Statebuilding Interventions Research Articles

Militarized state-building interventions and the survival of fragile states

Militarized state-building interventions (MSIs) must fulfill two often conflicting goals. At the time of withdrawal the intervenor must leave in place a state able to survive on its own and govern its territory. States only intervene in other states, however, when they aspire to change the policy of the target in ways they prefer. In attempting to balance these objectives, the intervenor ‘pulls’ policy in its preferred direction by supporting a less popular leader at the cost of leaving behind a state that is no more likely to survive over time than its peers. We test our theory and find evidence for this trade-off by examining all MSIs by great powers and IOs in failed states from 1956 to 2006. Consistent with the theory, we find that MSIs do not on average have any significant effect on state survival. We also find that MSIs that move the target state’s policy closer to that of the external power have a negative effect on survival, but interventions that do not result in a change in policy do not. This argument and finding temper the optimism of much of the contemporary literature on international interventions. Potential intervenors face a stark trade-off. If they draw the policy of the failed state towards their own preferences, then that state will be more likely to fail again in the future.

Responding to Sexual Violence: How (De-) Politicization and Technicalization Shape Donor-Funded Interventions

ABSTRACT This article introduces an analytical framework for studying and interpreting the sometimes surprisingly different ‘shapes’ (key topics and approaches) of donor-funded responses to sexual violence in and after armed conflict. Our framework highlights processes of politicization, depoliticization, and technicalization and their influence on interventions. Drawing on available studies, published documents, and our own field research in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone, we show that donor-funded responses to sexual violence since the early 2000s have taken remarkably different shapes – despite the emergence of influential international policy narratives and roughly similar forms of sexual violence in both contexts. A focus on context-specific processes of politicization, depoliticization, and technicalization reveals how these differences came about and persisted over time. (De-)Politicization and technicalization of sexual violence as a ‘weapon of war’ in DRC have led to medicalized and security-centred statebuilding interventions in the county's eastern conflict zones. By contrast, donor-funded responses in Sierra Leone framed and addressed sexual violence as ‘domestic violence’ even before the war had officially ended. We find that these different shapes emerged from initial differences in (de)politicization and technicalization processes driven by different ‘first responders’ in both contexts, which created enduring path dependencies.

Twenty Years of Externally Promoted Security Assistance in Iraq: Changing Approaches and Their Limits

ABSTRACT Iraq adds to the poor track record of externally promoted security assistance in conflict-affected and fragile contexts. By taking a long-term perspective, this article examines and problematizes the shift in paradigms from Security Sector Reforms (SSR) as a pillar of the liberal statebuilding intervention in Iraq to Security Force Assistance (SFA) as the remedy that the post-interventionist turn endorsed since the 2010s. In discussing this shift, the article also shows that in successive phases of externally promoted security assistance, different notions of security prevailed. As the intervention unfolded, human security instead of guiding SSR was quickly put to the side, as donors’ security (2003–2008) and later regime’s security (2009–mid 2014) prevailed. The late 2014–2019 prevalence of SFA in Iraq was instead characterized by the disjuncture of security assistance from other governance aspects in the country while it later became part of a tense geopolitical context (2020–2023). Overall, Iraq proves to be a laboratory for testing out concepts relating to security whereby external actors and factors are key to explaining the shift in security assistance, while internal local needs for security are largely ignored.

International Statebuilding and the Domestic Politics of State Development

Managing the threat of violence remains a central concern in international security and development. International actors seek to terminate civil wars and prevent conflict recurrence by building peace and strengthening state institutions. In this article, I review the scholarship on international statebuilding, defined broadly as external efforts to create, strengthen, reform, and transform the authority structures of the state. Much of this literature models international statebuilding as provision, in which external actors provide a solution to the enforcement problem that plagues postconflict bargains. However, in many cases, the assumptions about domestic politics underpinning the provision model do not hold. When the central problem of domestic politics concerns bargaining over the distributional consequences of the peace rather than the parties’ ability to credibly commit to the peace, international statebuilding is more fruitfully modeled as imposition, in which terms are imposed on recalcitrant domestic actors. The imposition model allows the preferences of external actors over the postwar order to diverge from the preferences of domestic actors. Divergence arises because statebuilding interventions have distributional consequences that threaten the interests of domestic elites. To unpack why this is the case, I turn to the literature on the domestic politics of statebuilding, which shows that governance arrangements that appear to outsiders as weak statehood can help manage violence by facilitating the distribution of sovereignty rents. Insights from these literatures suggest exciting new avenues for future scholarship.

