state building

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state building

government

Written by Conor O'Dwyer

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state building, the construction of a state apparatus defined by its monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in a given territory. Because of the wide variance between states across history, state building may be best understood not in generic terms but as the result of political dynamics bearing the indelible imprint of their historical moment.

Defining the modern state is a contentious project, but most scholars would recognize a core set of features, including a standing army, a diplomatic corps, a centralized bureaucracy (especially for tax collection), the replacement of ad hoc patrimonial legal procedures with standardized rational ones, the demarcation of national economies, and the incorporation of populations as citizens rather than status groups.

That constellation of features first developed in western Europe in the 16th century through the mutually reinforcing, though analytically separate, processes of making war, raising taxes, and constructing a centralized officialdom to oversee and maximize success in both war and taxation. In western Europe those changes were marked by the transition from feudalism to absolutism to the nation-state. State-building theory tends not to dwell on the differences of political regime that may accompany the state-building process; both democracy and authoritarianism require a state to defend its borders, govern its citizens, and extract resources from them. (An important exception, however, can be found in scholarship on the link between democratization and state building. One influential argument is that the development of professional and effective state bureaucracies is more difficult in areas where democratization precedes the consolidation of core state institutions.)

Decolonization after World War II and later the collapse of the Soviet Union greatly added to the number of states in the international system. The success of those state-building efforts, however, has been highly variable, ranging from failed states to neopatrimonial states to developmental states. Changes in the international system during the 20th and 21st centuries have altered the basic dynamics of state building: the harsh selection mechanism of interstate military competition that characterized the emergence of western Europe’s nation-states in previous centuries ceased to exist. Thus, the drive for rationalization is no longer an imperative of state survival, and from the state-builders’ perspective, it is no longer as crucial that growth in state size be matched by increase in state capacity—especially its capacity to stimulate economic development. Instead, a host of other factors may drive state expansion. A commonly cited factor is the need to maintain a domestic governing coalition, especially in societies with divided political elites. That may lead to rapid state expansion fueled by political patronage; it may also take the more-passive form of surrendering state capacity through insider privatization and the toleration of official corruption. Some have argued that international aid to less-developed countries has also had the unintended effect of diverting resources from state-building capacity.

Conor O'Dwyer

nation building

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nation building

Written by André Munro

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nation building, a concerted project to construct or rebuild a nation-state and its underlying institutions and sense of community. The objective of nation building can be to create a cohesive nation-state that never existed or that never properly functioned or to rebuild one that has collapsed or has been destroyed. Generally speaking, nation building is not performed as a purely altruistic endeavor. States engaged in nation building abroad are generally motivated by some strategic objectives of their own, such as advancing their own wealth, security, or international standing. While nation building is mainly carried out by sovereign states, some civil society and international organizations (such as the Ford Foundation and the United Nations) can also engage in it, sometimes under the less controversial rubric of international development.

Despite its name, the process of nation building is fundamentally two-pronged and involves the creation of a state and a corresponding nation, and their mutual alignment. Thus, nation building is both an institutional and a cultural project. Critiques of the concept of nation building are diverse, ranging from the argument that it is mainly an exercise in imperialism to the idea that nations are never truly purposely created but emerge organically.

At the most basic level, the state-building component of nation building involves creating security conditions so that the state can effectively claim a monopoly of power within its own territory—the very definition of the state, according to the German sociologist Max Weber. However, modern state institutions are not limited to having an effective army and police force; the state is expected to fulfill other fundamental needs of its population, including providing basic infrastructure, health care, education, and the necessary conditions for a functioning economy.

Besides creating a functioning state apparatus, nation building aims at creating the nation itself, meaning a collective identity that corresponds, if imperfectly, with the boundaries of the sovereign state. As the political scientist Benedict Anderson has argued, cultural institutions, in particular mass media such as newspapers, can play a key role in creating the shared “imagined community” of the nation. Many scholars also highlight the critical role of education in nation building, because of its capacity to instill a sense of common identity and destiny in a whole generation. Various cultural initiatives can foster national identity; some can be implemented quickly, such as creating a new flag or anthem, while others, such as changes in education or the media, require a long-term commitment. In the nation-state paradigm, the nation and the state are closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing: the nation legitimizes the state and transforms it into a meaningful entity, while the state fulfills the essential needs and future of the nation and provides it with collective agency on the domestic and world stage.

The process of nation building can also be destructive of other identities (such as ethnic, regional, or religious identities) that resist, or are not easily subsumed under, the new national identity. Following the French Revolution, for example, the nascent French Republic embarked on a large-scale project to unify the country around a sole common language (French) and shared republican institutions and ideals. This French exercise in nation building, in which education played a key role, created the foundation of a rich national identity that endures to this day, but it also destroyed or diminished, often to the point of folkloric irrelevance, many regional cultures and languages, such as Breton and Occitan. Not all nation-building projects are this exclusionary, however, and it is possible to foster a national identity that can accommodate pluralism and difference.

Following the end of World War II, the United States led two of the most important exercises in nation building ever pursued—namely, the democratic reconstruction of postwar Germany and Japan. Both examples set the standard for post-conflict nation building, as they showcased the possibility of creating long-lasting and self-governing polities even after almost complete destruction and years of totalitarian rule. In both cases, nation building required investments and coordinated efforts in ensuring security, reconstructing the countries’ infrastructures and economies, providing humanitarian relief, creating a working civil administration, and creating the cultural and institutional conditions for democratic rule.

After the end of the Cold War, nation-building projects multiplied with the emergence of a plethora of new but weak states. In the 1990s the U.S. government alone, under the Bill Clinton administration, engaged in an average of two nation-building exercises per year. The concept of nation building was popularized in the early 2000s following the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War, in which the United States led an occupation of both countries and sought to transform both into sustainable democracies. While nation-building efforts were initially more successful in Afghanistan, they ultimately failed, as the Taliban recaptured the country in 2021 and reestablished its theocratic regime. More than two decades after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq is still struggling to establish both a competent state serving its population and a nation that transcends ethnic and sectarian fault lines. While nation building itself has far from disappeared, its popularity faded following these two failed attempts.

André Munro