Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding

David Chandler, Timothy D. Sisk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415677028
• eBook ISBN: 9781135940010
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This new Handbook offers a combination of theoretical, thematic and empirical analyses of the statebuilding regime, written by leading international scholars.

Over the past decade, international statebuilding has become one of the most important and least understood areas of international policy-making. Today, there are around one billion people living in some 50-60 conflict-affected, 'fragile' states, vulnerable to political violence and civil war. The international community grapples with the core challenges and dilemmas of using outside force, aid, and persuasion to build states in the wake of conflict and to prevent such countries from lapsing into devastating violence.

The Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding is a comprehensive resource for this emerging area in International Relations. The volume is designed to guide the reader through the background and development of international statebuilding as a policy area, as well as exploring in depth significant issues such as security, development, democracy and human rights. Divided into three main parts, this Handbook provides a single-source overview of the key topics in international statebuilding:

Part One: Concepts and Approaches

Part Two: Security, Development and Democracy

Part Three: Policy Implementation

This Handbook will be essential reading for students of statebuilding, humanitarian intervention, peacebuilding, development, war and conflict studies and IR/Security Studies in general.

PART I

Concepts and approaches

1

RETHINKING WEBERIAN APPROACHES TO STATE BUILDING¹

Nicolas Lemay-Hébert

Political sociology is key to understanding current debates on statebuilding. One's conception of what to rebuild – the state – will necessarily impact the actual process of statebuilding, whether consciously or unconsciously. Drawing upon the vast contemporary literature on state collapse and statebuilding that has emerged since Helman and Ratner's pioneer article in 1992–1993, this chapter analyzes the rise of the ‘institutional approach’ to statebuilding, strongly influenced by the Weberian sociology of the state and legitimacy, and focusing on the capabilities of the state institutions to secure the state's grip on the society. Three practical implications of the institutional approach will be considered: (1) the claim of forecasting state collapse and the underlying equation between fragile states and ‘underdevelopment’; (2) the hermetic distinction between state and society, which allows the differentiation between statebuilding activities and ‘nation-building’ ones; and (3) the ‘more is better’ approach that comes as a natural policy prescription – legitimizing intrusive interventions on the ground that they are more efficient for institutional reconstruction. Finally, this chapter will highlight an alternative approach to the state and statebuilding, dubbed here the ‘legitimacy approach,’ more concerned with socio-political cohesion of the state than institutional reconstruction per se.

Every scholarly or policy-oriented contribution on statebuilding adopts, whether consciously or unconsciously, a definition of what it intends to reconstruct – that is, a definition of the state. In that regard, one striking aspect of current statebuilding debates is how little debate there is about what type of state major actors want to promote (Marquette and Beswick, 2011: 1706; Marquette and Scott, 2010: 9). As this chapter claims, the Weberian approach to statehood is the starting point for a number of analyses, having attained the status of orthodoxy in the mainstream literature. Following this ‘institutional approach,’ the state is equated with its institutions, state collapse is understood in terms of the collapse of state institutions, and statebuilding implies their reconstruction. While being portrayed implicitly as consensual and apolitical, the institutional approach to statebuilding carries specific consequences for scholarly and policy debates. First, this chapter looks at the Weberian influence on statehood and legitimacy, and the rise of the ‘institutional approach’ to statebuilding based on the Weberian approach. Three implications of the institutional approach are debated. First, by equating the strength of state with its institutional reach, the institutional approach amounts to equating state fragility with ‘underdevelopment.’ Second, the Weberian sociological approach of state autonomy leads researchers to conveniently distinguish statebuilding activities (understood in apolitical and technical terms) from ‘nation-building’ activities (linked to socio-political cohesion). This leads to the final implication of the institutional approach, related this time to policy prescriptions that stem from this discussion: if statebuilding is the reconstruction of state institutions, and if it is possible to isolate statebuilding from nation-building, then ‘more is better’ in terms of institutional reconstruction. The ‘more is better’ approach has already provided the normative foundations for international administration projects in Kosovo, Timor-Leste, and Iraq more recently (Lemay-Hébert, 2011b). However, there are alternatives to this specific reading of a Weberian lecture of statehood and statebuilding. In its last section, this chapter suggests a ‘legitimacy’ approach, more concerned with socio-political cohesion and the legitimacy central authorities can generate, and built around Emile Durkheim's sociology.

