Referendum, Response and Consequences for Sudan. The Game between Juba and Khartoum

To examine the relationship between patient satisfaction and doctor performance, the authors observed 2,271 interactions between 292 doctors and their patients in this paper presents a game theory model of the strategic interaction between Khartoum and Juba leading up to the referendum on Sudan’s partition in 2011. The findings show that excessive militarization and brinksmanship is a rational response for both actors, neither of which can credibly commit to lower levels of military spending under the current status quo. This militarization is often at the expense of health and education expenditures, suggesting that the opportunity cost of militarization is foregone economic development. These credibility issues might be resolved by democratization, increased transparency, reduction of information asymmetries, and efforts to promote economic and political cooperation. The paper explores these devices, demonstrating how they can contribute to Pareto preferred outcomes in equilibrium. The authors characterize the military expenditure associated with the commitment problem experienced by both sides, estimate its costs from data for Sudan, and identify the opportunity cost of foregone development implied by continued, excessive, and unsustainable militarization.

The US and Iraq: Time to Go Home

Given the record of the US occupation and the profound limitations of America’s present stature, the Barack Obama administration is right to continue to draw down the American presence in Iraq. But in remembering the egregious mistakes of its predecessor the administration should not claim victory as it exits. It should not, as Vice President Joe Biden did in the midst of the de-Ba’athification crisis, claim all is well in Baghdad. A more honest and realistic approach would recognise the impossible legacy left by the Bush administration. The damage the previous administration did so much to encourage would then be minimised with the help of US allies and multilateral organisations. In short, after seven years of American occupation, it is time to go home.

Security Sector Reform and Transitional Justice in Kosovo: Comparing the Kosovo Security Force and Police Reform Processes

Transitional justice and security sector reform are critical in post-conflict settings, particularly regarding the reform of judicial systems, intelligence services, police, correctional systems, the military, and addressing systemic massive human rights abuses committed by individuals representing these institutions. Accordingly, the relationship between security sector reform and transitional justice mechanisms, such as vetting, the representation of ethnic minorities in key institutions, the resettlement and reintegration of the former combatants deserve special attention from scholars. This article presents a comparative analysis of the reform of police and security forces in Kosovo, and explores the causes of different outcomes of these two processes.

World Development Report 2011 : Conflict, Security, and Development

The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.

Redefining the Laws of Occupation in the Wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom

This comment presents a three-part analysis that ultimately critiques and redefines occupation law to prevent a repetition of the failures that transpired in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Section One lays out the fundamental provisions of the conservative laws of occupation as embodied in the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions as well as the U.S. Army Field Manual. It also discusses the growing trend towards humanitarian intervention and the need for transformative occupation to ensure a successfully stable post- war state. Section Two uses the tenets of occupation law as outlined in Section One to describe the dire consequences of the Coalition’s breach of this body of law, through its actions that revamped the administrative, political, economic, and legal structures of the state. Section Three uses the analysis of Section Two to demonstrate that the conservative laws of occupation are inadequate and need to be redefined. This Section lays out the “exceptional” circumstances for a non-U.N. mandated intervention. It then proposes a revision to occupation law that seeks to incorporate human rights law, as well as additional considerations derived from post- war Iraq, to formulate a modified and modernized legal regime “under a new umbrella labeled jus post bellum.”

Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil War

Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term. Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector–the police and military–and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. An original and thoughtful reassessment of civil war terminations, Securing the Peace will interest all those concerned about resolving our world’s most pressing conflicts.

A Tale of Two Types: Rebel Goals and the Onset of Civil Wars

Previous research has implicitly assumed that civil wars represent a coherent category of events, but given the variety of rebel goals that supposition seems tenuous. We split civil wars into those where the rebels simply want to remove the government (replacement) from those where the rebels want to alter the relationship between the state and society (legitimacy). Theoretically, states are most at risk for a civil war of replacement when they extract substantial wealth from society and the government is weak. In contrast, civil wars of legitimacy are more likely to occur in states where the rebels have both grievances and a means to maintain their future viability. An empirical analysis of civil wars of replacement and legitimacy from 1960 to 1999 confirms both our argument about the different types of civil violence and their differing causes.

