ABSTRACT
Introduction Rebuilding governance in failed states has become a high priority for official bilateral and multilateral international development organisations (hereafter ‘donors’) in recent years. This concern reflects the increased incidence of state failure since the end of the cold war and growing concerns about the security implications of state failure for Western countries (Doornbos 2005). Yet donors have been remarkably unsuccessful in improving the quality of governance in these states. Lakhdar Brahimi (2007: 2), a former special adviser to the UN Secretary General, has noted that UN ‘peace-building’ missions have very often failed to imbue failed states with the capacity to maintain internal security: ‘about half of the countries where [UN] peace operations were said to have ended in success,’ he noted, ‘actually fell back into conflict within five years or less.’ Similarly, Pei and Kaspar (2003: 1) concluded their review of the US government’s attempts to rebuild democracy in post-conflict environments during the past century by commenting that: ‘nationbuilding attempts by outside powers are notable mainly for their bitter disappointments’. Finally, zuercher (2006) found that while 17 recent UN ‘peace-building’ operations had been reasonably successful in bringing an end to war, they had been much less successful in terms of other dimensions of governance: re-establishing the state’s full monopoly over the means of violence, promoting economic development, rebuilding democracy and enhancing institutional capacities.
