Failed States and Statebuilding

The goal

The course aims to explore the concept of state – by focusing primarily to its fragility and failure in conflict-affected and post-conflict societies. It will examine plausibility of ‘failed state’ concept, the hegemonic position of the Westphalian concept of state, and the conventional criteria for state failure. Furthermore, it will give a critical perspective on statebuilding as an inevitable component of liberal peacebuilding concept. This course will draw its empirical examples primarily from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Besides discussing main theoretical concepts, it will include a series of country case studies, examining how the state failure and statebuilding literature helps us to understand the contemporary political processes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Somalia, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

The outcome

Students will be able to demonstrate:
- An understanding of current debates about concepts of failed states and statebuilding;
- Knowledge of state failure and statebuilding in specific countries and regions;
- Assessment of how political, historical and cultural factors affect state development in conflict-affected and post-conflict societies;
- The ability to summarize and criticize key ideas from the literature on state failure and statebuilding;
- The ability to evaluate, orally and in writing, statebuilding policies from the perspectives of different actors in the international system.

Contents of lectures

1. Introduction to the course
2. Weak, fragile, failed, and collapsed states
3. Failed state as an ideology
4. Deconstructing Westphalian myth: Comparative and international perspectives on state
5. Postwar reconstruction: Statebuilding or state-failing?
6. Building states without sovereignty: Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo
7. The quest for state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa: South Sudan and Somalia
8. Statebuilding after military interventions: Afghanistan and Iraq
9. State reconstruction and ethnic conflict regulation: Consociation and identity in Northern Ireland
10. State failure and non-state actors: Terrorism and violent extremism
11. Economic perspectives on statebuilding
12. A new research agenda for state making
13. Reading week – draft essay for peer review
14. Reading week – essay writing
15. Exam

Contents of exercises

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1. Bartelson, Jens, M. Hall and J. Teorell (eds.), De-Centering State Making: Comparative and International Perspectives, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018

   (Original)

2. Belloni, Roberto, Statebuilding and International Intervention in Bosnia, Routledge, 2007

   (Original)

3. Chandler, David, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton, Pluto Press, 1999; Chandler, David, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-building, Pluto Press, 2006

   (Original)

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

   (Original)

5. Finlay, Andrew, Governing Ethnic Conflict: Consociation, identity and the price of peace, Routledge, 2011

   (Original)

6. Richmond, Oliver P, Failed Statebuilding: Intervention and the Dynamics of Peace Formation, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2014

   (Original)

7. Richmond, Oliver P, Franks, Jason, Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2009

   (Original)

8. Rotberg, Robert I. (ed.), State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror, World Peace Foundation, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003

   (Original)

9. Rotberg, Robert I. (ed.), When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004

   (Original)

10. Giessmann, H. J. and R. Mac Ginty (eds.), Research Handbook on Political Transition, Edward Elgar, London, 2018

    (Original)

11. Evans, P. B., D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge University Press, 1985

    (Original)

12. Woodward, Susan L, The Ideology of Failed States: Why Intervention Fails, Cambridge University Press, 2017

    (Original)

13. Zartman, I. W. (ed.), Collapsed State: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, Lynne Rienner Publishers, London, 1995

    (Original)

14. Berdal M., A. Wennmann, (eds.), Ending Wars, Consolidating Peace: Economic Perspectives, Abingdon, Routledge, 2010

    (Original)

Lectures, seminars (presentations), summaries, essays