Weber, statehood, and statebuilding: the rise of the ‘institutional’ approach

Weber famously defines the state as ‘a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber, 1948: 78). For Weber, the formation of modern Western states relied on the constant progression of their bureaucratic foundations over time. Hence, Weber saw administration and the provision of security as benchmarks according to which each state can be judged (Badie and Birnbaum, 1983). Besides security, which is certainly the central criterion of state strength, other criteria are also taken into account by various authors, all related to the capabilities of the state to secure its grip on the society. From this perspective, a weak state is a political entity that lacks the institutional capacity to implement and enforce policies; statebuilding is the creation of new government institutions and the strengthening of existing ones. Scholars adopting this ‘institutional’ approach tend to focus on the administrative capability of the state and the ability of the state apparatus to affirm its authority over the society.

The term ‘failed state’² came to prominence in the contemporary academic and policy discourse with the publication of Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner's article, defining ‘failed state’ as ‘a situation where governmental structures are overwhelmed by circumstances’ (1992–1993: 5). Helman and Ratner's article constituted one of the first attempts to cope with the phenomenon in a post-Cold War world, an effort that coincided with the actual collapse of Somalia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is also one of the first major post-Cold War works exemplifying the institutional approach, as their definition emphatically revolves around governmental institutions. Not only was Helman and Ratner's work pioneering, but it is still considered by many as authoritative (for example, Wilde, 2002–2003: 425). Unfortunately, Helman and Ratner do not go much deeper in their analysis of the collapsed state phenomenon and they do not provide any subsequent clarification, apart from a distinction between the degrees of collapse (Helman and Ratner, 1992–1993: 5).

Helman and Ratner's institutional focus has been developed by subsequent scholars who, in the purest functionalist tradition, assert that ‘nation-states exist to provide a decentralized method of delivering political (public) goods to persons living within designated parameters.’ For example, for influential US policy academic Robert Rotberg, ‘it is according to their performances—according to the levels of their effective delivery of the most crucial political goods—that strong states may be distinguished from weak ones, and weak states from failed or collapsed’ (Rotberg 2004: 2). Here, public goods encompass a list of state institutions and functions, including the supply of security, a transparent and equitable political process, medical and health care, schools and education, railways, harbors, and even a beneficent fiscal and institutional context, within which citizens can pursue personal entrepreneurial goals, thus framing his approach explicitly within the liberal peace paradigm (Chandler, 2004, 2010; Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2009; Paris, 1997). The institutional approach has had a profound impact on scholarly debates regarding state collapse and statebuilding. Interestingly, the institutional approach is so pervasive that even some authors who claim not to take a stance end up adopting it. For example, in Making States Work, Sebastian von Einsiedel asserts that:

for present purposes, no attempt will be made at a final definition of the term ‘failed state’. Much ink has been spilled on developing typologies of the forms of state failure, using either the degree of failure or its cause as a criterion. Instead, this volume treats state failure as a continuum of circumstances that afflict states with weak institutions.

(von Einsiedel 2005: 16; emphasis added)

As one would expect, the Weberian approach to statehood and statebuilding has also found a large echo in the policy literature. Boutros Boutros-Ghali defines state collapse as ‘the collapse of state institutions’ (United Nations, 1995: 9), whereas the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) defines ‘fragile states’ as countries where ‘governments cannot or will not deliver core functions to the majority of its people’ (DFID, 2005). Similarly, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicates that ‘states are fragile when state structures lack political will and/or capacity to provide the basic functions needed for poverty reduction, development and to safeguard the security and human rights of their populations’ (OECD, 2007: para. 3; emphasis added). These assumptions constitute the framework within which to understand the incorporation of legitimacy aspects, as constitutive of state strength, in the analysis provided by recent OECD reports (OECD, 2008).

Weber and legitimacy: a one-way process of legitimizing authority

If the (neo)Weberian approach to statehood has profoundly influenced the statebuilding literature, the same could be said of the Weberian legacy regarding legitimacy (Lemay-Hébert, 2013). If Weber is rightly regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in social science, his contribution regarding the concept of legitimacy has been deemed highly controversial. For David Beetham, for example, ‘on the subject of legitimacy, his influence has been an almost unqualified disaster’ (1991: 8). Weber defines legitimacy as ‘the prestige of being considered exemplary or binding’ (Weber, 1962: 72). Hence, for Weber, the claim of legitimacy is a bid for a justification of support and its success consists not in fulfilling normative conditions but rather in being believed. Weber conceives legitimacy as a necessary condition and a means for a government to exercise authority over society. This could be done by charismatic, traditional, or rational–legal principles (to take up the three well-known ideal types, presented in Weber 1947: 130). In this sense, legitimacy principles are in fact principles of legitimization of the central authority. However, according to Beetham and others, the main mistake is not Weber's but that of those social scientists – the neo-Weberians – who have reduced the explanation of beliefs to the processes and agencies of their dissemination and internalization (1991: 10; Hobson and Seabrooke, 2001).

