The Effect of National Factors on the Statebuilding Outcome in Fragile, Non-Permissive Environments (I/III)

BRIEF The Effect of National Factors on the Statebuilding Outcome in Fragile, Non-Permissive Environments (I/III) Christian Bayer Tygesen, Ph.D. Fellow, University of Copenhagen & Anna Lindh Fellow, Stanford University* * I would like to thank Peter Viggo Jakobsen for his supervision and comments on an earlier draft of this brief. Institute for Strategy - ifs@fak.dk Royal Danish Defence College Ryvangs Allé 1 DK-2100 Copenhagen East

This policy brief is part of a series consisting of the following: - The Effect of National Factors on the Statebuilding Outcome in Fragile, Non-Permissive Environments (I/III) - Security Sector Reform in an Unstable, Fragile State (II/III) - At se klart i tågen: analyser af udviklingen i oprørsbekæmpelsesindsatser (III/III) The Royal Danish Defence College is the Danish armed forces powerhouse for education, training and research-generated consultancy. Our research is conducted within a broad range of military-related topics. Our research priorities, such as topics and resource allocation are determined by the Commandant of the Royal Danish Defence College, who is aided by a research council. Research at the Royal Danish Defence College should enlighten and challenge the reader, whether they are in the armed forces or in the surrounding environment. This is only achievable if the employees have the freedom to administer their own research projects and draw their own conclusions. This is a principle, which is honoured at the Royal Danish Defence College. We hope you enjoy reading the Royal Danish Defence College s publications! Royal Danish Defence College All rights reserved. Mechanical, photographic or other reproduction or photocopying from this book or parts thereof is only allowed according to agreements between The Danish Defence and CopyDan. Any other use without written consent from the Royal Danish Defence College is illegal according to Danish law on intellectual property right. Excepted are short extracts for reviews in newspapers or the like. Copenhagen January 2013 Royal Danish Defence College Ryvangs Allé 1 DK-2100 Copenhagen Denmark Phone: +45 3915 1515 Fax: +45 3929 6172 Editor: Director of the Institute for Strategy Ole Kværnø Layout by B-O. Kure ISBN: 978-87-7147-009-3 Royal Danish Defence College Publishing House

Royal Danish Defence College This brief presents a crucial lesson on the dynamics of statebuilding in unstable, fragile state environment: the impact of international actions and resources on the statebuilding outcome is secondary to, and highly dependent upon, the impact of the preferences and capacity of national actors. The brief begins by situating this lesson in the debate on the future of statebuilding. This leads to a presentation of two national factors that have a signifi cant impact on the statebuilding outcome. Finally, the brief draws two strategic implications of this lesson for statebuilding in unstable, fragile state environments. Context Statebuilding, defi ned as an effort by international and national actors to build state institutions to advance the stability and democratic development of the state, has a mixed record: effective in achieving a sustained end to large-scale intra-state violence; ineffective in building state capacity and inducing economic growth and democratization. 1 Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped much of the political will and public support for new statebuilding endeavours in fragile states. But several failed and fragile states worldwide underline that new statebuilding missions can hardly be ruled out. This compels statebuilding practitioners, civilian and military alike, to examine past experiences, assess crucial lessons, draw policy implications and adapt accordingly. This policy brief presents a critical lesson from Afghanistan and Iraq: The impact of international actions and resources on the statebuilding outcome is secondary to, and highly dependent upon, the impact of the preferences and capacity of national actors. First, this lesson is placed in the perspective of the broader contemporary debate on the future statebuilding. Secondly, the dynamics of the primacy of national factors are examined as determinants of statebuilding outcome. Finally, the brief examines the respective policy implications of this lesson at the local and national level of the statebuilding effort. Debating the future of statebuilding One way to frame the debate on the future of statebuilding is to distinguish between advocates of disengagement and advocates of reform. The dominant thinking among the former is that local solutions should be applied to local problems. Disengationists call for a less interventionist statebuilding effort, in which the main line of effort is channelled through local actors and institutions with an emphasis on local ownership of policy goals, design and execution. Objectives should be tailored to local conceptions of political order and legitimacy, not a preconceived model based on ideals of a centralized, Weberian state. Development projects should be aligned with local preferences, capacity and resource-restraints to ensure (1) Doyle, Michael W. and Sambanis, Nicholas (2006): Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Also: Newman, Edward; Paris, Roland and Richmond, Oliver P. (eds.) (2009): New Perspectives on Liberal Peacebuilding, New York: United Nations University Press. 3

