Liberal Peacebuilding Project and State-Making in the Global South

This essay examines the consistency and contradictions between the liberal peacebuilding project and Charles Tilly's state-building model in the Global South. It highlights the limitations of liberal peacebuilding, particularly its susceptibility to mission creep, and contrasts it with Tilly's emphasis on establishing a state monopoly over violence. The essay argues that while external agencies promote democratization, privileged classes often exploit services for personal gain, leading to rebellion and hindering state modernization. It further discusses the challenges faced by global actors in engaging with local actors and the inadequacies of state-building efforts in fostering local authority. The conclusion posits that state-building, as an extension of conventional liberal peace, lacks emancipatory content and potential, resulting in states with design flaws, a lack of authenticity, and the promotion of elite interests while marginalizing local populations.

Running head: STATE FORMATION RESTRICTING GLOBAL SOUTH STATE-MAKING
STATE FORMATION RESTRICTING GLOBAL SOUTH STATE-MAKING
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What specific elements of the liberal peacebuilding project are consistent, or in
contradiction, with a Tilly-esque process of statebuilding in the Global South? Illustrate
with examples.
Recent UNDP report indicates that one-quarter of the world’s populace whereby over 1.7
billion people live in destabilized states positioning at the vanguard of global relations. However,
in the view of Verkoren, Willemijn and Kamphuis (2013), contemporary neoliberal state-
building has been considered as an extension of much-defamed structural modification projects
whereby market democracy has reinstated acts of socialism. Furthermore, as per the perspectives
of Paris, Roland and Timothy (2009), state building aims to pursue a path towards modernity
intended at post colonial states in the global south particularly in regions across Africa and
further for a series of violence such as with nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Haiti1.
The thesis statement of the paper is the way elements of the liberal peace-building project have
been consistent with Charles Tilly’s ideas of state-building in the Global South.
Following to the apparent limitations of liberal peace-building specifically in relation to
susceptibility to mission creep in countries such as Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo in
the 1990s whereby state-building has offered a light footprint strategy, as following to 2004 in
Afghanistan which further tends to be less intolerable towards global or local allies. Tilly (2009)
has asserted that primary focus of State-building essentially on instituting a state monopoly over
the ways of violence along with a significant shift from authoritarian as well as developmental
states which had shown utmost prevalence during the period of Cold War2. Such a focus further
signified the outcome of absolute state formation processes to highly balanced progressions.
1 Verkoren, Willemijn, and Bertine Kamphuis. "State building in a rentier state: how development policies fail to
promote democracy in Afghanistan." Development and Change 44, no. 3 (2013): 501-526.
2 Paris, Roland, and Timothy D. Sisk, eds. The dilemmas of statebuilding: confronting the contradictions of postwar
peace operations. Routledge, 2009.

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Significantly, Paris (2002) at this juncture has observed Tilly’s assertions that the conclusion of
Cold War witnessed several states based on totalitarian or authoritarian purposes replaced by
destabilizing states which could not uphold sovereignty, order, or provide services. Tilly’s
indications have essentially been cultivated from existing concerns related to the worries of the
mounting criticalities of war with the intensifying role of immense powers as providers of arms
and military organization to financially deprived nations and also with the growing significance
of armed forces regulation in similar countries.
However, as per the opinion of Tilly (2009), state-building has effectually emerged out
of the development of European medieval societies along with their mounting necessity for
power in order to essentially normalize wars over assets, province and identity3. Additionally, it
has been consequential to state building to err on the bureaucratic as well as procedural part to a
certain extent rather than sustaining the associative agenda which any community would
demand. At such a juncture, the UN agencies based on UNDP or the Peace-building Commission
which has the potential to involve local communities to some extent as a significant part of their
consent4. However, such an engagement tends to pose greater amount of impediments for the
World Bank, which anticipates executing its operations with the state along with its government.
Additionally, Pospisil, Jan and Florian (2016) have stated that as the elite section look forward
towards status as well as interest policies to serve contributory role at state and global levels, the
state at this stage exhibit a propensity to be outwardly justifiable however the government time
and again has less internal authenticity as a consequence5. It is essential to note the concerns
3 Tilly, Charles. "War making and state making as organized crime." (2009).
4 Eriksen, Stein Sundst⊘ L. "The liberal peace is neither: Peacebuilding, state building and the reproduction of
conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo." International Peacekeeping 16, no. 5 (2009): 652-666.
5 Pospisil, Jan, and Florian P. Kühn. "The resilient state: new regulatory modes in international approaches to state
building?." Third World Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2016): 1-16.

