IS806 / G100 State Failure and Reconstruction: Comparative Perspectives Simon Fraser University School for International Studies Fall Term 2011 Wednesday 9.30-13.20 (HC 1525) Instructor: Onur Bakiner (obakiner@sfu.ca) Office Hours: Wednesdays 15.00-16.00 at HC 7272. Description: State failure and state building have become keywords in the popular media and academic circles since the mid-1990s to refer to the challenges domestic publics and the international community face today. This graduate seminar will provide an overview of the general conceptual, normative and practical debates on statehood, state capacity, state failure and state building. Some of the central questions of the course will be: What constitutes state capacity? What, if anything, does state failure mean? Why are some states more capable than others in the provision of freedom, security and public goods? When and why do states fail? What does state building entail? How can a failed state be rebuilt, especially in the wake of conflict? Does the international community have a right and/or obligation to intervene in the case of state failure? What is the relationship between socioeconomic development and state building? What are the implications of state failure and state building for human rights, the rule of law, and the provision of justice? As we shall see, scholars address these questions through a variety of perspectives. We will begin with conceptual discussions of what state, state failure and state building mean. Then we will explore the historical development of the modern state in different parts of the world. The majority of the readings deal with contemporary issues on state failure and state building, employing approaches and tools from a variety of disciplines. The course will deepen our understanding of state institutions, development, conflict and post-conflict reconstruction, and we will have a better grasp of the current issues at hand. Requirements: The grading will consist of a midterm (25% of the total grade), a writing assignment (25%), a final paper (40%), and participation (10%). The midterm will consist of two parts: (i) short-answer questions that test students mastery of the basic debates and terms; and (ii) essay questions that allow the students to synthesize the material learned in class. The writing assignment and the final paper will be essays that engage debates on state building and state failure. 1
The participation grade consists of regular attendance as well as active participation in the classroom. Since this is a graduate seminar, much of the course time will be devoted to class discussion. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that each student participate actively. Each student will be asked to make a short presentation on one of the relevant themes of the class. Week 11 is devoted to student presentations on a selected topic (see below). Readings: The readings are a mixture of books, academic articles and field papers. The books that we will refer to extensively (see below) will be available at the SFU bookstore. There will also be a courseware that contains book chapters. I will make available online as much of the readings as possible. Books: Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, (2008) Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Robert Bates, (2001) Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Robert Bates, (2008) When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Deborah Brautigam, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad and Mick Moore (eds), (2008) Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries: Capacity and Consent. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Charles T. Call with Vanessa Wyeth (eds), (2008) Building States to Build Peace. Boulder and London: Lynne Reiner. Paul Collier, (2010) Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. New York and London: Harper Collins. Francis Fukuyama, (2004) State Building: Governance and World Order in the Twenty First Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Promptness and Excuse Policy: Please make sure to be on time for class, as well as tutorials. Students who arrive more than 5 minutes late will not be admitted to class. Students are allowed to take make-up exams only when they have a serious excuse (e.g. personal illness or death in the family), and when they bring an official document to prove the excuse (e.g. hospital certification). Academic Integrity: All students taking courses in International Studies are expected to read and understand the University s policies regarding academic integrity. Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated under any circumstance! There are clear rules and regulations of the University to punish offenders of academic honesty. It is possible that you may not know the appropriate rules of citation and quotation; in this case please consult me immediately. Please make sure to read the University policies at: http://students.sfu.ca/academicintegrity.html 2
More resources: - SFU Library: Identifying and avoiding plagiarism: http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/writing/plagiarism.htm - Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism: A Self-Directed Tutorial http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/tutorials/interactive/plagiarism/tutorial/introduction.ht m 3
