The Violence of Statebuilding in Historical Perspective: Implications for Peacebuilding

Edward Newman
Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and International Studies
University of Birmingham, UK

Abstract
In historical perspective statebuilding has generally been a violent process.
Statebuilding involves imposing a unified, centralized state and pacifying autonomous
regions, seizing border areas, and imposing regulation, taxation and territorial
control. This has been a coercive and often violent process because it threatens the
interests of recalcitrant forces and it encounters outlying resistance which must be
subjugated. The consolidation of national political projects is a related process that
has often been accompanied by significant armed conflict as groups with vying
political visions compete for control of the agenda. A wealth of historical sources
presents violent conflict as a central theme of statebuilding. In stark contrast, in the
21st Century scholars and policy analysts interested in peacebuilding portray
peacebuilding and statebuilding as complementary or even mutually dependent.
International peacebuilding activities in post-conflict and conflict-prone societies
undertaken by international organizations and individual donor states focus upon
the creation or recreation of state institutions as a conciliatory process and as the key
to peace and stability. There is also the expectation that statebuilding processes
should adhere to democratic procedures and principles. This raises a range of
interesting problems and questions: Has there been a historical transformation in the
relationship between statebuilding and peace? Is it realistic to expect that external
actors can promote peace and stability by building or rebuilding state institutions as
a conciliatory process, in the face of contrary historical experience? What
implications does historical statebuilding experience hold for international
peacebuilding activities?
In historical perspective statebuilding has generally been a violent process. Statebuilding
involves imposing a unified, centralized state and pacifying autonomous regions, seizing
border areas, and imposing regulation, taxation and territorial control. This has been a
coercive and often violent process because it threatens the interests of recalcitrant forces and
it encounters outlying resistance which must be subjugated. The consolidation of national
political projects is a related process that has often been accompanied by significant armed
conflict as groups with vying political visions compete for control of the agenda. The work of
Alexis de Tocqueville (1856), Charles Tilly (1990, 1993), Theda Skocpol (1979, 1994) and
Jeff Goodwin (2001), amongst others, presents violent conflict as a central theme of
statebuilding. This is generally the case whether statebuilding has been driven by domestic

reform agendas and ideological conflict or by external pressure. Empirical research appears
to support this historical pattern.
In stark contrast, in the 21st Century scholars and policy analysts interested in
peacebuilding portray peacebuilding and statebuilding as complementary or even mutually
dependent. International peacebuilding activities in post-conflict and conflict-prone societies
undertaken by international organizations and individual donor states focus upon the
creation or recreation of state institutions as a conciliatory process and as the key to peace
and stability. Good governance and capacity building are promoted as uncontroversial and
peaceful. As a complementary theme, there is also the expectation perhaps a norm that
statebuilding processes should adhere to democratic procedures and principles. This raises a
range of interesting problems and questions that will be explored in this paper: Has there
been a historical transformation in the relationship between statebuilding and peace? Is it
realistic to expect that external actors can promote peace and stability by building or
rebuilding state institutions as a conciliatory process, in the face of contrary historical
experience? Debate on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction has been dominated by
the question of whether statebuilding is a technically viable project for external actors but
given the historical experience, why is there so much confidence that statebuilding and
peacebuilding are mutually supportive? What implications does historical statebuilding
experience hold for international peacebuilding activities? Are international peacebuilding
ideas and practices altering the nature of political change by suppressing the violence of
statebuilding or do such activities fly in the face of unalterable political reality? In
conclusion, despite apparent downward trends in violent conflict and the role of international
peacebuilding activities in this, the paper argues that the violence of statebuilding is not a
thing of the past, and a failure to understand this aspect of armed conflict results in
international approaches to instability that are ineffective or even flawed.

Statebuilding and peacebuilding

In recent decades international peacebuilding activities in post-conflict and conflict-prone

societies aimed at preventing the resumption or escalation of violent conflict and
establishing a durable and self-sustaining peace have become an exercise in statebuilding,
based upon the assumption that effective, preferably liberal, states form the greatest prospect
for a peaceful society and a stable international order. Almost all post-Cold War
peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations have been deployed into or subsequent to
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situations of civil conflict, and have involved tasks related to promoting domestic security,
development, humanitarian assistance and strengthening governance and the rule of law.
Such activities have included assistance in economic development and regulation, promoting
and facilitating democratic practices, strengthening institutions of justice and legislation,
strengthening public service delivery, supporting civil society, promoting human rights and
reconciliation, addressing land reform claims, and in some cases constitutional drafting or
amendments. In addition to the major post-conflict cases such as Cambodia, Bosnia,
Liberia and Kosovo national overseas development programmes are also directed towards
the building or strengthening of state institutions and governance in societies throughout the
developing world.
These activities are a testimony to the liberal peacebuilding agenda: the top-down
promotion of democracy, market-based economic reforms and a range of other institutions
associated with modern states as a driving force for building peace (Newman, Paris, and
Richmond 2009). Beyond democracy and market economics, liberal peacebuilding embraces
a broad range of practices and values, including secular authority, capacity-building,
centralized governance and institutions of justice. The liberal peacebuilding vision also
reflects the evolving international security agenda. There is wide although not uncontested
agreement that unstable and conflict-prone societies pose a threat to international security
and stability. Many analysts now consider these situations as the primary security challenge
of the contemporary era. Theories of conflict and instability increasingly point to the
weakness of the state the declining state (Vayrynen 2000:43) or the problem of the
modern state (Holsti 2000:239) as a key factor in the onset of violent conflict. Amongst
foreign policy elites this forms a paradigm shift in security thinking: challenges to security
come not from rival global powers, but from weak states (Hagel 2004:64). According to
Fukuyama (2004:92), weak and failing states have arguably become the single most
important problem for international order. It is debatable whether this view reflects reality
or is rather a political construction (Newman 2009). Nevertheless, greater efforts and
resources have been forthcoming from powerful states to contain, resolve and to some extent
prevent civil war, and assistance in statebuilding is at the heart of this. One analyst has
therefore suggested that addressing failing and conflict-prone states has become one of the
critical all-consuming strategic and moral imperatives of our terrorized time (Rotberg
2004:42). A number of critical academic voices have arisen to engage with and challenge
these ideas (Security Dialogue 2010).

