PeaceFoundation, Brookings Institution Press, 2003, pp. 510.

26 Neil Robinson

19 International Crisis Group, Kyrgyzstan: A Faltering State, Asia ReportNo. 109, 2005.

20 Jackson, Quasi-States. For a short explication of these points seeBates, R.H. Prosperity and Violence. The Political Economy ofDevelopment, New York: W.W. Norton, chapters 4 and 5.

21 Reno, W., Warlord Politics and African States, Boulder, CO: LynneReinner. See also his Mafiya troubles, warlord crises, in Beissinger andYoung (eds), Beyond State Crisis? for an argument about the applicabilityof the concept beyond Africa.

22 Bates, Prosperity and Violence, p. 97.23 van de Walle, N., The economic correlates of state failure, in Rotberg, R.I

(ed.), When States Fail. Causes and Consequences, Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2001. van de Walles argument is summarizedin Fukuyama, F., State-building. Governance and World Order in theTwenty-first Century, London: Profile Books, 2004, pp. 212.

24 Ayoob, M., State-making, state-breaking and state failure: explainingthe roots of Third World insecurity, in Van de Goor, L., Rupeshinge, K.and Sciarone, P. (eds), Between Development and Destruction: AnEnquiry into the Causes of Conflict in Post-colonial States, Basingstoke:Macmillan.

25 For an alternate list see the maps in Rotberg, The failure and collapse ofnation-states, pp. 469; also the case studies in Zartman, CollapsedStates, p. 5; Rotberg, State Failure and State Weakness; Chesterman, et al.Making states work.

26 See, for example, Helman, G. and Ratner, S., Saving failed states, ForeignPolicy, no. 89, pp. 320.

27 Yannis, State collapse, p. 826.28 For an overview of the issues around state and globalization see Clark, I.,

Globalization and International Relations Theory, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999.

2

A. & Rob Hehir State Building Theory and Practice Routledge Advances in International Relations and...

Documents

Transcript of A. & Rob Hehir State Building Theory and Practice Routledge Advances in International Relations and...