“ONE” in “International Statebuilding in West Africa” | Open Indiana

INTRODUCTION

The civil wars in Liberia (1989–1996 and 1999–2003), Sierra Leone (1991–2002), and Côte d’Ivoire (2002–2007 and 2010–2011) attracted significant international attention that led to major peacemaking and statebuilding efforts by the international community. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, there were robust international humanitarian interventions and postwar reconstruction efforts, while in Côte d’Ivoire, the international community played a critical supportive role in ending the fighting and forging a still-shaky political solution to the conflict. These civil wars and the pursuant peacebuilding efforts of the international community raise important questions about the challenges of building states in Africa. They exposed not only the fragility of African states but also the impediments to developing reasonably stable, democratic, and prosperous states in Africa. The political instabilities and poor economic and social conditions in a number of African countries have led to them being portrayed as rife with violence and poverty. Many African states have been characterized as undemocratic, underdeveloped, least developed, weak, decayed, fragile, and failed.¹ Notwithstanding the problematic nature of labeling, these ascriptions do to some extent portray the political, economic, and social predicaments of many African states. The pathologies of African states are even more acute in war-torn countries, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. As one of the interview respondents in this study indicated concerning Liberia, “There is considerable dissatisfaction and suffering among the people of this country.”² Côte d’Ivoire, which was once an oasis of peace and prosperity in West Africa, has also been marred by political violence and declining economic and social conditions.

Yet civil wars are not necessarily the underlying problems of the African state; rather, they are manifestations of fundamental problems of statehood, most notably the lack of political freedom, social justice, and economic opportunity. Civil wars must be treated not only as crises to be quelled but as opportunities to rethink the state and build better policies and institutions. In the face of the devastation in war-torn Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire, scholars and policymakers should be seeking ways to transform these states from oppressive political and economic apparatuses into political systems that foster freedom, social justice, and economic development. These transformations could take the form of a fundamental break with the prewar political system or significant postwar changes in the political culture and state institutions that could serve as catalysts for democracy and economic development. Such changes could be the result of homegrown political and civic awareness born out of the wars, the deployment of international forces and humanitarian agencies, or a combination of changes in domestic political culture and the impact of international intervention. The critical issue is to understand the links between state decay and civil war on the one hand and international humanitarian intervention and statebuilding on the other. These interconnections must be traced not only to the antecedent colonial and neocolonial statebuilding projects but also to the evolving nature of the international community and humanitarianism.

Some notable cases in West Africa that demonstrate the interconnections between civil war and statebuilding include Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Since the Biafran War (1967–1970), Nigeria has engaged in numerous efforts to redesign the state in ways that take into account the country’s ethnic and regional diversity.³ The process of redesigning the Nigerian state has largely been internally driven. In contrast, the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone attracted significant international intervention in both the peace processes and postwar reconstruction efforts.⁴ In Côte d’Ivoire, too, the international community played a major role in the peace process, albeit with limited success during the first half of the Ivoirian Civil War.⁵ These three countries present illuminating cases for understanding the nexus between civil war and international statebuilding in West Africa and contributing to the wider body of literature on civil wars, international interventions, and neoliberal statebuilding.

Over the past few decades, there has been a huge increase in intrastate wars and international humanitarian-cum-military interventions, including in West Africa. Numerous works have been published on these events with a focus on peace and conflict, democracy, and international development. These bodies of work often evoke two critical questions that are important for statebuilding in war-torn postcolonial multiethnic states: What are the underlying causes of violent conflicts? And how can countries design institutions that create conditions for a peaceful and democratic state?⁶ This study taps into these questions and expands the focus. Overall, two lines of work are relevant to our study—those that address the connections between civil wars and democratic statebuilding, especially through international intervention driven by humanitarianism and regional/international security concerns, and those that examine civil wars and the challenges of peacebuilding.

The first line of work—on civil wars, statebuilding, and the building of peaceful democratic states—finds its roots in the works of scholars such as Charles Tilly.⁷ Tilly’s work on war making and state making has led to a growing interest in the relation between civil wars and the making of democratic states, notably in Europe. This interest now includes developing countries, especially through international humanitarian interventions. Reyko Huang, for example, has examined the connection between civil wars and democratizations in Nepal, Tajikistan, Uganda, and Mozambique.⁸ In Robert Blair’s study of Liberia, he examines the role of the international community in building the rule of law in postwar settings, which is critical for building a democratic state.⁹ Similar issues of liberalism are addressed by Roland Paris’s work on peacebuilding.¹⁰ Paris examined the efforts to build market democracies in numerous war-torn countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The critical issue is how to consolidate peace, and this often involves issues of economic and political liberalization along the lines of liberal peace. Paris argues that neoliberal political and economic reform packages make sense but warns that reforms are pushed much too quickly by the United Nations (UN), donors, and other international actors, potentially undermining postwar peacebuilding and leading the belligerents back into war.

Another important strand in this line of work examines the root causes of civil wars, notably in Africa. Key among these are the works that focus on corruption and authoritarianism. William Reno’s work on Sierra Leone, for example, shows how the country became ripe for civil war.¹¹ Abu Bah and Ibrahim Bangura further show how patrimonialism persisted even after the civil war.¹² Robert Bates provides a panoramic analysis of the effects of corruption across several African countries.¹³ Notably, he examines the impact of elite political behavior, as the elite increasingly lack incentives to promote the public good over the long term. This has led to high levels of corruption across a wide swath of African countries. Theft of public resources became a clear strategy to ensure the political survival of the elite, but that undermined legitimacy, the economy, and the political system as a whole. As financial security diminishes in such systems, various groups (regional, religious, ethnic, etc.) compete for scarce resources, bringing them into violent conflict with each other. Essentially, civil wars are attributed to ethnicity and oppressive and corrupt rule, as evidenced by the greed-versus-grievance thesis.¹⁴ In this line of thought, the main cause of civil wars is seen to be the absence of liberal democracy.¹⁵ However, our understanding of what appropriate institutional designs to foster thriving multiethnic democracies would look like is limited.

Other research on war-making and statebuilding focuses more on human development. For example, Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart focus on the practical domestic and international problems that impede the transformation of states plagued by war and terrorism warfare, most notably in Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, and Nepal.¹⁶ In their work, the processes by which fragile states become stable depend jointly on human security and human development and international development assistance. Ghani and Lockhart argue that peace-building efforts and the rehabilitation of failed states generally do not succeed due to the fact that there is often no comprehensive framework for coordinated action that takes on a citizen-based approach. Tanja Schümer takes up the issue of international aid and human development in Sierra Leone during the time of its civil war.¹⁷

There are also works on postwar statebuilding issues particularly focusing on the area of social justice. A notable example is Peace Medie’s work on violence against women.¹⁸ Medie examines the implementation of international norms and postwar reforms with regard to violence against women in Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. Studies focused on transitional justice and postwar reconstruction address broader issues of human development and peacebuilding. However, they are more concerned with human rights and postwar human development than addressing structural challenges to democracy and the institutional arrangement of the state. Transitional justice studies also focus on war crimes.¹⁹ To its credit, the postwar reconstruction literature has sometimes addressed institutional reforms, especially in the security sector.²⁰ A key part of the postwar reconstruction studies rests on analysis of the peace dividend associated with generous international development assistance and the promotion of good governance and human development.²¹ However, institutional reforms in the postwar reconstruction literature generally limit their focus to enhancing the implementation of current programs and effectiveness of extant institutions. The studies focus on good governance and human development without addressing core questions about the state and its institutional choices and designs.