long-term sustainability. Too much development assistance can overwhelm the absorption capacity of host state institutions and pervert the preferences of local actors, creating reform-averse conditions and fuelling corruption. Reformists argue that international actors must often take the lead in the statebuilding effort, and they defend the necessity of international interventions, but mount a strong criticism of current statebuilding practices. International statebuilding actors must get serious about donor coordination and policy alignment, objectives must be matched to resources and time constraints, and international actors must place a greater emphasis on local ownership. 2 In short, well-known best practices on development must be more vigorously enforced. Both sides have put their mark on the debate on Afghanistan. On the disengagement side, many argue that a failure to understand Afghan culture has led state-builders to support ineffective local actors and build an illegitimate state, modelled on the ill-conceived panacea of the centralized, democratic state. 3 Others fi nd the intrusive international effort has created an Afghan aid dependency; fl ooded with technical assistance and aid, Afghan actors have had little incentive to undertake substantial reform. 4 Among the reformists, many argue that the civilian side of the international effort failed to seize the window of opportunity in the initial years of the war and provide Afghans with a visible peace dividend. 5 Drawing support from unaddressed local grievances, the insurgency was able to re-emerge. Other reformists, however, have ascribed shortcomings in Afghanistan to a counterproductive militarization of the international strategy 6 and the political failure by NATO leaders to commit suffi cient fi nancial and human resources to the statebuilding effort. 7 (2) Paris, Roland and Sisk, Timothy D. (eds.) (2009): The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations, London: Routledge; Krasner, Stephen D. and Pascual, Carlos (2005): Addressing State Failure, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84. No. 4, July/August, pp. 153-163. (3) Ottaway, Marina and Lieven, Anatol (2002): Rebuilding Afghanistan: Fantasy versus Reality, Policy Brief 12, January, Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (4) Suhrke, Astri (2011): When More is Less: The International Project in Afghanistan, London: C. Hurst & Co. (5) Rubin, Barnett (2007): Saving Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 1, January/February, pp. 65-68; Rashid, Ahmed (2008): Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, New York: Viking, First Edition, p. 248; Jones, Seth G. (2006): Averting Failure in Afghanistan, Survival, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 111-128. (6) Fänge, Anders (2010): The State of The Afghan State, Afghanistan Analysts Network, Discussion Paper 01/2010, January; Eide, Kai (2010): Høyt Spill om Afghanistan, Oslo: Cappelen Damm; Cowper-Coles, Sherard (2011): Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West s Afghanistan Campaign, London: Harper Press. (7) Barfi eld, Thomas (2010): Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 315-318; Jones 2006: 111-128; Paris, Roland (2006): NATO: Go Big or Get Out, The Globe and Mail, Commentary, October 25; O Hanlon, Michael and Sherjan, Hassina (2010): Toughing It Out in Afghanistan, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press; Rubin 2007:58. 4

Royal Danish Defence College Irrespective of the merits or shortcomings of these arguments, both sides share a shortcoming: They signifi cantly overstate the direct impact of international actors on the statebuilding outcome. As described in the following, the effect of international actions is highly dependent upon, and ultimately secondary to, the effect of national factors in the host state. This relationship is amplifi ed in a non-permissive fragile state environment. The effect of national factors on the statebuilding outcome The academic literature covers a wide range of national factors that affect the statebuilding outcome in post-confl ict and confl ict settings. These include societal cleavages, access to natural resources and sea routes, economic growth and income distribution, political culture and social mobility, number of warring factions and longevity of confl ict, and religion. The distinct signifi cance of each factor continues to be debated, and some may not even be applicable in all statebuilding cases. The two factors examined here, however, are arguably both applicable and signifi cant (although not decisive) across all past, current and indeed future cases: the preferences of national actors and the antecedent capacity of the host state institutions. The emphasis on elite preferences has its roots in the rational choice school of state development. 8 Applied to statebuilding, the rational choice lens sharpens its focus on two strategic interactions: the strategic interaction among national elite actors, defi ned as the actors that wield the levers of economic, military and political power in the state; and the strategic interaction between international actors and national elite actors. An underlying assumption is that elite actors will seek to maximize their self-interested preferences. In an unstable and fragile state context, with a high risk of political violence and a weak democratic culture, the strategic interaction between national elite actors is a zero-sum competition in which each actor seeks to maximize power and extract as many resources as possible. 9 Elite actors have little, if any, interest in strengthening state institutions and provide services to the population or to facilitate a broader political inclusion of non-elites since this would reduce their ability to extract rents by increasing oversight, diverting resources toward public goods and closing opportunities for corruption and clientelism. Given the dominance of self-interests, zero-sum thinking and political uncertainty and insecurity, elite actors are risk-averse and therefore disinclined to make the compromises necessary to tackle corruption and pave the way for economic and political reform. 10 Unless reforms serve their self-interest, the elite actors will remain an obstacle to any statebuilding efforts that (8) For a brief introduction to the rational choice school, see Krasner, Stephen D. (2011): Review Article: Foreign Aid: Competing Paradigms, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 129-132. (9) Krasner 2011 (10) Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A. (2006): Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15-23. 5

