Chapter 3
Legitimacy and the ‘built’ state
The desire to shape states to meet the demands of external actors or a dominant normative consensus is not a new aspect of global politics. In today’s world, this often takes the form of development or reform projects. In more extreme cases, statebuilding is employed, often in the name of security. The frameworks of good governance are seen as ‘a “silver bullet” capable of assisting states in coping with the problems of our complex globalized world: facilitating sustainable development, social peace and the development of democracy and the rule of law’.[102] Statebuilding is an ideological exercise: with the ‘goal of developing and exporting [these] frameworks of good governance’,[103] it is characterized by an interventionist project that goes into a state with a list of goals of what to achieve and how to achieve them. It is a highly political externally driven project that may include some deference to local considerations, but the project itself best reflects external demands, agendas and requirements – a check list of sorts. It is what Bendana identifies as top down, externally guided, supply-driven, elitist and interventionist.[104] However, statebuilding projects to date have shown little success, with security situations degrading and shaky political solutions often crumbling once statebuilders leave and sovereign control of the state is handed over to local actors. This is not to say that statebuilding is a bad idea. Indeed, in theory it makes sense – it is potentially a shortcut to political and physical stability for not only the target state and its population, but also for the liberal international order. But in practice it does not work. Statebuilding is a complex process of socio-political change taking place within contentious and often divided societies. To assume that simply creating the institutions will lead to good practice and popular acceptance is a hubristic understatement of the complexities of politics and the state. It is almost clinical in its naivety.
Many question the effectiveness or appropriateness of the narrow liberal framework and the laser-like focus on institutionalization as the chosen mechanism through which to build the ideal successful state.[105] Ottaway notes that whereas externally-led reconstruction enforces the creation or re-creation of the empirical-juridical state, internally-led reconstruction follows a more circuitous route similar to the state formation process undergone by the majority of modern states that did not obtain their statehood through decolonization: control or raw power is first established within the territory, then institutions, either democratic or not, are slowly developed.[106] the short-cut of the externally-led process does not guarantee a stable democratic state exhibiting efficient and accountable institutions. Bypassing the lengthy formation process through the international community’s route harbors the hope of quickly achieving the desired goal of a stable democratic state. Without rooting the state and the institutions in society, however, and incorporating internally-led reconstruction efforts what is deemed success is often only temporary. The fast-tracked state reconstruction process has not proved successful in creating the desired stable modern states, leaving the open question of how these states can be established.
Indeed, Ottaway’s concerns echo those often found within statebuilding literature. Throughout local ownership has been identified as an aspect vital to state ‘success’ that is difficult to achieve, if it is even achievable, within externally-led statebuilding.[107] At the root of the local ownership problem is the more fundamental ‘operational challenge’ of legitimacy.[108] With external demands, agendas and expectations driving the process, internal expectations and necessities are often marginalized or excluded. Within the liberal framework guiding statebuilding, there is also a distrust of indigenous structures, and local mechanisms of governance are viewed with skepticism or caution. There is a dilemma in the heart of statebuilding. Statebuilding is meant to be an endogenous process supported from the outside. However, with international dynamics and agendas driving the practice and its funding, statebuilding happening from the inside becomes impractical. The dilemma here is one centered on a gap in expectations: can both internal and external expectations be met within an externally-led process? Within this gap in expectations lies a gap in legitimacy as well, creating a dual faceted problem. if a state is not perceived of as acceptable or legitimate by external actors, that could have a detrimental impact upon its interactions in the global arena. At the same time, though, if domestic expectations are not met and the state is not legitimate from within, the sustainability of reconstructions or reforms, particularly those aimed at establishing liberal democracy, come under threat. Thus, balancing expectations and closing the legitimacy gap is key to successful statebuilding. This is an area of focus largely because in previous interventionist statebuilding projects local ownership has been an elusive or distant desire, yet there is a necessary tangential link between local ownership, legitimacy and the chances of sustainable statebuilding that must be recognized. This chapter serves to address this gap first through a critical examination of statebuilding in order to identify it, and then offering a more complete understanding of the relationship between the state and society and its placement within statebuilding. Finally, this chapter explores internally-led statebuilding – a form of statebuilding more likely to show success in closing the gap – before turning to the case of Somaliland, where balancing the internal and the external is a key strategy of statebuilding.
Statebuilding, Take 2
Within externally-led statebuilding, the technocratic institutional approach prevails, and often local considerations are placed below external political or economic agendas and demands in order of importance. ‘By the book statebuilding’ is an externally driven project reflects external demands and requirements – a check list of sorts. At some point the state will be handed over to local leaders, at which point local ownership is supposed to take place. The ideas underpinning statebuilding vastly oversimplify the process, yet after a short period of time it is expected that a stable political entity will stay standing and the population will support it. as Larry Diamond notes, when Jay Garner, a proponent of the ‘quick’ and ‘light’ footprint approach to rebuilding Iraq, left for Baghdad, he stated that he intended to complete the transition to a permanent Iraqi government within four months. When challenged about the time frame and told that ‘it takes a little longer to do democratization than three or four months in the summer in Baghdad’, Garner responded by saying ‘Oh yes we can, and we will’.[109] Statebuilding in Iraq is an extreme and exceptional case, and certainly a time frame of four months is unusually short. However, and perhaps Iraq is the best contemporary example of fallacies and potential dangers in the policy approach to statebuilding in this regard, it is presumptuous to assume that a quick approach will result in any lasting success. Political change, especially drastic political change such as statebuilding, is incredibly disruptive and unstable; democratization just as much if not more so. drastic political change requires drastic social change as well, and in an already contentious or volatile post-conflict or fragile society this social change is not as easy as imposing institutions with the idea that this will lead to the state providing the expected political and public goods of a modern ‘good governance’ state. Statebuilding tends to be approached as a step-by-step and relatively quick process – the state is imposed, or ‘gifted’, rather than negotiated or even tailored. This in itself creates its own complications and indeed fragility.[110]
As identified in the previous chapter, the approach to externally-led statebuilding is one dominated by building institutions as the means through which to build stability, security, development, peace and provision. However, in simplifying statebuilding to the practice of institution building, the complexity of the state is marginalized or ignored. The conception of the state within the practice of statebuilding is one that harks back to the Weberian understanding: a bureaucratic administration characterized by a collection of institutions that claim a monopolization on legitimate authority and force within a given territory. The current approach to statebuilding assumes that in creating institutions the ‘state’ itself will follow. It assumes that the institutions define the state. However, the state is more than merely the existence of institutions, and an understanding of the state must also take into account the socio-political relationships existent within between the political community and the institutions; relationships that help define and shape the state, especially within a post-conflict environment. As noted by the Somaliland academy for Peace and development,
State-building and peace-building are potentially contradictory processes – the former requiring the consolidation of government authority, the latter involving its moderation through compromise and consensus. The challenge for both national and international peacemakers is to situate reconciliation firmly within the context of statebuilding, while employing state-building as a platform for the development of mutual trust and lasting reconciliation.[111]
In maintaining a single-minded focus on building and strengthening institutions as its primary goal and as the path to peace, the current approach to statebuilding sets itself up for failure.
The fundamental problem with externally-led statebuilding is not the intended outcome of a legitimate, accountable, safe and secure state. Although much criticism can be placed on this set-in-stone end goal, without a paradigm shift away from the liberal framework in the international system the end goal is unlikely to change whilst the policy option of statebuilding continues. The problem with the practice, rather, is the process through which this end goal is meant to be obtained. the rigid vision of state design and empirical expectations is a contributor to this problem, and the expectation of quick democratization through the imposition of a defined set of institutions is not only indicative of external technocrats anxious to get to the point of a local leadership that can ‘own the process’ as soon as possible, but is also at the heart of the problem. Even more fundamental to this, though, is the exclusion of society from the statebuilding plans. Here is where the failure of local ownership and domestic legitimacy lies.
Although lip service is paid to statebuilding being a domestic process that is supported from the outside, external demands and expectations sideline local considerations, actors, structures and practices. As Woodward notes, statebuilding tends to be ‘narcissistic’.[112] Design, assessment and evaluation are undertaken by external actors who
View their actions as exogenous to local politics, but paradoxically assuming little influence while expecting much. Countries and local actors are viewed largely as aid recipients whose actions are relevant only in terms of outsiders’ policies and expectations, as captured in terms such as ‘political will’, cooperation, obstruction and absorption capacity. We know very little about what Fortna calls the ‘peacekept’, that is, ‘the decision-makers within the government and rebel organizations.[113]
With its emphasis on ‘proven’ institutional design and capacity building, often dependent upon the empowering of influential leaders or Western-educated reformers as the shortest way to capacity building,[114] the endogenous process must compete with the demanding, and sometimes forceful exogenous components. Sisk maintains that the ‘international community’s approach … must balance the lofty goal of “local ownership” of statebuilding processes with an explicit and sometimes very assertive liberal interventionist agenda’.[115] It is interesting to note Sisk’s choice to attach local ownership to the statebuilding process here rather than simply to the end result, as is common within discussion of local ownership. One must question, though, whether local ownership of the process is possible in external projects, and if not, is local ownership of the outcome an achievable reality.
Statebuilding is seen as a project rather than a process. It is an imposition rather than a negotiation: it is imposing the apparatus of the state with little regard to how that apparatus meets the demands or expectations of society. Here the modern liberal state is something to be obtained rather than attained. Historically state formation and statebuilding in Western states was a highly political process during which the relationship between the state and the population evolved and was determined through war, victory and consent. Albeit often violent or repressive, the process itself fostered the socio-political change that ultimately resulted in the relationships now exhibited within those states. In imposing the state, the process of development and negotiation is skipped and the relationships that lay at the foundation of a strong state are absent. In post-conflict or fragile political environments, where peace may be unstable and where there may be little trust in the political processes of the state, failing to root the state in society and investing society in the state is problematic. There is a ‘yawning gap’ between what the idealized notion of and path to a modern state and the realities of governments on the ground in war-torn or fragile countries.[116] It is little wonder that local ownership is a problem.
The State and the Nation
Very often statebuilding and nation-building are used interchangeably. Interestingly, though, the ‘nation’ rarely factors into the very institutional and technocratic statebuilding design and process. As Fukuyama notes, much of this terminological conflation exists within US academia as the term ‘nation-building’ reflects the national experience in which ‘cultural and historical identity was heavily shaped by political institutions like constitutionalism and democracy’.[117] Within European scholarship, however, there is an awareness of the distinction between state and nation, and a realization that the creation of a community – ‘nation-building’ or the ‘idea’ of the state – cannot be undertaken by an outside power.[118] However, despite terminological recognition within European scholarship, in practice the distinction is significantly more ambiguous. Given the expectation that building institutions will lead to eventual social acceptance of the state and the processes surrounding it, it is assumed that the nation is complicit. This not only reflects the faith placed in the institutional approach, but it also reflects misgivings about the socio-political processes of the state. This view homogenizes the nation, assuming a universal desire for state relationships that are found primarily where the evolution of the state has resulted in expectations for central democratic control through a set of defined institutions.
Within this is the assumption that in statebuilding there is not a need to ‘reshape society or citizens’.[119] Call offers two reasons as to why this may perception may exist.[120] The first is that ‘citizen identification with the state is no longer the sine qua non for successful stateness’. he claims that requiring nation-building with statebuilding is an idea that is trapped within the confines of Modernization theory and that in a globalized world with multicultural states, it is no longer necessary to assume that the population has to overcome ethnic or religious allegiances in order to form an allegiance with the state. In other words, the concept of the nation is outdated, so nation-building is not necessary. the second reason is that it believed that within statebuilding, it is ‘self-defeating’ and ‘silly’ in today’s world for an outside actor to try to redefine a society’s allegiances and identities. Although this reason seems to be implying that allegiance and identity within a state only exists in the context of ethnicity or religion not with a political identity, it also reflects the limitations of external actors to reweave social fabrics or reconcile societal divides.[121] It is fair to say that outside interveners are unlikely to be able to change ethnic or religious identities or allegiances. However, the assumption within this is that societal allegiance and identity does not have a role in building a state, and that is a limitation of the liberal prescription of statebuilding. Even if the identity being discussed is political in nature rather than ethnic or religious, it is presumptuous to assume that a state can be built without engaging with the social dimensions of the state, not matter how complex they may be.
Whilst the second reason given by call is problematic, it easily falls under the criticism that assumptions about the processes of the state and therefore the process of change taking place during statebuilding are narrow and naïve. The first, however, warrants further examination and discussion. Whilst strict interpretations of the concept of the nation as an ethnic or religious grouping are often perceived as outdated, the concept of the nation as a political community is not. Existing within the territorial confines of the state, the population is the political community in question. In post-conflict or fragile environments this political community is not always unified, but the commonality is that it is the target and the subject of the exercise of governance and authority within the state. Thus, when discussing local ownership the concern is not only with ownership by the political elites, but also ownership by the political community. Within problems with establishing local ownership are concerns about the legitimacy of the state being built. With statebuilding being a means through which to obtain sustainable peace, certainly the institutions existing within the state must be accepted by the population in order for the state to have the legitimate authority to either mitigate potential violence within society or to prevent violent contestation of the political settlement, the institutions or the regime. In his own criticisms, call begins to recognize the fallacy of this categorization in saying that a state is:
An entity that represents a territorial political community over and above the government. This entity includes the institutions of government but goes beyond them, having its own character and (in some minimal way) speaking for the political community.[122]
Woodward goes further, noting that the crucial element of stabilized statebuilding is ‘deference to the new authorities and compliance with their rules and decisions, in sum, the state’s authority’. she discusses this in the post-civil war environment, arguing that nation-building is a compulsory for stabilized statebuilding in order to ensure that the state does not have to resort to military force to obtain compliance domestically, as ‘no state survives’ that.[123] she warns against confusing statebuilding and nation-building as if they were the same and maintains that ‘discounting the importance of this process [of nation-building] (and thus the time needed for it and that only locals can do it) – all of which are common – repeats the outsider’s misunderstanding of the particular nature of statebuilding after civil war’.[124]The state being built derives its sovereign authority not from an external actor that empowers it, but rather from the legitimizing acceptance of society. Legitimacy is the normative belief of a political community that a rule or institution ought to be obeyed.[125] States are legitimate when
Key political elites and the public accept the rules regulating the exercise of power and the distribution of wealth as proper and binding. Legitimacy implies that the political community views the goals pursued by the state, the means selected to pursue them, and the decision making process leading to both goals and means as proper.[126]
because statebuilding operates under tight time constraints and with clear objectives and goals surrounding what is needed, lengthy negotiations ‘aimed at achieving consensus among leaders about the role and structure of the state’ are prevented.[127] Papagianni warns that this may result in a segment of the political elites not supporting the institutions, creating serious legitimacy deficits. Further, though, concerns must also be expressed about support derived from the political community as a whole. In post-war and fragile environments, state legitimacy is difficult to maintain, especially if the state cannot provide public goods that are expected by the population, or if the state is or has been violent. During the statebuilding process the state violence is likely to be removed due to the presence of external actors, and external funding will change the negative balance of provisions. However, once external actors leave and sovereignty is exercised by the new institutions, those conditions are no longer guaranteed. In these conditions, the ‘new’ state will only survive if it is deemed legitimate by the political community, a community inclusive of not only the political elites but also society. If society is not accepting of or invested in the state – if the state is not domestically legitimate – the statebuilding process is unlikely to be successful or sustained. Society, defined within the concept of the political community or nation, is a vital legitimizing component of the statebuilding process, as ‘the state serves as an embodiment and guardian of society’s shared principles and ideals’. These ideals are not based on a shared ethnicity or religion – traditional understandings of the nation – but on a ‘shared understanding of and respect for the state’s rules and institutions’.[128] As Woodward argues government effectiveness in terms of service delivery or provision will matter in the long-term stability of the state, ‘but in the short run, the more important issue is trust: to what extend and how does the new political leadership and its institutions rebuild the trust of the population?’[129] Certainly, this is a complex component in any area where statebuilding is taking place as there was some form of a pre-existing divisive factor that not only potentially divided society, but also potentially created a situation of distrust between the state and the population; conditions dependent upon the situation of each state, but conditions that must be reconciled regardless. For this reason, assuming that nation-building is not needed is an erroneous conclusion that is detrimental to statebuilding.
One of the core principles of liberal democracy is the social contract, yet in externally-led statebuilding the social contract is assumed or absent. Chandler identifies a hypocrisy of liberal democracy within statebuilding that he identifies as being a hypocrisy of autonomy.[130] Within the proliferation of the liberal democratic state through development policies, including statebuilding, structures and practices familiar to leading Western states are reproduced, leaving very little room for alternative forms of state design or practice. although some, such as Ghani and Lockhart, maintain that a future model for ‘fixing’ states must be flexible through ‘stitching together local capabilities and resources and tailoring tactics to context’, these solutions continue to depend upon pre-existing guidelines and frameworks and therefore do not go far in granting autonomy and independence that would allow for deeper inclusion of individual contexts.[131] Whilst paying lip service to the importance of local considerations, underlying social structures that shape and determine the relationship between the people and the state are often disregarded in the political process. The institutionalization of the ideal incorporates familiar and predictable institutions of governance into the statebuilding paradigm. This obsession with the known, predictable and controllable is symbolic of what chandler notes is a fear of another core principle of liberal democracy: autonomy. In the quest to achieve the end goal of liberal democracy, a political system dependent upon autonomy of individuals and society, the autonomy of choice in states perceived to be failed or dysfunctional is a frightening prospect: What happens if the choices made to not comply with external expectations of how the state should be? To reduce the perceived threat of deviance or dysfunction, a clear shortcut to liberal democracy and good governance is laid out, removing domestic choice and voice for the sake of success in the larger project being undertaken. The assumption is that success will instill the conditions necessary for good choices, therefore shaping what societal and state autonomy will be. The problem with this is clear. Institutions are important, but institutions do not comprise a complete state. Excluding the population from the process of statebuilding isolates them from the political process that is the state. if the people do not have a voice in the institutions and mechanisms that will govern them, can there be the legitimizing trust in the political process and relationships that is necessary for sustained success?
Legitimacy is difficult to assess and to determine, but it is even more difficult to install or impose. It is assumed that legitimacy comes through democracy. Whilst democratic choice can legitimize the authority of those occupying the institutions of government, it does not necessarily legitimize the state itself. As the embodiment or reflection of society’s principles and ideas, the rules and institutions reflect the rules, or the political culture, of the state. Because of this,
Institutions cohere if they emerge out of existing social forces, if they represent real interests and real clashes of interest which then lead to the establishment of mechanisms and organizational rules and procedures which are capable of resolving those disagreements.[132]
Sisk claims that statebuilding constantly strives to balance a number of the exogenous and the endogenous, between external and internal expectations.[133] The challenge for external actors thus becomes balancing between external goals and agendas and internal expectations and socio-political structures, practices and consent, a balance that too often places the external before, if not above, the internal. Building institutions and encouraging practices of good governance may have the best of intentions, but effective statebuilding must strategize around several key linkages, one of them being those between international interests and agendas versus national interests and legitimacy.[134] If statebuilding takes place without conscious strategies of how to balance the external and the internal, successful consolidation of the peace-bringing liberal state is questionable. Within statebuilding there exists a duality of legitimacy and therefore a duality of expectations. With external expectations and demands meeting internal expectations and necessities, a gap in expectations exists; a gap that leads to a gap in legitimacy. Balancing these expectations is important in statebuilding, not only for the success of the project, but also for success of the process.
Mind the Gap: Legitimacy and the Built State
The concept of the nation within the practice of statebuilding is a narrow one. It assumes no duality of identification or allegiance, something that can be proven false very quickly when looking at most liberal democracies, where identification with an ethnic group exists along with an identification with being part of an ethnically or religiously diverse political community (i.e. Irish-American, British Asian, Canadian First Nation, etc.). This is perhaps due to allegiance to the state being implicit rather than explicit within many Western states. Allegiance and a cohesive political community stemming from that is assumed in established democracies, and it becomes easy to overlook the importance of this in formulating plans for stabilizing post-conflict or fragile situations. But as has already been discussed above, excluding the political community from the drastic sociopolitical transformation that is statebuilding creates a deficit of legitimacy and a gap in expectations. Based on a series of assumptions, it removes the autonomy and identity of the political community. It assumes a pre-existing identification of the population with what the state should be as determined by the external actors and within that, it assumes an identification with the mechanisms of governance to be created. It assumes a familiarity with, or at least expectation of, the institutions and practices being established and instilled within those mechanisms of governance. It assumes an automatic, or at least inevitable, societal acceptance of the political arrangement of the state. However, a state is not just the apparatus or the institutions. As such, statebuilding must include a consideration of the political relationship not only between the apparatus and the population, but also between the political community and what the state is or should be.
If we take the technocratic institutional component of the state as one end of the spectrum of what the state is, at the other end sits what Buzan considers the idea of the state.[135] In this, the state not a tangible entity that can be identified through the existence or functions of institutions, but rather it is an abstract that reflects and embodies the political culture of a territory and its population. Physically, the state can be identified by its foundations of territory and population. As Buzan identifies, the physical components of the state can exist without the state or without any particular state. And although the state can survive if the physical components are damaged, it cannot exist in the absence of them.[136] From this, it must be inferred that the state ‘exists, or has its essence, primarily on the social rather than the physical plane’. It is more a ‘metaphysical entity, an idea held in common by a group of people, than it is a physical organism’.[137]
When Anderson wrote of imagined communities, he wrote in terms of nationalism, arguing that a nation is ‘an imagined political community’ that is ‘imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’.[138] it is imagined ‘because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’.[139] extrapolated further, Anderson’s ideas of communion and shared images within a political community ring true when discussing the idea of the state and the population’s expectations of the political entity surrounding and encompassing it. In many ways, the idea of the state is akin to the nation in old concept of the nation-state. it is a form of identity or narrative of the state in that it is the ‘essence’ or character of the state: it is a reflection of the ideals and expectations of the political community over which it exists and it demands a shared idea of what it means to be ‘us’. In this, the ‘state’ is where the people and politics meet. The institutions are a component of this, but they are best described as an embodiment of the people and politics coming together, reflecting political culture and domestic demands and expectations. As such, ‘without a widespread and quite deeply-rooted idea of the state among the population, the state institutions by themselves would have great difficulty functioning and surviving’ without resorting to brute force.[140] the idea of the state is what ties the population to the apparatus of the state, and is also what shapes societal expectations of how the state should be and how it should act: it is a component of the legitimizing social contract. In this manner, a ‘governing’ state could exist even in the absence of bureaucratic institutions, what Buzan notes would be an argument of a purist anarchist.[141] A ‘state’ can also exist in the absence of external recognition of sovereignty, provided it exists within a defined territory. In this conception of the state the traditional Weberian notion of statehood, and indeed the dominant liberal understanding of the state prevalent within statebuilding, is inverted, with the idea of why and what the state should be predating the creation of physical institutions. It is a necessary component of state stability and, indeed, the state itself.
This component of the state does not assume an outcome of liberal democracy as it is possible that political culture leads to legitimate authoritarian rule if that is what the people expect or desire of the state or imagine it to be. Within any given state that is the subject of a statebuilding project, there may be a dream for liberal democracy and provision within the state, and there are almost certainly individuals within the state that have been shaped by external experiences and expectations. However, it is not guaranteed that this dream is a widespread one. Rather, the idea of the state is more likely to be shaped by a shared history, an area that undoubtedly impacts upon what domestic expectations are. In an area where there is ‘deep social distrust of the state in the first place’,[142] expectations of centralized power or strong institutions alone may invoke fear within a population that experienced political or state violence. Equally, expectations for liberal democratic provision may be much less of a priority than the provision of basic goods, services and stability. If the shared history is one of violence and oppression, domestic expectations might not expect the institutionalization or provision of the kind that the liberal democratic state entails. History shapes political processes, but a shared history also shapes societal fears, expectations and necessities: a shared history shapes the idea of the state.
As a reflection of the relationship between the politics and society, the idea of the state is not homogenously applicable across all territorial states, and it is possible to have different ideas of the state within different communities within the same territory (this is likely to lead to political instability or turbulence). It is for this reason that it is an important consideration within statebuilding. In reflects the character of society and how that helps define the state, but the shared idea acts as a cohesive agent within society, creating a focus that helps shape and define the political community. It is something that can be utilized, constructed or even manipulated by elites, but because of this it possesses an incredible amount of power. In externally-led statebuilding, though, the internal idea of the state is overlooked in order for primacy to be placed on what external expectations of the state are. As a powerful agent within the political relationships found within a state, though, the absence or marginalization of the ideas of the state not only creates the potential for instability and contestation, but also creates a gap in expectations of what the state should be.
Closing the Expectations Gap: Statebuilding in Unrecognized States
In today’s international system, the state cannot exist on an idea alone, even if it existed within legally recognized sovereign boundaries.[143] But empirically the demands of liberal democracy – both its classical understanding and its understanding through the framework of liberal interventionism and liberal peace[144] – cannot be expected to be met through only institutions. This creates a fundamental problem within externally-led statebuilding. A mutual dependence between the empirical and the social exists, yet it is not acknowledged and is sometimes dismissed within statebuilding. Through this, externally-led statebuilding, with its limited yet dominating focus on institutions, creates gaps in expectations and legitimacy. On one side of the gap are internal considerations and demands of the political community. On the other are external interests and normative demands. In order to close this gap without resorting to force or military rule a balance between the internal and the external must be established and maintained. Whilst this is not overtly evidenced within externally-led statebuilding projects, it is apparent within another form of statebuilding: domestically-led statebuilding like that found in some unrecognized states.