A second critical line of work examines the challenges of peacebuilding in the context of civil wars, especially though international peacekeeping and peace mediation efforts. Some of the earlier works in this track relate to the ethics of international interventions, especially in relation to human security, state sovereignty, and the responsibility to protect (R2P). While the works tend to differ in their assessment of the motivations for and implications of international military intervention, they all address the interconnections between civil wars and security (human, state, regional, and international) and the ethical and practical dilemmas of international interventions. Neta Crawford, for example, covers the ethical dilemmas of international interventions through the frame of decolonization.²² Once international intervention is initiated, there are also a host of challenges to peacebuilding. Séverine Autesserre discusses the challenges of international intervention and why peacebuilding has failed in the Congo and elsewhere.²³ Autesserre follows up on this in Peaceland, which examines ground-level problems that impede the success of international peace builders.²⁴

There are also significant works that focus on the nature of the civil wars and the regional-cum-international interventions in West Africa.²⁵ Adekeye Adebajo’s Building Peace in West Africa provides a sobering read, underlining the reality that Africa as a continent has been increasingly marginalized in the international system.²⁶ Adebajo focuses his research on a cluster of neighboring countries (Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau) devastated by civil war. All three countries witnessed a wide variety of initiatives to help end the violence, but Adebajo argues that the various interventions of the international community (e.g., Great Britain in Sierra Leone or France in Côte d’Ivoire) have primarily been based on the security interests of the Western intervenors. Few works researching ways to maintain security in Africa explore the links between the state and the structural conditions for peace. Instead, structural factors are framed within the political economy of war discourse.²⁷

This book is about statebuilding in war-torn African countries, using Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire as case studies. Beyond shedding light on these three critical cases in West Africa, we seek to further our understanding of the problematic nature of the postcolonial state and its effects on the well-being of its people. Our work explores both the challenges and opportunities for building peaceful and democratic postcolonial states in Africa and addresses critical factors affecting the stability of states: their vulnerabilities, the roles of the international actors in the development of states, the mechanics of statebuilding, and the nature of institutional design. This study tackles an overarching question: How can a multiethnic postcolonial war-torn country be transformed into a peaceful and democratic state? This question provokes other related questions about the case countries and broader issues of international relations: What are the causes of state collapse and civil wars? How does the international community respond to state collapse and civil wars? How are the causes of the civil wars addressed? What kinds of institutional arrangements have been established to ensure durable peace and inclusive democracy? This book examines the reasons for the problematic nature of the state in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire; suggests pathways for building peaceful and democratic states; and looks at the role of the international community in statebuilding.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION

This book is based on qualitative research that combines the comparative-historical methodology with expert interviews rooted in grounded theory. At its core, the work is a comparative and historical study of civil wars, international humanitarian interventions, and statebuilding in three West African countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. The data collection and analysis followed established methodological traditions in the social sciences, most notably political science, sociology, and anthropology.²⁸ Data was collected from rich archival materials on primary documents during the fieldwork and supplemented with secondary sources from the academic literature, policy documents, and established media sources. In addition, expert interviews were conducted, and deep insights were gathered from field observations and insider knowledge of the African political experiences derived from extensive involvement with African diaspora communities and lived experiences. Such data-collection methods have deep roots in the study of political and social issues in the modern world going back to the works of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Bronislaw Malinowski, who are among the classical founders of modern social science rooted in comparative and historical study of social reality.²⁹ As Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers rightly note, “Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical patterns from two or more times or places. Part of the appeal comes from the general usefulness of looking at historical trajectories in order to study social change. Indeed, practitioners of comparative history from Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber to Marc Bloch, Reinhard Bendix, and Barrington Moore, Jr. have typically been concerned with understanding societal dynamics and epochal transformations of cultures and social structures. Attention to historical sequences is indispensable to such understanding.”³⁰ While the geographic focus and histories of the places studied vary significantly, the common methodological point here is that modern social sciences have relied heavily on observations, interviews, historical records, and comparisons to not only catalog and explain political, economic, and social realities but also to construct theories and conceptual insights into the development and trajectory of the modern state and the conditions of its citizens. As James Mahoney argued, there has been “a significant and growing literature concerning comparative-historical methods. This literature offers methodological tools for causal and descriptive inference that go beyond the techniques currently available in mainstream statistical analysis.”³¹

This method of comparative-historical research geared toward causal explanations and theory building began with the classical founders of modern social sciences and continues in groundbreaking modern works currently paving a path for social science. Pioneering works of scholars such as Moore Jr., Skocpol, Tilly, and Immanuel Wallerstein have not only expanded on the issues and geographical scope of the works of the classical theorists but also provided further insights into the collection and analysis of comparative-historical data, especially in relation to the development of political and economic systems.³² More recently, scholars such as Mahoney, Andrew Arato, Nic Cheeseman, Michael Bratton, Nicolas Van de Walle, and Bah have applied comparative and historical research methods to analysis of democracy and governance.³³ Other scholars, such as Crawford, Paris, and Mohammed Ayoob, have also used comparative and historical approaches to research peace and conflict.³⁴ While the works of these scholars have greatly contributed to theoretical and methodological developments in political science and related fields, discussion of the African experience in relation to mainstream theory has remained marginalized despite important comparative and historical works on African politics from such scholars as Ali Mazrui, Mahmood Mamdani, and Gilbert Khadiagala.³⁵ This book uses comparative-historical data from African states not only to explain core political issues in these countries but also to contribute to our theoretical knowledge of international statebuilding. We also seek to bridge some of the gaps between African case studies and theory building in comparative-historical research elsewhere, especially in the area of international relations.

A key feature of comparative-historical research is its contribution to theory. As Mahoney rightly notes, “Comparative-historical analysis has been a leading site for both the development of new concepts and the creation of new methodologies regarding the use of concepts. In terms of conceptual innovation, comparative-historical researchers have offered leading definitions for many of the most important social science concepts. An incomplete list would include authoritarianism, capitalism, corporatism, democracy, development, feudalism, ideology, informal economy, liberalism, nationalism, revolution, socialism, and the welfare state.”³⁶ This work employs comparative-historical methodology to provide insights into the complexities of war, international intervention, and statebuilding in the three case countries but also, more importantly, to contribute the theoretical and conceptual framing of peace and conflict, international intervention, and statebuilding in the context of war-torn postcolonial multiethnic countries. As such, the three countries in this work are not mere case studies; collectively, they form the basis of a comparative analysis of historically grounded data that explains the civil wars, shows patterns in the trajectory of the state, and contributes to the conceptualization of civil wars in relation to humanitarian intervention and international statebuilding.

The comparative-historical method entails thick descriptions of historical events and processes with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the context of events and identifying patterns that show causality. This requires, as Weber would argue, probing the subjective meanings associated with actions and processes through a deep and detailed documentation and analysis.³⁷ Comparative-historical research collects and presents detailed and in-depth granular data on complex events and processes, which is very important for the advancement of social science. As Charles Ragin and Lisa Amoroso note, “Many theoretical advances come from detailed, in-depth examination of cases.”³⁸ Moreover, historical events can be compared and traced across time and space to draw lessons and extrapolate hidden meanings and patterns. As with other methods in the social sciences, in comparative-historical research significant amount of data is collected and analyzed through an analytical frame to create a representation of social reality, answer research questions, and provide plausible explanations for events and historical outcomes. As Ragin and Amoroso rightly point out, “Much of the work of social science centers on debating, clarifying, and using analytical frames to represent social life. These frames make it possible for social researchers to see social phenomena in ways that enhance their relevance to social theory.”³⁹

The comparative-historical method has great value for researching historically and culturally complex phenomena that are intertwined with multiple aspects of society, such as civil wars and statebuilding. To make sense of such phenomena, which are macro in scope, the comparative-historical method requires not only detailed data but also a robust analytical frame through which data can be analyzed, leading to a plausible representation of the factors connected to the historical events. As Ragin and Amoroso note, “Researchers make sense of their evidence by constructing images of their cases from the data they have collected. In effect, an image is constructed by the investigator when he or she brings together, or synthesizes, evidence. Images often imply motives or say something about causation.”⁴⁰ Ultimately, such images are the bases of the concepts that emerge from comparative-historical research. According to Mahoney, “The close examination of cases in comparative-historical research stimulates this conceptual development. Because analysts study cases in great detail, they almost inevitably match background understandings of concepts with fine-grained evidence from their cases. After many rounds of iteration, this process can lead to new conceptual understandings and perhaps the formation of entirely new concepts.”⁴¹

With regard to the selection and use of cases in comparative-historical research, Skocpol and Somers identified three kinds of approaches: parallel comparative history, contrast-oriented comparative history, and macro-analytic comparative history. They argue that the parallel comparative-history approach is used to juxtapose case histories in order to show that “a given, explicitly delineated hypothesis or theory can repeatedly demonstrate its fruitfulness.”⁴² This approach is good for making generalities and showing that a given theory holds well, but the cases tend to be shallow, as the focus is more on controlling for variables in a way that is akin to quantitative methodology. In the contrast-oriented comparative-history approach, the juxtaposition of cases shows how a theory holds generally from case to case. In this approach, “differences among the cases are primarily contextual particularities against which to highlight the generality of the processes with which . . . theories are basically concerned.”⁴³ This approach provides details and nuances that not only speak to the general theory but also to the peculiarities of the cases in a way that is holistic. As Skocpol and Somers note, “Practitioners of Contrast-oriented comparative history stand squarely in the middle between the characteristic disciplinary concerns of social scientists and historians. These comparativists actually care about general issues that cross-cut particular times and places.”⁴⁴ The macro-analytic comparative-history approach is mainly used for the “purpose of making causal inferences about macro-level structures and processes.”⁴⁵ Its strength lies in the possibility of showing causal relations in complex macro-phenomena. While each of these approaches tends to be used distinctively, they can sometimes be combined complementarily to address the various angles of the research question. According to Skocpol and Somers, “It is important to recognize that works of comparative history sometimes combine (especially in pairs) the major logics we have reviewed.”⁴⁶

This work follows the contrast-oriented comparative history and the macro-analytic comparative-history approaches. The contrast-oriented comparative history is the primary approach used to address the core research question about how war-torn postcolonial multiethnic states transform into peaceful and democratic states. The approach allowed us to examine the effects of international intervention and the postwar statebuilding processes. We used the macro-analytic comparative-history approach to delve into the causes of the civil wars and show the connections between these wars and state decay. We used thick descriptions to show how dictatorship and poor governance led to civil war and to provide new conceptual insights into statebuilding through international humanitarian intervention.