In the policy world, at the discursive level at least, there is wide agreement that weak,
failing and conflict-prone states are the key international security challenge and that effective
states are the key to peace within and between states (Rice 2003; Straw 2002). The US Office
of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization was established in 2004 and its
mission statement provides a clear statement of the development-security-peace nexus:
Failing and post-conflict states pose one of the greatest national and international
security challenges of our day, threatening vulnerable populations, their neighbors,
our allies, and ourselves. Struggling states can provide breeding grounds for terrorism,
crime, trafficking, and humanitarian catastrophes, and can destabilize an entire region.
Experience shows that managing conflict, particularly internal conflict, is not a
passing phenomenon. It has become a mainstream part of our foreign policy (US
Department of Defense 2008).

The 2008 UK National Security Strategy reflects similar thinking, arguing that a key driver of
global insecurity in the contemporary world is poverty, inequality, and poor governance:
In the past, most violent conflicts and significant threats to global security came from
strong states. Currently, most of the major threats and risks emanate from failed or
fragile states . . . Failed and fragile states increase the risk of instability and conflict,
and at the same time have a reduced capacity to deal with it, as we see in parts of
Africa. They have the potential to destabilise the surrounding region. Many fragile
states lack the capacity and, in some cases, the will adequately to address terrorism
and organised crime, in some instances knowingly tolerating or directly sponsoring
such activity (UK National Security Strategy 2008).

The 2010 UK Strategic Defence and Security Review similarly suggested that:
Recent experience has shown that instability and conflict overseas can pose risks to
the UK, including by creating environments in which terrorists and organised crime
groups can recruit for, plan and direct their global operations. Groups operating in
countries like Somalia and Yemen represent a direct and growing terrorist threat to
the UK; criminal gangs use West Africa for smuggling goods into the UK; and
conflicts overseas disrupt our trade and energy supplies. A lack of effective
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government, weak security and poverty can all cause instability and will be
exacerbated in the future by competition for resources, growing populations and
climate change (UK Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010).

This line of reasoning is plentiful in the official statements and policies of national agencies
and international organizations (Department for International Development 2005; Department
for International Development 2006; High Level Panel 2004; OECD 2005; OECD 2008a;
OECD 2008b; UN Secretary-General 2005; World Bank 2008). In recent years international
peacebuilding activities in conflict-prone and post-conflict countries ranging from modest
ODA governance assistance to major UN operations have increased in number and in
complexity in line with this evolving security discourse. These activities have also become an
exercise in statebuilding. Peacebuilding is therefore a part of the security agenda, insofar as
the pathologies of conflict-prone and underdeveloped states have been constructed as
international threats (Newman 2009).
The liberal institutionalist approach to peacebuilding and development in fragile states
is driven by the belief that the principal problem with conflict-prone societies is the absence
of effective state institutions. With this rationale, (re)building viable institutions, often
based on generic, Western models, becomes a priority and an end in itself. The institutionalist
view assumes that state institutions are enough to generate the material objectives of
peacebuilding and concentrates on institutional benchmarks and peacebuilding metrics.
According to this, certain institutions are believed to be universally viable secular
citizenship, electoral democracy, a centralized state, civil and political human rights and so
once these are achieved in a formal sense, political and economic development will naturally
move forward and serve peace, all in a mutually-supportive process.
As a corollary, therefore, the solution to the challenge sees statebuilding and
peacebuilding as mutually supportive. According to the US National Security Strategy:
We will help build the internal capacities of countries at risk. We will work with and
through like-minded states to help shrink the ungoverned areas of the world and
thereby deny extremists and other hostile parties sanctuary. By helping others to
police themselves and their regions, we will collectively address threats to the broader
international system (Department of Defense 2008).

As the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (2008) indicates, the
ambitions which lie behind this are hardly modest:
Until now, the international community has undertaken stabilization and
reconstruction operations in an ad hoc fashion, recreating the tools and relationships
each time a crisis arises. If we are going to ensure that countries are set on a
sustainable path towards peace, democracy and a market economy, we need new,
institutionalized foreign policy tools tools that can influence the choices countries
and people make about the nature of their economies, their political systems, their
security, indeed, in some cases about the very social fabric of a nation.

Contemporary international peacebuilding and overseas development policy must be seen

