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Statebuilding: can the international community get it right?
14/01/2008 By Megan Burke
Statebuilding efforts in states in crisis by the international community have had limited success.
Three new publications - "Greater than the Sum of Its Parts", by Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown; "Ending Wars and Building Peace", by Charles T. Call and Elizabeth Cousens; and "Managing Contradictions: The Inherent Dilemmas of Postwar Statebuiding", by Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk - confront the broad question of “Can we do it?” head on. All three publications take a step beyond most previous critiques of statebuilding or peacebuilding programs.
Early analyses reviewed lessons learned of various projects or national case studies to identify problems such as limited or poorly timed funding, improper sequencing of political or economic programs and a general lack of trained civilian staff. However, the recent setback in Timor L’este and the seemingly endless international presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina have led some to wonder if the lessons we have learned have brought us much closer to true success.
These three publications seem to herald a new generation of reflection on statebuilding that takes a much broader view, questioning the approach of the industry as a whole.
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Keywords
Failed states Fragile state State buildingRelated publications
- The democratisation of a dependent state: the case of Afghanistan
- When More is Less: aiding statebuilding in Afghanistan
Bio author: Megan Burke
Megan Burke is a Programme Manager at the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA) where she works on a campaign that seeks to eliminate the impact of landmines in several post-conflict countries and serves on the Steering Committee for the United States Campaign to Ban Landmines. Megan Burke is also a consultant to the Governance and Civil Society Unit at the Ford Foundation where she provides research assistance for portfolios on U.S. Foreign Policy, post-conflict reconstruction, and regional conflict prevention and resolution in Africa and the Middle East. She holds a Master's degree in International Relations from Yale University.