To address the questions raised in this book, we conducted rich comparative-historical research based on established methodological practices. We used three kinds of data: archival material, secondary sources, and expert interviews. Archival materials are the primary source documents pertaining to the civil wars and postwar reconstructions, such as the peace agreements, resolutions adopted by intergovernmental bodies, and reports by government commissions and international agencies. Most of these were collected through online archives, at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the UN in New York or at the personal libraries of colleagues in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal. Until recently, historical archives were typically delicate pieces of paper kept in boxes at a physical location, where researchers spent an extensive amount of time taking notes and making photocopies when feasible. At the time of our initial data collection, this was certainly the case at the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld Library in New York. During the summer of 2005, data was collected at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library using orthodox practices established for collecting archival material. Similar practices were also used to collect archival materials in West Africa, in particular at the archives at the Sierra Leone Library in the summer of 2008.⁴⁷ Archival materials were also gathered from the personal libraries of colleagues, friends, and acquaintances in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire during the summer of 2008 and in Senegal during the summer of 2012. Archival data collection through these networks was mostly informal and based on personal or professional relations and referrals by other colleagues and friends. Most of the data collection was limited to making photocopies of original documents in their possession.

We were also able to access a lot of primary source documents through online archives. There has been a huge increase in the size and number of online archives that has resulted from both the digitalization of traditional archives and the electronic generation and storage of new documents.⁴⁸ As Bill Tally and Lauren Goldenberg observe in their study of historical thinking among students, “The growth of online archives of primary sources (such as those maintained by the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and countless universities, museums, and libraries) has made rich documentary materials widely available, and provided an extensive laboratory for teacher and curriculum development.”⁴⁹ Our research greatly benefited from the vast array of primary documents stored in online archives. In particular, we accessed primary documents through the online archives of organizations such as the UN, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, UN country offices, UN Peacekeeping, United States Institute of Peace, African Union, and European Union. We also accessed the online archives of national agencies such as government ministries, special courts, and truth and reconciliation commissions. Collectively, these online archives gave us access to original documents including peace agreements, reports of commissions, binding international resolutions, testimonies, development plans, funding programs, progress reports, and policy documents, which enabled us to gain accurate and detailed accounts of historical events and processes. We complemented these primary sources with such secondary sources as reports from civil society organizations, media reports, and academic works.

In addition, expert interviews were conducted during fieldwork in New York, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal. The fieldwork was primarily funded through grants from Northern Illinois University, the West African Research Association, and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. Fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire was central to the data collection, particularly in terms of accessing archival material, conducting expert interviews, and making general observations about statebuilding and the sentiments of the citizens about the civil wars and the postwar reconstruction process. New York and Senegal were also selected for fieldwork because of the huge presence of diplomats and international security and development experts at intergovernmental agencies and international organizations there. Respondents for the expert interviews included government officials, diplomats, international development experts, security experts, civil society and religious leaders, members of the political opposition, and academics.

In New York, fieldwork was conducted at the UN headquarters during the summer of 2005. Fourteen experts were interviewed, including African diplomats, a European diplomat, a US State Department official, and officials from various departments of the UN. In the summer of 2008, fieldwork was conducted in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire; twenty-one experts were interviewed in Sierra Leone, seventeen in Liberia, and fifteen in Côte d’Ivoire. The respondents included members of the clergy, government officials, members of opposition political parties, diplomats, staff of international agencies, leaders of civil society organizations, and academics. All of these people had firsthand knowledge of some aspects of the civil war, the peace process, and/or postwar reconstruction in their country. In the summer of 2012, fieldwork was conducted in Senegal because a lot of the international organizations operating in the region are based there, and the country has been central to the peace processes. Twenty-one people were interviewed in Senegal. The respondents included members of the Senegalese military, diplomats, and officials of international organizations. All the respondents had extensive knowledge of the interventions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and/or Côte d’Ivoire.

Respondents for the expert interviews were recruited via a snowballing technique using extant professional networks.⁵⁰ Paid research assistants were used to help with the logistics of copying archival materials and arranging meetings with respondents in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal.⁵¹ Typically, interviews lasted for about fifty minutes, were conducted in English, and took place at the offices or homes of the respondents. All interviews were recorded, and respondents were assigned a code and given a consent form and the option to keep their name confidential.⁵² None of the recordings have the names of the respondents; a log with the names, codes, contact information, and institutional affiliation of each person is maintained on a computer file. Before the start of each interview, the code assigned to the respondent was first recorded before the first question was asked. The interviews included open-ended and standard prompt questions. Follow-up questions were asked as needed. Generally, the questions related to the respondents’ professional background and involvement with certain aspects of the civil wars, the international interventions, and/or the postwar reconstruction. Respondents were also asked to share their views on core social, political, and economic problems. Before the interview date, they were sent a letter that described the research and its goal and a consent form requesting permission to record the interview and use the data for the research. Respondents’ preferences for confidentiality were recorded on the consent form. Most interviews were preceded by short informal introductory conversations between the researcher and respondent. The interviews followed best practices in the collection and preservation of data. All the interview tapes and files are securely preserved.

The research yielded an enormous amount of data that was then organized and mapped out. All the interviews were transcribed by research assistants who were graduate students at Northern Illinois University and were trained in basic research ethics as part of their studies. These assistants were given access to the computer files with the interviews but not to the log of respondents. Each transcript was identified by the code assigned to the respondents, and all transcripts are saved on the same computers with the audio recordings of the interviews. The archival materials were also organized into computer files based on country and theme.

A critical element of qualitative methods is the organization and mapping of the data in a way that shows patterns and relations among events. To accomplish this, we developed conceptual categories and rubrics.⁵³ We went through the archival material and took notes and also inserted notes and highlights on the documents. Also, we color coded the interviews based on themes. Through repeated readings, we coded the key themes, facts, and arguments that emerged. We used both deductive and inductive approaches rooted in grounded theory to map out and analyze the data.⁵⁴ By creating categories based on the literature review, we were able to discern some themes that were largely evident in both the archival material and the interviews. The inductive approach allowed us to map out events and facts that were not very apparent during the interviews but provided critical insights into the causes of the wars, nature of international interventions, and trajectories of statebuilding. We used various coding techniques, including vivo coding, descriptive coding, structural coding, and value coding.⁵⁵ This allowed us to group information and do thematic analysis and pattern coding. Moreover, we used tables and rubrics to enter summarized text and keep track of page numbers on the original sources.

The data analysis yielded very useful concepts that allowed us to theorize statebuilding processes by showing the link between state decay and the civil wars and the context and implications of the international humanitarian interventions. We developed concepts that add further theoretical and policy insights into the problems of international statebuilding in war-torn postcolonial multiethnic states. In particular, we expanded the debates on the causes of the civil wars from the notion of failed state to that of state decay and added contextual depth to the discussions on new wars and humanitarian interventions through the notion of new humanitarianism. We also developed the idea of people-centered liberalism as an emerging mode of international statebuilding. We incorporated the issues of democracy and good governance into the notion of institutional design.⁵⁶

STATEBUILDING: A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Statebuilding in Africa has been fragmented and undermined by contradicting agendas. In West Africa, the precolonial empires such as Ghana, Mali, Ashanti, Sokoto, Shongai, Oyo, Sokoto, and Futa Jallon represented the early indigenous efforts of statebuilding. They amassed vast territories, established formidable political machineries for governance, engaged in trade, and developed solid cultural institutions.⁵⁷ However, they failed to evolve into modern states, remained trapped in feudal structures, and suffered from rivalry and stagnation. Those that survived were eventually destroyed by colonialism,⁵⁸ which aborted indigenous statebuilding and initiated a new and externally driven process that was characterized by contradictory statebuilding logics. The colonial powers carved out territories, drew political boundaries, established central governments, and built some infrastructure to promote trade, forming the foundation of the states that emerged after independence.⁵⁹ These essential ingredients of statehood were developed to promote the colonial enterprise rather than to build countries that were culturally cohesive and ruled by governments that had legitimacy with the people. The key elements of statehood—defined territorial boundaries, a central government and security apparatus, and so on—were established during colonial rule. However, these states were not conceived as cohesive cultural units that could be transformed into nations. Instead of promoting nationhood, the colonial agenda undermined it. The territories continued to be amalgamations of people of diverse cultures who were pitted against one another for access to state resources. A sense of nationhood did not really emerge until the rise of the nationalist movement during the 1930s. Such movements created opportunities for forging nations within African states. However, the opportunities evaporated as indigenous political leaders started to vie for power.⁶⁰ The struggles continued after independence and frequently degenerated into political repression and dictatorships, which further undermined the state and created conditions for civil war in a wide number of cases.