WEEKLY OUTLINE Week 1 (9/7): Introduction to the Theories of the State and State Failure Chapters 6 and 7 in Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Branwen Gruffydd Jones, The Global Political Economy of Social Crisis: Towards a Critique of the Failed State Ideology, Review of International Political Economy Vol. 15, Issue 2 (2008). Stephen D. Krasner Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics, Comparative Politics (1984), Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 223-246 Karen Barkey and Sunita Parikh, Comparative Perspectives on the State, Annual Review of Sociology (1991), Vol. 17, pp. 523-49. Hendrik Spruyt, The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State, Annual Review of Political Science (2002), Vol. 5, pp. 127-49. Ashraf Ghani, Clare Lockhart, and Michael Carnahan, An Agenda for State-Building in the Twenty-First Century, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 30, Issue 1 (Winter 2006), pp. 101-124. Brennan M. Kraxberger, Failed States: Temporary Obstacles to Democratic Diffusion or Fundamental Holes in the World Political Map? Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 6 (2007), pp. 1055-1071. Week 2 (9/14): The Emergence of the Modern State Robert Bates, (2001) Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. Cities and States in World History (Chapter 1) in Charles Tilly, (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1990. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Week 3 (9/21): Institutions, Organizations and State Building Francis Fukuyama (2004), The Missing Dimensions of Stateness (Chapter 1) and Weak States and the Black Hole of Public Administration (Chapter 2) in Francis Fukuyama (2004) State Building: Governance and World Order in the Twenty First Century. Michael Woolcock and Lant Pritchett, Solutions When the Solution is the Problem: Arraying the Disarray in Development, World Development (2004) 32, 2 pp. 191-212. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, (2005) Building States Inherently a Long-Term Process? An Argument from Theory, in Matthew Lange and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds) States and Development: Historical Antecedents of Stagnation and Advance. New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Part 2 (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) Transforming Visions in James C. Scott (1998) Seeing Like 4
a State: Why Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. New Haven, Yale University Press. Week 4 (9/28): and State Building Deborah Brautigam, (2008) Introduction: Taxation and State-building in Developing Countries in Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries: Capacity and Consent. Odd-Helge Fjeldstad and Mick Moore (2008) Tax Reform and State-building in a Globalised World in Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries. Mick Moore (2008) Between Coercion and Contract: Competing Narratives on Taxation and Government in Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries. Week 5 (10/5): Ideas about State Failure Part I (Chapters 1-4) in Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart (2008) Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Robert I. Rotberg, Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators. Available at: http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/chapter_1/statefailureandstateweaknessinatimeoft error.pdf Jeffrey Herbst (2004) Let Them Fail: State Failure in Theory and Practice in Robert Rotberg (ed), When States Fail: Causes and Consequences Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Available at: http://glennschool.osu.edu/faculty/brown/failed%20states%20readings/herbst.pdf David Carment, (2003) Assessing State Failure. Implications for Theory and Policy, Third World Quarterly 24 (3), pp. 407-427. Charles T. Call, The Fallacy of the Failed State, Third World Quarterly, 2008, vol. 29 issue 8, pp. 1491-1507. Marta Malek, State Failure in the South Caucasus: Proposals for an Analytical Framework, Transition Studies Review (July 2006) Vol. 13, no 2, pp. 441-60. Jennifer Milliken and Keith Krause State Failure, State Collapse, and State Reconstruction: Concepts, Lessons and Strategies, Development and Change, (2002) vol. 33, no 5, pp. 753-74. Week 6 (10/12): When and why do States Fail? Robert Bates, (2008) When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa. Paul Collier, (2009) Wars: The Political Economy of Destruction (Chapter 5) in Paul Collier, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. Paul Collier, (2009) The Political Economy of State Failure, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 25 (2): pp. 219-240. James D. Fearon and David Laitin, (2003) Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War, 5
American Political Science Review Vol 97, no 1, pp. 91-106. Joel S. Migdal, (2001) Strong States, Weak States: Power and Accommodation (Chapter 3) in State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another, Cambridge University Press. William Reno, (2000) Clandestine Economies, Violence and States in Africa, Journal of International Affairs 53 (2): 433-459. Week 7 (10/19): The International Community and State Building: Moral and Practical Aspects (1) Chapters 8 and 9 in Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, (2008) Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Chapter 8 in Charles T. Call with Vanessa Wyeth (eds), (2008) Building States to Build Peace. Alex J. Bellamy, (2006) Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the 2005 World Summit, Ethics and International Affairs 20(2): 143-170. Paul Collier, (2009) Votes and Violence (Chapter 1); Better Dead than Fed? (Chapter 9) and On Changing Reality (Chapter 10) in Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. Mark T. Berger, (2006) From Nation-building to State-building: the Geopolitics of Development, the Nation-state