Give Peace a Chance: Nonviolent Protest and the Creation of Territorial Autonomy Arrangements

This study examines factors that predict the formation of territorial autonomy arrangements for regionally concentrated ethnic communities. Territorial autonomies are institutional arrangements that allow ethnic groups to express their distinct identities while keeping the borders of host states intact. Although an extensive literature has investigated the capacity of autonomy arrangements to manage interethnic disputes, little research has addressed the precise origins of these institutions. The existing literature considers violent tactics as a primary factor that enables ethnic collectivities to attain territorial autonomy. In this study, the reasoning from the extant literature is juxtaposed with the arguments developed in the research on nonviolent opposition. Nonviolent movements enjoy moral advantage vis-a?-vis violent groups. Moreover, peaceful tactics have the advantage of garnering attention for the concerns of ethnic groups without the liability of provoking the animosity or distrust created by violent conflict. Based on the analysis of a dataset representing 168 ethnic groups across 87 states from 1945 to 2000, it is found that the peaceful tactics groups employ when seeking greater self-rule is the single strongest predictor of the formation of autonomy arrangements. In particular, this study concludes that groups that rely on peaceful tactics, such as protests and strikes, and demand territorial autonomy, as opposed to an outright independence, have a greater potential to achieve territorial autonomy in comparison to those groups making extreme demands through the use of violence.

The Spoils of Peace in Iraqi Kurdistan

This paper examines transition patterns in post-Gulf war Iraqi Kurdistan as a function of external aid, and the impact of these developments on relations between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad. It argues that, despite ethnic traditions and structural legacies, the asymmetrical and changing nature of aid has created new incentives for conflict and co-operation. Since 1991 aid has strengthened the Kurdistan region’s power in relation to the state and increased leverage on the central government to accommodate Kurdish demands for autonomy. Yet it has also created an increasingly complex political,?economic order and new interdependencies between the regions. The shift from relief aid to reconstruction within a neoliberal framework has helped open the Iraqi and Kurdish political economies by encouraging trade between the Kurdistan region, regional states and foreign governments. The creation of a federal Iraqi state has also led to financial and political linkages between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad and to new requirements for negotiation.

The Rise of Outsourcing in Modern Warfare: Sovereign Power, Private Military Actors, and the Constitutive Process

In this article, we will examine these world order implications through the prism of the world constitutive process. This process is one of continuing communication and collaboration that examines, refines, and allocates competence in the international system. The process of contextual mapping might shed light on the terms associated with, and concepts communicated by, privatized military combat, which might be better understood when the contexts in which they are used are illuminated in a discriminating manner. Their multiple meanings are given coherence when we appreciate the divergent contexts within which they are used. To develop the appropriate predicate for contextual mapping, we recognize that, notwithstanding the various nuanced meanings attached to the concept of privatized military combat-as an outsourcing of national security responsibilities, as a part of a nation-building campaign to bring stability to a weak or failed state, as a mechanism to subvert congressional oversight, as a pretext to channel money to certain corporations, and more, we can nevertheless distill points of reference of sufficient conceptual generality to give coherence to the appropriate description of this form of outsourcing in the context of contemporary international law and international relations.

Peace beyond Process?

Post-Cold War peacebuilding is increasingly conflated with the smooth functioning of a range of processes associated with democracy, governance, development and securitisation. However, critiques of these approaches tend to focus on their liberal-democratic norms and to ignore their underlying processual logics. This article problematises two facets of process with regard to peacebuilding: its postulation as a basis for peace grounded in everyday human activity and its construction of violence as anti-process. Its goal is to present the critique of process as a means for understanding the complex relationship between international and local actors in the context of peacebuilding, thus enriching the liberal peace debate. Drawing on normative political theory, including that of Arendt and Deleuze and Guattari, the article demonstrates how the problems raised by these two issues can help to explain a range of concerns associated with contemporary peacebuilding and provide starting points for imagining forms of peace that are not so reliant upon processual logics or opposed to those acts which disrupt them, which may in fact be attempts to realise radically different versions of peace. In so doing, it extends and enriches the perspectives offered by existing liberal peace critiques.