The development of the state in Sierra Leone can be traced back to the establishment of the colony of Freetown in 1808 and the protectorate in 1896.⁶¹ The two territories had separate political systems until the creation of a single legislature in 1948 under the Stevenson Constitution.⁶² Since the end of colonial rule in 1961, the country’s key challenges have been to transform colonial institutional structures into political and economic institutions suitable for a modern African state and foster a nation. The cultivation of a national identity has largely been tied to the nationalist movement and struggle to build the state.⁶³ However, this nascent identity has been superficial and fragmented.⁶⁴ The earlier part of Sierra Leone’s identity and nationalism were interwoven with those of other British West African territories, most notably through the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBW).⁶⁵ The relatively decentralized nature of the British colonial administration and the decline of the NCBW provided the people of Sierra Leone the opportunity to develop their own nationalist movement, led mainly by Isaac Wallace-John and Milton Margai.⁶⁶ These leaders had a common goal of ending British rule and building an independent state but differed in their political interests and visions for the country. The development of a common national identity was hampered by the bifurcated political structure of colony and protectorate and the wider ethnic and regional divisions in the country. The colony, inhabited mainly by the Creoles, maintained a separate political system from the protectorate, which was inhabited by a variety of indigenous ethnic groups.⁶⁷ By 1961, there were intense divisions and power struggles among the various groups. While independence marked the establishment of a sovereign state, there was very little sense of nationhood. The politics of ethnicity and regionalism that followed led to violence and dictatorship, which further undermined a sense of unity and the chances of transforming the state into a nation. By 1990, political oppression and bad governance had made the country ripe for a civil war.⁶⁸

In Côte d’Ivoire, the development of an independent state and national identity was limited by the French colonial policies of assimilation and association.⁶⁹ In principle, Côte d’Ivoire was simply an extension of the French state and nation until independence in 1960.⁷⁰ Côte d’Ivoire became a French colony in 1893. From 1904 to 1958, it was part of the French Federation of West Africa, which was comprised of eight colonies in the region. Within the wider colonial frame, Côte d’Ivoire was part of the French Union established in 1946. When the union collapsed in 1958, Côte d’Ivoire opted for membership in the French Community instead of becoming an independent country as Guinea had.⁷¹ The centralized nature of French colonial rule made the Ivoirian state and national identity deeply intertwined with those of other French colonies in the region. This was reflected in the colonial administrative structure and the pan-African nationalism championed by the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (African Democratic Rally, or RDA).⁷² The RDA was established by Félix Houphouët-Boigny and leaders across the French Federation of West Africa who met in Bamako in 1946.⁷³ Côte d’Ivoire’s first major step in carving out an independent national identity could be traced back to Houphouët-Boigny’s break from the pan-Africanist vision of the RDA in 1958.⁷⁴ As the country moved away from pan-Africanism, it increasingly allied itself with France, which hindered the formation of a truly indigenous national identity.⁷⁵ Moreover, Côte d’Ivoire’s subordinate status within the colonial administrative structure and position as a key base of French economic interest weakened the possibilities for an autonomous national identity. However, as a result, Côte d’Ivoire attracted not only French capital but also workers from neighboring French colonies who assumed Ivoirian citizenship.⁷⁶

Côte d’Ivoire’s colonial legacies had mixed effects on the development of the state. While technically it was just a subunit of the French Federation of West Africa, it had its own political boundaries, bureaucracy, internal politics, and economic infrastructure, which are key elements of a state.⁷⁷ When it became independent in 1960, it had all the institutional trappings of postcolonial states. In fact, its relative economic development made Ivoirian state institutions more efficient as compared to other countries in the regions.⁷⁸ Its strong political and economic ties with France helped the country develop relatively efficient state institutions. However, the Ivoirian state as a whole remained trapped in the vestiges of the political, economic, and social structures of colonial rule. This problem came to light shortly after the death of Houphouët-Boigny, when Ivoirian nationality became politicized.⁷⁹ The conflict over citizenship exposed the deep penetration of the Ivoirian economy, politics, and culture by people from the former French colonial empire. The attempt to distinguish Ivoirians who claimed autochthony from other Ivoirians whose ancestors came from neighboring parts of the former French colonial empire and deny the latter full citizenship resulted in a civil war that exposed the fragility of the state.⁸⁰ The conflict in Côte d’Ivoire “raised so many questions . . . of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, tribalism . . . and these things . . . worked as a means to break social cohesion” in the country, undermining national unity and leading to the outbreak of civil war.⁸¹

The Liberian state had a slightly different colonial path but faced similar predicaments of statebuilding as other countries in the region.⁸² Unlike Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia was not formally colonized by Western powers. The country was founded in the early 1820s as a home for emancipated Blacks in America, who became known as Americo-Liberians.⁸³ Despite this aura of freedom, Liberia developed its own pedigree of colonialism. Internally, the settler Americo-Liberians exercised a form of political and economic hegemony over the natives that was reminiscent of the subordination of the native Africans by European colonizers.⁸⁴ Externally, Liberia depended heavily on the United States and maintained a virtual neocolonial relation despite its status as an independent country.⁸⁵ These two forms of quasicolonialism became the hallmark of the Liberian state and posed major impediments to building a stable and integrated nation. As one Islamic scholar and community leader in Liberia noted: “If you look at [Liberia], if you go deeply into the history of Liberia; particularly the birth of Liberia was built on the foundation of suspicions and mistrusts. . . . The pioneers, the American Liberians, the free slaves felt in America that they were sold by their people in Africa and taken into slavery. When they came to Liberia. . . . But at the same time, they tried to convince our people to accept then that they are now coming back to their homes.”⁸⁶

Liberia was ruled by the minority Americo-Liberians until 1980. In the late 1870s, they established the True Whig Party (TWP), which became the de facto sole party until 1980. The majority of people belonging to the sixteen major native ethnic groups occupied a subordinate political and economic position.⁸⁷ The natives, commonly referred to as “up-country” people, resented this.⁸⁸ Under the TWP, the Liberian state marginalized the natives and increasingly became authoritarian, despite claiming to embrace democracy. The Americo-Liberian hegemony over the state ended with the bloody April 12, 1980, coup led by Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe, who belonged to the Krahn ethnic group. Like other countries in the region, Liberia had a defined territory, state bureaucracy, and security apparatus; however, it, too, failed to foster a cohesive nation. The marginalization of the natives undermined the legitimacy of the state and created a bifurcated society. Dictatorship and ethnic oppression worsened under the Doe regime, creating conditions for the civil war.

Despite their distinct colonial experiences, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire had similar issues with statebuilding. In all three cases, the state was an alien political and economic structure that was imposed on the natives. They adopted models of Western state institutions but failed to foster the common national identity needed to transform a state into a nation. All three countries fell into the thorny path of dictatorship, which undermined the legitimacy of the state and intensified ethnic and regional animosities. In the case of Sierra Leone and Liberia, dictatorship led to colossal forms of bad governance and economic retardation that rendered many state institutions dysfunctional. The political and economic failures of these states were exacerbated by bloody civil wars that brought them to near collapse.⁸⁹ Though Côte d’Ivoire did not suffer from significant economic retardation and dysfunctional state institutions, the development of the state has been hampered by the north-south divide and excessive dependence on foreign capital and labor. The political tolerance for foreign input into the economic development of Côte d’Ivoire, which Houphouët-Boigny skillfully nurtured, ruptured after his death in 1993. The chaos that ensued led to significant economic decline, political violence, and civil war. The origins of the war can be traced back to years before the outbreak of violence, as an interview respondent indicated: The war “started . . . when the former president [Houphouët-Boigny] died.”⁹⁰ Accordingly, some have argued that “the first president did not really prepare his . . . people successfully . . . before . . . he died in 1993.”⁹¹

STATEBUILDING AND CIVIL WAR: SIERRA LEONE, LIBERIA, AND CÔTE D’IVOIRE

Since the outbreak of the civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire, there has been significant international intervention in all three countries that is critical to the future development of the state. In Liberia, “the international community was very instrumental in . . . peace, bringing an end to the war, restoring some stability.”⁹² Furthermore, specifically in regard to Sierra Leone, another person interviewed for this study simply argued that “the participation of the international community during the war is quite interesting. Their pressure ended the war.”⁹³ In Liberia and Sierra Leone, the dire security and humanitarian conditions led to massive international interventions to restore order and ameliorate the humanitarian condition.⁹⁴

