The State as a Result of Ongoing Negotiations and Struggles:

Theoretical Implications

There are two distinct understandings of how to conceptualize the state in current statebuilding literature. The first one considers the state to be separate from society and the second one assumes that state and society are in a mutually constitutive relation.

This work will build on the second assumption. In order to clarify the theoretical implications this understanding has for approaching the analysis I will briefly recall the debate over the nature of the state as presented in current publications. As the central category of all analysis its evolvement provides a good indicator for the evolvement of the state building debate at large.

As Foucault phrased it there is “no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (Foucault 1995, 27). The powerful nature of perceiving the state as an entity that hovers over its subjects is therefore first and foremost evident in the silence of state building literature on this central category.

Rather than a concept it represented a truth in the Foucauldian sense. Autesserre remarks in this regard:

“Consider for instance the dominant collective understanding that interveners should approach their roles in a top-down manner through regular interactions with national and international elites. This understanding originated in the practice of diplomacy in classical antiquity, and each critical historical juncture – such as the 1648 treaty of Westphalia and the rise of international organizations in the twentieth century – has reinforced it”

(Autessere 2014, 34).

While the perceived redundancy to elaborate on ones’ understanding of the state proved the hegemonic character of this definition, the recent trend to trace the production of knowledge back to this assumption indicates the greater shift in the field of state building research. The most comprehensive effort in this regard is the edited volume The semantics of statebuilding and nationbuilding: looking beyond neo-Weberian approaches. In the introduction the editors outline the intentions of this publication as follows: By engaging with “philosophical, sociological, historical and economic perspectives” the contributors will shift attention from “statebuilding as a professional practice to the meanings associated with it”. And further: “Central to the process is our

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understanding that language is both the most important tool for building anything of social significance and the primary repository of meaning in any social setting.”

Departing from this understanding they present analysis that are concerned with the perceptions of scholars and interveners: How have they conceptualized central categories such as “state, state fragility and statebuilding” and what kind of repercussions does this have on “’good practices’ for statebuilding, demonstrating how the semantics of statebuilding construct, reproduce and maintain particular visions of order” (Lemay-Hébert, Onuf, and Racik 2014, 1).

Of particular relevance for the present work are Lemay-Hébert’s two contributions, as they revolve directly around the question of how the so-called Weberian or neo-Weberian approach to statehood has been challenged by other conceptualizations.⁶ Weber’s dominant understanding of the ‘state as government’⁷ had provided the rational for interventions aimed at reconstructing state institutions. As already outlined in Chapter 2 the related technocratic top-down approach allowed interveners to understand themselves as experts charged with treating various institutional deficiencies. ‘State structures and societal forces’ were conceptualized as two separate spheres.

Scholars and practitioners alike subsequently drafted their strategies and recommendations based on the assumption that there is a “distinction between statebuilding and nationbuilding” and hence “that it is possible to conduct statebuilding operations from the outside without entering into the contested sphere of nationbuilding. […] In other words, it is possible to target the institutions of a given state, to strengthen state capabilities, without engaging in the dreaded realm of identity-building” (Lemay-Hébert 2014, 92). Applying a reverse reading of these postulations the question is hence, what are the analytical consequences of understanding the ‘state

6The following paragraph paraphrases his findings unless indicated through other citations. In a slightly different form, Lemay-Hebert’s chapter had already been published in 2009 under the title “Statebuilding without Nation-Building? Legitimacy, State Failure and the Limits of the Institutionalist Approach.”

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 3 (1): 21–45. Findings here may be based on both his article and his book chapter.

7 Lemay-Hebert quotes a number of scholars that have underlined that Weber’s definition of statehood ought to be seen in connection with his concept of the nation.

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as social system’? If we turn our attention towards the context of a statebuilding or peacebuilding mission, three aspects will gain particular importance:

1. Interveners always engage in nation building

The first one is obvious: Whether or not interveners intend to, their activities will always have an impact on the constitution of the collective identity of the intervened society. In building this argument Lemay-Hébert describes in depth how different sociological thinkers have shown that state and nation have to be perceived of as mutually constitutive. Defined as a “sociological process subject to alteration, modification, reinterpretation, or even wholesale creation bypolitics […] the nation is a social entity, a social reality, only insofar as it relates to the modern state” (Lemay-Hebert 2014, 96). The design and implementation of intervention policies with the corresponding attempts to reconstruct or create institutions are therefore bound to have concrete “repercussions on socio-political cohesion (Lemay-Hebert 2009, 41). Hence, no conclusions can be drawn from the strategic conceptualizations of mission as

‘statebuilding’ or ‘nationbuilding-missions’ as regards the actual engagement of interveners in the realm of the ideas.

2. All practice is political in nature

The fact that even the most technocratic reforms have political consequences is a common reminder in current literature. Bellina et al. for instance point out that “any intervention by external actors, however technical it may be, will affect the relative position of different local groups and is thus inherently political” (Bellina et al. 2009, 36). In a similar vein Wesley argued that “however technocratic their intention, state-building missions inevitably find themselves factored into local rivalries. As agents of reform, interventions cannot fail to incur the opposition of those in the political elite that were benefiting from the previous system” (Wesley 2008, 380). With the focus on elite conflicts and power structures the political nature of interventions is here framed in terms of interests and benefits. Linking this argument more directly to the postulated interrelatedness of state and society allows us to also see the symbolic dimension of

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interveners’ decisions and their political consequences. In implementing their mandate international actors derive their authority “in no small part from [their] claim to know what needs to be done to prevent future conflicts, and to help build a liberal democratic state” (Sending 2009, 2).

This claim of knowledge has to be regarded as inherent to every practice and every decisions interveners present as legitimate. By understanding society and the state as mutually constitutive this also means that such a claim is not only concerned with the way institutions are supposed to look like, but, by extension, also with the way society and the state should relate. Interventions are therefore not only irreducibly political because the affect actors’ positions and their power. They are political because all of the interveners’ actions represent an attempt to influence how the people may perceive, comprehend, and interpret the new order.

3. Interveners are in a competitive relationship with other political actors The fact that the local political actors have to respond to the values and principles propagated by interveners has of course long been acknowledged. It is, however, usually conceptualized as an activity to which the interveners remain strangely external: Manning for instance criticizes that international actors often fail to take the important challenges into account that the local political elite faces when attempting to balance the expectations of now two ‘constituencies’: their voters and the international community (Manning 2004; Manning 2007).

The presence and influence of an international authority pressures these actors to conform to the new rules and regulations of the game and to prove their commitment to liberal norms. This might further the need to modify “the collective identity the party offers to its followers” (Manning 2004, 60). Other authors presuppose the same possibility to neatly separate communication spheres in a post-conflict setting when they define actors as ‘importers’ and ‘exporters’ of liberal ideas, or describe the different language politicians use in their attempts to please international and local expectations (Goodhand and Walton 2009; Limani-Beqa 2011). Just like the earlier conceptualization of state and society that underpinned statebuilding analysis, these

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descriptions evoke the image of a liberal dictate that hovers somewhat ominously over local actors heads. Such a perspective simultaneously overemphasizes the strategic intent and control local actors have over questions of collective identity and de-emphasizes the active role international actors have in its creation.

With a focus on the social dynamics set in motion in a post-conflict setting it has been argued elsewhere that the society in question should be perceived of as an intervention society, that is a society that encompasses interveners and local actors (Bonacker et al. 2010). The concept removes the analytically unhelpful separation between interveners and the local society and draws attention to the concrete practice that constitute ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’ (Andersen 2012; Bonacker et al. 2010).

With regard to the here developed theoretical argument it allows us to further clarify the relationship between interveners and local political actors. An intervention society, just like any society, is engaged in continuous struggles and negotiations over the nature of the state. But unlike every other society it is marked by a heightened importance of the political realm. In paraphrasing Grenier the authors Goodhand and Walton describe interventions as “charismatic moments”⁸ (2009, 314); that is a time during which “the autonomy of the political dynamic as a whole seems to be enhanced”

and political actors and ideas “shape politics in a dramatic way” (Grenier 1996, 12).

According to them, the “peace process then is best seen an intensified political environment providing a range of opportunities for different actors to generate legitimacy in different ways” (Goodhand and Walton 2009, 316).

By embedding this postulation in the concept of an intervention society the relationship between interveners and local political actors can no longer be adequately described in terms of imposers and imposed upon. Rather, they have to be understood as competitors that engage in the realm of ideas, where they struggle over the meaning of the new institutions and their role in reforming the relationship between society and the state.

8 Strictly speaking they do not define the intervention as constituting the charismatic moment, but argue that interventions take place in charismatic moments and are hence always political. Given their definition of the peace process I consider this slight adaptation to be a valid one.

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