Dialogue Series No 8 - Building Peace in the Absence of States

Author Title / Description Date
Martina Fischer & Beatrix Schmelzle (eds.)

Building Peace in the Absence of States: Challenging the Discourse on State Failure

The exchange between the lead authors and the discussants in this dialogue vividly illustrates the need to shift from a state-centric view, yet without entirely rejecting the notion of state. At the same time it shows the difficulties of integrating concepts of political order that do not correspond with the western-style Weberian/Westphalian state. Instead of advocating ideal-type, off-the-shelf models and blue-prints, the contributors to this dialogue argue that historically well-informed analysis, which leads to a deeper contextualized understanding of the local and regional situation on the ground, has to be the bedrock of any attempts for external assistance aimed at peace and development. They discuss evidence and counter-examples from Somaliland, Afghanistan, Liberia through to the Balkans and East Timor.
2009

Single articles in this dialogue include:

Martina Fischer and Beatrix Schmelzle

Introduction

Volker Boege, Anne Brown, Kevin Clements and Anna Nolan

On Hybrid Political Orders and Emerging States: What is Failing – States in the Global South or Research and Politics in the West?



Available translations:

Spanish / Español

Trutz von Trotha

The “Andersen Principle”: On the Difficulty of Truly Moving Beyond State-Centrism

Susan L. Woodward

A Case for Shifting the Focus: Some Lessons from the Balkans

Andreas Mehler

Hybrid Regimes and Oligopolies of Violence in Africa: Expectations on Security Provision “From Below”

Susanne Schmeidl (with Masood Karokhail)

“Prêt-a-Porter States”: How the McDonaldization of State-Building Misses the Mark in Afghanistan

Bjoern Hofmann

Are Hybrid Political Orders an Appropriate Concept for State-Formation? Timor-Leste Revisited

Volker Boege, Anne Brown, Kevin Clements and Anna Nolan

Undressing the Emperor. A Reply to our Discussants


A service for our readers…

Also available for this issue is a list of acronyms (pdf).