Peter Haldén

Laudable, ahistorical and overambitious: security sector reform meets state formation theory.

Security sector reform (SSR) is a concept that is highly visible within policy and practice circles and that increasingly shapes international programmes for development assistance, security co-operation and democracy promotion. This paper examines the concept and practice of SSR using theories of the state and state formation within a historical-philosophical perspective. The paper recognises that the processes of SSR are highly laudable and present great steps forward towards more holistic conceptions of security and international development. However, the main argument of the paper is that we should be careful of having too high expectations of the possibility of SSR fulfilling its ambitious goals of creating states that are both stable and democratic and accountable. Instead, we should carefully determine what level of ambition is realistic for each specific project depending on local circumstances. A further argument of this paper is that legitimate order and functioning state structures are prerequisites and preconditions for successful democratisation and accountability reforms within the security sector.

Heteronymous politics beyond anarchy and hierarchy: The multiplication of forms of rule 750–1300

Anarchy and hierarchy are two central concepts of International Relations theory but as conventionally defined they cannot describe political life for most of Western history. Neither concept describes the structure of medieval politics well. Rather, many different principles of differentiation existed simultaneously, both stratificatory and segmentary. The situation was closer to anarchy as understood as the absence of overarching principles of order rather than as ‘anarchy’ in the conventional sense used in international relations and absence of government. The power of the Popes over temporal rulers was considerable, but it never corresponded to the concept ‘hierarchy’ as conventionally understood either. Between c. 700 and c. 1300, Europe became more heteronymous as time went by, not less. More principles of differentiation were developed, and both Popes and kings became more powerful. The reinvention of the papacy after the ‘Investiture Controversy’ (1075–1122) created a system of law and practices in which European monarchs and realms were embedded, but it did not create an all-powerful papacy.

Organized Armed Groups as Ruling Organizations

Previous studies of the cohesion of organized armed groups (OAGs) have made great progress, but they have mostly focused on units fighting for modern Western states. I argue that the study of OAGs that contain their own legitimacy requires a broadened theoretical framework. Such groups may be conceptualized as “ruling organizations” in Max Weber’s terminology. Examples of such groups range from early medieval warbands to modern militias and guerrillas. Members of ruling organizations obey commands for a combination of three reasons: rational, traditional, and charismatic—these in turn form the basis of the legitimacy of the organization. Pinpointing the foundations of obedience in a group provides us with another way of emphasizing weak points that we want to either target or reinforce. This study contributes theoretically to the study of cohesion by linking it to theories of legitimacy in political orders.

Republican continuities in the Vienna Order and the German Confederation (1815-66)

This article argues that the German Confederation — deutscher Bund — (1815–66)was a form of rule built on early modern republican political theory. It was a ‘Compound Republic’ form of rule constructed to prevent the emergence of a system of sovereign German states as well as a single sovereign German state. Its purpose was maintaining peace and stability in Europe and safeguarding the autonomy of its member polities. Contemporary statesmen, intellectuals and scholars saw these purposes as complementary. A non-sovereign, polycentric and republican organization of the German lands was regarded as a natural and necessary component in a stable Europe free from war and revolutions. This article analyses the origins, institutions and policies of the German Confederation, with particular regard to how the means of organized violence were organized. It thereby demonstrates the implementation of republican ideas and purposes in the Bund. The article situates the Bund in 19th-century thinking about European stability and sovereignty, further demonstrating the prevalence of republican ideas on international order. Republican political theories and institutions differed sharply from modern theories and models of international relations. Consequently, the history of international politics, the European system of states and state-formation must be re-conceptualized more in line with historical realities.

Contextualising international state-building

Weak or failing states are among the greatest concerns of the contemporary strategic context. Not only are they the causes of humanitarian disasters, human rights abuses, economic grievances and waves of refugees, weak and failing states are also seen as security problems internally, regionally and, after the terror attacks on 11 September 2001, globally. In the words of Francis Fukuyama: ‘[s]tate-building is one of the world’s most important issues for the world community because weak or failed states are the source of many of the world’s greatest problems, from poverty to AIDS to drugs to terrorism’. Enhancing developing states’ capacities for security governance, and control over their territories and populations, has become an important security interest of Western states. According to David Chandler, different forms of state-building activities have therefore come to dominate Western security activities towards the developing world. However, the results of past international state-building operations have been mixed at best. Despite the wealth of activity and research, critical engagement with these practices is necessary as current perspectives and policies oversimplify the problems and complexities at hand. State-building is too often reduced to issues of technocratic management and handbook solutions. Because of the urgency, gravity and scale of state-building, more sophisticated analyses and methods are required. One way to achieve this is through

