ABSTRACT
One of the dominant, if not the predominant trend of international relations in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, was the dethroning of the sovereign nation state as the subject of international politics. Some commentators referred to this as the emergence of a ‘postWestphalian’ era, implicitly suggesting that centuries of international politics were being abruptly overturned. By contrast, in the early twenty-first century the dominant theme of international relations seems to be almost the symmetrical opposite of the 1990s: the pressing need to construct viable, autonomous states. Having ostensibly shed the historical ballast of centuries in a matter of years, international politics now seems to be in reverse gear – the state is back. Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada, argues ‘it comes down to this: how well are we doing in helping to make weak states stronger so that they can better fulfil their responsibilities to their own people and to others?. . .All the aid in the world will have only a fleeting effect if a country does not have functioning public institutions and a rule of law. Development depends on good governance’.1 In his latest offering, Francis Fukuyama explains why building strong states is of such contemporary importance: ‘state building is one of the most important issues for the world community because weak or failed states are the source of many of the world’s most serious problems, from poverty to AIDS to drugs to terrorism’.2 President Bush echoed this outlook in his second inaugural speech: ‘We have seen our vulnerability, and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny – prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder – violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat.’3