Furthermore, the international community has been deeply involved in postwar reconstruction aimed at restoring state capacity and laying the foundation for democracy and economic development.⁹⁵ These interventions have been largely viewed as necessary in order to restore security in the region and fulfill the moral obligations of the international community to the peoples of these countries. Since intervening in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the international community has been involved in statebuilding. In many instances, the international intervention forces and aid agencies provided critical services on behalf of the state. In contrast, Côte d’Ivoire points to both the possibilities for and limitations of international statebuilding. During the first civil war, the external intervention in Côte d’Ivoire was largely limited to securing the buffer zone, mediating a political solution to the conflict, and supporting the implementation of the peace agreements. International intervention was viewed with some skepticism, and its results have been at best mixed.⁹⁶ The international community repeatedly failed to properly address the underlying cause of the conflict in the peace process. Ivoirians eventually sidestepped the international community and negotiated a fairly successful peace agreement. The minimal nature of the intervention in Côte d’Ivoire is largely due to the fact that the civil war was contained; additionally, the state was functional in the south, while in the north, the rebels established a fairly stable administration. Even during the second Ivoirian intervention, international involvement was largely limited to providing military support to the rebel forces to capture President Laurent Gbagbo. International intervention in Côte d’Ivoire assumed a different form of statebuilding role, which has been limited to creating an environment for Ivoirians to address the fundamental citizenship issue and to ousting Gbagbo after his refusal to accept the UN-certified election result. Economically, statebuilding in prewar-Côte d’Ivoire benefited from foreign capital. The critical issue in postwar Côte d’Ivoire was whether the international community would inject capital to promote the economic development and consolidate peace or support a truly inclusive democratic process. The country presents real opportunities for pursuing an investment approach, rather than an aid-driven approach, to international statebuilding in Africa.

STATES AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL STATEBUILDING?

The notion of international statebuilding raises conceptual and policy questions about modern states and humanitarian interventions. The modern state has a defined territory, often referred to as a country, with a sovereign authority that exercises control within its territorial boundaries. Membership in the state is based on citizenship. The critical features of a state are its territorial boundaries, bureaucratic and security apparatuses for exercising authority, sense of citizenship and national identity, and relationship with other states in the international system.⁹⁷ The modern state is both a political space and a fluidly defined social and economic space and typically emerges out of the remnant of old empires or through colonial conquests.⁹⁸ States born out of empires such as France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, and Japan have often emerged as national states.⁹⁹ The vast majority are the products of colonial encounters. Some of the most notable examples are the countries in the Western Hemisphere, including the United States. In Asia, too, countries such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia are products of colonialism. With the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, all the countries in Africa are the direct product of colonialism.¹⁰⁰ Colonialism laid the critical first step in the establishment of modern African states by defining their external boundaries and imposing some form of sovereign authority over the territories and their inhabitants. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 was a critical moment in the establishment of modern states in Africa; the whole continent was carved into distinct colonial territories that later became independent states.

As Weber noted, modern states have a distinct bureaucratic form of exercising control over their territory and people. They are characterized by a political apparatus that claims the legitimate and exclusive right to make and enforce laws and to use force to maintain order within the boundaries of the state. This political apparatus is built around a government that controls the state’s administrative and security institutions.¹⁰¹ The critical element of the claim to authority is the basis of legitimacy, which may emanate from tradition, democracy, popular sentiments, or the application of force. States that rely exclusively on force tend to lack legitimacy and be inherently unstable. The specific form of authority over a state ranges from democracy, where the mandate of the government is derived from free and fair multiparty elections, to various forms of nondemocratic rule, such as aristocratic, colonial, one-party, military, and sultanistic regimes.¹⁰² African states have mostly experienced nondemocratic forms of rule. The colonial regimes exercised virtual control without a mandate from the people. In most cases, the application of force and divide-and-rule stratagems were used. Around the period of independence, African states experimented with multiparty democracy, but this did not last for long; nearly all of them fell into the destructive path of one-party or military dictatorship, which undermined legitimacy, ruined the economy, and created the conditions for civil war.¹⁰³ During the 1990s, most African countries began reverting back to multiparty democracy. Democracy has been viewed as the best chance for promoting good governance and economic development, two critical elements of statebuilding.¹⁰⁴ While there has been major progress on this front, there are some disturbing trends in antidemocratic practices, including the improper prolongation of the presidential mandate.

States are not just defined by bare territories but, more importantly, by the people who inhabit them. In this sense, the modern state is a community of citizens who share some sentimental and cultural affinity and bear membership rights and obligations in a specific country. States define citizenship criteria and the corresponding rights and obligations of citizenship,¹⁰⁵ and this definition delineates members of the state from nonmembers. Furthermore, states often try to foster a common national identity and culture among the people who live there.¹⁰⁶ While citizenship is largely based on legal membership in the state, the nation evolves out of subjective and objective ties to the state embedded in such factors as shared culture, history, values, and political destiny.¹⁰⁷ Developing a sense of citizenship and nationhood is one of the most critical challenges for the establishment of a modern state. Citizenship can be complicated by contestations over civil, political, and economic rights often resulting from the acquisition of new territories or mass movement of people into a state.¹⁰⁸ Contested citizenship claims by a substantial category of people can result in oppression and violence.¹⁰⁹ The problem of nationhood lies in its fluidity and the inevitable diversity of people. While a state without some form of shared identity and culture among its people is difficult to maintain, in reality, modern states are comprised of people with diverse cultures, histories, values, and identities. Thus, modern state crafting tends to be a delicate balance between accepting diversity and promoting the necessary common culture to sustain the state. The suppression of cultural rights and ambitious homogenization projects, which in worst cases result in genocide, can destabilize the state. The modern state needs to foster a nation, but it need not be a monocultural nation. In fact, modern states are pluralistic nations with diverse cultures, ethnic groups, and religions.¹¹⁰ African states are emblems of pluralistic nations characterized by a high degree of ethnic diversity.¹¹¹ Sierra Leone and Liberia each have sixteen ethnic groups. Côte d’Ivoire is divided into five major cultural groups, which are further divided into more than sixty ethnic groups. No single ethnic group is a majority in any of these countries. In many cases, members of the same ethnic groups are spread across two or more neighboring countries. This fragmentation of African states and cultural groups is a result of the artificial political boundaries imposed on the continent by the colonial powers. Since the imposition of these boundaries by the colonizers, the citizens of African states have been learning to live in a multiethnic postcolonial state.

Ethnic diversity has been at times a key source of political turmoil in Africa.¹¹² In Sierra Leone and Liberia, ethnic politics led to the dictatorships that ruined the states and sparked civil wars.¹¹³ In Côte d’Ivoire, the civil war was a direct result of ethnic political marginalization and contested citizenship claims.¹¹⁴ So far, ethnic diversity has been an impediment to the development of the state in all three countries examined here. However, there is a growing awareness about the common history and shared political destiny among the various ethnic groups in these countries. By recognizing the disastrous effects of ethnic politics, these countries have an opportunity to build better institutions to promote ethnic political harmony. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, the peace process eventually centered on building mechanisms to resolve the citizenship dispute and promote political inclusion. In Sierra Leone, too, there was an effort to move away from the ethnic politics that marred the country during the 1960s, but that effort has not been successful so far.

While all modern states are sovereign, they are part of an international system that has critical effects on their development. This international system is a complex legal and institutional arrangement that facilitates and regulates relations among sovereign states, most notably in the areas of security, governance, trade, and the natural environment.¹¹⁵ The international system, which has now grown to encompass nearly all aspects of modern life, is driven by powerful countries and institutions that have the most access to capital, weapons, and technology and a vested interest in international security largely under the banner of global liberal governance.¹¹⁶ It is shaped by capitalism and the forces of globalization, while its excesses are challenged by a patchwork of international laws, humanitarian morality, and civic activism—and, more recently, the emergence of diabolical nationalism in Western countries.¹¹⁷ One of the most critical aspects of the international system is the issue of sovereignty. States often concede some elements of their exclusive authority to make and enforce laws when they enter into international agreements. The international system has disproportionate impacts on developing countries that are less capable of asserting their sovereignty and interests. As Wallerstein observed, modern states vary according to their position within the international system. The capacity of the state to develop itself and assert meaningful sovereignty is contingent on its location within the global political and economic structure.¹¹⁸ States with powerful militaries and economies, such as the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India and the major West European countries, are at the core of this system. In contrast, postcolonial states with poor economies and histories of dictatorships are at the margins of the international system.¹¹⁹ States shift positions as their economies and political alliances adapt to the ever-changing world order. Countries such as Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa have emerged as significant players in the international system and major regional power brokers. Poor developing countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire occupy a subordinate role in the world capitalist economy and a dependent relationship with the powerful countries and Western-backed financial and political institutions.¹²⁰ This dependency, which began in earnest during colonial rule, has taken a variety of economic and political forms during the past century. Sierra Leone, for example, moved from being a colony to a raw material–exporting state and sponge in the ideological warfare between the West and East. Since the civil war, Sierra Leone has become a donor-driven state and a virtual UN experiment in international statebuilding.¹²¹

One critical aspect of the evolution of the international system is the security and moral interconnectedness of states.¹²² Any significant breakdown in law and order, such as a civil war, becomes not only a political, economic, and social problem for the state but also a security and moral challenge for the international community. When such wars break out, those with strong interests in the affected country intervene to stop the fighting and find a peaceful solution. The extent of intervention varies from simple diplomacy and conflict mediation to the deployment of a peacekeeping force and, in exceptional cases, intervention forces with a strong UN Chapter VII mandate.¹²³ The security interests of other countries and the moral obligation to ordinary people have led to serious debates about the limits of sovereignty and the right to intervene.¹²⁴ Sierra Leone and Liberia clearly exemplify the kinds of security and humanitarian conditions that evoked robust international interventions even without the consent of the government or other parties vying to rule the state. In Côte d’Ivoire, the international intervention took a minimal form that was largely limited to peace mediation and monitoring the buffer zone and later to efforts to simply capture Gbagbo after he refused to accept the UN-certified election result.

