| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
065727
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
091973
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2009.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the attempts at state-building by international actors in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It uses this experience to discuss some of the obstacles and dilemmas facing external state-builders. I argue that attempts at state-building by foreign actors in the DRC have not had much success, and point out four reasons. First, insufficient resources have been provided. Second, donors have used a standardized approach that does not take local context sufficiently into account. Third, domestic power relations have been such that state-building has not served the interests of key actors. Finally, the policy has been based on a fixed, non-negotiable conception of what the state eventually should look like. Although all these factors have contributed to the failure to create a liberal state in the DRC, the last two appear to be more fundamental than the first and the second.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
101743
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2011.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article provides a critique of the discourse of 'failed states', and outlines an alternative approach. It is argued that by taking the model of the modern state for granted, and by analysing all states in terms of their degree of correspondence with or deviation from this ideal, this discourse does not help us understand the nature of the states in question, or the processes that lead to strong or weak states. Instead, the idea of the state should be treated as a category of practice and not as a category of analysis. Post-colonial state formation could then be analysed by focusing on the inter-relationship between the idea of the state and actual state practices, and on the ways that states have become linked to domestic society on the one hand and their relations with the external world on the other.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|