Nevertheless, Weber's definition of legitimacy has not been exempt from criticisms in political sociology. It led Hanna Pitkin to argue that it was ‘essentially equivalent to defining “legitimate” as “the condition of being considered legitimate,” and the corresponding “normative” definition comes out as “deserving to be considered legitimate”’ (1972: 281). It is also on these grounds that Peter Blau states that Weber ‘takes the existence of legitimate authority for granted and never systematically examines the structural conditions under which it emerges out of other forms of power,’ while Carl Friedrich posits that Weber's analysis ‘assumes that any system of government is necessarily legitimate’ (Blau, 1970: 149; Friedrich, 1963: 186). Friedrich argues that Weber actually confuses the concepts of legitimacy and authority (1963: 216–246), a distinction made by Jürgen Habermas in his debate with Niklas Luhmann, for instance (Habermas and Luhmann, 1973: 243).

Weber's conception of legitimacy has been quite influential, leading many social scientists in the twentieth century to follow the Weberian definition of legitimacy as belief in legitimacy. For instance, Seymour Lipset defines the legitimacy of a political system as its capacity ‘to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society’ (1959: 86), while Richard Merelman considers legitimacy as ‘a quality attributed to a regime by a population. That quality is the outcome of the government's capacity to engender legitimacy’ (1966: 548). Charles Tilly is also resolutely neo-Weberian when he states that ‘legitimacy depends rather little on abstract principle or assent of the governed … Legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a given authority’ (1985: 171). Accordingly, scholars following the institutional approach to statebuilding, under the influence of Weber's pioneering work, tend to treat legitimacy either as a mere consequence of functioning institutions or as a process of legitimization. This naturally stems from the Weberian approach to legitimacy. As Robert Grafstein states, ‘Weber virtually identifies legitimacy with stable and effective political power, reducing it to a routine submission to authority’ (Grafstein, 1981: 456).

This approach to legitimacy has had a remarkably enduring impact on the statebuilding literature. Rotberg's work is certainly a good example of the tendency to reduce legitimacy to a consequence of ‘stable and effective political power.’ Mentioning legitimacy only as a consequence of good delivery of public goods, he argues that public goods ‘give content to the social contract between ruler and ruled’ (Rotberg, 2004: 2–3). The author notes that ‘there is no failed state without disharmonies between communities,’ but considers these ‘disharmonies’ as consequences of the failure of state institutions (Rotberg, 2003: 4). Hence, legitimacy is treated as a natural by-product of successful state institutions. Institutional failure thereby produces a loss of legitimacy: ‘a nation-state also fails when it loses legitimacy, that is, when its nominal borders become irrelevant and autonomous control passes to groups within the national territory of the state, or sometimes even across its international borders’ (Rotberg, 2003: 9). The Weberian conception of the state could not be more crudely emphasized than in this framing.

Institutionalizing poverty, forecasting state failure

Conceiving state collapse as a breakdown of government institutions, as institutionalists contend, allows one to identify failed or failing states according to institutional strength. It therefore leads Francis Fukuyama to suggest a matrix that helps differentiate the degrees of stateness in a variety of countries around the world (2004: 7), and Robert Rotberg to propose a performance indicator comprising the functions that states perform (2004: 2). The Political Instability Task Force, formerly the State Failure Task Force, looks at state structures and claims to forecast state failure with a degree of exactitude of 80 per cent (Goldstone et al., 2010). Other indexes provide different lists of failing states, according to their own criteria for measurement of state performance (Fund for Peace, 2011; Rice and Patrick, 2008; World Bank, 2006).

It is also no coincidence that some use a diagnostic medical analogy to exemplify how we should be able to forecast state failure. For instance, after defining state failure in institutional terms – inability to control its territory and guarantee the security of its citizens, incapacity to enforce the rule of law and deliver public goods to its population – the former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stated in a speech that ‘in medicine, doctors look at a wide range of indicators to spot patients who are at high risk of certain medical conditions – high cholesterol, bad diet, heavy smoking for example … this approach does enable the medical profession to narrow down the field and focus their effort accordingly. We should do the same with countries’ (Straw, 2002). Thus, it is a positivist approach that mixes a certain fascination for hard sciences with governmentality – some would see parallels here with the Foucauldian analysis of biopolitical social regulation (Foucault 2008; Chandler 2010). Other scholars have already unveiled the concealed assumptions that underlie the medical analogy and the failed state discourse, especially from a gender perspective (Manjikian, 2008).

What appears crucial here is that in the forecasting process, ‘developed countries’ of the West set the standard against which other states are mea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Concepts and Approaches
• Part II Security, Development, and Democracy
• Part III Policy Implementation
• Index