ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the state that has emerged in East Timor since independence and assesses whether, how, and how deeply international statebuilders, primarily the UN, its missions, and its agencies, influenced the new state's shape. It argues that UN missions influenced the shape of the state that has emerged in East Timor since independence, but in unexpected, unintended, and perverse ways. Despite the absence of its own statehood, East Timor had in fact developed a rich organizational life, which historically had often operated in parallel with or in opposition to the state structures of Portuguese colonialism and the Indonesian occupiers. The East Timorese have shared with much of South-East Asia an historical inclination to 'state aversion', preferring other ways than the state to 'shape coherences'. UN Transitional Administration in East Timor approached its statebuilding mandate in East Timor from the perspective that it was dealing with a 'blank slate'.
