Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: International non-governmental think tanks advocating the stabilisation of fragile or war-torn states have flourished as one part of the state-building approach that has emerged as an important instrument in international politics since the 1990s. Their main aim has been to influence the course of international politics concerning interventions and peace-building projects. Founded in 1995, ICG is among the most well-known of these new agencies. It covers zones of conflict worldwide with currently 15 field offices. The Balkans – which are the example that will serve as a reference for the ideas brought forward in this paper – are covered from ICG’s Europe headquarters in Brussels as well as field offices in Kosovo and Serbia. Founded in 1999, ESI has become a competitor in field-based analysis and advocacy in the Balkans. Starting with analyses of the peace-building process in Bosnia, it currently focuses mainly on Turkey, Kosovo, questions of state-building by foreign powers in general, and EU enlargement. Both international think tanks have established themselves as widely recognized experts in their respective areas of expertise by providing information, recommending policies and criticising international politics.
I suggest that there are at least three main areas a critical research should scrutinize in order to shed some more light on the role that such international think tanks play (1) in international politics regarding the governance of (post-) conflict spaces, (2) in and for the post-conflict states concerned and (3) in IR as an academic discipline. The first area involves the interna-tional peace-building agents, states as well as international governmental and non-governmental organisations. To a certain degree, the think tanks’ reports seem to shape the international view of the societies which are the object of international actions, to boost cer-tain policy options adopted by the so-called international community in each case as well as across cases and to condemn others. Chapter 2 takes stock of and localises the international think tanks ICG and ESI against the background of contemporary international politics. This part is meant to detect their specific characteristics, working styles and possibilities to access power and to influence the course of international politics in post-conflict spaces. The second area of study concerns the effects that the work of international think tanks takes in post-conflict state-building. Chapter 3 outlines some observations with respect to the role of ICG and ESI post-conflict BiH in order to specify the impact that ICG and ESI had. The main question here is whether the think tanks mattered at all, and if so, how they were able to influ-ence the course of the international intervention in BiH. The third area of study comprises interdependencies between international think tanks and the scientific community. The think tanks operate at an interface between academic research and politics and are therefore highly interesting in view of the question – raised also as topic of this ISA convention – about the relation between politics, policy and scholarship. Drawing again on observations from the Bosnian case, in chapter 4 the paper outlines some basic problems regarding the repercussions of the scientific debate on international state-building advocates, the influences of the interna-tional agencies’ work on IR research, and the relative influence both groups had on the course of the international intervention in BiH.
Based on the ‘material’ gathered in the previous sections, chapter 5 sets out to explore possi-ble ways of theorising the role of international think tanks in post-conflict state-building. I suggest that there are three circulating perspectives: a liberal view, a critical interpretation and a political economy approach. In the case of BiH there are certain evidences for all three strands. In addition to briefly pointing out the perspectives’ main argumentative lines I pro-pose some conceptual starting points for additional analyses. The conclusion in chapter 6 sketches out further research tasks which go beyond the scope and possibilities of this paper. What all three perspectives have in common – apart from their many differences – is that they do not primarily focus on the post-conflict states concerned by international governance. Therefore, I propose to elaborate an alternative approach which focuses especially on state formation and stateness in post-conflict spaces.