This book examines the ways in which long-term processes of state-formation limit the possibilities for short-term political projects of statebuilding. Using process-oriented approaches, the contributing authors explore what happens when conscious efforts at statebuilding ‘meet’ social contexts, and are transformed into daily routines. In order to explain their findings, they also analyse the temporally and spatially broader structures of world society which shape the possibilities of statebuilding. Statebuilding and State-Formation includes a variety of case studies from post-conflict societies in Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as the headquarters and branch offices of international agencies. Drawing on various theoretical approaches from sociology and anthropology, the contributors discuss external interventions as well as self-led statebuilding projects. This edited volume is divided into three parts: Part I: State-Formation, Violence and Political Economy Part II: Governance, Legitimacy and Practice in Statebuilding and State-Formation Part III: The International Self – Statebuilders’ Institutional Logics, Social Backgrounds and Subjectivities The book will be of great interest to students of statebuilding and intervention, war and conflict studies, international security and IR.

The emergence and disintegration of states, often under conditions of appalling violence, is a problem of primary importance in the world. Chad's long experience of civil strife and foreign intervention illustrates some of the fundamental difficulties involved in the attempt to achieve political stability through armed intervention. Covering Chad's thirty years of civil strife, Limits of Anarchy looks at foreign intervention in Chad's civil war and the effects of such intervention on state construction. The first major study of Chad to appear in English for many years, the book pays particular attention to French, Chadian, and other African political reflections on the problem of Chad. Chadians still hope to construct a viable national state. Nolutshungu looks at their rival approaches to state building under external constraints and at reasons for their failure.

This book posits that when foreign actors face high opportunity costs of intervention in a weak state, their behavior may foster state sovereignty. This occurs as foreign actors work with local groups to avoid their worst fear, domination of the polity by rivals. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, Ja Ian Chong examines this argument by considering China, Indonesia, and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The book augments existing perspectives on nationalism, sovereignty, and state formation by introducing insights from research on foreign intervention and local collaboration.

Existing models of state formation are derived primarily from early Western European experience, and are misleading when applied to nation-states struggling to consolidate their dominion in the present period. In this volume, scholars suggest that the Western European model of armies waging war on behalf of sovereign states does not hold universally. The importance of 'irregular' armed forces - militias, guerrillas, paramilitaries, mercenaries, bandits, vigilantes, police, and so on - has been seriously neglected in the literature on this subject. The case studies in this book suggest, among other things, that the creation of the nation-state as a secure political entity rests as much on 'irregular' as regular armed forces. For most of the 'developing' world, the state's legitimacy has been difficult to achieve, constantly eroding or challenged by irregular armed forces within a country's borders. No account of modern state formation can be considered complete without attending to irregular forces.

Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our time involve the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups, as well as fractionalization within them. It would be natural to suppose that warring groups form alliances based on shared identity considerations - such as Christian groups allying with Christian groups - but this is not what we see. Two groups that identify themselves as bitter foes one day, on the basis of some identity narrative, might be allies the next day and vice versa. Nor is any group, however homogeneous, safe from internal fractionalization. Rather, looking closely at the civil wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia and testing against the broader universe of fifty-three cases of multiparty civil wars, Fotini Christia finds that the relative power distribution between and within various warring groups is the primary driving force behind alliance formation, alliance changes, group splits and internal group takeovers.

From Kurdistan to Somaliland, Xinjiang to South Yemen, all secessionist movements hope to secure newly independent states of their own. Most will not prevail. The existing scholarly wisdom provides one explanation for success, based on authority and control within the nascent states. With the aid of an expansive new dataset and detailed case studies, this book provides an alternative account. It argues that the strongest members of the international community have a decisive influence over whether today's secessionists become countries tomorrow and that, most often, their support is conditioned on parochial political considerations.

A new perspective on how the nation-state emerged and proliferated across the globe, accompanied by a wave of wars. Andreas Wimmer explores these historical developments using social science techniques of analysis and datasets that cover the entire modern world.

Why is it that states emerging from intervention, peacebuilding and statebuilding over the last 25 years appear to be 'failed by design'? This study explores the interplay of local peace agency with the (neo)liberal peacebuilding project. And it looks at how far can local 'peace formation' dynamics can go to counteract the forces of violence and play a role in rebuilding the state, consolidate peace processes and induce a more progressive form of politics. By looking at local agency related to peace formation, Oliver Richmond and Sandra Pogodda find answers to the pressing question of how large-scale peacebuilding or statebuilding may be significantly improved and made more representative of the lives, needs, rights, and ambitions of its subjects.

Debates about the role and nature of the state are at the heart of modern politics. However, the state itself remains notoriously difficult to define, and the term is subject to a range of different interpretations. In this book, distinguished state theorist Bob Jessop provides a critical introduction to the state as both a concept and a reality. He lucidly guides readers through all the major accounts of the state, and examines competing efforts to relate the state to other features of social organization. Essential themes in the analysis of the state are explored in full, including state formation, periodization, the re-scaling of the state and the state's future. Throughout, Jessop clearly defines key terms, from hegemony and coercion to government and governance. He also analyses what we mean when we speak about 'normal' and 'exceptional' states, and states that are 'failed' or 'rogue'. Combining an accessible style with expert sensitivity to the complexities of the state, this short introduction will be core reading for students and scholars of politics and sociology, as well as anyone interested in the changing role of the state in contemporary societies.

This examination of the 1991 uprisings in Iraq demonstrates how external intervention by the UN and other actors in ethnic conflicts has contributed to the problems with democratization experienced in the post-Saddam era.