News
New CRU paper ‘Strengthening Governance in Post-Conflict Fragile States’
June 11, 2009. This new publication, ‘Strengthening Governance in Post-Conflict Fragile States’, written by Louise Anten of the Clingendael Conflict Research Unit, provides a mapping of the main issues related to the restoration of governance in post-conflict states. It recognises that in these states, the first priority of peace-building and state-building must be a form of political governance through which the state and society reconcile their expectations of one another.
It also recognises that in practice the effectiveness of international support to the strengthening of governance has been quite modest. Frequent tensions and dilemmas occur that constrain the effectiveness, for example between peace-building and state-building objectives, or between the objectives of governance legitimacy and effectiveness.
Academics and practitioners agree on the importance of context. What will work in a specific situation will highly depend on a number of historical and current country-specific context factors, and how these define the structures of power, interests and incentives of major stakeholders. The study identifies the most important historic, foundational factors that in many post-conflict situations still influence the playing field, for example persistent horizontal inequalities, and hybrid political orders. But these ‘root causes’ of the conflict do not tell the whole story, since war transforms societies, and the peace (agreement) further adjusts interests and incentives. So the most relevant post-conflict factors are also identified, such as the way the conflict ended, the type of international intervention and the type of post-conflict (transition) regime.
The operational implications for national and international actors highly depend on the interplay of all these factors at the level of a specific country, and the conceptual framework of the actor. Nevertheless, the study proposes a number of tentative general operational implications for a medium sized international actor like the Netherlands, taking a pragmatic realist view. One recommendation is to set realistic objectives, that take into account the interests and incentives of major stakeholders and the scope of change these allow. Imposing reforms that run counter to the interests of major stakeholders are not likely to take root. Other recommendations focus on the scope for constitution-making and the further development of political systems. Also, the importance of recognising local capacity and locally legitimate institutions is stressed. It justifies balanced support to state and non-state institutions that have a basic legitimacy and capacity, as a way to strengthen governance in hybrid states.
As a follow-up to this desk-study, field studies will be carried out in four countries in order to assess to what extent the concepts developed and lessons identified can be applied in concrete situations.
Some of the preliminary findings of this publication were discussed at a meeting of international experts on 23 January 2009 in The Hague. The author wishes to thank all the experts who contributed valuable ideas to this study, at this meeting or afterwards.
Download PDF.