Global Notes

By Michael Barnett, Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota

Paper Prepared for the Conference, ”The Challenge of Institution Building, Threats to International Security and Lessons from EU Enlargement,” European University Institute, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Florence, Italy.

This paper develops two claims that follow from two general conclusions from recent research on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. The first is that international peacebuilders are fairly good ending violence and producing stability but are less talented at creating liberal states. In order to understand why, Section I develops the concept of the “peacebuilders’ contract,” which is intended to map the kinds of strategic interactions that are likely to unfold between peacebuilders and local elites and capture why those interactions are likely to favor the status quo preferred by local forces. Following on the general recognition that international peacebuilders are limited in what they can produce, the second conclusion concerns the need for peacebuilders to be more strategic in their thinking and be satisfied with producing small victories that can support the emergence of decent governments and that provide the foundations for future movements toward a positive peace. These observations and their implications are applicable not only to post-war interventions but also to the broader international agenda of fixing states.

The Peacebuilder’s Contract
Contemporary peacebuilders aspire to do more than end violence – they also intend to remove the root causes of violence and create the conditions for a positive peace. It is not enough that former combatants go to their respective corners, disarm, or recognize that a resumption of violence will generate more costs than benefits. In order for there to be a stable peace, war-torn societies must develop the institutions, intellectual tools, and civic culture that generates the expectation that individuals and groups will settle their conflicts through non-violent means. Peacebuilders aspire to remove the root causes of violence and create this pacific disposition by investing these post-conflict societies with various qualities, including democracy in order to reduce the tendency toward arbitrary power and give voice to all segments of society; the rule of law in order to reduce human rights violations; a market economy free from corruption in order to discourage individuals from believing that the surest path to fortune is by capturing the state; conflict management tools; and a culture of tolerance and respect..

There are various explanations for why peacebuilding operations have fallen far short of this ambitious goal of creating the good society. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that peacebuilders are expecting to achieve the impossible dream, attempting to engineer in years what took centuries for West European states and doing so under very unfavourable conditions. Peacebuilding operations confront highly difficult conditions, including a lack of local assets, high levels of destruction from the violence, continuing conflict, and minimal support from powerful donors and benefactors. Another explanation faults the peacebuilders, failing to realize that their goal of transplanting a liberal-democracy in war-torn soil has allowed former combatants to aggressively pursue their existing interests to the point that it rekindles the conflict. In their effort to radically transform all aspects of state, society, and economy in a matter of months, peacebuilders are subjecting these fragile societies to tremendous stress. States emerging from war do not have the necessary institutional framework or civic culture to absorb the potential pressures associated with political and market competition. Consequently, as peacebuilders push for instant liberalization, they are sowing the seeds of conflict, encouraging rivals to wage their struggle for supremacy through markets and ballots. Shock therapy, peacebuilding-style, undermines the construction of the very institutions that are instrumental for producing a stable peace.

This paper offers an alternative: peacebuilders have adopted strategies that have reinforced previously existing state-society relations - weak states characterized by patrimonial politics and skewed development. How so? Begin with assumptions regarding the preferences of three key actors: the peacebuilders, state elites, and local elites. As their name suggests, peacebuilders want to build a peace. And, as illustrated by recent reports produced by various documents connected to the European Report on Development, international peacebuilders have big eyes. They aspire to remove the root causes of violence and create this pacific disposition by investing post-conflict societies with various qualities, including democracy in order to reduce the tendency toward arbitrary power and give voice to all segments of society; the rule of law in order to reduce human rights violations; a market economy free from corruption in order to discourage individuals from believing that the surest path to fortune is by capturing the state; conflict management tools; and a culture of tolerance and respect.