Warlords and the Liberal Peace: State-building in Afghanistan

This article draws out the contradictions in the liberal peace that have become apparent in post-Taliban state-building in Afghanistan. In particular, it focuses on how warlords have been incorporated into the government. The government has been unable to achieve a monopoly of violence and has relied on the support of some powerful militia commanders to secure itself. This raises a number of practical and ethical questions for the liberal peace. The focus of the article is on warlordism, rather than in providing detailed narrative accounts of particular warlords. The case illustrates the difficulty of extending the liberal peace in the context of an ongoing insurgency.

Statebuilding without Nation-building? Legitimacy, State Failure and the Limits of the Institutionalist Approach

The paradox of attempting to (re)construct state institutions without considering the socio-political cohesion of societies recurs throughout the world, most notably today in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. This essay tries to shed some light on the debate around the concepts of state and nation-building. Drawing on a sociological understanding of the modern nation-state, it contends that it is impossible to conceive of statebuilding as a process separate from nation-building. This essay identifies two different schools of thought in the discussion concerning the statebuilding process, each of which reflects different sociological understandings of the state. The first one, an ‘institutional approach’ closely related to the Weberian conception of the state, focuses on the importance of institutional reconstruction and postulates that statebuilding activities do not necessarily require a concomitant nation-building effort. The second, a ‘legitimacy approach’ influenced by Durkheimian sociology, recognizes the need to consolidate central state institutions, but puts more emphasis on the importance of socio-political cohesion in the process. Building on this second approach and demonstrating its relevance in contemporary statebuilding, this article concludes with a discussion of recent statebuilding attempts and the ways external actors can effectively contribute to statebuilding processes.

Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States

Nationbuilding or state-building efforts are almost always described in terms of empowering local authorities to assume the responsibilities of conventional sovereignty. The role of external actors is understood to be limited with regard to time, if not scope, in the case of transitional administration exercising full executive authority. Even as the rules of conventional sovereignty are de facto violated if not de jure challenged, and it is evident that in many cases effective autonomous national government is far in the future, the language of diplomacy, the media, and the street portrays nothing other than a world of fully sovereign states. The next section of this article describes the basic elements that constitute the conventional understanding of sovereignty and provides a taxonomy of alternative institutional forms. It is followed by a discussion of the ways in which conventional sovereignty has failed in some states, threatening the well-being of their own citizens and others. The inadequacy of the current repertoire of policy options for dealing with collapsed, occupied, and badly governed states-governance assistance and transitional administration-is then assessed. The possibilities for new institutional forms-notably shared sovereignty and some de facto form of trusteeship-are examined. Included is a discussion of why such arrangements might be accepted by political leaders in target as well as intervening states.

Legitimacy and International Administration: The Ahtisaari Settlement for Kosovo from a Human Security Perspective

Legitimacy is recognized as critical to the success of international administrations in their efforts to build and promote peace, stability and welfare in post-conflict territories. Nonetheless, scholarship on statebuilding is dominated by the managerial approach, which offers a top-down analysis of policies by international actors and their impact on local constituencies. With its focus on the grass roots, the individual and a multiplicity of concerns, a human security perspective on international administration can identify and address their legitimacy gap, resulting in strategies for more effective conflict resolution. The argument is illustrated by analysis of the Ahtisaari process and plan for Kosovo’s final status.

“Walking Together” Toward Independence? A Civil Society Perspective on the United Nations Administration in East Timor, 1999-2002

Issues surrounding legitimacy and the role of civil society are at the forefront of contemporary global governance debates. Examining the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and focusing on the specific issue areas of justice and gender, this article evaluates the effectiveness and accountability of the administration from the perspective of East Timorese civil society, whose voice is largely absent from previous analyses. Drawing on the archive of the prominent civil society group La’o Hamutuk, this study adds precision and nuance to an area of research characterized by broad-stroke assessments of the legitimacy of multinational interventions. It finds variations in the levels of overall legitimacy exhibited by particular issue areas and differences in terms of the configuration of accountability and effectiveness enjoyed by UNTAET. Although sounding a cautionary note about the degree of civil society influence in global governance, the study concludes that La’o Hamutuk nevertheless provided a more diffuse sense of discursive voice and accountability than would otherwise have been accorded the East Timorese during this crucial period in their history.