within this evolving security agenda, and the policy elites which drive peacebuilding
generally subscribe to the view that conflicted and failing states are the new existential
threat. As a consequence, international peacebuilding in conflict-prone and post-conflict
societies covering security, development, humanitarian assistance, governance and the rule
of law has developed rapidly in recent years in terms of the range of activities conducted,
the number of operations deployed, and the number and variety of international actors
involved in these missions (Newman 2010).
The evolution of these missions also illustrates the growing importance of, and
attention to, domestic issues of governance and state institutions in peace operations since the
end of the Cold War. Almost all the major peacekeeping operations undertaken previously
represented the classical model of inter-state conflict management, and few deployed in civil
war situations. They were aimed at containing and not resolving the sources of
international instability, and even less so at preventing or resolving civil war. In contrast,
post-Cold War peacebuilding operations reflect a different/approach to conflict management
and international security. Contemporary peacebuilding approaches reflect the idea that
maintaining peace in post-conflict societies requires a multifaceted approach, with attention
to a wide range of social, economic and institutional needs. They reflect a liberal project: not
just managing instability between states, but seeking to build peace within and between states
on the basis of liberal democracy, market economics and effective state institutions. In line
with this, the types of activities in peace operations have transformed and entail engagement
with a wider range of actors including NGOs, humanitarian organizations, and commercial
entities. These activities have involved tasks related to promoting domestic security,
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development, humanitarian assistance and strengthening governance and the rule of law. The
key examples since the end of the Cold War are the UN operations in Cambodia, Angola,
Burundi, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Chad, Cote dIvoire, Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Somalia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, East Timor, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Eastern Slavonia, and Kosovo. But beyond these major, high profile UN operations, a much
larger number of cases exists in which national development agencies such as the UK
Department for International Development, the US Agency for International Development,
the Canadian International Development Agency, the German Corporation for International
Development Cooperation, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency support governance and rule of law
programmes in developing countries. These activities promote strengthened, accountable
governance and institutions, civil society, more effective bureaucratic regulation and taxation
and other statebuilding processes with the belief that statebuilding is itself peaceful and
conciliatory, and that statebuilding promotes and consolidates peace.
Scholarship relating to peacebuilding in post-conflict and conflict prone societies has
largely accepted this reasoning. There are two main strands of thought in this literature. One
line of reasoning essentially accepts the peacebuilding-statebuilding nexus, and argues that
international actors can play a constructive role in supporting these processes as long as the
prerequisite conditions are in place before political and economic reform is undertaken, and
provided that the appropriate coordination exists amongst the actors involved (Paris 2004;
Gromes 2009; Paris and Sisk 2009; Ponzio 2010). A number of analysts argue that
institutions which can manage the volatile environment of change are necessary; Paris
(2004), for example, calls for institutions before liberalization; Mansfield and Snyder
(2005/6:44) suggest the need to establish the preconditions of democracy in the right
sequence. This response to the challenge suggests that the solution relates to sequencing,
coordination, and negotiation with local elites. It is premised upon the idea of top-down
institutions as the primary goal of peacebuilding, assuming that development, growth and
stability will automatically follow.
The second response is provided by more critical analysts who are sceptical of the
role of markets and formal institutions of democracy in post conflict situations. This
perspective raises more fundamental challenges to the promotion of liberalism in
development and conflict-affected societies (Chandler 2010; Chandler 2006; Lemay-Hebert
2009; Richmond ed. 2009; Richmond 2009; Pugh, Cooper and Turner eds. 2009;
Encarnacion 2005). Some critical scholars go as far as denouncing the entire international
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peacebuilding agenda as a hegemonic exercise undertaken at the behest of powerful states,

aimed at controlling or exploiting developing countries (Duffield 2007; Jacoby 2007;
Chandler 2006).
Even when scholars have been critical of the approach of international statebuilding
as a means of promoting peacebuilding, the criticism has been directed at the legitimacy of
externally-driven visions of the state, or the manner in which it is promoted. The fundamental
assumption that statebuilding can and should be essentially peaceful is widely accepted.
The theory and practice of international peacebuilding and overseas development
assistance does seem, therefore, to reflect the belief that peacebuilding and statebuilding are
mutually supportive or even inter-dependent. In turn, this belief largely determines how
peacebuilding and development policies are defined and funded.

Statebuilding and armed conflict

The mutual inter-dependency between statebuilding and peace does not, however, reflect
historical experience. In many different contexts, at various historical periods, statebuilding
has generally been an inherently violent process. Statebuilding involves imposing a unified,
centralized state and pacifying autonomous regions, seizing border areas, and imposing
regulation, taxation and territorial control. Most consolidated states experienced periods of
armed conflict as these processes were played out, and this forms a wide pattern across
different contexts that points to a general process of violence in statebuilding. Clearly, many
consolidated states experienced historical periods when their borders, constitutive principles
and their geopolitical centre of gravity were contested. The imposition of centralized control
is a direct challenge to the autonomy of territorially outlying areas, and these peripheral
power centres have to be pacified and brought into line often violently. In many cases this
process generates violent opposition and insurgency as autonomous leaders motivated by
aggrandisement, ideology or territorial control seek to defend their interests. The
consolidation of the state invariably means the imposition of regulation and taxation, which is
also a coercive process since it threatens entrenched interests. Regulation involves the
imposition of standards and norms which are often unwelcome to peripheral regions, often
formerly untouched by national affairs. The consolidation of the state has often been a
process of fundamental social and cultural transition, and often an unwelcome one. It
generates opposition and mobilizes insurgency as a result of the interests it directly threatens,
and as a result of the alienation inherent in the process of change. Some brief illustrations,
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drawing upon historical narratives, can be made with reference to the civil wars in the US
(18611865) and Japan (1877).
The US Civil War like any other major conflict cannot be represented as a single
incontrovertible story, but rather through a range of sometimes complementary and often
vying narratives, depending upon the perspective of the observer. Nevertheless, at least at the
elite level, the war is generally portrayed as a clash of value-systems and interests, pitting the
industrializing Northern union against slave-dependent Southern states, underscored by
differences in economic systems, resistance to state consolidation and centralization, and
racism (McPerson, 1990; Jimerson 1988; McPherson 1994; Weighley 2002; McPherson
1992; Gallagher 1997; Cowley 2003). The Northern states were more populous, more
industrialized, and relatively more progressive. Southern states were embedded in rural
economics particularly cotton plantations that depended upon slavery. The perception that
Northern elites sought to halt the geographic spread of slavery and eventually prohibit it was
an intolerable threat to the existence of Southern states. Differences in lifestyle, culture,
economic production, and the perception of Northern political domination, underscored these
divergent economic paths. The Northern states were increasingly urbanized, industrialized
and distinct from the rural South. In-migration from Europe was almost entirely into the
North, and the net flow of domestic migration was from the South to the North.
From the perspective of the political elites of the Southern states who were
generally economic pioneers embedded in agricultural production a fairly straightforward
source of conflict can be seen. The Southern states perceived that the political agenda of the
unionist Northern states involving the containment and eventual abolition of slavery was
an intolerable threat to their economic survival, which depended upon rural production and in
particular cotton plantations. The Southern secession of confederate states was driven by a
desire for separation, a resistance to the consolidation of the country increasingly driven by
Northern interests and Northern visions of modernity and progress. As the consolidation of
the country had progressed since its founding towards the end of the 18th Century, the
different economic, cultural, political and social realities in the North and South had led to
very different and incompatible paths and visions of the role of the state. The agenda of the
elites of the South was to secede from this Northern-dominated model of development and
statebuilding.
Their motivations and objectives were quite transparent. Georgias declaration of
secession (1861) conveyed the insults, injuries, and dangers that Southerners perceived in
the strength and domination of the North, and the sense that the South was steadily becoming
9

