Small Wars Journal

International Support for State-building: Flawed Consensus

Tue, 06/14/2011 - 5:55am
International Support for State-building: Flawed Consensus by Stephen D. Krasner, NDU's Prism. Here's the abstract:

Conventional wisdom holds that the most important challenge for state development is the creation of effective institutions. The major objective for external actors engaged in state-building is to enhance capacity in target states. This perspective, which tacitly takes the ideal typical Weberian state as the ultimate objective, is deeply flawed. The Weberian ideal, in which a fully autonomous state effectively governs its own territory, is unattainable for many poorly governed or failed states. Governance may improve, but it will be problematic. The central state may not be able to provide security across its territory or even have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. External actors may share executive authority. Services might be provided by independent service providers rather than by the state. Policy could be more effectively framed if decisionmakers abandoned their commitment to conventional sovereignty and recognized the variety of authority structures, not only horizontally within states but also vertically between them, that exist in the contemporary international system.

Read the full article: International Support for State-building: Flawed Consensus.