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Tilly has focused on the position of planned ways of hostility in the expansion and
transformation of distinct forms of administration typically defined as national states which
appear to be comparatively federal, distinguished organizations or less effectively argue power
over the leader determined ways of violence surrounded by a populace inhabiting a large,
neighbouring territory. Furthermore, each of the chief application of violence produced typical
forms of organization such as war-making capitulated armed forces along with supporting
services. While in the view of Tilly, state making produced durable mechanisms of surveillance
along with control within the territory.
Nevertheless, regardless of democratization being highly aided by external agencies,
privileged class or administrations typically implement services as a approach of extorting
considerable amount of rent or bribes which consequentially coerces acts of rebellion resulting to
receive insignificant amount of support from the local population. These rebellion acts further
have posed certain criticalities for global actors to modernize the state along with the society.
Meanwhile, Ayoob (1995) has shed light on global players who have intended to associate with
legitimacy based on a series of informal and formal local actors and engage with them. Such an
association however, fundamentally exhibits a need of an explicit explanation of local scale as
well as unofficial political processes, whereby locals tend to show utmost lack6. Drawing
significance from these areas Sargsyan (2016) has asserted that though field missions or field
offices have greater degree of competencies, they typically exhibit significant constraints of local
players. Such constraints primarily have been based on misplaced understanding and knowledge
in areas of broadcast back to headquarters in New York or Washington7. These forms of
6 Ayoob, Mohammed. The third world security predicament: State making, regional conflict, and the international
system. L. Rienner Publishers, 1995.
7 Sargsyan, Anna Hess. "Synthesis of Common Challenges: Multifaceted Obstacle Course for the osce and all
Parties Concerned." Security and Human Rights 27, no. 3-4 (2016): 517-529.

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drawbacks have implied the inadequacies of state-building in relation to endeavours seeking for
local sites of authority for functioning.
The lack of support given by the purposes of state-building has signified various
potentials for the state. Such deficiencies of acknowledgements have been consequential to
various, fusions instead of focusing on homogenous structures of state which could be disagreed
in the case of Kosovo, Somalia, Timor Leste, Afghanistan, and Somaliland along with other
nations of global south8. However, such potentials might not valorise these policies but
essentially raises the issue of the way, state-building has been perceived from the chaos.
Furthermore, authors have highlighted on the disagreements concerning state-building continual
in an internal strategy along with intellectual register of problem solving, which also does not
explain deliberation regarding about invade rule that emerged in the 1990s.
Conclusion
On a concluding note, state-building corresponds to an expansion of a highly
conventional liberal peace significantly lacking emancipatory content and potential. State-
building has produced states which have shown severe incompetence in design and have
undergone significant lack of authenticity along with extensive recognition of the argument, play
as per the convenience of exclusive elite projects. As state-building has disqualified significant
parts of local populations such as in Afghanistan or further support comparative inequity in the
global system such as in countries like Kosovo, they tend to pursue typical operating measures
despite of precedent breakdowns and further avert certain neighbouring dispute which chiefly
concerns the category of the state that might have the propensity to be established such as in the
Southeast Asian nation of Timor Leste.
8 Jackson, Richard. "Post-liberal peacebuilding and the pacifist state." Peacebuilding 6, no. 1 (2018): 1-16.

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Bibliography
Ayoob, Mohammed. The third world security predicament: State making, regional conflict, and
the international system. L. Rienner Publishers, 1995.
Eriksen, Stein Sundst⊘ L. "The liberal peace is neither: Peacebuilding, state building and the
reproduction of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo." International Peacekeeping 16,
no. 5 (2009): 652-666.
Jackson, Richard. "Post-liberal peacebuilding and the pacifist state." Peacebuilding 6, no. 1
(2018): 1-16.
Paris, Roland, and Timothy D. Sisk, eds. The dilemmas of statebuilding: confronting the
contradictions of postwar peace operations. Routledge, 2009.
Paris, Roland. "International peacebuilding and the ‘mission civilisatrice’." Review of
international studies 28, no. 4 (2002): 637-656.
Pospisil, Jan, and Florian P. Kühn. "The resilient state: new regulatory modes in international
approaches to state building?." Third World Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2016): 1-16.
Sargsyan, Anna Hess. "Synthesis of Common Challenges: Multifaceted Obstacle Course for the
osce and all Parties Concerned." Security and Human Rights 27, no. 3-4 (2016): 517-529.
Verkoren, Willemijn, and Bertine Kamphuis. "State building in a rentier state: how development
policies fail to promote democracy in Afghanistan." Development and Change 44, no. 3 (2013):
501-526.
Tilly, Charles. "War making and state making as organized crime." (2009).