International Statebuilding and the Domestic Politics of State Development

Managing the threat of violence remains a central concern in international security and development. International actors seek to terminate civil wars and prevent conflict recurrence by building peace and strengthening state institutions. In this article, I review the scholarship on international statebuilding, defined broadly as external efforts to create, strengthen, reform, and transform the authority structures of the state. Much of this literature models international statebuilding as provision, in which external actors provide a solution to the enforcement problem that plagues post-conflict bargains. However, in many cases the assumptions about domestic politics underpinning the provision model do not hold. When the central problem of domestic politics concerns bargaining over the distributional consequences of the peace rather than the parties' ability to credibly commit to the peace, international statebuilding is more fruitfully modeled as imposition, in which terms are imposed on recalcitrant domestic actors. The imposition model allows the preferences of external actors over the post-war order to diverge from the preferences of domestic actors. Divergence arises because statebuilding interventions have distributional consequences that threaten the interests of domestic elites. To unpack why this is the case, I turn to the literature on the domestic politics of statebuilding, which shows that ``weak statehood'' can help manage violence by facilitating the distribution of sovereignty rents. Insights from these literatures suggest exciting new avenues for future scholarship.

“The Way of Progress and Civilization”: Racial Hierarchy and US State Building in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (1915–1922)

AbstractRacial stratification remains critically undertheorized in hierarchy studies. Postcolonial analyses demonstrate how diffuse systems of racial knowledge produce unequal subjectivities in world politics, but they are often criticized for making overdetermined explanations that do not account for agency or contingency. To rectify this theoretical lacuna, I develop a postcolonial-practice theory approach to explain variation in the intensity and duration of governance hierarchies. I argue that racialized discourses constitute the habitualized dispositions of dominant and subordinate actors and make possible specific governance practices. This approach can account for puzzling cases of successful resistance by some subordinates while others languish under intense domination. Two such cases are US state building interventions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic during the early twentieth century. By using a variety of primary archival and public sources, I demonstrate how ideas about racial differences among Anglo-Americans, Dominicans, and Haitians led US policymakers to enact a more long-term and domineering occupation of Haiti compared to the Dominican Republic. Once Dominican elites articulated a European–Spanish identity in opposition to Blackness, they mobilized support from other Latin American states and made US withdrawal practical. A postcolonial-practice explanation is useful because it addresses the limitations of both narrow and broad approaches to the study of hierarchy. Its focus on the contestation of US hierarchies further contributes to hegemonic-order theory while illustrating how the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion shape imperial rule and strategies of anti-imperial resistance.

The Population-Centric Turn in Special Operations: A Possible Way Ahead for SOF Informed by a Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of State-Building Interventions

ABSTRACTPost-Cold War liberal state-building interventions are characterized by a convergence of operational approaches rooted in counterinsurgency, state building and peace operations. A cross-disciplinary analysis of these operational approaches reveals a holistic framework consisting of initial, provisional, and durable control. Connecting this framework to the results found in case studies on liberal state-building interventions, it becomes clear that there are conceptual conflicts. Conceptual conflicts which have real-world consequences when it turns out that the requirements for initial, provisional, and durable control are difficult to reconcile in areas of operations. Such real-world consequences can be mitigated by having a thorough understanding of the societal context. Because the acquiring of understanding with regard to possible (near-future) intervention area’s is often hazardous and requires a specific skillset, Special Operations Forces (SOF) might be the entity most suitable for these kinds of activities. For this to happen, SOF will have to reorient and reorganize itself. This entails that it will have to partially shed the baggage it has collected during the last three decades.

