State-Building

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State-building is a term used in state theory. It describes the construction of a functioning state. This concept was first used in connection to the creation of states in Western Europe and focused on the power enforcement of state in society (Tilly 1975). Tilly (1975: 70f.) described the advantages of state building in Europe as follows:

„State building provided for the emergence of specialized personnel, control over consolidated territory, loyalty, and durability, permanent institutions with a centralized and autonomous state that held the monopoly of violence over a given population“.

State-building is now increasingly used to describe the aim of international development and peace-building in weak or failing states. International community assisted state-building undertaken for the purpose of ending and preventing a return to conflict, represents an emerging consensus that one of the weaknesses of many of the past peace-keeping missions had been an inadequate focus on the state that was left behind after the peace-keeping mission withdrew. Many of those missions were not able to create sustainable peace, with a high proportion of states returning to conflict when the peacekeepers withdrew, or emerging as weak and unstable states. The United Nations (through complex peacekeeping operations), the UN Development Program, the World Bank, and many bilateral donors have increasingly adopted state-building in their aid and development stategy (eg Haiti, East Timor, the Former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iraq).

Despite initial optimism over the potential of the state-building approach, especially following Timor-Leste’s admission into the United Nations as a new democracy in 2002, there is growing recognition that while there needs to be a focus on creating legitimate and sustainable state institutions, strategies to achieve this have not yet been fully developed. Little of the state-building undertaken so far has been successful. Most state-building activities have taken place in failed, fragile or post-conflict states. These war-devastated states are frequently characterized by brutalized civilian populations, destroyed economies, institutions, infrastructure, and environments, widely accessible small arms, large numbers of disgruntled soldiers to be demobilized and reintegrated, and ethnically or religiously divided peoples. These obstacles are compounded by the fundamental difficulty of grafting democratic and human rights values onto countries with different political, cultural, and religious heritages.

It is evident that state-building is an extremely complex and time consuming task, and the challenges it faces have been reviewed by a number of researchers and policy experts. See eg (Dahrendorf, 2003), (The Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction, 2003), (Collier, 2003) (Fukuyama, 2004), (Paris, 2004), (Samuels 2005). Common critiques include inadequate strategy and a lack of coordination, staffing weaknesses, and that funding is insufficient or poorly timed. Moreover, it is increasingly recognized that many of the tasks sought to be achieved are extremely complex and there is little clarity on how to best proceed. For instance, it is extremely difficult to provide security in a conflictual environment, or to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate armies successfully. It remains practically impossible to address vast unemployment in states where the economy is destroyed and there is high illiteracy, or to strengthen the rule of law in a society where it has collapsed. Moreover, the unintended negative consequences of international aid are more and more evident. These range from distortion of the economy to skewing relationship of accountability by the political elite towards internationals rather than domestic population.

[edit] state structures within the concept of state-building

A "state" can both to mean a geographic sovereign political entity with a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with the other states, as defined under international law (Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, December 26, 1933, Article 1), as well as a set of social institutions claiming a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory (Max Weber, 1919).

For the purposes of state-building in environments of instability, the sub-structures of states can be defined as a political regime (or system of government), a governance framework (or constitution), and a set of state institutions (or organizations) such as the armed forces, the parliament, and the justice system. State capacity refers to the strength and capability of the state institutions. Nation conventionally refers to the population itself, as united by identity, history, culture and language.

[edit] Literature

• Almond, Gabriel: The Return to the State in: American Political Science Review, Vol. 82, No. 3, 853–874, 1988.
• Bastian, S. and Luckham, R. ) In Can Democracy Be Designed? : The Politics of Institutional Choice in Conflict-Torn Societies (Ed, Luckham, R.) Zed, London Collier, P., 2003.
• Collier, Paul Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy OUP, Oxford, 2003.
• The Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Play to Win, Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Association of the U.S. Army, Washington DC, 2003.
• Covey, Dziedzic, et al. (eds.) The Quest for Viable Peace: International Intervention and Strategies for Conflict Transformation, USIP Press, Washington DC, 2005.
• Dahrendorf, N. (Ed.) A Review of Peace Operations: A Case for Change, King's College, London, 2003.
• Fukuyama, Francis: State Building. Governance and World Order in the Twenty-First Century, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004a, ISBN 0-8014-4292-3
• Fukuyma, Francis: The Imperative of State-Building, in: Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2, 17–31, 2004b.
• Kjær, Anne M./Hansen, Ole H./Frølund Thomsen, Jens Peter: Conceptualizing State Capacity, Working Paper, March, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2002.
• Krasner, Stephen D.: Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics, in: Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No.2, 223–246, 1984.
• Kuzio, Taras/Kravchuk, Robert S./D’Anieri, Paul (eds.): State and Institution Building in Ukraine, London: Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-17195-4 .
• Migdal, Joel S.: State in Society. Studying how States and Societies Transform and Constitute one another, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Paris, Roland, A War's End , University of Colorado, Boulder, 2004.
• Samuels, Kirsti S, State Building and the Consequences of Constitutional Choices in Conflictual Environments: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fiji, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, South Africa and Uganda, IPA Policy Paper, New York, 2006.
• Skopcol, Theda: Bringing the State Back In, in: Social Science Research Items, Vol. 36, June, 1–8, 1982.
• Tilly, Charles: Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 900–1990, Malden: Blackwell, 2000, ISBN 1-55786-067-X.
• Tilly, Charles (ed.): Western-State Making and Theories of Political Transformation, in: The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.
• World Bank : World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997