Although peacebuilders (PBs) can have a variety of preferences and preference ordering, model assumes two critical preferences. They want to implement reforms that lead to a liberal peace. In other words, they want to deliver services and assistance that will create new institutions that (re)distribute political and economic power in a transparent and accountable way. However, they operate with limited resources and seek to minimize casualties. Accordingly, stability, that is, the absence of war and a stable partner in the capital, is an important precondition for the security of the peacebuilders and their ability to implement their liberalizing reforms. Consequently, peacebuilders prioritize stability over the kinds of structural reforms that are posited to produce the kind of liberal peacebuilding they desire.

Local elites want to preserve their political power and ensure that the peace implementation process either enhances or does not harm their political and economic interests. The political and economic survival of state elites depends on their ability to co-opt or deter challengers from the periphery; their complicity usually does not come cheaply, which means that they must finance their patronage system. State elites will thus try to balance the opportunities that peacebuilders offer with the threats that the implementation of liberal peacebuilding poses to their survival strategy. Other elites, namely those who are not part of the central government, are likely to want to maximize their power and their autonomy. In fact, the war might have strengthened their hand. A typical consequence of war and the collapse of state services (if they ever really existed) is that individuals and groups looked beyond the state and toward their local communities and parallel organizations for their basic needs. Consequently, rural elites can be a relative beneficiary from the conflict. In any event, they will want to make sure that they do not lose in any peace dividend or post-conflict state-building process. Like state elites, rural elites will attempt to capture the resources offered by peacebuilders while minimizing the costs reforms might pose to their local power and autonomy vis-à-vis the central government.

Because peacebuilders, state elites, and secondary elites are in a situation of strategic interaction, where their ability to achieve their goals are dependent on the strategies of others, they will strategize and alter their policies depending on (what they believe) others (will) do. Peacebuilders face considerable material and normative international constraints. They are condemned to get results with limited resources, under high time pressure, and with minimal casualties. The international community has rarely spent lavishly on peacekeeping or peacebuilding exercises; indeed, the higher the projected cost the less likely is the UN Security Council to authorize the operation. Not only are peacebuilders expected to perform near miracles without requisite resources, but they are expected to do so with amazing speed because the international community suffers from attention deficit disorder and will quickly lose interest and patience. There also are normative constraints. Indeed, peacekeepers and peacebuilders operate according to the principles of consent; they are expected to negotiate with and gain the cooperation of the targets of their intervention in order to ensure that the intervened gain “ownership.” In fact, the more necessary are enforcement mechanisms to achieve the mandate the greater are the costs of the intervention; and as the costs increase so, too, does the likelihood of the cessation of the peacebuilding operation. These constraints generate a strong desire by peacebuilders for security on the cheap. Consequently, local actors who are necessary for the production of stability will have a strengthened hand. Furthermore, the ability of peacebuilders to enact their liberalizing reforms also is highly dependent on the cooperation of local elites. Peacebuilding will succeed only if elites cooperate with a process that they are presumed to own.

The ability of local elites to achieve their preferences is dependent on the actions of peacebuilders and each other. The resources that peacebuilders can allocate, however limited, usually dwarf those of the state budget of the target country, and their allocation can have important consequences for the distribution of political and economic power. Consequently, state elites will treat the international presence not only as a potential constraint but also as a potential opportunity. This is not a new development. During the age of imperialism local actors frequently attempted to attract international attention and resources in order to enhance their political position vis-à-vis local rivals, and during the Cold War state elites attempted to attract the attention of Cold War in order to garner strategic rents that they, in turn, can distribute domestically to bolster their political support. Moreover, peacebuilders can confer legitimacy on local elites, choosing to treat some as important political powers or as agents of political communities, thus enhancing their bargaining power over rivals. Yet in a situation of elite competition, what is viewed as a positive externality by one party is likely to be treated as a negative externality by another. Consequently, state elites will attempt to steer international peacebuilders in a direction that furthers their interests.