may threaten their self-interests, such as anti-corruption measures, improvement of governance practices in state institutions and promotion of merit-based hiring. 11 This dynamic has signifi cantly hampered efforts to promote reforms in both Bagdad and Kabul. International actors usually apply a combination of carrots and sticks to induce elite actors to support and enact reforms to build institutional capacity, improve governance and promote development. This brings us to the strategic interaction between international actors and national elite actors. At fi rst glance, international actors seem to hold much leverage, given the host state s dependency on international aid and security support. But this leverage is primarily effective if the international actor s threat to cut its support is perceived by national elite actors as credible. International actors must be able to credibly threaten to withdraw either its military support or its economic assistance or both. This is seldom the case. 12 In Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, international leverage has been reduced by the clear linkage between the national interests of the engaged coalition partners and the county s stability and political order. Despite international and even local public pressure, it has proven very diffi cult to entice or press national elites to undertake reform. Elite actors have generally seen international conditioning of assistance on governance reform as a hollow threat, calculating that it would be politically unfeasible for the donor community to withhold its assistance en masse. The emphasis on antecedent capacity of the host state is informed by the institutionalist school of state development and statebuilding. 13 The antecedent conditions, i.e. the baseline capacity from which international and national state-builders begin, can be more or less conducive to statebuilding. The greater the level of state capacity to build on, the more conducive the conditions are to statebuilding. 14 Weak state capacity due to a shortfall of able civil servants, dysfunctional organizational infrastructure, ineffective bureaucratic procedures etc. reduces the state institution s ability to absorb international assistance and build capacity. In Afghanistan, for instance, statebuilders had little more than institutional rubble to build on after two decades of confl ict and internal strife. They faced the daunting task of building the state almost from scratch. (11) Easterly, William (2001): The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Easterly, William (2006): The White Man s Burden: Why the West s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, New York: Penguin Press. (12) Svensson, Jakob (2000): When is Foreign Aid Policy Credible? Aid Dependence and Conditionality, Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 61, pp. 61-84;Svensson, Jakob (2003): Why Conditional Aid Doesn t Work and What Can Be Done About It?, Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 381-402; Scholl, Almuth (2009): Aid Effectiveness and Limited Enforceable Conditionality, Review of Economic Dynamics, Vol. 12, pp. 377-391; Easterly 2006: 149; Krasner 2011: 137-143; Suhrke 2011 (13) For a useful introduction to this school, see Krasner 2011. (14) Capacity is an illusive concept of which there are few, if any, good indicators or measures. Here capacity is defi ned in functionalist terms as the ability of an institution to fulfi ll its functional responsibilities effectively. 6

Royal Danish Defence College Moreover, the lack of state capacity hinders the application of many of the best practices defi ned by donors in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness 15. For instance, given the often acute need to deliver essential public goods to alleviate public grievances, international actors often see no alternative but to create parallel, internationally run service-delivery structures to compensate for the lack of host state capacity to deliver essential public goods. This can create a vicious circle, whereby the already weak state is undercut by parallel structures, compounding its capacity-defi cit, and in turn re-enforcing the need of international actors to work through parallel structures. This challenge also stood before statebuilders in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the country-wide mobilization of Provincial Reconstructions Teams to channel aid and ensure service delivery, and the extensive use of international contractors to execute development projects. These measures have no doubt ensured concrete output-results such as increased access to basic health services and basic education. However, they have also drawn criticism for side-lining the state and weakening the institution-building effort. Finally, weak state capacity complicates efforts to promote democratic governance and economic growth. Indeed, as many institutionalists argue, in the absence of functional state institutions, democratization and economic reforms can be detrimental to the state s stability by opening space for corruption, increasing societal tensions by aggressive political competition, and destabilizing rent seeking behaviour. 16 To sum up, national elite preferences and antecedent state capacity are, particularly in the short term, crucial to the statebuilding outcome and determine the obstacles, opportunities and dilemmas facing international actors. This warrants a level of modesty when considering and projecting the impact of international actions on the statebuilding outcome. Indeed, this is even more pronounced in a non-permissive environment, where the statebuilding effort is undertaken to advance an overall counterinsurgency effort. Here, as Seth Jones notes, the outcome of the counterinsurgency effort is highly dependent upon the capacity of the state s military and civilian institutions (and the level of external support for the insurgency). 17 Moreover, since the marginalization of the insurgency ultimately hinges upon the decision of the population to back the state or at least break with the insurgency the actions and preferences of the elite state actors become crucial. In the fi nal part of the policy brief, two strategic implications of the importance of national factors are considered. (15) See http://www.oecd.org/dac/aideffectiveness/parisdeclarationandaccraagendaforaction. htm (16) Paris, Roland (2004): At War s End: Building Peace After Civil Confl ict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (17) Jones, Seth G. (2008): Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, RAND Counterinsurgency Study, Vol. 4, pp. 7-24 7