Kosovo and the UN

Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia was followed by sporadic violence on the ground, and sharply divided the international community. Russia, China, India and a majority of the world’s nations opposed what was characterised as ethnic separatism. The United States and much of the European Union supported Kosovo’s independence as the last step in the non-consensual break-up of the former Yugoslavia. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sought to defuse the crisis with a package of measures including the drawdown of the UN mission that had administered Kosovo since 1999, Security Council support for the deployment of a European Union rule-of-law mission, and a status-neutral framework within which recognising and non-recognising countries could cooperate while Kosovo’s transition continued. Almost three years later, Kosovo’s new institutions have progressed significantly; Serbia is governed by moderates focused on that country’s European future, and the international military and civil presences are being reduced.

Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World

The international community has struggled without much success to remedy the problem of failed states. Meanwhile, 40 or 50 countries around the world — from Sudan and Somalia to Kosovo and East Timor — remain in a crisis of governance. In this impressive book, Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister, and Lockhart, who has worked at the World Bank and the United Nations, assess the missteps and offer a new framework for coordinated action. They argue that international responses have failed because they have been piecemeal and have proceeded with little understanding of what states need to do in the modern world system to connect citizens to global flows. They advocate a “citizen-based approach.” State-building strategies would be organized around a “double compact”: between country leaders and the international community, on the one hand, and country leaders and citizens, on the other. The book also proposes methods for the generation of comparative data on state capacity — a “sovereignty index” — to be annually reported to the UN and the World Bank. Ultimately, this study offers a surprisingly optimistic vision. The fact that so many disadvantaged countries have made dramatic economic and political transitions over the last decade suggests that developmental pathways do exist — if only the lessons and practical knowledge of local circumstances can be matched to coordinated and sustained international efforts. The authors provide a practical framework for achieving these ends, supporting their case with first-hand examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world’s success stories–Singapore, Ireland, and even the American South.

Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq

Fukuyama brings together esteemed academics, political analysts, and practitioners to reflect on the U.S. experience with nation-building, from its historical underpinnings to its modern-day consequences. The United States has sought on repeated occasions to reconstruct states damaged by conflict, from Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War to Japan and Germany after World War II, to the ongoing rebuilding of Iraq. Despite this rich experience, there has been remarkably little systematic effort to learn lessons on how outside powers can assist in the building of strong and self-sufficient states in post-conflict situations. The contributors dissect mistakes, false starts, and lessons learned from the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq within the broader context of reconstruction efforts in other parts of the world, including Latin America, Japan, and the Balkans. Examining the contrasting models in Afghanistan and Iraq, they highlight the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as a cautionary example of inadequate planning.

State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century

Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of “stateness.” He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community may legitimately intervene to prop them up.

Too Little, Too Late? International Oversight of Contract Negotiations in Post-conflict Liberia

International actors involved in transitional post-conflict situations often focus their attention on the reconstruction of a state’s political apparatus. Even where control of natural resources is central to the conflict, there tends to be less consideration of resource governance issues in transitional periods. This article examines one particular aspect of resource governance – the negotiation and signing of foreign investment contracts – in the context of post-conflict, pre-election Liberia. The investment contract process was mishandled by the transitional Liberian government. Although local interests resisted external oversight, international actors could and should have done more, in the interest of all Liberians, to proffer contract negotiation expertise and to prevent the transitional government from locking the state into unsatisfactory deals on major resource assets. International actors did address the contract issue and external oversight of economic governance more generally during Liberia’s formal transitional period, but ultimately their interventions amounted to too little and they came too late.

Balancing Peace, Justice and Sovereignty in Jus Post Bellum: The Case of ‘Just Occupation’

Theories of jus post bellum have tended to be what I call `restricted’, in that they have focussed on the norms to govern the ending and immediate aftermath of a just war. But the goal of building a just peace, which is the ultimate aim of a just war, often places rather longer-term responsibilities on the shoulders of the victorious just, especially where occupation of the defeated unjust state is required (the scenario on which I concentrate). Given the variety of possible post-conflict situations, then, we should expect there to be various conceptions of jus post bellum, sensitive to the context-specific demands of the `just peace’ objective. This article therefore sets out the case for an `extended’ theory of jus post bellum which is likely to be required in, for example, occupation scenarios. But, having argued that `restricted’ conceptions do not fully lay out what might be reasonably expected of just occupiers, the article then contends that the `extended’ considerations may be in significant tension with another post- bellum requirement, namely, the obligation to restore sovereignty to the occupied state as soon as is reasonably feasible. Various ways of negotiating the tension are discussed and found to be wanting. Given that just war theory in general is supposed to be action-guiding, the concern is that an extended jus post bellum may be unhelpfully action-disorienting. The ostensibly strong case for it is therefore cast into some doubt and some implications for how the obligations of peacebuilding for just occupiers should theorised are considered.

