STATE FRAGILITY, THE PEACEBUILDER'S CONTRACT, AND THE SEARCH FOR THE LEAST BAD STATE

Michael Barnett

No 14, EUI-RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS)

Abstract: This paper develops two claims that follow from two general conclusions from recent re-search on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. The first is that international peacebuilders are fairly good at ending violence and at producing stability, but are less talented at creating liberal states. In order to understand why, Section I develops the concept of the peacebuilders' contract, which is intended to map the kinds of strategic interactions that are likely to unfold between peacebuilders and local élites and capture why these interactions are likely to favour the status quo preferred by local forces. Fol-lowing on the general recognition that international peacebuilders are limited in what they can produce, the second conclusion concerns the need for peacebuilders to be more strategic in their thinking and to be satisfied with producing small victories that can sup-port the emergence of decent governments which provide the foundations for future movements towards a positive peace. These observations and their implications are ap-plicable not only to post-war interventions, but also to the broader international agenda of fixing states.

Date: 2010-03-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/1814/13537 Full text (text/html)
http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/13537/3/RSCAS_2010_14.pdf Full text (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/13537/3/RSCAS_2010_14.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/13537/3/RSCAS_2010_14.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erp:euirsc:p0235

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EUI-RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Valerio PAPPALARDO ().