Police Reform in a Post-Conflict Context: The Case of Solomon Islands

Abstract Police reform in much of the developing world reflects a preoccupation with either shifts away from paramilitaristic policing models or restoration of law and order in post-conflict societies. For many Pacific Island Countries (PICs), dialogue on reform reflects the prioritization of internal organizational restructuring and capacity building, with minimal emphasis on responding to ever-changing stakeholder demands. What is also common is for police reform efforts to closely align with prioritized focal areas of donor countries or powerful neighbours in developed countries with different contextual realities. Here we discuss police reform efforts in a PIC that has been the recipient of a major regional post-conflict state-building intervention and highlight the complexities specific to piecing together the police reform architecture. We also make reference to Solomon Islands to support our argument that problematic police reform can be largely attributed to focal imbalances between internal and external transformation agendas. The article concludes with a summary of the constraints associated with police reform in post-conflict contexts and recommendations for navigating the reform process.

Statebuilding, legal pluralism, and irregular warfare: assessing the Dutch mission in Kunduz province, Afghanistan

ABSTRACT This article focuses on external statebuilding through judicial reform. It contributes to the existing literature on state- and peacebuilding with an analysis of two local realities that affect judicial reform during external statebuilding interventions: legal pluralism and irregular warfare. Using the Dutch Integrated Police-training Mission (IPM) as a case study, it analyses how judicial reform was understood in the Dutch mission in contrast with the perceptions and conduct of Afghan civilians in Kunduz province, Afghanistan. The article shows that the Dutch IPM did not sufficiently consider the decentral and political nature of the dispensation of justice. Furthermore, the IPM's attempts to increase the capacity of the formal justice sector did not change the conduct of commanders and other local actors that resolve disputes in the society at large. The IPM case therefore demonstrates important limitations of an institutionalist approach to statebuilding in environments of legal pluralism and irregular warfare.

International interventions seen from the ‘Middle’: Perceptions of intermediary actors in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon

This article examines the perceptions of domestic actors in international governance and state-building interventions. To further decentre a research field that has so far focused primarily on the perceptions and representations of actors in the Global North, the article reconstructs how a specific set of domestic actors sees the presence of donors in international interventions and their own interactions with them. Drawing on recent advances in relational sociology, our analysis focuses on how domestic intermediary actors in two post-war political settings exposed to external state-building interventions conceive of and navigate their social relations with the interveners. We find that they frequently view interveners as mainly interest-oriented, bureaucratic and erratic actors. In contrast to studies that posit a clear-cut and static hierarchy between Northern interveners and Southern targets of interventions, the article moreover paints a more nuanced picture of the interactions and relations between interveners and ‘the intervened upon’. The article illustrates its argument by drawing on a series of problem-centred and expert interviews in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon.

International development aid and the politics of scale

ABSTRACTMuch international development assistance has been delivered in the form of statebuilding interventions over the past 20 years, especially in post-conflict or fragile states. The apparent failure of many international statebuilding interventions has prompted a ‘political economy’ turn in development studies. This article critically assesses the key approaches that have emerged to address the interrelations between interveners and recipients, and advances an approach that places the politics of scale at the core of the conflicts shaping the outcomes of international intervention. Different scales privilege different interests, unevenly allocating power, resources and political opportunity structures. Interveners and recipients thus pursue scalar strategies and establish socio-political alliances that reinforce their power and marginalise rivals. This approach is harnessed towards examining the uneven results of the Aceh Government Transformation Programme, financed by the World Bank-managed Multi Donor Trust Fund following the 2005 peace agreement and implemented by the UNDP and the Aceh provincial government.

