Building State Failure in East Timor

Abstract

East Timor is the newest state of the twenty–first century. Yet its human development indicators compare with the most severely collapsed states in the world. Two and a half years of international administration by the United Nations seems to have had little effect on a social and political reality that has evolved by itself. In effect, the UN has given birth to a failed state. The purpose of governorship types of intervention — which attempt to (re)build governments that have collapsed or states that have failed — was to take control of a local political process and break with an abusive past. This aim was the rationale behind the most total form of international administration — UN statehood and international sovereignty in East Timor. In practice, however, the intervention failed to decentralize its own absolutist form of authority, but succeeded in excluding the local population from the equation. If there is to be any future for interventions that are both effective and legitimate, then they will need to guarantee much greater and genuine integration of the local population. ‘Participatory intervention’ is the next doctrinal puzzle to solve in the evolution of international state–building enterprises of any brand.