The statebuilding in conflict-affected situations has received considerable attention in recent years. The idea implies attempts for reforming fragile and dysfunctional states into functional ones through international assistances, for the purpose of establishing durable peace and ensuring the international security. This special issue includes ten articles, in addition to this introduction part, analyzing today’s international statebuilding through theoretical and empirical approaches.
This introduction provides a concise overview of current discussion on this issue. To begin with, it explains historical backgrounds of the recent focus on the statebuilding, and singles out different logics searching for the functional state. In this context, three kinds of logics are distinguishable. The first one, claimed by peace-builders like United Nations, requires the functional state, as it is indispensable for containing internal violence and establishing sustainable peace. Secondly, the development community uses slightly different logic, seeking the legitimate states for the sustainable state-society relationship and economic development. Thirdly, the national interests of Western countries need the strong states for strengthening the international security and the existent international political order. Characters of the international engagement in the statebuilding reflect the balance of these three logics.
Next, the paper examines some critical views on current international state building, and distinguishes those who admit the statebuilding as a necessary policy measure for peacebuilding and those who oppose it in claiming that the statebuilding has not contributed to durable peace. The two groups, however, agree on the importance of enhancing legitimacy of the state in the eyes of ordinary people.
With regard to this point, the paper points out two interesting developments in recent arguments of statebuilding. Firstly, premise of the statebuilding has been revisited. Arguments on satebuilding used to regard its main objective as the reconstruction of the Weberian state monopolizing the legitimate violence. However, facing with the reality that autonomous communities, often being provided with military capacity, still exist in a number of developing countries, particularly in Africa and Pacific islands, attempts are recently made to build a “hybrid” type of state in promoting in a certain extent autonomous activities of such communities.
Secondly, interest in the human security in everyday life has been developed in arguments about statebuilding and peacebuilding. While the main-stream statebuilding literature has tended to focus on macro-level institution building, some of recent peacebuilding studies emphasize the importance of micro-level security, such as land and property rights, as it is directly related to the nature of state, namely statebuilding.
At the final section of the introduction, summaries of ten papers constituting this special issue are briefly presented.