System and the Changing Global Order, Third World Quarterly, Feb 2006, Vol. 27 Issue 1, pp. 5-25. Week 8 (10/26): The International Community and State Building: Moral and Practical Aspects (2) John Heathershaw, Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from Post-conflict Tajikistan, International Peacekeeping, Vol.14, Issue 2, April 2007, pp. 219-236. Marina Ottaway, (2002) Rebuilding State Institutions in Collapsed States, Development and Change, Vol. 33, no 5, pp 1001-1023. James Fearon, and David Laitin (2004), Neo-trusteeship and the Problem of Weak States, International Security, vol. 28, no. 4. Barnett B. Rubin (2006), Peace-building and State-building in Afghanistan: Constructing Sovereignty for Whose Security? Third World Quarterly, volume 27, no. 1, pp. 175-185. A Report of the Secretary-General, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development Security and Human Rights for All, (2005). Summary available at: http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/executivesummary.pdf A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, Part III, Collective Security and the Use of Force (2004), pp. 59-75. Available at: 6
http://cisac.stanford.edu/publications/more_secure_world our_shared_responsibility _a/ Gerald Knaus and Marcus Cox (2005), The Helsinki Moment in Southeastern Europe, Journal of Democracy, Volume 16, Number 1, pp. 39-53. James Dobbins, et al. The UN s Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/rand_mg304.pdf Week 9 (11/2): Foreign-led State Building: Security and Legitimation Chapters 2, 3 and 7 in Building States to Build Peace. Mats Berdal, and Richard Caplan, (2004) The Politics of International Administration, Global Governance vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1-5. Mitja Muller and Philipp Rotmann, (2007) The New Protectorates: International Administration and the Dilemmas of Governance, GPPI Conference Summary. Available at: http://www.gppi.net/fileadmin/gppi/cambridgejune2007summary.pdf Toby Dodge (2006), Iraq: the Contradictions of Exogenous State-building in Historical Perspective, Third World Quarterly, vol. 27, no.1, pp. 187-200. Amitai Etzioni, (2004) A Self-Restrained Approach to Nation-Building by Foreign Powers, International Affairs, vol. 80, no. 1. Jason Brownlee, Imperial Designs, Empirical Dilemmas: Why Foreign-Led State- Building Fails, in CDDRL Working Papers. Stanford: Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford Institute on International Studies. Available at: http://cddrl.stanford.edu/publications/imperial_designs_empirical_dilemmas_why_foreig nled_state_building_fails/ Week 10 (11/9): Social and Economic Dimensions of State Building Chapters 4 and 5 in Building States to Build Peace. Chapter 5 in Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Jens Chr. Andvig and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, (2008) Crime, Poverty and Police Corruption in Developing Countries, Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI Working Paper WP 2008: 7). Available at: http://www.cmi.no/publications/publication/?3076=crimepovertypolice-corruption-in-developing Arta Ante, (2008) Exploring Social Capital, A Missing Link in the State-Building and Development Process in Kosovo, L'Europe en Formation 3/2008 (n 349-350), p. 205-222. Available at www.cairn.info:revue-l-europe-en-formation-2008-3-page-205.htm Deniz Kandiyoti, (2007) Old Dilemmas or New Challenges? The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan, Development and Change, Vol.38 No.2, pp.169-199. Abby Stoddard, Humanitarian NGOs: Challenges and Trends, Overseas Development Institute HPG Briefing Number 12 July 2003. 7
James K. Boyce and Madalene O Donnell, (2007) Policy Implications: The Economics of Postwar Statebuilding, in James K. Boyce and Madalene O Donnell (eds.), Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar Statebuilding. Boulder and London: Lynne Reiner. Ashraf Ghani, Clare Lockhart, Nargis Nehan, and Baqer Massoud, (2007) The Budget as the Linchpin of the State: Lessons from Afghanistan, in Peace and the Public Purse. Week 11 (11/16): Post-conflict Justice and Reconciliation Chapter 6 in Building States to Build Peace. Erin K. Baines, (2007) The Haunting of Alice: Local Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation in northern Uganda, International Journal of Transnational Justice, Vol. 1, No. 1. Paige Arthur, (2009) How Transitions Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice, Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2): 321-354. Diane F. Orentlicher, (2007) Settling Accounts Revisited: Reconciling Global Norms with Local Agency, International Journal of Transnational Justice, Vol. 1, No. 1. Kirsti Samuels, (2006) Rule-of-Law Reform in Post-Conflict Countries: Operational Initiatives and Lessons Learnt, Social Development Papers, Conflict Prevention & Reconstruction, nr. 37, The World Bank. Available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intcpr/resources/wp37_web.pdf Ahmad Nader Nadery, Editorial Note: In the Aftermath of International Intervention: A New Era for Transitional Justice? International Journal of Transitional Justice (2011) 5(2): 171-176. Roland Kostic, Nationbuilding as an Instrument of Peace? Exploring Local Attitudes towards International Nationbuilding and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Civil Wars, 10 (4), pp. 384 412. David Mendeloff, (2004) Truth Seeking, Truth Telling, and Postconflict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm? International Studies Review 6 (3): 355-380. Week 12 (11/23): Presentations of Country Studies Week 13: Conclusion 8