the victim of subjugation and interference. It explains the perception of flawed and unfair
Northern industrial economic policies that privileged Northern interests to the detriment of
the Souths agricultural base and commercial restrictions and protectionism, corruption and
waste. It also points to the attempts of Northern politicians to destroy Southern institutions,
most importantly slavery. All of this is echoed in the declaration of Mississippis secession,
which laments the Northern plan to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits
and to destroy our social system. The declarations and much of the Southern commentary
at the time all shared the position that secession was a right laid down by the founding
fathers who fought for independence against the British: utter subjugation and
degradation could only be resisted through independence For far less cause than this,
our fathers separated from the Crown of England. The South Carolina declaration similarly
emphasized the inherent right of secession laid down by the founding fathers; the North had
transgressed the sacred principles of the founding compact. It is a testament to the
fundamentally different visions of statehood and identity that many in the South believed that
secession was constitutionally legal as a birth right laid down by the revolution, whilst the
North believed that such a fragmentation would be a catastrophe that would destroy the
national project and everything that the founding fathers had fought for.
The American Civil War can then be seen as a reflection of statebuilding and national
consolidation which tested and then established the relationship between federal and local
authority. It was a culmination of centralization and a process of working out which political
and economic elites would determine the shape of the countrys future, and a conflict
between different and incompatible visions of the state. This involved the subjugation of
centrifugal forces in the context of territorial expansion, in the face of violent local resistance.
Slavery was a key polarizing factor, although McPherson (1990:8) claims that [t]he
countrys territorial growth might have created a danger of dismemberment by centrifugal
force in any event. For a complex combination of reasons cultural and economic
prominent amongst these Southern states placed greater emphasis upon state autonomy and
a weak federal authority, and Northern elites, and indeed the public, saw a strong union as
being essential for the success of the national project. Therefore, in the context of rapid social
and economic change and expansion, the conflict was a culmination of fundamentally vying
visions of the statebuilding process. Many or most of the tangible signs of conflict over
slavery, political representation and economic policy, amongst others, throughout the 19th
Century can be interpreted in this context. The perseverance of the Northern military

10

campaign, from the soldiers to the elites, reflected the commitment to both building and
maintaining their image of a modern and progressive country.
In the 1870s Japan experienced a number of rebellions, led by members of the
samurai warrior caste, culminating in the most significant episode, the Satsuma civil war of
1877 (Mounsey 1879; Vlastos 1989; Keene 2002; Reischauer and Craig 1973; Beasley 1972).
These uprisings were ostensibly triggered by the loss of economic and social prerogatives of
the samurai class, and a rejection by former elites of the programme of modernization and
centralization of the new regime. They also represented a manifestation of regional and elite
rivalries, and an expression of dissatisfaction regarding the direction that Japan was moving
in a number of different policy areas. The rebellions represented different agendas, even if
they shared similar social underpinnings, and different patterns of participation and
mobilization. However, the rebellions must be understood in the context of radical social and
economic changes occurring in Japan in the mid-nineteenth century that transformed society
and generated acute grievances amongst former elites and alienated them from the new
national project. The rapidity of change exposed an inevitable clash between the forces of
progress and modernization and the bastions of conservatism and tradition. The rebellions
also essentially represented a challenge to the centralized bureaucratic state created by the
Meiji Restoration and were in a sense therefore counterrevolutionary and presented the
final threat to Japan as a unified, consolidated state. In Mounseys personal record of the
conflict (1879: 250), he observes that it could not reasonably be expected that the
destruction of a political system as old and as deeply rooted as that of the feudal system of
Japan would be accomplished without some violent reactionary struggles.
Given that these political, economic and social changes were fundamentally important
to the future of the Meiji Restoration and that without them, the development of Japan as a
unified and industrialized state would be in question the military campaign to overcome the
obstacles to these changes represented a form of coercive statebuilding. It facilitated the
imposition of centralized rule, national institutions, and a national economic system. This
involved centralization in the obvious sense of ensuring that the central government based in
Tokyo would henceforth be the prevailing legitimate power and authority in the country (the
Satsuma rebellion represented in some ways a de facto secession of parts of the country) and
centralization in the sense of viable national institutions taking root and gaining acceptance.
The uprising was in some senses a counterrevolutionary impulse, and the statebuilding
project meaning, building a new Japan required a robust, violent response.