State Building Interventions in Post Cold War Period: A Critique of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and ‘Humanitarianism’

This paper explores the concepts of humanitarianism and responsibility to protect, which have most influentially guided state building interventions in the post Cold War period. With more than fifty states intervened in the guise of ‘responsibility to protect,’ this paper attempts to analyze why interventionist state building has developed as a major concern for the international state system. It further delves into the impacts of such interventionist rationale on the nature and functioning of the international state system. This paper argues the rise of sovereignty as responsibility and humanitarianism challenged the inviolable sovereignty of states by making it conditional on the government’s exercise of monopoly over violence within its territory and extension of protection to its citizens against war, crimes, violence and bloodshed. The paper further argues that the selective application of the principle of human security and non-intervention by major powers in crucial conflicts makes the moral ground of this principle very dubious. It also highlights that in post 9/11 period, the mixed successes of these concepts in practice, resulting form a large number of political, institutional and operational challenges, underlie the need to use non-military diplomatic, political and economic means for conflict resolution.

Intermediaries of Intervention: How Local Power Brokers Shape External Peace- and State-Building in Afghanistan and Congo

ABSTRACTWhy do international peace- and state-building interventions regularly fail to transform conflict-ridden countries into liberal states? This paper argues that interventionists’ practices and dependency on local intermediaries help explain the disappointing outcomes of intervention. Based on a relational theoretical approach and original empirical material, the paper compares two of the largest peace- and state-building interventions in recent years. For practical and normative reasons, peacebuilders need to find local partners who help them instil change. However, as partners of peace- and state-building interventions, local elites may appropriate international resources and use them to strengthen their own positions. Interventionists abstain from sanctioning such appropriation as long as their own short-term and purpose-oriented goals are not undermined. Contrary to assumptions in much of the literature, interventionists do not eagerly defend their alleged liberal agendas. Instead, their pragmatism strengthens existing neo-patrimonial figurations rather than fostering fundamental transformation. The paper argues that research should focus on peacebuilders’ actual practices rather than normative statements. Such an approach allows for a better understanding of evolving political orders in conflict societies.

Creating Frankenstein States: The Persistent Quest for the Ideal Modern Polity

The current paper argues that examining Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein provides a good analogy for understanding the current development of the international state-building agenda, particularly the underlying principles guiding intervention. In particular, the paper analyzes the Enlightenment Project’s quest for progress and perfection and how those ideas still thrive in the international organizations involved in post-conflict state-building interventions. The paper begins by analyzing the key characteristics underlying the Enlightenment’s search for global progress and peace. Subsequently, it identifies how modern international organizations have operationalized the principles and assumptions of the Enlightenment to promote world peace, particularly emphasizing its relationship to contemporary state-building operations.

Border Security and Drug Trafficking in Senegal: AIRCOP and global security assemblages

ABSTRACTTransnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through international statebuilding interventions, are altering the sub-region’s borders and border enforcement. The article employs a practice-oriented ‘global security assemblages’ approach to demonstrate how border security professionals compete over how, who, and where to secure the border from borderless threats like drug trafficking. The article demonstrates this theoretical position empirically through an analysis of struggles over a flagship drug control project implemented by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at Senegal’s Leopold Sédar Senghor (LSS) airport—AIRCOP. Senegalese customs, police, and gendarmes simultaneously cooperate and compete with international actors, private actors based at the airport, and amongst themselves, over how to curb drug trafficking. Through these competitive struggles over who should be the border’s guardian and how it should be guarded, it can be seen how new security practices and understandings are devised, as well as how borders become (re)constituted within the connected spaces of global security assemblages.