In the scholarly and policy discourses, states are categorized based on such factors as their genesis, cultural composition, economic development, political system, and level of security and control. States that emerged out of empires, typically in Europe, have been characterized as old states. Most of them were industrialized by the end of the nineteenth century.¹²⁵ Conversely, the states that emerged out of colonial rule in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries are referred to as new states; they are mostly in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. New states have also emerged in Eurasia after the fall of the Soviet Union; they are typically referred to as postcolonial states.¹²⁶ States have also been characterized according to their level of cultural diversity. Those with significant ethnic or religious minority groups are referred to as multicultural states, while those with a relatively homogenous culture tend to be characterized as monocultural states.¹²⁷ However, homogeneity is not a stable factor in the life of a state. Truly monocultural states have rarely existed, and if they do emerge, they are difficult to sustain.¹²⁸ In reality, most states only aspire to create a nation out of their diverse people. States that succeeded in creating a relatively high degree of common national identity are characterized as national states, while those that remain fragmented along ethnic or religious lines tend to be multiethnic states.¹²⁹

Apart from their historical and cultural peculiarities, states are most significantly classified according to their level of economic development, political system, and level of stability. Traditionally, industrialized countries have been labeled developed countries, while poor countries with economies that are mostly based on agriculture and the extraction of raw materials have been referred to as underdeveloped countries. This categorization has been refined to consider global economic changes, especially since the fall of communism. The UN, for example, uses four classifications: developed economies, economies in transition, developing economies, and least developed countries.¹³⁰ The World Bank has classified states, according to their Gross National Income per capita, into high-income ($12,196 or more), upper-middle-income ($3,946–$12,195), lower-middle-income ($996–$3,945), and low-income ($995 or less) economies.¹³¹ Most African states fall into the last two categories of the UN and World Bank classifications. Too often, they are at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index.¹³²

Politically, states are classified as either democratic or nondemocratic. States that meet the minimum standards for regular free and fair multiparty elections and guarantee core democratic values, such as rule of law, freedom of expression, and civil liberties, are considered democracies. Nondemocratic states include those with authoritarian, totalitarian, post-totalitarian, and sultanist regimes.¹³³ After the end of the Cold War, there was a growing trend toward democratization, including among African countries that were mostly military or one-party regimes. Unstable and undemocratic states are often categorized based on the extent of fragility of the states and their ability to deliver political and social goods. Typically, they have been classified as weak, fragile, failed, or collapsed states.¹³⁴ While failed and collapsed states are those that lack any credible authority capable of ruling, weak states are characterized by governments that are ineffective and unable to deliver positive political and social goods.¹³⁵ According to Robert I. Rotberg, “Weak states include a broad continuum of states that are: inherently weak because of geographical, physical, or fundamental economic constraints; basically strong, but temporarily or situationally weak because of internal antagonisms, management flaws, greed, despotism, or external attacks; and a mixture of the two.”¹³⁶ The most problematic states are failed and collapsed states. Jean-Germain Gros defined failed states as those in which “public authorities are either unable or unwilling to carry out their end of what Hobbes long ago called the social contract, but which now includes more than maintaining the peace among society’s many factions and interests.”¹³⁷ Similarly, Zartman defined state collapse as “the situation where the structure, authority (legitimate power), law, and political order have fallen apart and must be reconstituted in some form, old or new.”¹³⁸ In essence, a “collapsed state is a rare and extreme version of a failed state.”¹³⁹ State failure often results from chronic conditions of state decay.¹⁴⁰ Africa has a disproportionate number of weak, failed, and collapsed states.¹⁴¹ According to the 2010 Failed States Index, for example, more than half of the forty states classified in the critical or danger categories were in Africa; in fact, no African country was in the stable category.¹⁴² Though the index seemed a bit apocalyptic, it pointed to the comparative disadvantage of African states as measured by the critical political, economic, and social indicators of stability.¹⁴³

Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire were classified as failed states. According to Rotberg, Sierra Leone and Liberia were failed states for most of the civil war period. At the height of the civil wars, they teetered into the category of collapsed before recovering and moving back into the failed state status.¹⁴⁴ Rotberg characterized Côte d’Ivoire as a failing state: “Côte d’Ivoire slid rapidly in late 2002 from weakness to the edge of failure” and “could easily join neighboring Liberia in full failure in 2003 or 2004.”¹⁴⁵ While Sierra Leone and Liberia became classic failed states, Côte d’Ivoire became a peculiar kind of failed state. After the end of the civil wars in Sierra Leone (2002) and Liberia (2003) and the signing of the 2007 Ouagadougou Accord in Côte d’Ivoire, all three countries significantly recovered. In the Failed States Index, for example, Sierra Leone and Liberia respectively moved from sixth and ninth place in 2005 to twenty-ninth and thirty-third in 2010. Most significantly, they moved from the critical to the “in danger” category. Côte d’Ivoire moved from third place in 2006 to twelfth in 2010. However, the country remained in the critical category, as the peace agreement had not been fully implemented.

In his seminal work on the American state, Stephen Skowronek argues that “statebuilding is most basically an exercise in reconstructing an already established organization of state power.”¹⁴⁶ Similarly, Fukuyama observes that the core of statebuilding is the creation of a government that has a monopoly of legitimate power and is capable of enforcing rules throughout the territory.¹⁴⁷ However, this Weberian approach leaves out the economic and social problems that undermine states. In developing countries, statebuilding, which is sometimes referred to as nation building, also entails developing the infrastructure for economic and social development.¹⁴⁸ In this sense, statebuilding is the process of governing a state in a way that makes it a viable political and economic entity within the international system. This entails establishing a legitimate political system, maintaining the rule of law, and developing an economy that creates opportunities for economic and social well-being among a vast majority of the people. Similarly, Ghani and Lockhart identified ten key functions that states must fulfill, including security, administrative, financial, managerial, and a variety of public policy duties.¹⁴⁹ Statebuilding is a never-ending process, since both legitimacy and well-being are unstable and virtually insatiable elements of life that are contingent on the real political and economic conditions of a state. However, statebuilding can be deemed a success or a failure depending on the extent to which the state has attained the critical internationally recognized standards of stability, political freedom, economic development, and social well-being. Too often, these include the establishment of a democracy, some level of industrialization, a fairly modern infrastructure, and access to basic social services such as health care, education, proper housing, and clean drinking water. Yet, in the case of international statebuilding, what is also needed is a lasting commitment on the part of the international community. As one international development expert in Liberia noted, “These benchmarks cut across the big issues of security, peace, and then of course the state . . . reconstruction, which is utterly the mandate of . . . the UN mission, but it is more importantly . . . a longer term engagement.”¹⁵⁰ Essentially, statebuilding is measured by the extent to which citizens enjoy civil, political, social, and economic rights.¹⁵¹ While the notions of civil and political rights are universally accepted, economic and social rights still remain ambiguous and contested by proponents of neoliberal and welfare state models. Statebuilding does not mean that citizens have the right to a set of economic and social privileges that the government must provide them for free; rather, statebuilding assumes that the state will create the conditions to provide affordable essential services and ensure the social and economic well-being of its citizens or foster an economy in which the vast majority of citizens have a realistic chance of securing their own economic and social well-being. The success of statebuilding in Africa can be best gauged by the political, economic, and social indicators used by the UN to measure development, especially among developing countries. These indicators were embodied in the UN Millennium Development Goals and the subsequent Sustainable Development Goals.¹⁵² Given the fact that African countries fall at the bottom end of the UN Human Development Index and are classified as either the least developed counties or developing countries, statebuilding in Africa is essentially the political and economic process of realizing key development goals, which are shared by the UN and African organizations (e.g., African Union [AU], Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS], and New Partnership for Africa’s Development [NEPAD]).

