The Handbook of Global Security Policy

Chapter 15 State-Building, Nation-Building, and Reconstruction

Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Denisa Kostovicova, and David Rampton

Introduction

The end of the Cold War has ushered in a new kind of engagement between external actors and volatile post-conflict states. Foreign states, multilateral institutions (such as the United Nations, European Union, NATO, and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), and international nongovernmental organizations (such as Red Cross, Yellow Crescent, and Médicines Sans Frontièrs) have taken on the rebuilding of states, societies, and economies in the aftermath of war. The involvement of a multitude of external actors in comprehensive governance (Caplan, 2005a, pp. 16–44) in foreign states has evolved alongside a reconceptualization of post-Cold War threats whereby weak and failed states have emerged as a primary security concern. The understanding of state weakness and fragility as a security threat represents a shift away from great power security competition where threat was judged as commensurate with the strength of the state (cf. Fearon and Laitin, 2004; Rotberg, 2007). Within this post-Cold War framework, conflict-affected space, understood as a distant “zone of chaos”, could no longer be isolated or ignored due to the intensification of globalization (Cooper, 2004). Increasingly, local governance failures have come to be perceived as sources of transnational insecurity, illustrated by criminal activity, terrorism, and mass ...