Economics for the Curious. Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates

1. Depressions are Different Paul Krugman 2. Rethinking Economics: A Classical Perspective Vernon L. Smith 3. Employment and Unemployment Peter Diamond 4. Unemployment During and After the Great Recession Dale T. Mortensen 5. Long Term Trends and Stuctural Change in the Global Economy Michael Spence 6. On Policy Consistency Finn E. Kydland 7. Natural Resources and Sustainability Robert Solow 8. Research Studies Approaching Cooperative Games with New Methods John F. Nash, Jr 9. Interdisciplinary Social Science: The Transaction Cost Economics Project Oliver E. Williamson 10. Financing Retirement William F. Sharpe 11. How Should We Elect Our Leaders? Eric Maskin 12. Standards for State-Building Interventions Roger Myerson

Hybrid Regional Order

The un peace operations have undergone significant revisions to calibrate mission mandates in tandem with emerging threats to international peace and security, especially non-traditional security (nts) threats that stem from governance challenges. These multidimensional missions essentially perform statebuilding interventions (sbis) through capacity-building programmes. The future of these missions depends on negotiated political settlements that facilitate the creation of accountable institutions and inclusive societies. Scholars debate the future of un peace missions, especially as it relates to stabilization operations. On the one hand, are the “narrowers” who believe that peace operations should remain focused on stabilizing state authorities. On the other hand, are the “broadeners” who favor people-focused stabilization operations. This article argues for a broad approach. Focusing on the role of regional organizations under Chapter viii of the un Charter, it argues that successive failures by the African Union to implement its doctrinal instruments, particularly the Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development Policy, the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance and the Common African Defence and Security Policy has narrowed its peace interventions in Africa to peace enforcement operations. To be relevant, the African Union needs to focus on the challenges of governance in Africa.

When less was more: external assistance and the political settlement in Somaliland

The internationally unrecognized ‘Republic of Somaliland’ presents a case in which the domestic drivers of peace and development may be examined when aid and other forms of international intervention are not significant variables. The relative autonomy of its peace process offers an alternative perspective on post-conflict transitions to that offered in the majority of the literature, which instead problematizes either the perverse outcomes or unintended consequences of international interventions in conflict-affected areas. The purpose of this article is not to establish the salience of Somaliland's relative isolation in its ability to achieve peace and relative political order, as this is already documented in the literature. Rather, it explores the ways in which that isolation fostered mutual dependence between powerful political and economic actors for their survival and prosperity. It uses a political settlements framework to probe the implications of this dependence for western statebuilding interventions in post-conflict situations. The findings present a challenge to orthodox assumptions about how states transition out of conflict, particularly that: greater vertical inclusivity necessarily strengthens a political settlement; effective Weberian institutions are a prerequisite of an enduring peace; and that external assistance is usually necessary to end large-scale violence in developing states or to prevent a recurrence of the conflict.

Prawo okupacji a międzynarodowe budowanie państwa: mój przyjaciel wróg

Following the end of the cold war, the incidence of statebuilding interventions has visibly increased in the case of dysfunctional (failed) states. Today, such interventionism in a good faith promotes liberal values and is believed to be in line with international legal regimes that makes it distinctive from neo-imperial politics. Even if state-building does not generally refer to regular warfare, it often takes analogous forms to occupation, which was codified in jus in bello at the beginning of the XXth century. While the occupation law requires occupants to maintain status quo on the occupying territory (article 43 of Hague Regulations), armed state-building is transformative by definition that seems to undermine conservative provisions of the former. The article presents traditional criteria for occupation in the Hague and Geneva conventions as well as prospects and limitations of its refinement (jus post bellum). In theory, such a redefinition could launch the formulation of the statebuilding regime, which aims to reduce deficits or double-standards in international state-building by focusing on the interests of local stakeholders of transformative projects. Hence, the Author addresses three interlocking issues: occupation within state-building, the occupation law and state-building, and transformative occupation as state-building.

The Regional Dimension of Statebuilding Interventions

In the post-cold war era, liberal statebuilding interventions have become a major tool of global governance. Yet, the variation in outcomes is still poorly understood. This article draws on state formation theory to elaborate a causal mechanism that can explain the successful monopolization of the means of violence in statebuilding interventions. Insights from the state formation literature suggest that the regional political system is crucial for state formation and statebuilding. In order to test the hypothesis, a novel process-tracing method is applied to the case of Sierra Leone. The case study suggests that only a cooperative regional setting enables interventions to succeed.