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These types of processes are seen in other cases and are generally, but not exclusively,
associated with earlier civil wars: Russias attempts in the 1820s to pacify Georgian
resistance to state unity, the Colombian Thousand Day War in 1899-1902, the Chinese civil
wars of 1929-1935 and 1946-1950, the Yemen civil war of 1948, Indonesias efforts to
integrate the Moluccans and Huks in 1950-52, and Afghanistan since 2003, amongst others.
Many other cases illustrate the violence of statebuilding in its different forms (most of
these cases are drawn from the Correlates of War data; see Sarkees and Wayman 2010). Postindependence civil wars present one of the most distinct historical patterns of conflict in the
second half of the 20th Century as many territories were plunged into a rapid process of
statebuilding in conjunction with independence. In this context former European colonies
especially in Africa and Asia experienced widespread conflict amongst protagonists who
sought to control the state and the national agenda. Such actors had often formed the armed
resistance to the colonial power during and towards the end of the colonial period and then
split, upon independence, to form an internecine conflict. Conflict in the post-independence
states also reflected the legacy of colonialism: arbitrary territorial boundaries which created
volatile inter-communal relations and attempts by groups for ascendancy, and weak state
institutions. Examples include the civil war in Sudan between 1963-1972, the Uganda state
conflict against the Buganda in 1966 and against the National Resistance Army 1980-1988,
the Pakistan-Bengali conflict of 1971, the Burundi conflict of 1972, the Zimbabwe conflict of
1972-1979, the civil war in Pakistan between the state and the Baluchi rebels 1973-1977, the
Somalia civil war 1982-1997, and the Mozambique civil war 1979-1992. In these and other
cases the consolidation of national identity and the political agenda was a part of the
statebuilding project, accompanied by significant armed conflict as vying political visions
competed for control of the national agenda.
There was sometimes a separatist agenda at play in these conflicts, such as in the
Congo (Katanga) conflict of 1960-65, the Nigeria (Biafra) conflict 1967-1970, the Ethiopian
civil war against the Eritreans 1974-1991, and the Sri Lankan civil war of 1983-2009.
Although these are generally described as separatist conflicts they fundamentally
represented statebuilding conflicts in terms of the clash between centralizing and centrifugal
forces that defined them. Whilst most such conflicts were associated with former European
colonies, a similar but generally smaller process could been seen at the end of the Cold
War with the disintegration of the Soviet Union with conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya,
Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and the former Yugoslavia.

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Ideological conflicts those in which violent competition between groups committed

to different political agendas characterises the onset and nature of the civil war also
represent a part of statebuilding, since these conflicts are defined by a violent contestation
over the nature and scope of state authority. These were often manifested as postindependence wars of succession, after colonial occupation. Such civil wars are also often
understood in the context of international ideological struggles such as the conflict between
fascism and liberalism during the 1930s and 1940s, and the Cold War since the 1950s
which formed a reference point for protagonists and often an external source of support. The
French civil war of 1871, the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939, the Greek civil wars of 19441950, the Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War of 1945-49, the conflict in Costa Rica in
1948, the Colombian civil war of 1949-1962, the Cuban conflict of 1958-59, the Laotian civil
war of 1963-73, the Philippines civil war of 1972-92, Guatemala 1978-84, the Nicaraguan
civil wars of 1978-79 and 1982-90, El Salvador 1979-92, Peru 1982-95, and Algeria since
1992, are examples, amongst others.
The weakening or failure of the state involving the disintegration of central
authority and control, and the rise of competing non-state combatant actors indirectly fits
into the statebuilding theme. These situations give rise to conflict as various actors seek to
gain control of territory or political influence, take advantage of economic opportunities, or
become involved in an internal security dilemma as latent antagonisms boil over, often
exacerbated by political elites. These processes directly or indirectly oriented around the
state are perennial and ahistorical, at least over the last 150 years. Inherent in this
phenomenon is the emergence of violently competing visions of the state.
Historically, therefore, the building or imposition of a unified, centralized state,
involving regulation, taxation and territorial control, has been a tumultuous and often a
violent process. It is inherently coercive and it encounters recalcitrant outlying resistance
which must be subjugated. The consolidation of national identity is a related process that has
often been accompanied with significant armed conflict as vying political actors compete for
control of the national political vision.
Quantitative studies of armed conflict offer some support for this link between
statebuilding and armed conflict. The Correlates of War (CoW) dataset identifies 335
intrastate wars in the period 1816-2007, based upon conflicts judged to have involved more
than 1000 combat deaths (Sarkees and Wayman 2010). The CoW project places intrastate
conflicts into four types: civil wars involving the government of the state against a non-state
entity; regional sub-national internal wars involving the government and a non-state entity;
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and intercommunal wars which involve combat between/among two or more non-state
entities within the state. Civil wars have been subdivided further into violent struggles for
control of the central government, and those involving disputes over local issues. In the CoW
data on intrastate conflict, civil war for central control (52.1% of the conflicts) and civil war
over local issues (39.5% of the conflicts) both of which are most likely to represent
statebuilding conflicts of some sort represent by far the majority of all intrastate conflicts.
In major intrastate conflicts which exceed 10,000 deaths, civil wars for local control represent
47.9% and civil war over local issues form 47.1%, again indicating that most are
statebuilding or rebuilding conflicts. However, it is notable that of all intrastate wars, the
proportion of civil wars over central control represents a larger proportion. Amongst the
major intrastate conflicts (exceeding 10,000 dead), civil war for central control and Civil war
over local issues are almost equal in number.
The manner in which, in historical perspective, intrastate conflicts have ended
according to this data is also relevant. The CoW data identifies a number of intrastate war
outcomes: outright victory by one side or the other; compromise; the war was transformed
into another type of war; the war remains ongoing; stalemate; and the conflict continues at
below the war level. The data suggests that the vast majority of such conflicts which can
essentially be broadly defined as statebuilding conflicts end as a result of outright victory
by one side or the other, and notably not by compromise. Again, this would appear to
underscore the intimate relationship between violence (and not conciliation) and statebuilding
in historical perspective.
A range of scholarship historical, comparative political science, and historical
sociology in particular has contributed to our understanding of these processes. Alexis de
Tocquevilles work (1856) on the French Revolution demonstrated that the revolution and the
ensuing conflict should not just be seen as an ideological or a social revolution, and much
less a revolution against the power of the church. In terms of the societal evolution of the
country, the revolution and subsequent events suggest that the conflict was a part of the
modern statebuilding process of France: the legacy of the revolution was an extensive
unified power which has attracted and absorbed into its centre all the fragments of authority
and influence which previously had been scatteredthroughout the body of society
(Tocqueville 1856:24). In this sense, contrary to the essence of revolution, Tocqueville
(1856:34) points towards the theme of continuity since the conflict represented an episode in
the ongoing process of state formation, characterized by vying interests it was therefore
much less innovative than is generally supposed. Indeed, France eventually moved back
14

