Putting the Cart before the Horse : Statebuilding, Early Warning and the Irrationality of Bureaucratic Rationalization

Abstract

Despite the transition of a government from authoritarian to democratic rule, the root causes of civil war persist and require monitoring in a post-conflict phase. The collapse of the Arusha peace accord in Rwanda is a prime example of both the importance of early warning in statebuilding and the severe consequences of its failure. This article demonstrates that such a crucial interaction between the detection of warning signals and peacebuilding has been obstructed by intervening mechanisms in international organization. These are, principally, those of bureaucratic rationalization – drawing on Max Weber's views of bureaucratic universalism and institutional rationality (Zweckrationalität) – and Western normalization – which moralises intervention scenarios to fit self-images of the pursuit of ‘noble causes’, often detaching policy from the complex realities on the ground.