In order to imagine the kinds of interactions and outcomes that might ensure, imagine a simple model of a two-person game. The game begins when the peacebuilders (PB) undertake a set of activities that can generate negative or positive externalities for populations in the country. PBs bring highly needed resources that can be life-saving in many instances and critical for rebuilding the country. PBs also can have goals that are diametrically opposed by local elites, especially when PBs encourage the pluralization of politics or enhance the position of rivals. Thus, externalities, in their intensity and in their sign, will differ depending on how they are viewed by distinct constituencies. Local elites can respond to these externalities in a variety of ways, from coercive to noncoercive. At one extreme, they might intimidate, threaten or carry out violence against PBs. At the other extreme, they might actively cooperate with PBs, contributing manpower, resources, and time. Regardless of the exact response, the crucial issue is whether local elites accept the peacebuilding reforms as presented or insist on a modification. When local populations accept, they engage in activities that support, encourage, or reward PBs; when they insist on modification, they engage in activities that are intended to force peacebuilders to alter the content and delivery of programs so that they are more consistent with their preferences. There are four stylized outcomes: cooperative peacebuilding, co-opted peacebuilding, captured peacebuilding, and confrontational peacebuilding.

What are the likely dynamics between liberal peacebuilders and status-quo oriented elites? If the state elites accept the peacebuilding program, then the game ends at cooperative peacebuilding. Peacebuilders are able to design and implement their programs with the knowledge that they will receive the cooperation and assistance from local elites. More likely, however, local elites will attempt to alter the content and implementation of these programs so that they are consistent with their interests. If PBs accept these conditions, then the outcome is captured peacebuilding. Peacebuilders become little more than the agent of local elites and international resources are transferred from international to local actors, who have control over its allocation and use.
It is doubtful, though, that peacebuilders will accept a situation in which they become the patron of a transitional government, especially one that is comprised of warlords and former combatants. Consequently, they are likely to present conditionality criteria that demand that local elites accept the legitimacy of local reforms in return for international support. If state elites accept these conditions, then they and peacebuilders are engaged in co-opted peacebuilding: both peacebuilders and local elites have altered their policies and strategies in order to accommodate the preferences of the other.

There is the possibility, though, that peacebuilders and state elites are not able to reach a compromise, continue to resist the demands of the other, and begin to consider more coercive instruments. Although peacebuilders have few coercive measures available to them, in rare circumstances they might threaten to go to the Security Council and ask for enforcement action or armed protection; more likely peacebuilders will threaten either to curtail their activities or withdraw altogether. State elites might resist the incursions of peacebuilders or attempt to modify their policies by resorting to a range of coercive tactics, from intimidation to the threat and use of violence. In such a scenario, the game turns confrontational and possibly deadly.

Their strategic interactions can lead to one of four possible outcomes: cooperative peacebuilding: local elites accept and cooperate with the peacebuilding program; compromised peacebuilding: local elites and peacebuilders negotiate a peacebuilding program that reflects the desire of peacebuilders for stability and the legitimacy of peacebuilding and the desire of local elites to ensure that reforms do not threaten their power base; captured peacebuilding: state and local elites are able to redirect the distribution of assistance so that it is fully consistent with their interests; or, confrontational peacebuilding: the threat or use of coercive tools by either international or domestic actors to achieve their objectives.

Compromised peacebuilding is the equilibrium outcome of this game because, in terms of preferences over outcomes, PBs prefer cooperative peacebuilding to compromised peacebuilding to confrontational peacebuilding to captured peacebuilding, and SEs prefer captured peacebuilding to compromised peacebuilding to confrontational peacebuilding to cooperative peacebuilding. Neither will be able to achieve its preferred outcome of either cooperative or captured peacebuilding (these are ordinal rankings); both would prefer confrontational peacebuilding to either captured or cooperative peacebuilding because it would distort (in the case of peacebuilders) if not threaten (in the case of state elites) their core interests. Compromised peacebuilding, therefore, becomes the equilibrium outcome because the parties have little incentive to defect once the agreement is negotiated.

