Sub-State Diplomacy in Malfunctioning States: The Case of the Republika Srpska,Bosnia and Herzegovina

Diplomacy is no longer the preserve of the state. It is increasingly used by sub-state actors to contest state-level authority. In malfunctioning states like Bosnia and Herzegovina, where lengthy state-building efforts have not alleviated the risk of instability, this possibility is a cause for concern. This article builds on paradiplomatic and state-building studies to examine specific aspects of the Republika Srpska's (RS) bid for diplomatic actorness. Based on the content analysis of official documents and interviews, it assesses the level of diplomatic actorness of the RS in four dimensions (legal authority, external presence, internal presence, autonomy) and examines whether this has grown in collaboration or competition with state-level diplomacy. The article shows that the development of the RS's paradiplomatic activities is driven by ethno-political competition, facilitated by state and sub-state actors’ mutual disregard, and that it both echoes and amplifies the systemic malfunctioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina.     

State formation as it happens: insights from a repeated cross-sectional study in Afghanistan, 2007–2015

This paper contributes to an empirical understanding of state formation. Based on an original household-level data set, we provide a detailed picture of the process of state formation in Afghanistan over the last decade. State formation happens when state and society engage in reciprocal relations. Central to this relationship is an exchange of services for the acceptance of authority and increased legitimacy. Our data allows us to assess state-society relations across different dimensions. We focus on the provision of services, on the responsiveness of the state, on conflict regulation and on taxation. As a result we find more evidence of state formation than expected, but also see this as a contested process that unfolds unevenly and with different speed across different sectors.     

‘Peace-building as state-building’? Rethinking liberal interventionism in contexts of emerging states

Contemporary policy-making guided by the ‘liberal peace’ holds that peace is necessary for states to emerge, and that peace-building and state-building do not only go in tandem, but are mutually reinforcing. Yet, in view of both the historical record of state-making and empirical evidence provided by liberal interventionism, this proposition appears questionable. While scholars have shown that state-making has, historically, been as much associated with war than with peace, cases from Afghanistan to Somalia suggest that state-making is inherently conflictive, frequently upsetting nascent peace. In order to shed light on the reasons underpinning the relationship between prevailing peace-building practices and the fundamental exigencies of state-making, this article pursues a theoretical argument. It proposes that while peace-building is principally about creating a situation of non-violent co-existence despite prevailing differences and, thus, essentially geared at accepting and enshrining institutional and identity pluralism, state-making is vitally aimed at replacing institutional and identity multiplicity with greater degrees of rule hegemony and standardisation. Applying the prism of ‘rule standardisation’ to the nexus of peace-building and state-making, this paper seeks to advance existing debates on this delicate relationship.     

The quest for legitimacy in independent Kosovo: the unfulfilled promise of diversity and minority rights

When Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, it did so not as a nation-state, but as a “state of communities,” self-defining as multiethnic, diverse, and committed to extensive rights for minorities. In this paper, this choice is understood as a response to a dual legitimation problem. Kosovo experienced both an external legitimation challenge, regarding its contested statehood internationally, and an internal one, vis-à-vis its Serb minority. The focus on diversity and minority rights was expected to confer legitimacy on the state both externally and internally. International state-builders and the domestic political elite in post-conflict Kosovo both pursued this strategy. However, it inadvertently created an additional internal legitimation challenge, this time from within Kosovo’s majority Albanian population. This dynamic is illustrated by the opposition movement “Lëvizja Vetëvendosje” (Self-Determination Movement), which rejects the framing of Kosovo as first and foremost a multiethnic state. The movement’s counter-narrative represents an additional internal legitimation challenge to the new state. This paper thus finds that internationally endorsed “diversity management” through minority rights did not deliver as a panacea for the legitimacy dilemmas of the post-conflict polity. On the contrary, the “state of communities” continues to be contested by both majority and minority groups in Kosovo.     

The architecture of annexation? Russia’s bilateral agreements with South Ossetia and Abkhazia

Following the August War of 2008, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Both territories remain dependent upon Moscow for their security and economic survival, and they remain dominated militarily, economically, and even politically by their northern patron. These relationships are structured, in part, by a series of bilateral agreements signed since September 2008, which have created a comprehensive legal architecture which, in turn, deeply affects the state- and nation-building processes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This article examines 78 agreements signed between Russia and these territories between 2008 and 2015 in order to better understand these processes and how they interact with and are influenced by their respective relationships with the Russian Federation. It groups these agreements into three categories: the 2008 “friendship” agreements which created the initial baseline for the bilateral relationship; the numerous, more narrowly defined documents which fleshed-out this relationship; and the “alliance” and “integration” agreements signed with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, respectively, through which Moscow sought to take its relations with these territories to a qualitatively new level. Of particular focus is the degree to which these territories exhibited signs of independent agency and formal autonomy, as well as the differences between them.     