towards a strong, centralized state and government, suggesting that the revolution was a
mechanism of reform to facilitate a strong centralized state. This involved overcoming feudal
and aristocratic institutions which represented an obstacle to this progress, because only by
doing so could the new elites modernize society and meet the challenges posed from within
and outside the country. As Tocqueville (1856:33) observed, the essential character of the
revolution was to increase the power and rights of public authority.
Barrington Moore (1966), pioneering a sociological and comparative-historical
approach, observed the role of conflict in the evolution of democratic (thus consolidated)
political systems. A central theme of his landmark volume, Social Origins of Dictatorship
and Democracy, is the clash between traditional feudal institutions and modernizing forces.
Although he was primarily interested in understanding the outcome of this process whether
this transformation resulted in liberal democratic, fascist or communist systems one of the
underlying messages of his book is that the consolidation of industrializing states was
inherently tumultuous and often violent. This is not seen as an aberration, but rather as a
function of political and social change.
Charles Tillys broad historical studies addressed the nature and evolution of the state
and patterns of statebuilding and political economy. The relationship between statebuilding
and war is again a central theme or implication, and in this context war is not seen as an
aberration but as a vehicle for change. In European Revolutions (1993) he related revolutions
over 500 years to changes in the character of states and relations among states. In this context
he suggested that forcible transfers of state power have changed in character as a function of
transformations in European social structure, and he saw armed conflict as an integral part
of the evolution and consolidation of states (Tilly 1993:5). In his volume Coercion, Capital
and European States, AD 990-1992 Tilly (1990) explored variations over time and space in
the kinds of states seen in Europe, observing that states are both the product and instrument
of coercion. He observed that Within limits set by the demands and rewards of other states,
extraction and struggle over the means of war created the central organizational structures of
states (Tilly 1990:15).
In the footsteps of Moore and Tilly, Theda Skocpol has made a significant
contribution to understanding the relationship between states, and social and political change.
Her key contribution seeks to explore the common patterns and facilitating social conditions
found in the social revolutions in France, Russia and China and explain their different
outcomes (Skocpol 1979; Skocpol 1994). Although armed conflict is certainly not her
primary interest, her work clearly sheds light on the role of violence in processes of
15

transformation from old regimes to modern, consolidated states. As a result of rebellions

and international pressures, she demonstrates how revolutionary leaders sought to consolidate
power in new types of centralized, bureaucratized, mass-incorporating nation states (Skocpol
1979). In common with others who take a comparative historical-sociological approach,
Skocpol focuses not on the role of individual agency, leadership, or even ideology, but rather
on the fundamental driving forces of social and political change structural factors. In this,
her work explores the interconnections between social revolutions and, amongst other things,
state structures, including statebuilding. She argues that these revolutions rapid, basic
transformations of a societys state and class structure involve the breakdown of the state
apparatus of old regimes in crisis and the building of new, revolutionary state structures
(Skocpol 1979:4-5). Borrowing from Marx, she places the emphasis upon social-structural
change and class conflict, which is a function of grievances, social alienation, and collective
mobilization. This is not synonymous with intrastate conflict and civil war, because
Skocpols vision of a social revolution can occur without large scale armed conflict, and she
is certainly not herself focussing on the conflict or violence itself in her analysis.
Nevertheless, these processes usually are violent to an extent that would have them defined as
intrastate wars by conflict analysts, and so her model of social revolution and the
implications this has for statebuilding certainly contributes to the picture of statebuilding as
an inherently violent process.
Whilst the emphasis of Skocpols States and Social Revolutions is upon the political
crisis in the structures of old-regime states in France, Russia and China, the implication
shared with Tocqueville is that the reform and rebuilding of the state is an integral part of
these transformational processes. She is therefore very much interested in understanding the
outcomes of these revolutions; these processes resulted in political and class struggles that
culminated in fundamental and enduring structural transformations (1979:161). Skocpol
therefore identifies the thread of statebuilding through from the original revolutionary crises
to the crystallization of the basic revolutionary outcomes (1979:171-72). For example, in the
case of France, this involved the bureaucratization, centralization and regulation of the
society, setting the groundwork for a legal framework and the rule of law, and the eventual
marketization and democratization of France as a mass-incorporating state. This is also a
theme in Huntingtons earlier work (1968). According to this, the meaning of these
momentous upheavals must be understand in the context of the (often violent) processes of
building a modern state. In Russia, France and China the outcomes may have been quite
different, but the processes as a function of coercive statebuilding were fundamentally the
16

same: a revolutionary process to rebuild, consolidate, and use state power (Skocpol
1979:280).
According to this structural approach the driving force of statebuilding can be a
consequence both of internal processes competing visions of the state, vying interests, and
grievances and external pressures which demand a centralized, autonomous strong state.
Yet Skocpol (1994:7) argues that state organizations and especially the administrative and
coercive organizations that make up the core of all imperial and national states should be
placed at the very centre of all attempts to define and explain social revolutions. Jeff
Goodwin and many others also approach the topic of revolutionary change with reference to
the state, which points to a strong tradition in comparative political science and historical
sociology which illustrates the intimate relationship between statebuilding, state
consolidation, armed conflict and revolution (Goodwin 2001; Wolf 1969; Trimberger 1978;
Brinton 1938; Johnson 1966; Goldstone 1993; Foran 2005; Farhi 1990; Halliday 1999; Selbin
2010; Rubin and Snyder 1998).
A long and reputable tradition of political science and historical scholarship has
demonstrated that statebuilding, revolutionary change and armed conflict are organically
linked. This is supported by a range of empirical, including quantitative, studies. In particular,
historical experience suggests that statebuilding is inherently violent. It is therefore
interesting that in the twenty-first century, the assumption amongst scholars interested in
peacebuilding and analysts in policy circles is that statebuilding and peacebuilding should
be mutually supportive or even mutually dependent. Has there been a historical
transformation in the relationship between statebuilding and peace? Is it realistic to expect
that external actors can promote peace and stability by building or rebuilding state institutions
as a conciliatory process, in the face of contrary historical experience? Given the historical
experience, why is there so much confidence that statebuilding and peacebuilding are
mutually supportive? What implications does historical statebuilding experience hold for
international peacebuilding activities? Are international peacebuilding ideas and practices
altering the nature of political change by supressing the violence of statebuilding or do
such activities fly in the face of unalterable political reality?

A Historical Transformation?
In historical perspective, all forms of armed conflict interstate and intrastate war appear to
be in decline, and so does their magnitude and human impact (although this remains
17

debateable). In conjunction with the emphasis upon statebuilding and the growing
international involvement in these activities as a means to build peace, this might lead one to
conclude that statebuilding has become pacified, contrary to historical experience. It is
therefore worth briefly considering scholarship regarding quantitative patterns of armed
conflict. Gurr, Marshall and Khosla (2000:9) presented the argument, supported by empirical
evidence, that the extent of warfare among and within states lessened by nearly half in the
first decade after the Cold War. The results of the Center for Systemic Peace at the
University of Maryland continue to support the proposition of a decline in warfare. Their
2008 report argued that global warfare has remained in decline through 2007 and has
diminished by over sixty percent since its peak in the late 1980s (Marshall and Cole 2008:3).
Moreover, the general magnitude of global warfare has decreased by over sixty percent
since peaking in the mid-1980s, falling by the end of 2007 to its lowest level since 1960
(Marshall and Cole 2008:7). Since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict has been
generally confined to intrastate war with numerically few conventional wars between states
so marked declines in global warfare mean marked declines in civil war.
The Human Security Report (2005:1) presented similar findings. The report claimed
that the number of armed conflicts around the world has declined by more than 40 per cent
since the early 1990s; the number of armed secessionist conflicts underway was the lowest in
number since 1976; the number of genocides and politicides declined by 80 per cent between
1988 and 2001; and the number of refugees dropped by some 45 per cent between 1992 and
2003. The report also claimed that the average number of battle-deaths per conflict per year
has been falling dramatically since the 1950s: in 1950, the average armed conflict killed
38,000 people and in 2002 the figure was 600, a 98 per cent decline. In essence, therefore, the
report (2005:22) found that During the 1990s, after four decades of steady increase, the
number of wars being fought around the world suddenly declined. Wars have also become
progressively less deadly since the 1950s. Again, this general decline in war points most
obviously to a decline in civil war. The decline was again reported in the follow-up reports of
2006, 2007, and 2010 (Human Security Report 2006; Human Security Report 2007; Human
Security Report 2010). The latter report (2010) was more measured in its analysis, noting an
increase in conflicts between 2003 and 2008, but still claimed an extraordinary decline in
high-intensity conflicts.
The Human Security Report derived its data from the work of the Uppsala University
Conflict Data Program (CDP), which also independently presented conclusions which
concurred. An article published in 2008 an annual publication which regularly reports the
18

findings of CDP suggested that At four in 2007, the number of wars is lower than reported
for any year since 1957, when there were just three (Harbom, Melander and Wallensteen
2008:698). This general finding corresponded to all of CDPs recent annual reports which
indicate a clear downward trend in armed conflict including civil war since the early postCold War period. The work and conclusions of the University of Heidelberg Conflict
Barometer concur with this. The Conflict Barometer which classifies violent conflict either
as crisis, severe crisis or war, depending upon the intensity of the violence recorded an
ongoing considerable de-escalation of violent conflict, and the lowest number of highly
violent conflicts since 1984 (Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research 2007:
1). The Political Instability Task Force argued that incidence and prevalence of political
instability worldwide between 1955 and 2003 which covers revolutionary wars, ethnic
wars, adverse regime changes, genocides and politicides saw a sharp decline since the early
1990s, both in terms of the percentage of countries experiencing instability and the number of
new episodes (Goldstone, Bates, Gurr, Lustik, Marshall, Ulfelder and Woodward 2005). The
general consensus is that armed conflict including civil war is declining both in absolute
numbers and in magnitude. This might suggest a number of things: that statebuilding and
peacebuilding have somehow dovetailed, that statebuilding has become less violent, and that
international statebuilding assistance is playing a role in this downward trend in armed
conflict.
However, other sources are far more cautious about the decline in intrastate conflict,
suggesting that the decline even when based upon empirical evidence may owe
something to the manner in which conflicts are codified and the data is interpreted (Newman
2009; Osterud 2008). Sarkees challenges in particular the Human Security Report claims
about declining war onsets. She observes that the Human Security Reports claims and
those of others are based on short time frames; this gives a misleading picture of decline.
Over a broader historical period this decline, according to Sarkees, may be merely part of the
peaks and troughs that span decades, and the idea of a dramatic decline of war after the Cold
War may be optimistic (Sarkees and Wayman 2010:566-569).
In addition, the decline appears to be based upon an analysis of civil war which
privileges a certain classical model of civil war: large-scale government versus nongovernment conflict, wars of national liberation, major wars of insurgency, and wars of
secession. It is these situations of unambiguous armed conflict which are most likely to
feature in the various conflict analyses. On this basis, patterns of absolute numbers of civil
war certainly appear to be in decline and the evidence for this is quite persuasive. However,
19

this analysis neglects and excludes a broader phenomenon of political and social violence
characteristic of low-intensity conflict, low-level insurgencies, and state weakness. In reality
whilst large civil wars may be less than in the past, the continuation of low-level instability
and conflict is a challenge to the idea of a decline in civil war. The downward trend in major
civil war which is contested masks the persistence of low-intensity conflict across the
developing world which is a manifestation of statebuilding processes.
Below the level of major armed conflict a significant number of low intensity
conflicts and failing states suggests that statebuilding may not be a panacea for peace. This
explains why liberal peacebuilding and more low key governance assistance and
statebuilding activities in places such as Somalia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, GuineaBissau, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Mali, Bosnia, East Timor, Central African
Republic, Cote dIvoire, Pakistan, Lebanon, Guinea, Burundi, Angola, Nigeria, Haiti,
Zambia, Malawi, Benin, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Yemen, Mauritania, Niger,
Congo, Kenya, Senegal, Nepal, Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Djibouti, Comoros, Papua
New Guinea, Lesotho, Benin, and elsewhere have not been as successful as many might
expect, and have sometimes been met with outright failure. All of these countries feature as
unstable or weak states on a range of international indexes on state weakness and conflict: the
Failed States Index (sponsored by the Fund for Peace), the State Fragility Index (maintained
by the Center for Systemic Peace and the Center for Global Policy at Maryland University),
the Global Peace Index, the Human Development Index of the UN Development Programme,
the Index of State Weakness in the Developing World of the Brookings Institution, and the
Worldwide Governance Indicators research project, sponsored by the World Bank (Fund for
Peace 2008; Marshall and Cole 2008; Vision of Humanity 2008; World Bank 2008;
Brookings 2008). In some cases such as Afghanistan and Iraq statebuilding has
exacerbated strong historical conflicts. The reason for this, according to the broad lessons of
history, is that statebuilding can be conflictual because it is necessarily coercive, it encounters
vying political agendas, and it generates violent opposition as vested interests, patrimonial
privileges and territorial domains are threatened. Attempts at statebuilding and the
international assistance that comes with this may be frustrated by the unresolved conflicts
related to the nature of the state in these societies. These forms of conflict may be less
conspicuous than in earlier historical periods, but it would be a serious error to assume that
statebuilding conflicts are a thing of the past. Below the radar of conflict analysts, these
conflicts are still playing out, especially in post-colonial states where these challenges are
most acute. In many such cases the resources that are put into capacity building and the
20

strengthening of institutions are simply wasted because the underlying sources of the conflict
remain and the society is fundamentally fragile. In the worst cases, they may be inadvertently
exacerbating or perpetuating conflict because statebuilding favours certain interests and
excludes others.
This conclusion may not be obvious, because of two reasons. Firstly, most evidence
suggests a decline in major civil war, as indicated above (although this is debateable).
Secondly, the high profile cases in which the United Nations has been involved have been
generally successful at least in promoting stability (Fortna 2004; Doyle and Sambanis 2006).
However, in terms of the success of UN peacebuilding activities, again, this is questionable.
Clearly, the stability that has ensued in cases such as Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone has in large part been the result of the major international involvement. The
extent to which consolidated, self-sustaining states are taking root is debatable. Where
internationally assisted statebuilding does appear to be resulting in stability and the
development of institutions, clearly this is in part large the result of substantial including
military international presence. But at the same time, externally led statebuilding based on
institutionalist models may undermine traditional indigenous authority structures, raising
questions of legitimacy in addition to effectiveness. Self-sustaining public institutions often
fail to take root; a phenomenon that has been observed in Sierra Leone (Taylor 2009; Kurz
2010). If the new centralized agendas fail to take root, instability and conflict can ensue (as in
East Timor in 2006).
The evidence may suggest that statebuilding has not become transformed or tamed
as much as many, and especially liberal peacebuilders, believe or hope. It is still inherently
coercive, and often violent. It seems intuitively possible that this is not manifested as
violently as in earlier historical contexts because many of the major statebuilding projects
and the armed conflict that accompanies them have been completed, although many,
including Afghanistan and Cote dIvoire, remain. Moreover, other, especially post-colonial,
situations that appear to be stable may mask over unresolved conflicts. A failure to recognise
many contemporary conflicts as a manifestation of unresolved statebuilding processes may
lead to a lack of understanding and therefore to questionable policy as the international
community seeks to contain or resolve them through the promotion of institutions which are
not appropriate or effective. Iraq, Afghanistan, and cases where conflict is just contained
and could recur are cases in point because the underlying sources of conflict still exist.

Conclusion
21

Despite appearances, statebuilding may not be fundamentally different in the 21 st Century. It

has not become completely pacified and it remains coercive. There are constraints on the
coercive nature of statebuilding processes, and some of the conflict is contained by
international involvement and norms and the occurrence of major statebuilding conflicts is
historically in decline. The apparent decline in major civil war suggests that intervention and
peacebuilding is playing a role in resolving conflict and reducing the likelihood of the
recurrence of armed conflict. However, liberal optimism neglects the underlying reality of
some major ongoing conflicts such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and other low-intensity conflicts, as well as potential armed
conflicts in fragile states. In many ways scholars of peacebuilding who advocate statebuilding
appear to be neglecting historical experiences, in assuming that statebuilding processes are
somehow different in the contemporary world, as well as neglecting a significant body of
literature. In some ways this is a function of the resurgence of liberalism following the end of
the Cold War, which suggests that the state in particular the Western model is universally
applicable and, with the relevant checks and balances, essentially benevolent. According to
this, the consolidation of the state need not conflict with vying interests and it can be a
conciliatory process. But that is not historical experience, and there is insufficient evidence to
suggest a fundamental transformation in these processes.
Is the solution to allow local actors to fight it out to give war a chance (Luttwak
1999) so that the coercive and adversarial processes of statebuilding and consolidation may
be played out? Clearly that is not an option, given the terrible humanitarian consequences of
such an approach. However, international efforts to build peace and stability must recognize
that most intrastate conflict in some way revolves around the state: statebuilding conflicts;
conflicts related to the control, political vision, and constitution of the state; challenges to the
territorial control and reach of the state; and conflicts emerging or re-emerging in the context
of state breakdown and state reconfiguration. Building a state, in cooperation with local elites
who may not necessarily represent the whole range of local interests, must be pursued
carefully because it is not viewed locally as a neutral or an inevitable process. This analysis
suggests a conclusion which may not be universally welcomed. What is known as
peacebuilding may have to be realigned more towards a model of statebuilding that reflects
local power politics. Whilst the international community should not compromise on the
importance of humanitarian considerations, it may have to jettison some of the liberalinstitutionalist agenda.
22

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