There are various reasons why peacebuilders and state elites will be satisfied with this outcome. Peacebuilders achieve security alongside an acknowledgement of the legitimacy and desirability of reforms. They have developed a culture of principled pragmatism, ready to make compromises in the face of hard realities. They have an organizational interest in demonstrating success, especially once they have committed resources to the operation. Finally, they know the preference rankings of state elites and thus can anticipate that if they defect and attempt to revise the bargain then state elites are likely to resist. There are various reasons why state elites also will be satisfied with this outcome. They receive international resources that they can use to maintain their support at home. They receive international recognition of their political standing. Finally, they know the preference rankings of peacebuilders and thus can anticipate that if they defect and attempt to revise radically the bargain in their favor, peacebuilders might depart.

Compromised peacebuilding becomes something of a peacebuilder’s contract – they have negotiated an arrangement in which each party has specific responsibilities and receives specific rewards. Peacebuilders agree to provide international resources and legitimacy for state elites in return for stability and acknowledgement by state elites of the legitimacy of peacebuilding reforms. Consequently, this contract reinforces the status quo even as it leaves open some possibility for reform. In other words, the reforms that do take place will unfold in a way that protects the interests of local elites. There are good, strategic reasons why peacebuilding potentially shapes “degree of the state” but has little impact on the transformation of the “kind of state.”

This outcome also can be seen as symbolic peacebuilding. In this way, it resembles what sociological institutionalists call “ceremonial conformity.” The actor, or organization, wants to maintain the stream of material and normative benefits required for its legitimacy and survival, but fears that full compliance will be too costly. Consequently, it adopts the myths and ceremonies of the organizational form, but maintains its existing practices (and in this way organizational form and practices become decoupled). It is symbolic, or ceremonial, peacebuilding therefore, in that the symbols of reform have been transferred and thus there is the surface appearance that there has been a transformation of the kind of state, that is, toward a liberal-democracy, even though the existing power relations have largely emerged unscathed. That said, symbols can matter. Once state elites have committed themselves to certain principles these public commitments can be used by liberalizing elements at home and abroad to try and force them to keep their word. Moreover, these symbols can encourage existing actors to reprioritize their interests and develop new networks of associations that can, over time, build support for liberalization.

Does liberal peacebuilding have a chance? Not really. Even under the best of circumstances, and rarely are there good circumstances, the chances are slim. The problem, though, might be less with liberal peacebuilders than it is with the donors, funding agencies, and ultimately Western states, who do not give those in the field the time, money, and backing they need. How might liberal peacebuilders better their hand? If they had more resources and power then their bargaining leverage would improve and presumably local elites would accept not only the symbols but also the substance of liberalization. Yet, there is always the possibility that the harder peacebuilders push and the more they demand the more likely local elites will resist and combative peacebuilding will result. There are no easy answers.

Perhaps compromised peacebuilding is not so awful. Cooperative peacebuilding is unrealistic, captured peacebuilding might very well only inflame conflict dynamics, and confrontational peacebuilding is a no-win situation. So, compromised peacebuilding does not look so bad given the alternatives. Even if local elites do little more than recognize the legitimacy of liberalization or accept the symbolic reforms, at the very least it creates new expectations and provides new benchmarks against which the performance of the central government and rural elites can be judged. Symbols, as we said earlier, can matter. They can provide new focal points. They can become public commitments that even hypocritical reformers must take into account. They can be used by local and international reformers to continue to press for change.

Compromised peacebuilding also might be a normatively desirable outcome. Do peacebuilders truly know better? Many arguments in favor of peacebuilding presume that liberal peacebuilders are pure of motives and know what is best for the local population. Even if we grant that these paternalistic peacebuilders are well intentioned, do we have any evidence that they actually know how to socially engineer a liberal peace? Not really. Indeed, they manifest two different but equally problematic trends. One is to create a rather long wish list, from security stabilization to sustainable development to local empowerment, without any consideration of how these items relate to each other. Their ambitions generate complexity. The other is that peacebuilders escape their uncertainty and complexity by relying on general models that frequently are developed from their most recent experiences in the field. But universal models can be a false sanctuary. The only way out is for peacebuilders to confess to a high degree of uncertainty - and actively incorporate local voices into the planning process. As Noah Feldman warned: “The high failure rate [of nation-building exercises] strongly supports the basic intuition that we do not know what we are doing - and one of the critical elements of any argument for autonomy is that people tend to know themselves, better than others how they ought best to live their lives.”