Policy implications at the strategic level A more effective statebuilding effort in a fragile state context requires a clear-eyed awareness of the primacy of national factors as elite preferences and antecedent state capacity on the statebuilding outcome and that the impact of international actions on the statebuilding outcome is often highly dependent on such national factors. A signifi cant implication is that working through host state institutions to build institutional capacity, while indeed a necessary and central pillar in an effective statebuilding strategy, should be based on a realistic understanding of: a) why the preferences of elite actors may diverge from international objectives; b) how reformaverse actor preferences can be addressed to create a more reform-conducive environment; and c) that institution-building even under ideal circumstances will yield incremental progress only in the short term. The fi rst point refl ects that due to self-interested preferences, elite actors may have little, if any, interest in building institutional capacity for the reasons outlined above. International private and public pressure for a show of Afghan or Iraqi political will to enforce reform seems to neglect this reality. This brings us to the second point: International actors should understand the underlying drivers of the elite preferences and work to address them so that elite actors will view institution-building as serving their self-interest. Donor conditionality has often been the instrument of choice in this regard, but it has proven to be largely ineffective due to the perceived weak credibility of the threat to withhold donor assistance. As noted above, one obstacle to reform-conducive elite preferences is the mutual distrust and fear of being out-maneuvered by rival elite factions once compromises to build institutions and governance capacity are made. The mutual distrust between elite actors can be eased by ensuring a suffi ciently inclusive, institutionalized balance of power between key elite factions and establishing an arbiter, international or otherwise, to check against power grabs that may destabilize the equilibrium and ensure that no institution-building elevates a specifi c elite group or non-national coalition. Finally, as a consequence of the third point, it is important to base the statebuilding strategy on realistic timelines. To put this in perspective, a 2011 World Bank study found that in the 20 th century it took the twenty fastest states an average of 28 years to develop from a fragile state (Yemen-equivalent) to a basic threshold with functional state institutions, controllable corruption and effective governance. 18 Their trajectories unfolded under conditions much more conducive to reform than in Afghanistan or Iraq. A second signifi cant implication is that the institution-building progress is likely to be greater, where elite preferences align with institution-building objectives. This (18) The World Bank (2011): World Development Report 2011: Confl ict, Security and Development, p. 11. The very best cases, South Korea and Singapore, were under stable, military rule, in a region of relatively stable states, and could draw on signifi cant human capital, and the political elites recognized the importance of building institutional capacity. 8

Royal Danish Defence College will generate uneven progress in the development of capacity across the host state institutions. Elite preferences are particularly likely to align with international objectives to build the military capacity of the state, as progress in this track is a precondition for the state s ability to assume responsibility for its own security and safeguarding the political order. This should, ceteris paribus, lead to an asymmetric statebuilding outcome, with progress in building military institutions exceeding the progress in building civilian institutional capacity. Indeed, trends in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to support this. In both countries, progress in building civilian institutional capacity of the state has been modest and halting, while progress in building the Iraqi and Afghan national army has seen far more headway. This has generated a clear civil-military imbalance in Iraq and will most likely do so in Afghanistan, too. The imbalance between weak and dysfunctional civilian versus stronger and more functional military institutions incurs considerable risks to the democratic development of both countries. 19 In conclusion, to advance more effective approaches to statebuilding and prepare for future engagements, the statebuilding community must recognize that international actions are often highly dependent upon, and ultimately secondary to, national factors and actions in determining the outcome of the statebuilding mission. This is not a question of assigning blame or praise; it is simply an issue of coming to terms with the diffi cult conditions confronting any statebuilding engagement in a fragile and non-permissive environment. A clearer understanding of how national factors condition the statebuilding progress, will allow statebuilders to design smarter policy, devise more effective solutions, set more feasible goals and, ultimately, acquire better results. (19) This dynamic is presented and examined in the second policy brief of this series. 9