Post-Conflict Statebuilding: Governance Without Government

Abstract

Statebuilding, the development of international regulatory mechanisms aimed at addressing cases of intra-state conflict and state ‘collapse’, or at shoring up ‘failing states’, is commonly held to be the most pressing problem of global security, on ethical, humanitarian, and, in the wake of 9/11, realist security grounds. It is not unusual for leading commentators to argue that ‘statebuilding is one of the most important issues for the world community’ and to note that the issue has rapidly ‘risen to the top of the global agenda’ (Fukuyama, 2004: ix–xi). As the 2002 US National Security Strategy stated, ‘America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones’ (US Government, 2002: section 1). It seems that no international policy or strategy document is complete without the focus on statebuilding as a key objective. Since the 1990s, the United States, the UK and other major Western governments have established new statebuilding departments and policy units, while international institutions, from the UN down to more specialised international bodies engaged in economic development, democracy or human rights promotion, have seen statebuilding as a key policy focus. International aid is increasingly channelled directly into strengthening governing capacity rather than used to support discrete projects concerned with sectoral improvements in areas such as health and social welfare, economic sustainability or security reforms; more than a quarter of bilateral aid to Africa, for example, is channelled directly into state capacity-building (Commission for Africa, 2005: 136).