ABSTRACT
In international politics, the state has to fulfill a dual function with regard to political order. First, it has to organize and guarantee public order domestically. Second, all states together constitute the international system and global order. Ineffective, weak, failing or failed states – best conceptualized as different instances of fragile statehood – tend to undermine both functions and cause problems at the national, regional and global level. For students of development and transformation research, it is evident that many post-colonial and postcommunist states are unable to provide basic public functions and services vis-à-vis their citizens and are incapable of assuming their responsibilities as members of the international community. However, until recently, the problem of fragile statehood has not figured prominently in security and strategic analysis, but was largely perceived as a problem of only local relevance or as an issue of development and humanitarian aid. Only occasionally, the international community staged military “humanitarian interventions,” as in Somalia 1992, Haiti 1994 or ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. After 9/11, the debate on fragile statehood has shifted to a more security-oriented approach. Thus, statebuilding has become a key activity of the international community (Rotberg 2003; Rotberg 2004; Fukuyama 2004; Chesterman 2005; Chesterman et al. 2005; Schneckener 2006; Call and Wyeth 2008). In contrast to earlier historical periods, statebuilding does not address the creation of new states, but instead the shaping and strengthening of states’ capacities to fulfill basic functions and to respond to the needs of their citizens. International statebuilding efforts differ significantly, ranging from aid and assistance to troop deployment and the establishment of transitional administrations. Since the mid-1990s, the international community, mainly under the leadership of the United Nations, has conducted complex and costly statebuilding operations in Cambodia, BosniaHerzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor Leste and Haiti (Iraq is a special case due to the US-led military invasion and occupation). In most of these cases external actors interfere deeply with state sovereignty, they take over (temporarily) a number of public services, including the provision of domestic security, and they set up rules and institutions. In other words, external actors step in with their own civilian and military personnel where state
functions are lacking. This type of quasi-protectorate not only entails a number of risks for the interveners but also requires a reliable provision of personal and financial resources by the international community. Moreover, the real challenge for international statebuilding is to prevent or to stop processes of state failure in many parts of the world. The demand, however, exceeds supply dramatically which simply means that the “Kosovo model” cannot be universalized – neither on empirical nor on normative grounds. The debate about concepts such as “neotrusteeships” or “shared sovereignty” therefore is missing the point (see: Fearon and Laitin 2004: 5-43; Krasner 2004: 85-120). The difficulties for external (mainly Western) statebuilders become even more pressing if one takes into account different levels of statebuilding, in particular the complex interactions between local and external actors, and the fact that different concepts and strategies are used. Both aspects lead inevitably to a number of unintended consequences and unanticipated (and often unwanted) outcomes that will be explored more closely in this chapter. The theorizing about unintended consequences of social actions has a long tradition in social and economic theory. Raymond Boudon, for example, pointed out that “perverse effects” are part of the “dynamic character of complex systems and cannot be avoided.” They are an important source for social change and they may be much more important in explaining these changes than the intended action taken in the first place (Boudon 1982: 7-11). Similarly, Robert Jervis saw “nonlinearity” as a key principle in understanding complex systems in which “a set of units or elements are interconnected so that changes in some elements or their relations produce changes in other parts of the system” and in which “most actions, no matter how well targeted, will have multiple effects” (Jervis 1997/1998: 570-574). With regard to statebuilding, one can indeed make the argument that developments on the ground are at least due to both intended actions and their unintended effects. The latter can be caused either by material effects of actions or by diverging perceptions and interpretations by different actors of these actions. All that may trigger unintended and often counterproductive consequences, which may cause the deterioration of the relationship between the actors involved even if all sides claim to have “good intentions.” From a methodological perspective, studying unintended consequences is not an easy undertaking. First, the issue of unintended effects needs to be distinguished analytically from policy failures or from the notion of “wrong policies.”1 In other words, the question here is not whether actions or policies are successful or whether they are appropriate to achieve certain goals. The focus is simply on the unintended effects they may have. Even successful actions usually have unintended implications. Second, there is a problem in analyzing the various effects of social actions since, as Jervis noted, “actions have unintended effects on the actor, others and the system as a whole” (Jervis 1997/1998: 578). And third, it is already difficult to establish causal links between actions and intended effects, but it seems even more difficult to do so when it comes to unintended consequences. The question arises: when do I know that an effect is unintended and how do I see it? This problem is further complicated by the fact that quite
often actors declare post facto that the observed consequences were actually intended. This happens in particular with unintended, but positive effects; here political actors have an interest in claiming that these effects are the logical and well-planned results of their policies. In the more likely cases of negative effects, however, actors usually start a “blame game” accusing others and their actions of responsibility for consequences nobody anticipated and nobody wanted, which again makes it difficult to identify a link between a single action by a single actor and its consequences. This chapter cannot solve these methodological questions; the aim, however, is to provide a framework for studying these processes in instances of international statebuilding where a large number of external actors engages in local affairs in order to stabilize, reform or rebuild state structures and institutions (for the more narrow field of peacekeeping see Chiyuki et al. 2007). The focus is indeed on policies and activities of external actors, their unintended consequences and the circumstances, which generally favor these consequences. Similar effects caused by actions of local actors are not part of the analysis. The chapter starts with the assumption that external actors explicitly or implicitly use various approaches for statebuilding, which can be attributed to different worldviews and concepts of political order. These approaches will be categorized as “liberalization first,” “security first,” “institutionalization first” and “civil society first.” Each of these strategies shows a number of specific unintended consequences when implemented in practice, since some approaches seem too broad and too ambitious, others seem too narrow and too one-sided. However, these consequences are not inevitable but often depend on circumstances and conditions due to the fact that external statebuilders have to cope with the multilevel and multi-agency nature of the whole undertaking. Some of these factors are related to the interplay between local and external actors at the field level, others due to problems among statebuilders themselves at the headquarter level. Finally, the chapter concludes that unintended consequences are a frequent feature of international statebuilding efforts and almost impossible to avoid. This should not lead to the conclusion to withdraw from zones of instability and conflict, but to search for ways of coping and managing these consequences, in other words, to become more self-reflective and more flexible and more open to the outcome of the statebuilding process.