Statebuilding is not a new venture in Africa. It began in earnest at the dawn of independence.¹⁵³ African nationalist leaders repeatedly pointed to the political and economic oppression of colonial rule and promised to liberate their people and create better conditions.¹⁵⁴ They set goals to enhance education, build infrastructure, provide health care, and generally improve the living conditions of their citizens. One of the first challenges of statebuilding in postcolonial Africa was establishing a legitimate political system that would maintain order and promote economic and social development. The nascent democracies were soon deemed unsuitable for achieving Africa’s development goals. They were seen as the sources of political chaos and unnecessary impediments to progress. Nearly all African countries abandoned multiparty democracy and fell into military or one-party rule.¹⁵⁵

By the late 1980s, one-party and military dictatorships had proved to be far more detrimental to economic development and the very stability of the state. African countries were forced to abandon these dictatorships and adopt democratic and neoliberal economic reforms. Some countries made significant progress, while many others took modest steps toward democracy and more open economies.¹⁵⁶ The net result was the end of one-party regimes and a reduction in the number of military regimes. In most cases, the democratization exercise led to significant political improvements. Some of the most notable examples include Benin, Ghana, Mozambique, and South Africa. However, the consolidation of democracy remains a problem.¹⁵⁷ Democratization has also exposed the vulnerability of the state in Africa. In some countries, democratization turned into political violence, which led to the breakdown of law and order and civil wars.¹⁵⁸ While democracy in and of itself is not the problem, there are serious questions about its feasibility and the conditions it requires to achieve stability in African states. In Nigeria, for example, manipulation of the democratization process by the power elite and ethnic grievances led to nearly a decade of political violence that brought the state to a virtual collapse. In countries such as Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, the failure to undertake meaningful democratic reforms perpetuated dictatorship and rendered the state highly vulnerable to civil war. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, manipulation of the democratic process and the preexisting political and economic grievances led to civil wars. The democratic transitions there not only failed, they led to the near collapse of these states, creating serious humanitarian and security challenges for the international community. The civil wars exposed the failure of statebuilding and ruined the scanty infrastructure that was available. In West Africa, the damage was most acute in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the crises led to significant international humanitarian interventions aimed at restoring security and putting the countries on the path to democracy and economic recovery.

Humanitarian intervention has become a critical element of statebuilding in failed and collapsed states.¹⁵⁹ In Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia are exemplary cases of robust humanitarian interventions by the international community to restore order and state capacity, ameliorate grave human suffering, and lay the foundation for democracy and economic development. The international community has also made important efforts to restore peace and improve living conditions in other African countries plagued by civil wars such as Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, South Sudan, and Somalia. Humanitarian intervention is the use of coercion, including military force, by states on another sovereign state in order to prevent or ameliorate the catastrophic human suffering and widespread violence associated with gross violations of human rights by the state or violent nonstate actors.¹⁶⁰ It is undertaken on the basis of UN authorization or the decisions of coalitions representing regional organizations or concerned states. Some of the critical activities include imposing sanctions on the perpetrators of violence, protecting civilians, negotiating and implementing cease-fire and peace agreements, disarming combatants, and postwar reconstruction.¹⁶¹ In cases where the underlying cause of the turmoil is limited and clearly attributable to a rogue ruler or organization, the intervention tends to be limited in scope and duration. However, in cases where the humanitarian tragedy is the result of a fundamental breakdown in state institutions and the eruption of civil war, which is often the case in failed or collapsed states, international intervention can be profound and prolonged, given sufficient interest and goodwill. In these cases, humanitarian intervention often evolves into statebuilding, which becomes unavoidable because of the incapacity of the state to carry out normal functions and the fact that state decay is often the major cause of the security and humanitarian tragedy. Typically, resolution of the conflict becomes contingent on the ability of the international community to help establish a legitimate and stable government and improve the living conditions of the people, which is essentially statebuilding.

Humanitarian intervention has raised serious concerns about violations of sovereignty, major power domination, and double standards in the application of international norms and laws.¹⁶² However, recent debates have juxtaposed state sovereignty with popular sovereignty and delineated state security from human security.¹⁶³ The new notion of sovereignty now encompasses the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens and the right of the citizens to receive protection from the international community, if their state is unable to prevent grave human suffering and widespread violence. This notion led to new humanitarianism, which departed from orthodox neutrality and the minimalist approach to humanitarian intervention.¹⁶⁴ New humanitarianism openly defends human rights and democracy, differentiates victims from victimizers, and advocates comprehensive peacebuilding approaches that address the root causes of civil wars.¹⁶⁵ According to the International Commissions on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) “The responsibility to protect implies the responsibility not just to prevent and react, but to follow through and rebuild. This means that if military intervention action is taken . . . there should be a genuine commitment to helping to build a durable peace, and promoting good governance and sustainable development.”¹⁶⁶ Similarly, the Humanitarian Policy Group observed: “International expectations of the role of humanitarian action have evolved. No longer seen as simply a palliative for the worst excesses of man and for the impact of natural hazards, many see humanitarian action as part of a wider agenda of conflict management and development.”¹⁶⁷ New humanitarianism dovetails neatly with the international statebuilding efforts associated with humanitarian interventions.

In his study of international administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Richard Caplan distinguished indigenous statebuilding from third-party statebuilding. Caplan’s notion of third-party statebuilding includes not only the international administration of war-torn territories but also the US-led Allied reconstruction of Germany and Japan and colonial regimes on the verge of withdrawal.¹⁶⁸ International statebuilding is a form of third-party statebuilding; unlike colonial statebuilding, it is rooted in new humanitarianism and collective security. International statebuilding is the active and sustained involvement of the international community in comprehensive peacebuilding and the reconstruction of a war-torn country in a way that is geared toward establishing a stable and democratic state that will not undermine regional or international security.¹⁶⁹ It is often spearheaded by the UN and international development agencies with the active support of at least one major world power with vested security, political, economic, or moral interests in the affected country. International statebuilding is different from orthodox peacekeeping or aid regimes precisely because the former relates to war-torn countries and entails significant short- and long-term development projects aimed at combating the root causes of violence.

Though international statebuilding does not occur too often and its success is often uncertain, it has been a critical strategy for maintaining international and regional security.¹⁷⁰ Following World War II, the United States and its allies committed to rebuilding Germany and Japan as a way to maintain international security. Both countries later became prosperous democratic states that have maintained a pacifist policy. Most recently, the United States was engaged in statebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of its strategy to combat terrorism.¹⁷¹ The statebuilding mishaps of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan underscore the security risks of failed states and the moral imperatives of international statebuilding. In Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire are illuminating cases of international statebuilding. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia were failed states in which the international humanitarian intervention evolved into statebuilding. Unlike many other cases in Africa, these countries attracted enormous international interest and goodwill.¹⁷² Sierra Leone, in particular, became a virtual UN experiment in statebuilding in Africa.¹⁷³ In Sierra Leone and Liberia, the international interventions have been credited with restoring the state and promoting democracy and development. Côte d’Ivoire did not degenerate into a collapsed state, but it faced formidable security, political, economic, and social challenges that attracted significant international intervention.¹⁷⁴ The real challenge for the intervention there was to preempt state collapse and lay the foundation of peace and democracy.¹⁷⁵ However, this could not be achieved without reworking the state, which has been undermined by the conflict over citizenship and efforts to monopolize power. International statebuilding in Côte d’Ivoire had a much more political angle aimed at building a peaceful, inclusive, and democratic state. The country’s economic and social conditions, which worsened during the war, also provided room for a financial angle to statebuilding. Though the intervention in Côte d’Ivoire did not entail major postwar reconstruction on the scales of Sierra Leone or Liberia, the Ivoirian state was shielded from complete failure, thanks to improvements to the economy and social services. Because of its relatively developed infrastructure, significant investment in Côte d’Ivoire had the potential to provide an alternative to the typical aid-driven approach to statebuilding in Africa. The exceptional experiences of these three countries serve as critical lessons for understanding the potentials and limitations of international statebuilding in war-torn countries. Yet, a question remains: Where were these countries’ neighbors and other members of the international community?

On this point, it is important to clarify the situation and point out the rather limited agency of African regional and subregional organizations as intervenors. Although clearly present in Liberia and Sierra Leone throughout most of the conflicts in the form of ECOWAS Monitoring Groups better known as ECOMOG, they lacked the ability to impose a definitive solution to the fighting in either of the countries. Nonetheless, as with other external actors, they, too, were unable to stop the internal conflicts there. Additionally, it is important not to provide a simple one-sided story of international intervention that places all of the blame on the internal or domestic problems of the affected states.

SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION

This book is about the nature and prospects of the postcolonial state in Africa through the lens of three war-torn countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. It focuses on states that were failing and losing the capacity to maintain themselves and had become threats to regional security. In these countries, international statebuilding became the most probable path for restoring order and developing the state. The study does not seek to negate the importance of indigenous statebuilding and domestic ownership of political and economic processes.¹⁷⁶ As Jens Meierhenrich rightly noted, a truly unstable state can be erected only from the inside.¹⁷⁷ However, international efforts at renewal may play an important role in facilitating statebuilding from within. This study simply asserts the external dimension of statebuilding in Africa. It examines the conditions that led to state failure and the subsequent international efforts to rebuild. Such an endeavor has the risk of devolving into a grandiose discourse of the political, economic, and social problems of African states—indeed, the state cannot be devoid of such issues. However, this study is premised on the notion that a holistic understanding of these problems requires a discourse on the state. As both an actor and object of action, the state is at the core of the problems. Thus, a discourse on the states becomes a necessary step toward a holistic understanding of the issues African countries face.

The myriad problems of African states have featured prominently in the peace-building, security, democracy, and development literatures,¹⁷⁸ but the state itself has hardly been studied. The studies that do exist mostly focus on the dysfunctions of political institutions, resources distribution, ethnic conflicts, bad governance, and civil wars.¹⁷⁹ The inadequate conceptualization and analysis of the state have not only hampered a holistic discourse of the conditions in Africa but also made it difficult to gauge the future direction of African countries. This problem is best exemplified by the tragedy of Côte d’Ivoire, which was once a beacon of peace and prosperity in the region. This study seeks to put the state at the center of Africa’s problems and bridge the isolated discourses on security, democracy, and development. By focusing on the state, the study provides a frame for examining the conditions that have led to civil wars and the efforts to change these conditions. We argue that the state is both the embodiment of the pathologies in African countries and the vehicle for their development. Moreover, the state is an actor and object of action. It has often acted as an oppressive political force, a predatory regime, and a patronage system. At the same time, domestic and external stakeholders use the state as a tool to realize their objectives—malevolent or benevolent. A critical question emerges: How can the state be transformed from an inefficient, predatory, and oppressive force into an instrument of political freedom and economic and social development? Mamdani’s seminal work captured both the oppressive character of the African state and its potential as a vehicle for emancipation.¹⁸⁰ However, his discourse of the state is largely in the realm of politics and centers on the struggle for citizenship and control of the state and the legacies of late colonialism. The modern state is not only a political and cultural space but also an economic space that shapes the material well-being of its citizens. The problems of the African state have shifted a bit from foreign rule to domestic political oppression and poor economic and social conditions. Thus, the discourse of the African state needs to capture its political tribulations as well as its economic and social conundrums.

Similarly, this study seeks to shift the discourse on civil wars from their pathologies to the opportunities to rework failing states. The causes of civil wars and their tremendous humanitarian and security implications have been well examined in the governance, security, and migration literatures.¹⁸¹ However, studies often fail to examine the link between civil wars and the transformation of the state. Notwithstanding the deplorable humanitarian tragedy of civil wars, such conflicts can be catalysts for ending state decay and reworking failed states. The success of these states depends on the manner in which civil wars are resolved, the kinds of political and institutional arrangements that are put in place to address the underlying cause of conflict, and the extent and nature of postwar reconstruction.¹⁸² By focusing on the fundamental nature of the state, local actors and international partners can create opportunities to build a democratic regime, address corruption and fundamental injustices, and promote economic and social development.

Finally, this study seeks to shift the discourse on African states from their colonial and neocolonial legacies to their moral and security connectedness to the international community. Africa’s relations with Western governments and financial institutions have mostly been tainted by the excesses of the capitalist and Cold War expansions.¹⁸³ The legacies of these excesses, which date back to slavery and the early colonial encounters, continue to perforate African states. However, the end of the Cold War led to significant transformation in the relation between African regimes and Western powers.¹⁸⁴ The failure of a number of African states coupled with domestic budget cuts and moral outrage over Africa’s debt crisis during the late 1980s led Western powers to redefine their relation with African dictatorships.¹⁸⁵ Western governments and financial institutions abandoned longtime allies and demanded political and economic reforms as preconditions for economic assistance. Most importantly, Western powers tacitly acknowledged their role in supporting bad governments in Africa. While the actual economic and political gains of Western austerity measures against African dictatorships remained questionable, they did initiate a new relationship between Africa and Western countries that seems to emphasize good governance, democracy, investment and trade opportunities, and security, which are all consistent with new humanitarianism and people-centered liberalism.

The threats to international and regional security from failed states raised critical questions about Africa’s relation with Western powers. Failing states in Africa were seen as push factors for unwelcome migration to Western countries, fertile grounds for terrorists and international criminal cartels, and recipes for regional destabilization and humanitarian tragedies.¹⁸⁶ Dictatorship and bad governance have been recognized as major contributors to state failure and insecurity. This situation led to critical discourses about early intervention in vulnerable states and the promotion of democracy and good governance. Africa and the Western powers seemed to embrace their shared security and moral interests in managing conflicts and addressing the political and economic roots of conflict. When civil wars break out, they draw increased attention to the problems of state failure and the need to maintain regional security. This is a significant shift from the colonial and neocolonial policies of exploitation that characterized Africa’s relation with the West before the end of the Cold War. Though most war-torn African countries have not seen robust international intervention to end their conflicts, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire received significant international attention. In the case of Sierra Leone and Liberia, the international community deployed an unprecedented number of peacekeeping forces and civilian agencies to enforce peace and help restore state capacity. By examining the civil wars and the peacebuilding role of the international community in these three West African countries, this study points to the ways humanitarian intervention evolves into international statebuilding and addresses the often-neglected external aspect of statebuilding. The growing role of international agencies in Africa’s development raises critical questions about their impact on the state and Africa’s relation with the rest of the world. Most importantly, it points to the potentials and limitations of international statebuilding, which is envisioned in new humanitarianism and people-centered liberalism.

To address the research questions and conceptual issues raised in this study, the book is organized into six chapters, including this introduction chapter (chap. 1) and the conclusion chapter (chap. 6). In chapter 2, we address the issue of state decay and the civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. We delve into the problematic nature of the state in the years leading to civil war through the notion of state decay. We use this notion to discuss the range of problems that created conditions for civil war. We also examine the civil wars and the security and humanitarian problems that prompted the international military interventions by regional and international powers.

In chapter 3, we address the issues of international humanitarian intervention and the peacekeeping mission. We examine both the broader moral and international security drivers and the mechanics of peacekeeping and negotiating peace agreements. Through the notion of new humanitarianism, we show how the international interventions evolved from weak observer missions to robust peace-enforcement missions under the doctrine of R2P. The chapter shows how new humanitarianism led to international statebuilding, which is largely anchored in the neoliberal multiparty election path to peace and democracy. In many ways, the peace agreements exposed both the possibilities and the missed opportunities to rethink the state and pursue creative institutional design options to address the root cause of state decay and the civil wars.

In chapter 4, we address the essence of and the ideological and policy drivers of international statebuilding. We use the notion of people-centered liberalism to examine both the neoliberal and human development approaches to statebuilding and international development programs. We examine the core postwar reconstruction frameworks for each of the countries and the roles of international and national actors in shaping the state. Through the lens of human security, we analyze both the human development and democracy aspects of international statebuilding. A critical question for us is whether the programs are mostly directed at restoring the prewar order or resolving the prewar pathologies that led to state decay. We also examine the costs of statebuilding and various avenues for funding robust programs.

In chapter 5, we look at various postwar reforms directed at consolidating peace, sustaining democracy, and inculcating good governance, all ingredients of statebuilding. The ultimate goal of these programs is to bring stability, durable peace, and democracy and boost economic development. As in the previous chapter, a critical question here is whether the programs simply restore the prewar conditions of the state or are fundamentally transforming the state in ways that avoid backsliding into decay and resolve the core causes of the civil wars. This chapter examines the core elements of the postwar reconstruction, notably security-sector reforms, human rights and justice issues, and good-governance issues.

Collectively, the chapters answer the core questions posed in this book and point to insightful lessons about the state, civil wars, international community, and statebuilding in a typical postcolonial African country. These lessons come together in chapter 6, which accentuates the conceptual and policy contributions of the book. Overall, the book provides novel ways to conceptualize international statebuilding, deep historical insights into state decay and the civil wars in the case countries, and a rich analysis of the mechanics of peacekeeping, peace mediation, and postwar reconstruction.

TWO

ONE

INTRODUCTION

The Contours of Statebuilding and Humanitarian Intervention

INTRODUCTION

METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION

STATEBUILDING: A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

STATEBUILDING AND CIVIL WAR: SIERRA LEONE, LIBERIA, AND CÔTE D’IVOIRE

STATES AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL STATEBUILDING?

SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION