ABSTRACT
A paradox plagues international interventions that attempt to rebuild states that have ‘failed’ or introduce the Westphalian model where it never really existed. Perceptions of a power vacuum created by governmental breakdown or the departure of an occupier have drawn the world community into an ever more intensive role in the exercise of transitional political authority. Yet the task of state building as an emergency response seems self-defeating. It is impractical – within a short space of time – to reestablish an executive, legislature and judiciary that did not work, or to construct them without historical foundations and where no conditions prevail for their animation.
