The Limits of State-Building: The Politics of War and the Ideology of Peace

In post-civil war international administrations in Bosnia, Cambodia, East Timor, and Kosovo, scholars and international officials expected that there would be sufficient authority and resources to build strong state institutions in areas such as the police, military, elections, and revenue. However, only a few efforts left strong institutions, while many efforts failed and contributed to violence and underdevelopment. This research, based on fieldwork in these four countries, demonstrates that institution building will only succeed when the international community is unified and does not threaten local elites’ nationalist goals or informal corruption and criminal networks. The project offers insight into current state-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Western Balkans, and suggests that the international community must accept the dominance of existing elites in the short term while working to strengthen state institutions in the long term.

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Andrew Radin, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a 2012 Regional Policy Symposium participant.