Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I will argue in this paper that the international state-building strategies show both weakening and at the same time strengthening effects on stateness (Staatlichkeit). In other words, interna-tional state-building specifically and the embeddedness of political domination in interna-tional coherences in general are the reasons why the state is still the main principle of political organisation worldwide. It is the international dimension and the globalised idea of the state which ensure the persistence of stateness as such. On the other hand, however, it is the very international embeddedness that provides an environment for state-building and consolidation attempts beyond the OECD world which is completely different from the one in which his-torical West-European state-building processes took place. While the latter occurred simulta-neously with the formation of the international system, post-colonial state-building was, from the start, determined by international conditions (e.g., power relations in the global market or statehood as condition for participation in the international system) and has since tried to catch up with the West. I contend that – besides all particularities of each individual case – my basic considerations are true for BiH as well as for other states of the post-communist and post-colonial worlds. So, while the outcome of state-building in Bosnia is not a decay of stateness, it neither is – nor could it be, as a look at states in Latin America, Asia and Africa reveals – consolidated stateness in terms of the modern state ideal.
The paper is organized in three parts. Firstly, I will give a brief introduction into the state con-ception on which my thoughts are based. I avail myself of a sociological state conception elaborated by Klaus Schlichte and Joel S. Migdal (Migdal/Schlichte 2005; Schlichte 2005) which defines the state as a field of power which is being influenced by the tensions between a globalised image of the state (including: clear boundaries – territorially as well as between private/public, political/economical and legal/illegal realms –, the state’s autonomy, its reali-sation as apparatus, and its internal coherence) and the actual practices of state officials and others which affect the state. I will show shortly how such a dynamic conception of the state which distinguishes between image and practices enables scholars to describe the often op-posed dynamics in one comprehensive frame of thought.
Secondly, I will try to expand the basic idea of differentiating between image and practices on the so called international community and the state-building project. This enables me to de-tect, describe and categorize frictions within the state-building agencies and strategies as well as between the international and local level. Most of my findings are not new per se and have been described elsewhere. What is innovative about this approach is the attempt to bring the sometimes contradictive findings together in one comprehensive terminological frame. The four main lines of tension in international interventionism and state-building are: firstly, propagated objectives versus applied implementation practices; secondly, general state-building objectives versus concrete programmes for action; thirdly, the envisioned state ver-sus the interveners’ home-country realities; and fourthly, the reality of intervention versus the interveners’ moralities and legitimacy.
Finally, I will, in a nutshell, apply this frame to the Bosnian case by describing major findings in two core areas of stateness: the state’s monopoly of violence and the state’s financing.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The twentieth century witnessed an explosion in state formation – a process that marked its beginnings in the Westphalian System but continues in many forms today. Some states pool sovereignties and grow larger, others become smaller through secession or

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Considerable effort in recent years has gone into rebuilding fragile states. However, the lively debates over the effectiveness of such state building exercises have tended to miss the fact that capacity building and the associated good governance programs, which comprise contemporary state building, are essentially about transforming the state – meaning the ways in which political power is produced and reproduced. State capacity is now often put forward as the missing link required for generating both positive development outcomes and security, blurring the dichotomous distinction between security and development. However, rather than being an objective and technical measure, capacity building constitutes a political and ideological mechanism for operationalising projects of state transnationalisation. The need to question prevailing notions of state capacity and the normative assumptions these carry has become sadly apparent in light of the failure of many state building programs in post-conflict states. Such programs have proven very difficult to implement, and implementation has rarely achieved the expected development turnarounds or alleviation of violent conflict in those countries. In this paper I argue that to identify the potential trajectories of such interventions, we must understand the role state building currently plays in domestic politics, and in particular the ways in which processes of state transformation and transnationalisation, whether intentionally or not, affect the development of different and often conflicting powerbases within the state. This argument is examined using examples from the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: State-building administrations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, have been initiated and legitimized as temporary instrumental enablers of the transition from conflict to peace and stability. A characteristic feature of many of these administrations has been the reluctance of the administrating body to rescind its competencies. The international administrations in Bosnia and Kosovo in particular, have demonstrated a pronounced unwillingness to devolve their powers, legitimating their maintenance of key competencies on the basis that these societies remain incapable of self-government.This paper will argue that this feature of state-building derives more from dynamics within Western society rather than the recipient state. State-building is a means by which the West exports an image internationally and confirms a self-image domestically, thus an administration’s success or failure has significant impact on the perceived competence and utility of the Western system. The need to create flawless pluralist democracies is manifest in the desire to create political communities in Bosnia and Kosovo which mirror an idealized vision of the Western state the existence of which, in its normative construct, is debatable. Thus the desire to create a particular kind of society and political community derives from an unreal vision of Western society and a need to project capability internationally. In this respect the (re)construction of Bosnia and Kosovo is unlikely to satisfy the normative goals set and, more importantly, an exercise in Western self-constitution. It will be argued that this process of self-constitution is also evident in the discourse surrounding failed and weak states where the comparative conceptualization of these states derives from the reification of the Western state.