Institution Building in Weak States. Andrew Radin
and communications, and proposed reforming Ukraine’s procurement system and the state-owned defense industrial complex, Ukroboronprom.
Our report was well received by the Ukrainian government and by Western analysts. Many of our recommendations were incorporated into the Strategic Defense Bulletin (SDB) approved in June 2016. In addition to informing the SDB, Ukrainian officials told me that our report spurred discussion about reform, and Western organizations used our report as a guide and benchmark to judge progress in the Ukrainian defense establishment.4
Ultimately, however, as my prior research suggested, individuals and organizations within Ukraine appeared to respond to our recommendations based on the perceived impact to their interests. The minister of defense, a military officer, responded positively and publicly announced that the ministry would launch a new working group to consider our recommendations.5 Our report generally supported his position: we recommended that the chief of the General Staff be subordinated to the minister, and we accepted that, although the minister’s successor would need to be a civilian, he could be grandfathered into his current position. According to think tank reports, other individuals were less supportive, including the chief of the General Staff, perhaps in part because our recommendations would weaken their positions relative to the Ministry of Defense.6 The report’s recommendations, as I detail in chapter 6, appeared to be most implemented where they posed the least threat to the existing leadership’s patron-client networks, meaning the personal connections between the leaders and subordinate officials. For example, while there was some progress implementing an e-procurement system for nonlethal supplies, major reform of the procurement system was indefinitely delayed, and there was little apparent willingness to undertake fundamental reforms of Ukraine’s sprawling and opaque defense industrial complex.7 These changes likely posed a greater threat to the political and economic interests of Ukraine’s leaders.
Improving state institutions in partner countries, such as the defense institutions in Ukraine, is an important and enduring task for the United States and the international community. My experience in Ukraine points to a common but understudied problem facing foreign institution builders. To improve partner institutions, foreign reformers must propose changes to these institutions, which may be framed either as obligatory demands or as optional recommendations. These changes often threaten the interests of elites and the population within the partner country, which can lead to opposition that damages the prospects for reform. This challenge raises an important question: what types of changes should foreign missions seek in partner institutions to make the greatest progress?
My central argument in this book is that foreign institution builders achieve the greatest success when they propose changes that do not provoke domestic opposition, and that they can do so by avoiding threatening two core domestic interests—nationalist goals, such as achieving independence or ethnic autonomy, and the ruling elites’ patron-client networks. I propose a “domestic opposition” theory to explain how foreign demands or recommendations that threaten these interests lead to different types of opposition. When reform threatens nationalist goals, it usually fails because of widespread public opposition, such as mass protests or boycotts by the elite. For example, in Bosnia, an effort from 2004 to 2006 to restructure the police force challenged the autonomy of the Bosnian Serbs, which led to mass protests and to Serb leaders refusing to comply with international demands for reform. The international mission was forced to compromise due to the popular opposition and as a result lost legitimacy for future reform efforts. Likewise, when reform threatens the patron-client networks of ruling elites, elites often privately oppose reform through delay tactics or co-opting state institutions. For example, in Iraq following the 2007 surge, Shia leaders blocked the recruitment of Sunnis into the police force in mixed sectarian areas, which undermined Sunnis’ confidence in the government. While well-resourced foreign reformers can make some progress against elite opposition, foreigners lack the local knowledge to fully monitor and punish obstruction by domestic elites. The most successful reforms improve state institutions by avoiding threatening nationalist goals and patron-client networks. For example, in the case of the defense reforms in BiH that began in 2003, shortly before the police restructuring effort, the international community proposed incremental changes that accommodated Serb interests while still creating a unified military out of two ethnically based militaries.
To show how foreign proposals shape the outcome of reform through domestic opposition, I explore seven cases of foreign-backed reform. The main analysis considers six reform efforts undertaken by highly resourced, post-conflict missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Timor-Leste, and Iraq. In a seventh case study, I show that similar domestic dynamics occurred in the lower resourced, non-post-conflict case of defense reform in Ukraine. Each case study uses written sources and personal interviews to explore why domestic actors opposed (or supported) reform and how their decisions influenced success. For example, in Iraq in November 2003, interviews and internal memos show how Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) officials had to compromise for fear that a Shia walkout would delegitimize Iraq’s new central governing institutions.
The book also explores two alternative theories about the success of reform that I develop from the literature on intervention. The international resources theory predicts that missions with higher resources—including a stronger mandate, more money or personnel available, and effective planning and coordination—are more likely to make greater improvements to a state institution. The path dependence theory emphasizes that state institutions are hard to change and expects that reform is also constrained by the level of development of a society and the quality of an institution before the intervention. The case studies evaluate these explanations by tracing exactly why each institution improved or declined and comparing different reform efforts (for example, military versus police reform in Bosnia) to isolate competing explanations.
In most of the cases studied in this book, domestic opposition is the most important factor determining whether reform hit a wall, made slow progress, or rapidly improved a state institution. Furthermore, it is usually more feasible for foreign interveners to change their demands or recommendations to limit domestic opposition than it is to increase international resources or avoid intervening in societies with poor preexisting institutions. Foreign reformers can achieve greater success by making demands or recommendations that avoid nationalist goals and patron-client networks while still improving a state institution. This is not to say that foreign reformers should or must accept unaccountable or ill-disciplined state institutions. Rather, foreign reformers are right to seek effective, accountable, and law-abiding institutions but need to be selective and patient in proposing changes to state institutions to accomplish these goals. Accommodating domestic interests may be disappointing, but it is a necessary tradeoff if the United States and the international community value improving partner state institutions.
WHAT IS INSTITUTION BUILDING?
This book studies foreign-supported institution building, meaning efforts by an organization outside a given society to improve a state institution within that society. These efforts are often led by foreign countries or organizations but can also be initiated by domestic actors. In describing these efforts, I adopt a frame of reference from within the target society, so I refer to the countries or international organizations pursuing institution building as foreign or international actors. I call the individuals or groups within the society domestic or local actors. I use the terms “institution building” and “reform” interchangeably.
By state institution, I mean an organization that is part of the state and provides a particular function of governance, such as the police, customs administration, education system, or central governing bodies. The book’s case studies examine reform of the central government, police, and military. These three state institutions are consistently the focus of international efforts as they are believed to facilitate the maintenance of peace and to be fundamental for ensuring internal and external security, the development of democracy, and basic services.8 Nevertheless, as discussed in the conclusion, the domestic opposition theory likely applies to efforts to reform other state institutions as well.
In studying state institutions, I consider both the people within the