Also, compromised peacebuilding, from the perspective of local elites and societal groups, might very well look normatively desirable because it provides greater opportunity for local voices to participate and affect a process that is supposedly “owned” by them. We readily acknowledge that many elites and politicians are not great democrats and are more interested in preserving their perks and power than in pluralizing politics (and in this respect are no different from politicians all over the world), but their presence does force otherwise steamrolling peacebuilders to go slow and adopt a more incremental approach. Compromised peacebuilding , if done right, might be the best of all possible worlds.

Seeking the Least Bad Government

There are states of society in which we must not seek for a good government, but for the least bad one. It is part of the inevitable lot of mankind, that when they themselves are in a backward state of civilization, they are unsusceptible of being well governed.

John Stuart Mill
Because international peacebuilders cannot produce heaven on earth, and because compromised peacebuilding is arguably more empirically frequent and more normatively desirable than the alternatives, they must consider strategies that can shore up potentially decent, but not fully democratic political coalitions in states that might be at risk for backsliding and humanitarian crises. Indeed, both policymakers and scholars are following the trail of evidence in this direction.

The ambivalence policy experts have regarding the relationship between state-building and democracy is profoundly evident in the highly regarded Fixing Fragile States. With considerable experience in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the authors rail on an international peacebuilding community that refuses to give decision making authority to local elites and citizens. Although to the best of my knowledge they never once use the concept of democracy, the pages are marked by various euphemisms that are intended to convey the importance of bringing citizens into the decision making process. Yet the countries that they single out role models for fragile states include Singapore, China, Kagame-led Rwanda, and Uganda; in other words, not exactly models of democracy. They celebrate the “social contract” between Singapore and its citizens, but the attributes of this contract that they cite concern not mechanisms of representation but rather improvements in the welfare of the population. Indeed, at various occasions the social contract is reduced to instances in which the state “invests in its citizens.” The combination of their aversion to the discourse of democracy alongside their approval of quasi-authoritarian regimes suggests that they are inclined to believe that a reasonably good outcome would be decent governments that were willing to act in ways that are generally within the interests of their populations.

Social scientists are confirming the hunch of policymakers that liberalism might be asking for too much too soon. Statistical studies show that partial democracies and incomplete democratic transitions are more likely to break down into civil war than are autocratic states. State transformation seems most promising in “easy” cases (countries that have been democracies before, have fairly high GNP and literacy, and where the spoilers have been decisively defeated) or tiny cases where an overwhelming and perhaps long-term international presence is feasible (Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, though the departure of peacekeepers and the scaling back of aid turned out to be very premature). Where the scale of the challenge is larger, as in Zaire/Congo, the level of effort may fall far short of what is needed to provide security and meet basic needs, let alone establish democracy. Moreover, among fourteen post-Cold War cases where the peacekeepers eventually packed up and left the country, Doyle and Sambanis find that seven are successes in establishing a “participatory peace” with the state intact, no residual fighting, an end to massive rights abuses, and at least minimal political openness. The UN undertook “multidimensional peacekeeping operations” in four of the successes by these criteria (El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique, and Namibia), a successful “peace enforcement” mission in Croatia, and a successful traditional “observer” mission in Nicaragua. Among these, the 2006 Freedom House democracy score remains at the level of fully “free” for Croatia, El Salvador, and Namibia, and “partially free” for Mozambique and Nicaragua. Multidimensional efforts failed in Haiti and East Timor (fighting broke out and peacekeepers had to come back) and led to an ambiguous result in the Central African Republic. Doyle and Sambanis code Cambodia as a multidimensional “participatory peace,” but its 2006 score of “not free” should demote it to what they call a “sovereign peace.”