Crony capitalism in the Palestinian Authority: a deal among friends

Abstract

This article interrogates the multifaceted political–economic networks entrenched within the multiple structures of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA). The main argument of this article is that crony capitalism is a defining feature of the PA’s relations with a handful of capitalists and business groups. The demonstration of this argument is exhibited through the large-scale public and private monopolistic practices in strategic sectors of the Palestinian economy, which function within the framework of Israel’s settler-colonial reality and the persistent patterns of international aid to the occupied West Bank. While acknowledging the existence of cronyism as a feature of the capitalist system in its diverse typologies, crony capitalism may be more pronounced in situations characterised by political uncertainty, whereby political–business collusion strategizes the expansion of neo-patrimonial networks and rent-seeking opportunities as a meta-mechanism for social control and political stabilisation. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, crony capitalism was developed as part of the political allegiances and economic alliances that underpin the structures created by the Oslo process, which are fostered by Israeli policies and the international donor community to maintain the cohesiveness of the PA regime.     

On Political Terror during the Soviet Expansion into Lithuania, 1918–1919

This article deals with a noticeable anomaly of Bolshevik expansion in Lithuania during 1918–1919: the refusal of the Soviet authorities to resort to terror to subdue the local population in order to export the world revolution. The author argues that the Soviets avoided political terror in Lithuania because they did not treat the Lithuanians as a nation capable of sustaining their own state. In fact, anti-Bolshevik forces employed more terror than the Bolsheviks in their attempt to drive out the Reds and uproot Lithuanian support for the Communist regime. The Lithuanian left-wing government of Mykolas Sle?evi?ius sought to contain its radicalized military and to preserve a soft-handed relationship with the local Bolshevik government.     

Aid and state-building,Part II: Afghanistan and Iraq

Part I of this article found that, in South Korea and Taiwan, institutional legacy and continuity as well as the politics of aid did matter for post-war state-building. The inheritance and continuity of Weberian states and the receipt of aid either as budget support or increasingly aligned with local priorities helped to foster state-building. Part II of the study in this article explores a different dynamic of post-war aid to Afghanistan and Iraq which had a legacy of neopatrimonial and weak states. It argues that under more adverse initial conditions – for a neopatrimonial state – the role of aid regime and state-building strategies become even more important. Under these conditions, aid and state-building strategies may undermine state-building if they induce discontinuity in the existing state capacity and create parallel institutions to those of the state. Depending on the policies, state weakness may be reinforced if leaders are preoccupied with the politics of patronage.     

Conflicts of preferences and domestic constraints: understanding reform failure in liberal state-building and democracy promotion

This paper challenges the common explanations that failures of external state-building and democracy promotion are the result of a lack of domestic capacity or a lack of domestic willingness against an externally set liberal agenda of state-building and democratisation. Studying political decision-making on a micro-level, we argue that both explanations fail to capture the multi-faceted motivations and interests of domestic actors that go beyond mere ‘resistance’ against externally induced liberal reforms. Rather, criticism of reforms might be rooted in ideas of social justice and claims to socio-economic security. Furthermore, these explanations tend to overlook the need for domestic elites to bargain with various domestic stakeholders. A case study of Croatian public administration reform illustrates that failure of externally promoted reforms remain an option when significant international resources are available for liberal state-building and the target of reform is a relatively mature bureaucracy.     

Unintended consequences of state-building and the management of diversity in post-conflict Kosovo

This paper examines the adoption of a multiethnic liberal-democratic model of governance in post-independence Kosovo and the dual task of state-building to secure unity and manage diversity. This article explains why in post-conflict and post-independence Kosovo, its domestic sovereignty and legitimization have become conditioned by the integration, accommodation, and protection of its minorities. While the existing literature has mainly focused on the shortcomings deriving from the exogenous character of state-building in Kosovo, this paper aims to challenge and complement this view by drawing on the “state-in-society” approach developed by Joel Migdal, which highlights that the actual states have less coherence than their theoretical counterparts. Analysis of post-independence Kosovo reveals the legislation-implementation gap and the unintended consequences arising under the impact of endogenous factors. Overall, this article shows that multiethnic state-building in Kosovo has been crucially transformed and “limited” by local idiosyncrasies.