State Building in Divided Societies of the Post-Ottoman World

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1 Lebanese Association for Sociology State Building in Divided Societies of the Post-Ottoman World International Conference held in cooperation between the Middle East Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Lebanese Association for Sociology Beirut, September 24-25, 2010 Institution or State Building has emerged as one of the central tasks and challenges to establish legitimacy and functionality in newly independent states, in efforts aimed at Peace Building and reconciliation after civil strife and conflict, and in transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. The challenge is especially crucial in divided societies where sub-national identities (ethnic, religious, sectarian) and the solidarities of primordial groups hold sway and compete with or even precede allegiance to the nation. In such societies, State Building is expected to reduce mutual fear as well as the dependency of the individual on such groups, as security, governance and welfare are entrusted to supposedly neutral institutions which are expected to operate on the basis of reliable rules. To the degree that it allows for democratic participation, State Building may also facilitate the formation of inter-communal coalitions in the pursuit of cross-cutting issues such as class, gender and sustainability, all of which will work to reduce the power of the primordial bond, and contribute to strengthen the sense of citizenship.

2 Such approaches to State Building work from the implicit assumption that strategic intervention and planning are capable to create working and sustainable state structures under often adverse conditions, and that the undeniable benefits of modern state formation are attainable without the high social cost, and sometimes even excessive violence, that has characterized much of its historical gestation. Yet the balance sheet of State Building attempts in developing or transitional societies (attempted in turn by colonial powers, national(izing) governments, and recently the International Community) appears uneven at best. In particular the concentration of executive power often deemed necessary to initiate and control the process, has frequently paved the way for authoritarian regimes and predatory forms of statehood, and hence worked to defeat the professed purpose. While valid for all State Building projects, such concerns are especially grave for divided and post-conflict societies, where State Building is increasingly prescribed as the most potent or even the sole remedy to cure the conflicts that may (again) grow into violence and war. In such societies, even the most benign attempts at State Building will inevitably proceed under the intense scrutiny of all parties contending for power, and will have to alleviate a multitude of real or professed fears with regard to the potential outcome. Real or perceived imbalances of power and provision will exacerbate such fears, thus facilitating attempts to derail the process by those who stand to lose from it. State Building, in the eyes of a part of the population, may turn into a tool and a code for the domination of others, and thus become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Hence, the challenges are immense, and the consequences of failure potentially disastrous. The slow dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, completed with the treaties of Sevres and Lausanne after World War I, created a number of new political units, supposedly in accordance with the principle of national self determination and in emulation of the European model of the nation state. At the same time, most of these new or future nation states contained diverse populations who espoused competing and partly incompatible national projects, based on ethnic and/or religious identifications. Social and political transformation and instability during the last century of Ottoman rule, the strategy of colonial powers to establish and consolidate their rule by pitting groups against each other, finally the tendency of national governments to build state power on exclusive definitions of nationhood, all conspired to solidify such identifications, and to prevent the emerging of inclusive national identities. Hence, subnational identities continue to be an issue of contention in nearly all successor states of 2 / 5

3 the Ottoman Empire, if by degrees, and a potential cause for disastrous conflict in some. The proposed conference intends to examine the experience of recent attempts at State (Re)Building in three countries of the latter category, i.e. countries that have experienced civil strife, war and state collapse as a result of politicized (religious/ sectarian and ethnic) sub-national identities: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Lebanon. It contends that those countries share a common historical experience, despite their different trajectories since the end of the 19 th century, and that a part of their predicament goes back to a cluster of shared root causes. Furthermore, all three have recently seen attempts at implementing State Building as a means of conflict mediation and prevention, with significant input by the International Community. Comparing the results of similar strategies in environments that appear strikingly different at the outset, but show underlying structural similarities and share a common history may produce original and valuable results about the conditions and origins of success and failure of an approach that has been prominent in international Peace Building attempts over the past two decades. Finally, exchange with colleagues working on similar issues related to different areas may enrich the work of the researchers involved in and hosted for this project. 3 / 5

4 Countries of Interest Bosnia and Herzegovina After its detachment from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, Bosnia-Herzegovina underwent a near century of Nation Building attempts, first by Austro-Hungarian colonialism (attempts at building a "native" Bosnian identity that would make Bosnian Muslims cut their ties with the Ottoman Empire, and Serbs resilient to the call of pan-slavism), then by the Serb-nationalist monarchy of the first Yugoslavia and finally, by socialist Nation Building during the first two decades of Tito s rule. After the mid-sixties, such approaches were abandoned and replaced by a system of ethno-federalist powersharing under the roof of the ruling party, which collapsed into separation and civil war after Postwar Bosnia has been established as one of the most intricate systems of ethnic power-sharing ever devised, and has only been functional through extensive intervention by the International Community. International actors have initiated a project of State Building according to Western standards of good governance in which local actors serve as junior partners, leaving little room for the Bosnian population to identify with the results. Arguably, Bosnia may serve as an example for the limits of externally engineered and controlled State Building projects, however benign. Iraq Iraqi history since the inception of the state has been shaped by the uneasy coexistence between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurdish communities, with a dominant position enjoyed by the first and separatist aspirations entertained by the latter. In particular since the Baathist takeover of 1968, Sunni and later tribal dominance and the marginalization of the majority Shia community were concealed behind a smokescreen of nation-building rhetoric centered on Arabism, while expressions of Kurdish identity and Shiite grievances were violently suppressed. State power penetrated and partly transformed most of society in a process of authoritarian and increasingly violent social integration. The collapse of the Baath-regime in 2003 spawned a contested system of federalism and the haphazard establishment of some measures of power-sharing between the three major communities (and the creeping marginalization of all other communities as well as non-communal identifications). 4 / 5

5 State Building has proceeded in fits and starts, initially at the hands of an occupying power ill prepared for the task, and has been marred by rampant violence, corruption and internal conflict. In Iraq, ill-calculated attempts at State Building may well have served to lend a new and destructive quality to existing divisions. Lebanon Lebanon was established around a nucleus of local autonomy and power-sharing between sectarian communities in the 19 th century. At independence, power sharing between Christians and Muslims became the basic covenant of national politics. State and Institution Building were kept at a minimum, except for a short period in the 1960ies, when the scope of state institutions and activity was expanded significantly in an attempt to address the causes of civil strife in the late 1950ies. Differences over foreign policy orientations as well as social and demographic change put pressure on the power sharing-formula in the late 1960ies; foreign interventions provided the means to pursue change by violent means, leading to civil war in The Taif accord of 1989 represents an attempt to tackle the root causes of internal divisions by creating new institutions and reforming existing ones. Building and strengthening institutions has been the professed objective of most postwar governments, and has attracted significant international support. Yet, twenty years after Taif, not only run internal divisions at an all time high, but respect and trust of the Lebanese for and in the neutrality and ability of state institutions are at an all time low. Lebanon may serve as a case in point for the resilience of established structures against attempts at establishing standards of rational statehood, but also for allegiance to a national narrative and identity, however contested, despite the failures of State Building and recurrent civil strife. 5 / 5