RESEARCH

State Building

So-called “state failure” — and its recurrence in states with weak governance institutions — has emerged as a defining problem of the twenty-first century. Though dysfunctional governance structures have long plagued poorer parts of the world, the intersection of failing states, terrorism with global reach, and weapons of mass destruction has thrust this issue onto the foreign policy agenda of all governments.

At the same time, there is a widespread assumption that general solutions to “state failure” can be found in the experience of Western models of liberal democracy and free-market economics. Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are happy alike, while unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way. It is tempting to say the same thing of states, as successful states enter an increasingly homogenous globalized economy and weaker states slip into individualized chaos. This would be, at best, partly true. Unless political structures and economic policies are tailored to the particular circumstances of a state, foreign assistance may be a poultice over divisions that later erupt. But there are generalizable insights about how to channel and limit power through law.

This project therefore aims to fill a major gap in existing policy work that tends to focus narrowly on specific tools of governance and development, advocacy to generate and respond to early warning, or analysis of the strategic use of coercive means to prevent or respond to crises of governance in states with weak institutions. What is missing is an account of what limits there are on the power of the various states and institutions involved in prevention of state failure, and how the exercise of that power interacts with the governance and accountability structures of the state in question. Working in collaboration with other constructive critics expert in their own fields, the Institute will seek to strengthen the capacity of national and international law and institutions to respond to the new strategic challenges of preventing state failure and supporting states at risk by developing such a framework.

The need for legal limits in such situations has been demonstrated most spectacularly in Iraq, where revelations of prisoner abuse and other problems have severely undermined us credibility in its state-building efforts there and its moral authority around the world. But more general problems have emerged in territories like Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where international actors seek to promote democracy and the rule of law but are themselves immune from that law and unaccountable to local populations. These concerns are not limited to post-conflict environments, however, and apply more generally to efforts to address cases of states with weak or collapsed institutions in territories from Somalia to the Solomon Islands.

Events

IILJ Scholar Event for current and prospective students

Special Session of Selected Problems in United Nations Law: State-Building, Governance, and Accountability

April 20, 2006

David Harland, Chief of the Best Practices Unit of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and Bruce Jones, Co-Director of the Center on International Cooperation, led discussion on the UN experience of state-building, including the prospects of the new Peacebuilding Commission established in December 2005. Moderated by Simon Chesterman.

Recent Publications

Simon Chesterman, "Imposed Constitutions, Imposed Constitutionalism, and Ownership", Connecticut Law Review 37 (2005) (forthcoming).

Simon Chesterman, "The Trope of Ownership: Transfer of Authority in Post-Conflict Operations", in Agnes Hurwitz (ed), Rule of Law Programming in Conflict Management: Security, Development and Human Rights in the 21st Century (forthcoming).

Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur (eds), Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2005). Read the policy brief here.

Simon Chesterman, "State-Building and Human Development", Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper 1 (2005), 1–56.

Simon Chesterman, "Rough Justice: Establishing the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Territories", Ohio State University Journal on Dispute Resolution 20 (2005), 69–98.

Simon Chesterman, "Occupation as Liberation: International Humanitarian Law and Regime Change", Ethics & International Affairs 18(3) (2004), 51–64.

Simon Chesterman, You, The People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).