Discussion of areas of separatist or extra-state governance within sovereign states is nothing new. These entities are often associated with civil war, ethnic conflict, rebel territories and criminality, particularly in relation to economic activity and resource wars. However, unrecognized states, also referred to as de facto states or states-within-states, are more specifically defined and identifiable than a territory controlled by a force other than the state apparatus. as King notes, ‘the territorial separatists of the early 1990s have become the statebuilders of the early 2000s’, creating territorial areas whose empirical attributes are ‘about as well developed as that of the recognized states of which they are still notionally a part’.[145] Simply defined, they are state-like entities that have achieved de facto independence but have not gained international recognition of sovereign statehood.[146] Pegg, preferring the term ‘de facto state’, defines these entities as:
Entities which feature long-term, effective, and popularly-supported organized political leaderships that provide governmental services to a given population in a defined territorial area. They seek international recognition and view themselves as capable of meeting the obligations of sovereign statehood. They are, however, unable to secure widespread juridical recognition and therefore function outside the boundaries of international legitimacy.[147]
Kolstø and Caspersen specify further, maintaining that in order to be an unrecognized state an entity must not only have de facto independence over a territory which is controlled by the leadership, but must also have a leadership seeking to build further state institutions and demonstrate its own legitimacy; the entity must be seeking international recognition; and it must have existed in this manner for at least two years.[148] Although, as Pegg concedes, it is ‘extremely difficult to discern what a movement’s true goals really are’,[149] the criterion for seeking recognition distinguishes between those entities within states that are seeking a degree of autonomy and those that are seeking statehood. Within these definitions is the recognition that statebuilding has begun and the process is a continuing one. These entities claim not only independence for a territory, but they claim independent statehood. Most simply put, these entities are ‘states within states’.[150] In many ways, statebuilding in unrecognized states is a form of modern state formation. Much of the academic work on state formation specifically references the formation of states in Europe, although translating those experiences to modern day cases and to the practice of statebuilding overall is not unheard of. One of the strongest arguments to come from these works is the importance of war and violence in the state-making process such as that put forward by Tilly.[151] Although Tilly maintained that his theories and observations were historically and geographically specific and that his work should not be transposed onto inappropriate historical or geographic cases, his foundational ideas of how the initial stages of state formation take place and how power is consolidated in a territory are often found in works on development and statebuilding today.[152] Indeed, King, Kolstø, Pegg and Lynch, among others, highlight the role of war and conflict as the foundation for the creation of unrecognized states; and scholars such as collier identify the role of conflict in sustaining the secessionist or autonomous movements within some cases.[153] Whereas Tilly highlights the role of banditry in early European state formation, scholars examining contemporary cases often reference criminality (Eastern Europe) and corruption (Africa). Within Tilly’s theory, however, is the allowance for these violent and corrupt elements to evolve into institutionalized political entities. It is then that the Weberian monopolization of force shifts from purposes of territorial predation to those benefiting and enhancing the productive basis of society.[154] Even Weber recognized that building a state is a process: the often cited bureaucratic Weberian state is, in Weber’s theory, the final stage of the evolution of state legitimacy. [155]
State-making through violence may have been vital state formation in Europe, and it may be the basis for claims of independence and the emergence of unrecognized states, but it must be remembered that European state formation did not take place in the short time frame that is commonly found in today’s policy, and it did not take place in the normative complexity of today’s international system. Because conflict and violence today are negatively perceived as contributing to state weakness rather than productively adding to the creation or stability of a state, the predetermined condition of modern ‘stateness’ does not include a concession for force in the statebuilding process. Indeed, statebuilding, as a mechanism of peacebuilding, is antithetical to this, and it is perhaps unsurprising that most unrecognized states seeking recognition of sovereignty are relatively peaceful.[156] Throughout literature and policy on statebuilding, though, it is common to find short-cuts that are based on the state produced by the lengthy European state-formation process but excluding ‘the war-induced development imperative European states did’.[157] There is a falsity in this, though, in that today’s aspiring states must comply with a complex web of external expectations and demands that did not exist at the time of European formation.
Functioning within an international system dominated, and in many ways dictated, by Western norms and ideals, many unrecognized states have adopted a unique form of state formation that can be viewed as ‘survival strategies’,[158] in that in order to meet the demands of external actors the state itself incorporates and accommodates those external structural and empirical demands whilst at the same time being accountable to the governance necessities of the population and of political culture within the territory. This method of state formation – domesticallyled statebuilding – reflects the preferences of external actors in a way that can best further the goals of recognition. At the same time, however, these strategies also often reflect or incorporate local preferences or demands needed to maintain the domestic legitimacy and justify the prolonged existence of the stateless state. Whilst some have noted marked similarities in the detailed recognition strategies employed by unrecognized states regardless of geographic region,[159] a lack of significant comparative research on this subject poses difficulties in marking any detailed specific or concrete consistencies. What can be noted, however, is the tendency for these territories to create what appear to be ideal modern states.
As Caspersen notes, external legitimization is a key component of the recognition campaigns of unrecognized states; the governments of these territories demonstrate that they are self-sufficient and successful states in an attempt to increase their chances at gaining international recognition of their statehood by proving first what they can do.[160] Whereas claims to independence in these territories were once based on self-determination arguments, claims are now being made on the basis of exhibiting the empirical attributes of statehood consistent with both policy and literature.[161] Unrecognized states comply with the normative rules of statehood as accepted by their target audience. If seeking recognition from a single patron state, an unrecognized state can be expected to reflect the expectations of that state. If seeking broad international recognition of sovereign statehood, most posit themselves as ‘good’ states and exhibit ‘acceptable’ statehood in order to ‘prove’ their statehood. In many ways, they conform to what Ghani and Lockhart have identified as the ‘way of the future’ in statebuilding: states that fulfil their obligations of the right of sovereignty both externally and internally, where a compact not only between the state and its population exists, but a second compact between the state and the international community exists ‘to ensure adherence to international norms and standards of accountability and transparency’. in this, strategies are ‘inherently about “coproduction” because internal and external actors have to agree on rules, a division of labor and a sequence of activities’; although it must be noted the rules and activities referred to exist under the rubric of liberal good governance and interventionist statebuilding, meaning that the local considerations go not much further than how to meet the externally pre-determined expectations of legitimacy, governance and the obligations of sovereignty attached to that.[162]
Whilst Ghani and Lockhart are looking into the future of externally-led statebuilding, their identification of the two distinctive compacts is relevant when discussing unrecognized states. With the end goal being recognition of sovereign statehood and acceptance as a legitimate state, as opposed to state-like, entity, do unrecognized states have to exhibit these two compacts in order to stand a chance at recognition? Arguably, unrecognized states have a much greater pull on the necessity of domestic legitimacy. In projects characterized by direct engagement with the international community or external international actors it is expected that the expectations, demands or desires of those external actors will be reflected and met in both the statebuilding project itself as well as in the resulting state. In unrecognized states, though, there is something else at play. In external projects, some element of sovereignty is exercised by the external actors. In domestically-led projects, the exercising of sovereignty remains primarily within the borders of the territory and rests with local actors, and the continuation of this depends upon an acceptance by the local population; the state is propped up from within. In domestically-led statebuilding, domestic support for the state and the process of building it must exist in some capacity from the start. as a result, the state that is built in these self-led projects, particularly where there is a strategy for recognition of sovereignty, is one that must go beyond the seemingly nominal ‘compact’ and rigid liberal framework and instead must reflect the expectations of the local population. In these entities, statebuilding cannot be simply a technocratic exercise aimed at ticking boxes or meeting criteria, but also must reflect the idea of the state – connecting the people to the process – as a legitimizing mechanism. Domestic legitimacy is integral the maintenance of these unrecognized states, but it does not stand alone as the demands of external legitimacy must also be met. Indeed narrowing, or even closing, the expectations gap and establishing a balance between internal and external legitimacy is arguably a defining characteristic of self-led statebuilding in unrecognized states.
