The value of state building

...Anarchist visions may sound liberating, but only because they assume that life under anarchy would be much like it is now—only better...

...Yet many Americans across the political spectrum regard states with deep suspicion and abiding hostility, as instruments of oppression...

...Even so, this more modest goal required years of military occupation...

...Promoting democracy without a minimally functional state may even, unfortunately, be counterproductive, discrediting any possible democratic future...

...However, the abuses that most affect ordinary Burmese—the expropriation of land, the conscription of labor, the arbitrary exaction of goods and funds, and the disastrously failing economy—are the products of state failure...

...Compared to actually existing alternatives, states have more potential for protecting human rights, human security, and international peace than any other political order...

...The Australian government's "Human Rights Initiative for Burma," which trains middle-rank civil servants and judicial officials in international human rights norms, is one small example of such a program...

...However, without states the legal enforcement of rights is almost inconceivable...

...Individuals who cannot secure the protection of one or another network are exposed to severe oppression...

...If failing states are part of the problem of creating a more just domestic order, strong states must be part of the solution...

...There, state institutions had collapsed completely and needed to be reconstructed from the ground up...

...The corollary to the oppressiveness of non-state politics is that, contrary to our commonsense understanding, states are relatively liberating and egalitarian...

...Weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states...

...Without it human rights activists are helpless, which means that they are helpless in countries that are stateless...

...invasion...

...The evil that states do is well known...

...In real life, the alternatives to the state are more violent, more coercive social and political orders dominated by warlords and gangs...

...They may not be willing or able to act now, but they may help smooth a transition once it comes...

...Although people cornPOLITICS ABROAD monly rail against bureaucratic inefficiency, these complaints measure bureaucracies against an ideal of efficient performance rather than against any actually existing alternative...

...Because its repressive capacities are so clear, political theorists seek to protect us from the state (Locke), to divide and limit its power (Madison), to liberate us from it (Marx), or to dissolve it entirely (Foucault...

...They can keep the peace, create security, control disease, police terrorist cells, and minimize refugee flows and humanitarian crises...

...The conceptual hegemony of the state is so great that there has been little serious thinking about alternative arrangements...

...The monopoly of legitimate force eliminates the widely dispersed violence typical in other kinds of polities...

...Poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels...

...Afghanistan and Iraq thus require simultaneous state building and nation building projects...

...States and Rights Modern states are distinctive in two respects: they claim and mostly wield a monopoly of the use of violence and they are bureaucratically organized...

...Yet Hobbes's picture of life without the state— poor, nasty, brutish, and short—still resonates...

...There is little evidence that Afghanistan was beginning to stabilize as a state prior to the U.S...

...According to the Bush administration's 2002 statement of national security policy, America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones...

...It is difficult to see how the dangers posed by failing states can be addressed without building state institutions that create an environment in which citizenship and civil society can thrive...

...An important reason that states are able to secure this monopoly is that rational-legal bureaucracies give them an unprecedented capacity to control society...

...The Afghan state was completely dePOLITICS ABROAD stroyed in the long struggle against the Russians and the endlessly divisive civil war that followed...

...Such a strategy would draw on the three main lessons that should be learned from U.S...

...2. Civilian programs are likely to be more effective than military interventions...

...These are oppressive social orders, dangerous to their own people, to their neighbors, and to the international system...

...There are abundant examples: from the brutality of the Thirty Years War to the Stalinist purges, the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and the Rwandan genocide...

...In most of the administrative systems that preceded the development of modern bureaucracy, offices were a form of property or ascribed status, held as private entitlements...

...They dispense traditional justice or sharia law, often inflicting summary or exemplary punishment with little regard to issues of due process...

...Debating Al Gore, for instance, George W. Bush repeatedly attacked the Clinton administration for supporting what he pejoratively called "nation building," and Gore did not attempt to defend it (nor had the Clinton administration been all that engaged in the hard work of political reconstruction...

...Both countries had been homogeneous nations governed by well-functioning states before the war, and only required rehabilitation under more democratic institutions...