Fundamental but not eternal: The public–private distinction, from normative projects to cognitive grid in Western political thought

Although the public–private distinction is a historical construction it has been deeply internalized and taken for granted in Western ways of thinking about society and politics. Therefore, we often apply it uncritically as a way to categorizing and coding non-Western societies. Doing so unreflectively may distort our observations as well as policies of state- and peacebuilding. I outline the history of the public–private distinction by emphasizing its role in state-formation processes. This distinction was essential to the formation of the state and society as distinct categories. Indeed, it was and is a pre-condition of the autonomy of the state.

A non-sovereign modernity : Attempts to engineer stability in the Balkans 1820-1890

Social theory almost invariably equates modernity with the sovereign state. This equation must be nuanced because the modern era and modern strategies of international stability have contained non-sovereign units. In the nineteenth century, the Great Powers tried to create international stability by engineering forms of rule in Europe. These strategies built on distinctively modern ideas: the possibility of radically breaking with the past, redesigning political organisations, and actively controlling political events through rational planning. Throughout the century the Great Powers alternated between creating non-sovereign units and creating sovereign units as instruments in these stabilising strategies. The degree of trust between the Great Powers accounts for the shift between the two strategies: they tended to create non-sovereign units when mutual trust was high and sovereign ones when trust was low. This article analyses Great Power strategies of designing forms of rule in the Balkans between 1820 and 1878. Like in previous centuries, nineteenth-century Europe actually consisted of two parallel but connected systems: the egalitarian system of sovereign states and a system of non-sovereign entities. Non-sovereign units disappeared only late in the century and this process was affected by the increasing rivalry and mistrust between the sovereign states.

Systems-building before state-building: on the systemic preconditions of state-building

State failure is often seen as due to endogenous factors, rather than systemic ones; correspondingly, the idea that states can be built by supporting internal processes and institutions alone is prevalent in policy documents and in some of the literature on state-building. This paper calls both assumptions into question. I demonstrate that three factors were important external preconditions of historical state formation: (1) effective states and sustainable regional security, which is expressed on an inter-state as well as a sub-state level, requires a region-wide creation of effective structures of state; (2) effective states and effective inter-state security require well-functioning states systems; (3) effective states require regional acceptance of the process of state-building. Analysing three contemporary countries and regions, Somalia/the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan/Central Asia and Namibia/ south-western Africa, the article concludes that state-building is substantially facilitated where these three contextual factors are in place. The absence of these external factors in the regions where Afghanistan and Somalia are located illuminate the depth of the problems facing these countries. In these cases regional structures are preconditions of state-building.

Reconceptualizing state formation as collective power: representation in electoral monarchies

This article deals with the importance of collective power and value consensus among elites for medieval polity formation by analyzing electoral monarchies. State formation theory focuses on the monopoly of legitimate armed force and has pushed notions of consensus and collective power into the background. This article questions material and coercive theories of state formation and emphasizes polity formation through theories of power as collaboration and as the ability to act in concert. Royal elections had two major functions: (1) A transfer of authority that created trust and concord among elite groups and (2) constructing ideas of an abstract ‘realm’ that political actors represented and to which they were accountable in an ideational and symbolic sense. The article focuses on the Holy Roman Empire and Sweden.

The Fiction of the State as the Good, Natural and the Beautiful

To say that we live in a world of states today is a truism. We also live in the world of the state if we consider the mental map of politics that dominates most thinking, debate and research on politics. The state is not just an object of research; it is the tool with which we understand politics. Having the state not only as a concept in politics but also as a precondition of politics provides a powerful heuristic organizing mechanism for doing and analysing politics; generations of advances in political science provide powerful testimony to that. Nonetheless, it obscures several aspects of socio-political life once we go before or beyond the world of states. From the viewpoint of this book the source of these problems is that the state originated as a normative-political project to quell religious and civil war in sixteenth-century Europe and to counter what were seen as injustices and inefficiencies caused by the power of estates and other intermediary bodies. As this normative ideal has supported the dominance of what, expressed as abstractly as possible, is a particular configuration of institutions (e.g. the state), prescriptive theory/ideology has transmuted into an analytical lens which today forms the basis of much of political science, law and sociology. Not only is the state widely regarded as the best form of rule, but in many respects also as the only possible one.