Much of the discussion surrounding legitimacy and unrecognized states centers on the acceptance of these political entities into the club of states through acceptance of their ‘statehood’ and recognition of sovereignty. However, internal legitimacy and its impact on the creation and sustaining of unrecognized states are often overlooked. When approaching this from a statebuilding perspective rather than a legal or systemic perspective, though, the role of internal legitimacy and the burden of meeting that are difficult to ignore. Because of quests for recognition and the demands for acceptance of statehood, though, this cannot be examined in isolation. Indeed, in unrecognized states we must look at the interplay of internal and external legitimacy in the creation and maintenance of these political entities.
Unrecognized states exist outside of the legal international order and the formal international community. But they also create a new environment for the practice of statebuilding, one in which international recognition is sought but that also centers on a form of shared identity or political community. It is a practice of statebuilding that is influenced by the international community but is simultaneously beyond the direct input of its practitioners. In many ways, unrecognized states flip the problem of legitimacy found within externally-led statebuilding, largely because the process of creating a state is an internal process rather than an external imposition, creating stronger prospects for local ownership and domestic legitimacy. The linear progression with the technocratic institutional project sees institutions being built and then gaining legitimacy through their actions, with the expectation that the institutions will create governance that is accepted internally through practice and externally by design. The unrecognized state, through its struggle for external recognition, alters this path, beginning with internal legitimacy and governance and then creating the institutions that not only reflect internal acceptance, but that will lead to external acceptance as well. Within this form of statebuilding bridging the gap of expectations is not only desirable, but is necessary.
Conclusion
In unrecognized states, there is a need for internal control and legitimacy without a dependence on the war-making and criminality that was commonplace in European state making. Unrecognized states cannot take the European path; a new approach is necessary, yet the outcome is expected to be the same. Whilst this is especially the case in domestically-led statebuilding, it is also the same for externally-led projects. However, in externally-led projects, with the onus of statebuilding on institutions, there is less latitude for the socio-political transformation necessary for successful statebuilding.
To be clear, domestically-led statebuilding is a different form of statebuilding Involving different actors, different pressures and different agendas to externally-led statebuilding. And just as externally-led statebuilding should not be a uniform practice, domestically-led statebuilding is not. Some unrecognized states, such as Tamil Eelam or south Ossetia, continue to be entrenched in or under threat of open conflict and do not meet the criteria of peace. Some, such as Kosovo and Timor-Leste, underwent externally-led statebuilding. Others may not desire international recognition of sovereignty, but may instead seek the recognition and thus support of a strong patron state. Or, in the case of Kurdistan, an unrecognized state may have latent rather than overt intent.[163] The target audience for some may be a single patron state whilst for others it is the wider international community. However, in these political entities statebuilding is taking place in various and specific forms, and the evident distinctions between not only the conditions of the entities but also the statebuilding processes themselves are no different to the contrasts seen within those states involved in externally-led projects. And although this type of statebuilding does have obvious differences from externallyled statebuilding, in both acknowledging the differences and recognizing the similarities an analytical door opens and an expanded understanding of statebuilding can be obtained. It is a form of statebuilding, and as such should not be discounted in the quest to better understand and inform the policy option. External support for statebuilding is a highly political process, made more complex by external agendas and dictates. But ‘recreating states is more than technical assistance to government institutions; statebuilding is a function of state-society relations’,[164] and as such cannot be reduced to building state institutions.
As Fukuyama notes,
[w]hile levels of social interchange and learning are far higher than they were three hundred years ago, most people continue to live in a horizon shaped largely by their own traditional culture and habits. The inertia of societies remains very great; while foreign institutional models are far more available than they once were, they still need to be overlaid on indigenous ones … Modern institutions cannot simply be transferred to other societies without reference to existing rules and the political forces supporting them. Building an institution is not like building a hydroelectric dam or a road network. It requires a great deal of hard work to persuade people that institutional change is needed in the first place, build a coalition in favor of change that can overcome the resistance of existing stakeholders in the old system, and then condition people to accept the new set of behaviors as routine and expected.[165]
In the same way, legitimacy cannot be caged within the confines of the modern ‘ideal’ democratic state; a common problem as legitimacy continues to be presented as something that results from popular participation in democratic elections rather than popular participation and investment in the process and the resulting state. statebuilding in practice ‘needs to be much more oriented to building on what exists rather than transplanting foreign models and processes into ill-suited local environments’.[166] This should not be limited to institutions and practices, and certainly cannot be limited to only those institutions and practices that may conform to liberal expectations of the state. Indeed, when considering legitimacy and how best to ‘legitimize’ a state, looking beyond institutions is a necessity.
Statebuilding can be a form of peacebuilding, but it is much more than that. Statebuilding encompasses a political struggle among political actors over political power and the distribution of that power. This struggle takes place not only for the power to govern, but also ‘between warring parties for international support and for domestic support, between those with economic power and those claiming political power in their mutual constitution of the state’, and, importantly, ‘between international preferences and local preferences’.[167] In maintaining a technocratic and institutional approach, externally-led statebuilding fails to recognize and accommodate these power struggles, thus creating obstacles not only for legitimizing the state, but also for sustained stability. Domestically-led statebuilding projects are not immune from these struggles, and in many ways are more susceptible to destabilization because of them. As Migdal notes, ‘state may help mold, but they are also continuously molded by, the societies within which they are embedded’.[168] In many ways, domestically-led statebuilding exemplifies this. They exhibit a degree of flexibility not seen in external projects; flexibility that, in combination with other powerful factors such as the quest for recognition, allows for the ‘ill-suited’ foreign model not to be discounted, but rather to be negotiated with local necessities, local institutions and local mechanisms of governance. And within this there are significant questions, and lessons, that pertain to the wider policy and concept of statebuilding.
Within self-led statebuilding projects, a balance must be reached between external expectations and internal necessities. In doing so, a duality of legitimacy is created: external legitimacy as an acceptable state, and internal legitimacy that, in domestically-led statebuilding, is vital for sustaining the process. Balancing external legitimacy with internal legitimacy is a prerequisite for ‘success’ not only in domestically-led projects, but in externally-led as well. The importance of popular trust and investment in the process of socio-political change that statebuilding brings should not be underestimated. in domestically-led statebuilding the process must be sustained from within, but at the same time, the process and the leaders would not have the rhetorical power needed to build the state if it were not for the need to ‘comply to be recognized’; indeed, external recognition as a goal can maintain the domestic political and social cohesion needed to continue the statebuilding process. External demands can, and must, come together with internal necessities as a mechanism of stability.
Statebuilding also must be viewed as a process before it is a project in order to allow for and foster societal investment and the socio-political change needed for legitimacy and success. Building a state must be a flexible process that may encompass a project (or a defined end goal), but cannot be solely the technocratic project that is often seen, and is often referred to, within contemporary statebuilding. One paradox found within statebuilding literature and practice is that of long-term and short-term goals. Often contradictory, one of the most difficult problems to overcome is striking a balance between what is necessary in the short-term and what is beneficial in the long-term.[169] Long-term goals are more difficult to judge and to certify progress to donors; often the short-term is detrimentally favored as the ‘quick’ stability helps tick off the criteria of the interveners’ goals and agendas. With the long-term goals more encompassing of the nation-building process within statebuilding, the short-termism favored focuses on the technocratic element of statebuilding; the elements with clear and measurable goals and standards that strike a balance between external resource commitment and goals to be met. In doing this, however, statebuilding necessitates acting through a blueprint or a checklist and it becomes a project rather than a process; the state becomes something that is implemented rather than something that is fostered, negotiated or grown, posing obstacles not only for sustainable change but also for legitimizing that change. Whilst a project can be at the center of the process, it cannot exist alone, and this process must have the flexibility necessary to negotiate, rather than impose, the state as a means of mitigating potentially destabilizing change. The state must be legitimated from the start, but it also must be re-legitimated throughout; what is accepted at one stage in the process may not be accepted at another, and the process and the state must be flexible enough to respond to this. If the state, the project, and indeed the process are not accepted as legitimate by the people, the bridge between short-termism and sustainable change will not be created.
One such unrecognized state in which lasting statebuilding ‘success’ is evident is Somaliland, the northwest territory of Somalia. The statebuilding process in Somaliland reflects the balance and mutual dependence between internal and external demands: it exhibits conforming to the norms of the ideal state, yet the survival of the externally valued democratic government in the territory is dependent upon stability provided by the domestic legitimacy. In creating and propelling a liberal democratic state, the founding fathers of Somaliland reflected the international preference regarding normative empirical attributes of statehood. As will be examined in following chapters, the creation of the democratic component of the government, whilst foreign to Somaliland society, was viewed as beneficial to obtaining recognition and the political and economic benefits that would bring. In the complex process of reacting to a multitude of demands, however, Somaliland deviated from the norm by including traditional governance structures as an institution in the central government. The creation of the Somaliland state did not follow the blueprint of statebuilding, but rather forged its own way by forming its own state. The remainder of this book will examine this process of statebuilding, focusing specifically on the utilization of the clan to bridge the gap between external and internal demands and expectations. An obvious point of interest within this is the inclusion of traditional structures of governance in the central government of Somaliland. As identified in Chapter 2, the vital social and political functions of traditional social structures in weak, fragile, failed or even de facto states are often overlooked in favor of an attitude of incomprehensibility. Particularly true for a territory within Somalia, where the overriding perception of traditional structures of governance – the clan – will be negatively associated with the continuing violence and instability in the south of the country, the inclusion of traditional authority in the government of Somaliland was a risky proposition in a territory presenting itself as a state ready for recognition. The questions remaining, then, are why was the traditional authority included in the government in Somaliland, and what can be learned from this inclusion? The following chapters will examine these questions in more detail.
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