...they will have an address for protests and recommendations...

...Ordinary citizens, nongovernmental agencies (NGOs), and international agencies can much more easily identify the agents of injustice...

...This efficiency is indeed sometimes dangerous, but non-bureaucratic systems are always dangerous because there is no systematic accountability, no way to check the abuses of the powerful...

...Furthermore, they claim, the program DISSENT / Fall 2003 n 21 POLITICS ABROAD will have no results, because these officials are unable to protect human rights in the present context...

...3. Multilateral action, preferably through international institutions to which the target country already belongs, are likely to be seen as more legitimate than unilateral action...

...Indeed, despotic regimes often attack their own bureaucracies, precisely because they represent a point of accountability and transparency, and thus may empower those outside the regime...

...Furthermore, the military intelligence wing of the army, which orchestrates the repression of the opposition, is the one bureaucracy that does not need rehabilitation: it is already well-staffed, well-trained and well-equipped...

...States can only be called oppressive if there is an alternative available, a more promising political order...

...Even if the rules are unjust, their systematic nature promotes accountability...

...Indeed, many dictatorships are simply failed states hiding behind a veil of legal sovereignty and international recognition...

...NEIL A. ENGLEHART iS assistant professor of government and law at Lafayette College...

...This is exactly what happened in Burma in the 1950s, laying the groundwork for a coup by what was initially a popular military junta...

...A more effective bureaucracy would likely reduce the suffering, not increase it...

...The demands of the Clinton and Bush administrations for the surrender of Osama bin Laden rested on the assumption that the Taliban had the capacity to deliver him, if they so chose...

...This article was written at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he was in residence 2002-2003, writing a book on state failure and human rights...

...Conflicts outside the lineage are resolved through force at least as often as through negotiation, with weaker groups forced into subordination by stronger ones...

...But they require a minimum threshold of state capacity in order to govern, whereas dictators may be able to maintain their power even without an effective state...

...Yet such efforts have been anathema in American politics...

...Aid programs to assist in building state capacity could easily be made palatable to many governments, even authoritarian governments, and would certainly cost less than dispatching troops...

...Out of this catastrophe the Pakistani-supported Taliban emerged dominant...

...Iraq by all accounts had a well-functioning bureaucracy prior to its invasion of Kuwait, but economic sanctions, Baathist brutality, and two wars have severely eroded state capacity...

...Such efforts should continue and should be supplemented with foreign aid programs aimed at strengthening threatened states...

...What would happen in the unlikely event that the generals were to accede to this pressure and allow the NLD to assume power...

...How To The first step in promoting democracy must thus be a rehabilitation of the Burmese state, so that a civilian regime could effectively govern it...

...The U.S...

...policy toward Burma...

...Not quite the Hobbesian war of all against all, they are rather wars of group against group, dividing society and destroying the possibility of a peaceful public sphere, of civil society, rights, and social justice...

...Ironically, the very people who decried "nation building" a few years ago have been compelled to practice it...

...The letter-writing campaigns of Amnesty International and the assessments of UN human rights rapporteurs depend on this accountability...

...Some regions of Somalia have begun to stabilize, but it remains unclear whether there will ever again be a Somali state...

...State Building and Democracy Most of our post–cold war interventions have been described as promoting democracy, in the hope that democratic politics will in turn solve the problems of state capacity...

...Its members never controlled the entire country, and in the areas they did control they never attempted to rebuild the civil service or to provide basic services such as health and education...

...Thus, programs to strengthen other state agencies won't increase the repression...

...State collapse in places such as Somalia and Afghanistan quickly gives rise to extremely unattractive forms of power and dominance, based on the localized command of violence...

...The reconstruction of Germany and Japan has been touted by the Bush administration as a model for rebuilding Iraq...

...Of course, many states fail to vest rights equally or to defend the rights they claim to recognize...

...The typical result of state failure is the creation of hierarchical and exploitative protection networks...

...The Burmese civil service, police, and justice system have been so corrupted under military rule that they are incapable of functioning independently...

...Acknowledging that potential is today a moral and political imperative...

...We now face quite a different set of challenges...

...To those who believe that the Burmese state is already excessively strong, it may seem perverse to advocate strengthening the civil service...

...The closest approximation to these missions is not postwar Japan and Germany, but Somalia in 1992-1993...

...It certainly suggests a lack of commitment to, or understanding of, the difficult work of state building...

...In Somalia, the state fell as the result of a multiparty civil war, which is still unresolved twelve years after the central government's demise...

...In truth, states are more likely to protect human rights than any other form of political organization...

...Although military occupation seems necessary to the process, it is likely—especially when it is unilateral— to delegitimate any state system that it produces...

...State Failure No one who has lived in a failed state will feel any attraction to stateless utopias...

...But in cases like Somalia and Afghanistan, both are necessary, and the two probably have to be attempted at the same time...

...Yet the Taliban never actually reconstituted the Afghan state...

...That's why state building is so important...

...States create what Norbert Elias calls "pacified social spaces," which permit citizens to pursue their own interests without worrying about their personal safety every minute of every day...

...mission in Somalia was handicapped from the beginning...

...20 n DISSENT / Fall 2003 It is worth distinguishing state building— the creation of the institutional capacity to govern— from nation building, which involves bringing together disparate and antagonistic social groups in a common government...

...However, if a country's problems stem from a crisis of state institutions, it is unlikely that democracy first, and democracy alone, will solve those problems...

...By monopolizing violence, modern states sharply reduce its overall level, enabling ordinary people to live more securely...

...wars destroy them...

...We have very limited experience with such activities...

...These small-scale networks are dominated by male elders, headed by warlords...

...In Burma—and in other failing states— we should aim at rehabilitating the civil service and police forces, creating a more functional state amenable to civilian rule...

...Such an approach to state failure would serve U.S...

...Nation Building and State Building Given the human disasters caused by failed states, there are good ethical and pragmatic arguments for assisting in their political reconstruction...

...Many on the left echoed these sentiments— indeed, in their concern with global equity and justice, some leftists were well ahead of the administration in seeking to address these issues...

...This would considerably ease the birthing pains of democracy, when its time comes...

...They specialize in foreign cultures and languages and are employed to collect information, provide medical support for local populations, handle refugee flows, and distribute food...

...Opponents of the Burmese government criticize the program for extending aid to an illegitimate regime...

...Officials were therefore much less responsive to the public or higher authorities, and social control—including the control of violence—was much less effective...

...interests by creating a more stable international system and improving our domestic security, but there are also ethical reasons to promote it...

...States dominate our minds as much as they dominate the globe...

...However, those two cases involved relatively straightforward operations, because neither state building nor nation building were required...

...After states collapse, direct military intervention may turn out to be the only option, but such interventions are dangerous and unpredictable...

...they will know whom to blame when things go badly...

...In fact, anarchists depend on the very order they seek to abolish, assuming that people will be treated as free and equal, able to make uncoerced choices outside the protection of the state...

...Because our commonsense understanding of states is formed from within the environment created by those same states, it is not surprising that we lack a comparative understanding of the alternatives...

...The U.S.-governmentfunded National Endowment for Democracy funds opposition groups dedicated to destroying the dictatorship, but so far they have been ineffective...

...The Clinton administration set up a State Failure Task Force to identify the early warning signs of political collapse...

...But surely it would be useful, if and when a democratic transition occurs in Burma, to have officials in place with some idea of international norms...

...They would seem to be key to the mission of "restoring hope," and their omission from the operational plan was startling...

...The NLD would have no political or administrative instruments with which to govern if the military were to withdraw from politics, and the ensuing chaos could well discredit democracy for years to come...

...At the extreme, in some African countries characterized by what William Reno calls "warlord politics," rulers incapable of creating states by monopolizing violence or building bureaucracies have abandoned any pretense of serving a greater public good or enlisting popular support...

...Wars do not make states...

...They maintain their power with a steady flow of revenue from embezzled development aid and natural-resource exploitation by foreign companies, privatizing the public sphere and abandoning their own populations...

...These are reserve units normally activated to serve as liaisons with the local population...

...The Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first Bush administration removed the civil affairs units from the plan for "Operation Restore Hope...

...Instead, they exploit fictive legal sovereignty to contract with buccaneer capitalists and foreign mercenaries...

...Democrats can build state capacity, probably more effectively than autocrats...

...Multilateralism can be justified in terms of building an international system that minimizes threats to all its members, both states and individuals, and would reduce inevitable suspicions about the motives behind unilateral action...

...After the regime fell, the United States lost interest in the country, and the various armed groups drifted into civil war...

...However, the U.S...

...Their utopian visions set the parameters of critiques of the state, but they 18 n DISSENT / Fall 2003 seldom recognize that the necessary substructure of their utopia doesn't exist "nowhere"— it exists only where states have established law and order...

...The monopoly of violence and rule of law together create the potential for rights—legally enforceable entitlements vested equally in all citizens...

...Nor is there a homogeneous Iraqi nation...

...These efforts are meant to press the Burmese junta to respect the results of the 1990 election and allow the National League for Democracy (NLD) to assume power...

...This is the task the Bush administration claims to be committed to in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...Only the military-run system of Peace and Development Councils provides any administrative structure in the country...

...government has enacted economic sanctions against Burma that simply expand investment opportunities for Chinese and Singapore firms with little interest in democratic politics...

...It is also not surprising that we chafe against the failures and imperfections of states, holding them—as we should—to an ideal that we can conceive only because of the social order that is potential in them...

...Ordinary citizens were forced to make peace as best they could with locally, often temporarily, dominant groups, but the conditions of the civil war were such that most were exposed to violence and extortion from more than one...

...Strong states capable of policing their own territories, accountable for the activities of their agents, and participating in international trade and multilateral institutions are better for their own citizens as well as for other states...

...22 n DISSENT / Fall 2003...

...Because the regime has repeatedly purged the bureaucracy, and because it pays such low wages that civil servants are forced into corruption, it has lost the ability to rationally plan and effectively execute policy...

...attempts to assist in state building since the cold war: 1. Preventing state failure is preferable to intervening after a collapse...

...Massive military interventions are likely to be counterproductive, with occupation by foreign troops discrediting the state building effort...

...In Afghanistan, the United States and Pakistan armed several mujahideen groups against the Soviet-supported regime...

...Because of their size and complexity, rationallegal bureaucracies are much more rulebound than the alternatives...

...they are more likely to improve the capacity to deliver services to citizens and ameliorate the chaotic economic and legal environment...

...People have been forced to rely for protection on lineage networks that sponsor armed gangs...

...Although they were able to enforce a few radical and repressive policies—the subDISSENT / Fall 2003 n I 9 POLITICS ABROAD ordination of women, for example—their capacity to formulate and enact policy in any systematic way was weak...

...A prime example is U.S...

...They provide, moreover, the basis for legally enforceable civil and political rights, and for political and legal accountability if such rights are violated...

...Probably we would see the familiar disaster of state collapse and localized violence...

...In fact, the state may have to be rebuilt before a democratic government can rule...

...In medieval Europe, for example, violence was legitimately used by peasant villages, urban guilds, city governments, the nobility, and the church—all in addition to, and independent of, the king...

...Such collapsed states rarely recover spontaneously...

...We will never know if this assumption was correct, but it is likely that one of the reasons bin Laden chose Afghanistan as a refuge was precisely because it lacked a state structure capable of disciplining its own citizens, much less a wealthy guest with an armed retinue...

...The infrastructure and skill base that it depended on has been destroyed...

...Bureaucracies are often accused of being intrinsically oppressive because they are so much more effective at gathering information and enforcing laws and policies than other kinds of administrations...