Furthermore, notwithstanding the label “multidimensional peacekeeping,” it is noteworthy that none of the unambiguous successes where peacekeepers actually left the country were cases of international military occupation with a transformational agenda along the lines of Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Iraq. Rather, they were all cases in which the local parties to the conflict were exhausted by war, perceived incentives to settle it, and got some international help to facilitate a transition to a somewhat more open society where the belligerents could lay down their arms. In all these cases, including Cambodia, elites with blood on their hands and a questionable track record remained in power, but decided to behave better for practical reasons of their own. There was no internationally imposed social revolution—indeed no social revolution of any kind. The good news, therefore, is that less ambitious strategies of change have sometimes been successful in creating the basis for political stability that reduces the risk of future humanitarian disasters.

If the international community is going to shoot for something between feeding dictators who can maintain stability and pie-in-the-sky dreams of creating textbook examples of liberal democracies, then they must consider how to institutionalize arrangements that encourage the development of publicity principles, deliberation, negotiation, and compromise, thus helping to create a more stable and mutually consensual outcome. Elsewhere I have called this strategy “republican peacebuilding” in order to distinguish it from “liberal peacebuilding” and in order to call attention to the fundamental insights of the American federalists who drew from republican political theory to invent new governance principles to confront the threats posed by factions and arbitrary power. These principles, I argue, are as relevant to today’s post-conflict cases as they were to the post-conflict American republic in 1787 – and are present in many of the successful cases of post-conflict peacebuilding.

Deliberation. Genuine deliberation requires that individuals and groups give public reasons for their positions and decisions. Deliberation has various virtues. It forces individuals and factions to legitimate their positions and proposals in the name of the community’s interest, thus encouraging them to widen their positions and incorporate the views of others. It helps give the collective decision some legitimacy, thus increasing the chances that policies will be accepted, or at least not met by passive or active resistance. It provides an opportunity for individuals to change their mind, to alter their beliefs, and to identify with the community.

Constitutionalism and Divided Power. Constitutions for establishing rules that restrain the exercise of arbitrary power, limit conflict between factions, and reduce the returns to power. Most famous are checks and balances - that is, the distribution of political authority that limits the possibility of either a centralized government exercising arbitrary power or a faction dominating the political system. The benefits of this kind of arrangement include creating a balance of forces within the political system and compelling the local actors to negotiate and compromise, In this way, divided government helps to further the goal of both political stability and legitimacy. Also critical is a process of deliberation and representation that leads to the construction of the constitutional arrangements; following these principles will help give the constitution some legitimacy.

Representation. The principle of representation does not hinge on democracy but rather on ensuring that all those affected by a decision have their interests considered before the decision is made. This view of representation is particularly relevant for post-conflict situations where it is now well understood that elections held too quickly can cause more troubles than they solve and potentially undermine the democratization. Consequently, it is imperative that post-conflict arrangements consider representative mechanisms instead of elections, including consultative bodies and transitional governments that can perform the function of representation until elections are appropriate.

If unelected bodies are to meet the principle of representativeness they must have: inclusivity, incorporating diverse groups; and publicity, making transparent their decisions and the reasons behind them. Satisfying these two criteria encourages those in power to broaden their perspective, acknowledge the views of others, and meet minimal standards of representation. As such, these criteria help invest the political process with legitimacy, reduce the possibility of arbitrary power, and stabilize the postconflict setting.

The principles of deliberation, divided government, and representation have other virtues that are essential for post-conflict peacebuilding. These principles will increase the legitimacy of the state. Legitimacy depends on the use of proper means to arrive at collective goals. Proper means is dependent on a political process that considers the diverse interests of its citizens; that is, groups need to believe that their views are being incorporated. Hence the importance of forms of deliberation, representation, and publicity. Too often we assume that legitimacy depends on democracy; we need to focus more on meeting the underlying principles and imagine different forms that those principles can take. Also, there are various virtues in modesty and incrementalism. Liberal peacebuilding, which includes the EU’s holistic agenda, has the vices of all grand social engineering experiments, basic design principles and deliberative processes provide the shell for improvisation and learning informed by experience.

In general, a central challenge of postconflict statebuilding is to design states, first, to contain the threats to stability posed by arbitrary power and factional conflict, and, second, to encourage society to begin conferring legitimacy on the new institutions. There is the threat to liberty posed by the exercise of arbitrary power by the state. Factions, a permanent feature of any society, can create instability if not controlled; rivalry can explode into conflict or lead one faction to try to grab state power and deploy it against its enemies. States also need to develop legitimacy if they are to maintain order, gain the loyalty of their citizens, and implement effective public policies.

If international peacebuilders become more strategic they will improve the likelihood of a better outcome. At the moment they appear torn between a recognition that in the short and medium term stability is not a bad result and a desire to keep inserting more and more goals into their operations. “Variable loading,” whether done by social scientists or policymakers, is not answer for being more strategic. Ambition is another word for incoherence and templates such as the security-development nexus appear to be an empty signal that policymakers can interpret as they see fit and consistent with their existing organizational interests. Strategy must be tailored to the circumstances on the ground. It is all well and good to desire a liberal democracy in which a culture of nonviolent conflict resolution prevails, but long-term hopes can be the enemy of cool, strategic analysis that rank-orders possible outcomes, assigns probabilities of their occurrence, and then identifies the means that are needed to achieve them.

Conclusion
A few points by way of conclusion. The arguments offered here, while directed at post-conflict reconstruction, are generally applicable to circumstances of “fragility.” Fragility, at least according to many policymakers, the attributes of fragility are nearly identical to the attributes of those states that are beyond fragility and experiencing a full-blown conflict. Indeed, the only difference between fragile and “beyond fragile” states appears to be the presence of absence of conflict, and in many case the difference is likely to be the degree and scale of conflict and not its presence, per se. Moreover, all the tools of peacebuilding, short of military deployment, would appear to be in play in all states that are no longer able or willing to protect the citizens and advance their welfare.

Intervention is not for the weak-hearted. Lots of harm is likely to be done no matter how careful peacebuilders are. Harm will be done if outsiders do not intervene. Harm will be done if peacebuilders intervene. Building states is always an exercise in coercion, and all the deliberation, democracy, and debate can only reduce and not remove the power in peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. There will always be tensions in a peacebuilding process and the sooner that peacebuilders recognize the presence of these tensions and contradictions, the better. The reports produced by the EU, in this regard, are symptomatic of a general liberal bias, present in much of modernization theory, that all good things go together. But they do not. International peacebuilders need to be more sober regarding what can be done and more strategic about how to accomplish what should be more circumscribed ambitions.

One of the pronounced trends of the peacebuilding enterprise is that perceived failures are always answered with calls for greater coordination, new bureaucratic machineries, and more decision making authority in the hands of the “good guys” in Brussels, Geneva and New York. In short, every perceived failure is answered with an increasing in the power of international peacebuilders, scaling up and away the locus of decision making authority from local to global actors. Yet there is little evidence that these technocratic responses have positively affected outcome that matters – improving the welfare of local populations and allowing them to have more control over their fates. A cynic might be tempted to suggest that the increasingly strident calls by international actors for better “partnership” with local actors is little more than an act of self-medication by the powerful; after all, these proclamations are almost never followed up by comparable action. If the growing global bureaucracy for helping “fragile” and “failed” states is not actually helping those on the ground, then who is benefiting from the system? What are we to make of a constant clamor for more resources for global peacebuilders who, on the record, favor the discourse of participation but who nevertheless seem reluctant to share power with those who are supposed to benefit from their interventions? Is peacebuilding a game that puts power in the pockets of new global constituencies but could not radically change things on the ground even if it wanted to?