American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction: Comparing Japan and Iraq

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, President G.W. Bush argued that if setting up democracy in Japan and Germany after WW II was successful, then it should also be successful in Iraq. This book provides a detailed comparison of the reconstruction of Japan from 1945 to 1952 with the current reconstruction of Iraq, evaluating the key factors affecting the success or failure of such projects. The book seeks to understand why American officials believed that extensive social reengineering aiming at seeding democracy and economic development is replicable, through identifying factors explaining the outcome of U.S.-led post-conflict reconstruction projects. The analysis reveals that in addition to the effective use of material resources of power, the outcome of reconstruction projects depends on a variety of other intertwined factors, and Bridoux provides a new analytical framework relying on a Gramscian concept of power to develop a greater understanding of these factors, and the ultimate success or failure of these reconstruction projects.

Building Peace and Political Community in Hybrid Political Orders

Peacebuilding supports the emergence of stable political community in states and regions struggling with a legacy of violent conflict. This then raises the question of what political community might mean in the state in question. International peacebuilding operations have answered that question in terms of the promotion of conventional state-building along the lines of the Western Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) model as the best path out of post-conflict state fragility and towards sustainable development and peace. This article argues for peacebuilding beyond notions of the liberal peace and constructions of the liberal state. Rather than thinking in terms of fragile states, it might be theoretically and practically more fruitful to think in terms of hybrid political orders, drawing on the resilience embedded in the communal life of societies within so-called fragile regions of the global South. This re-conceptualization opens new options for peacebuilding and for state formation as building political community.

Security Sector Reform in Liberia: An Uneven Partnership without Local Ownership

The security situation in Liberia is currently quite good, and at a glance the peacebuilding process seems to be moving ahead. However, the root causes of the conflict have not been adequately addressed, but have in fact become more interlinked in the aftermath of the civil war. Instead of addressing local perceptions of insecurity the international community made plans for Liberia without considering the context in which reforms were to be implemented. The peace in post-conflict Liberia is therefore still fragile and the international presence is regarded as what secures the peace. Still, the UN is supposed to start its full withdrawal in 2010, indicating that the international community will leave the country without addressing the root causes of conflict.

Making Plans for Liberia – A Trusteeship Approach to Good Governance?

Since the end of the Liberian civil war in August 2003 the international community has been “making plans” for Liberia. However, it rarely questioned whether these plans were in accordance with the political and economic logic of the peace agreement and the subsequent transitional government. The consequence was that corruption continued and a much more intrusive economic management plan was established. The Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme is supposed to combat corruption and facilitate good governance, but it also limits the range of policy options for the new democratically elected government of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The irony is that the best and most legitimate government that Liberia has ever had is subject to stronger external control than any of its predecessors. The probability that this scheme will remain sustainable when donor interest shifts elsewhere is low, and what is needed is a more pragmatic approach that draws a wider segment of Liberian society into anti-corruption management and creates checks and balances between them.

The Evolution of Post-conflict Recovery

Recent history has been marked by the rise of post-conflict intervention as a component of military and foreign policy, as a form of humanitarianism and as a challenge to Westphalian notions of state sovereignty. The terms of debate, the history of the discipline and the evolution of scholarship and practice remain relatively under-examined, particularly in the post-9/11 period in which post-conflict recovery came to be construed as an extension of conflict and as a domain concerned principally with the national security of predominantly Western countries. The subsequent politicisation of post-conflict recovery and entry of post-conflict assistance into the political economy of conflict have fundamentally changed policy making and practice. The authors argue that research into post-conflict recovery, which must become increasingly rigorous and theoretically grounded, should detach itself from the myriad political agendas which have sought to impose themselves upon war-torn countries. The de-politicisation of post-conflict recovery, the authors conclude, may benefit from an increasingly structured “architecture of integrated, directed recovery.”