Institution Building in Weak States. Andrew Radin
their behavior. For example, defense reform may include recruiting new personnel, changing the formal structure of the military or Ministry of Defense, altering formal rules or legislation, buying new equipment, or training personnel in its use. By improving a state institution or achieving success at reform, I mean making the institution more effective, accountable, or law-abiding, as I explain below.
There is an important distinction between my definition of a state institution as a part of the state and the use of the term “institution” by many works to describe a set of widely agreed-on rules or a stable pattern of behavior. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, for example, describe the development of inclusive political and economic institutions, such as laws permitting anyone to open a business, as fundamental for prosperity.9 Francis Fukuyama also identifies three basic institutions that are associated with highly developed modern democracies: the state, the rule of law, and an accountable government.10 My usage follows the practices of many organizations that pursue institution building—the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, for example, refers to its efforts to support military bureaucracies as “defense institution building.”11
The state institutions studied here are closely connected to, but distinct from, the broader institutions described by scholars such as Acemoglu, Robinson, and Fukuyama. For example, a society may have a police force that is effective at fighting crime and accountable to the population, even if the overall state is weak and the government is autocratic. Or, vice versa, broad institutions within the society could be strong, but a particular state institution could be weak. Nevertheless, in general, the quality of state institutions is expected to contribute to the overall quality of the broad institutions within that society and, hence, political and economic development. The potential impact of state institutions on political and economic development points to the importance of better understanding when and how the United States and its partners can indeed build stronger state institutions abroad.
WHY STUDY INSTITUTION BUILDING?
After US-led interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, an extensive literature has developed to study these efforts, and there are growing doubts of the merits of future intervention. Still, institution building deserves further study. It is an essential component of US and international policy, and the existing literature has not offered insight into the critical question of how the choice of demands and recommendations influence reform success.
Even after the drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan, institution building remains an important element of US foreign policy because it is rarely practical or efficient for US organizations to address threats without the help of allied or partner organizations. Building partner capacity is a central component of the US 2017 National Security Strategy and 2018 National Defense Strategy.12 In addition to improving the ability of partners to counter terrorism, US assistance to allies and partners can help deter adversary aggression, as in Ukraine, the Baltic states, or South Korea. In fiscal year 2019, the first year the US Department of Defense reported an aggregate statistic, it requested $3.4 billion for security cooperation.13 Building partner capacity ultimately hinges on the ability of the United States (and collaborators) to improve state institutions in a given society. Beyond the Department of Defense, other US government organizations, government organizations in other countries, and international organizations also seek to build security or nonsecurity state institutions. In particular, international aid and development efforts often focus on building state institutions to improve accountable government, increase the delivery of services, reduce poverty, and encourage economic development.14
Institution building is a particularly important part of large-scale, comprehensive missions to rebuild postwar societies. Such interventions have been referred to as peace building, nation building, or state building.15 UN transitional missions in societies such as Cambodia, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste sought to improve the police, military, and public services, as did US and allied missions in Germany, Japan, and Iraq. Some practitioners and scholars identify institution building as the central activity to create a sustainable peace in societies emerging from civil war.16 In a 2001 report, then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan wrote that a sustainable peace depends on the ability of domestic institutions to resolve conflict; hence, peace mission mandates should “incorporate such elements as institution-building and the promotion of good governance and the rule of law.”17 In an influential book published in 2004, Roland Paris blames the failure of many peace-building missions in the 1990s on holding elections before strong institutions were in place. Paris recommends “institutionalization before liberalization” to correct this problem, but he does not analyze in detail when and how institution building may be achieved.18
Following the terrorist attacks of 2001, some analysts claimed that failed states, meaning countries with an absence of state institutions or with extremely weak ones, were unleashing “public bads,” such as terrorism or refugees; they advocated for institution building to address these challenges.19 Although contemporary US national security discourse downplays the potential for future large-scale “nation-building” missions, large US missions in societies such as Libya or Syria remain possible.20
Many works examining postwar intervention tend to assess success or failure at the country level, such as by observing success in Bosnia and Kosovo but failure in Iraq. By contrast, this book studies the development of state institutions, not the development of the overall country.21 Understanding the varied success of institution building within a society offers new insight about how to adjust institution-building efforts to maximize the potential for success. It also more directly provides advice to the many professionals who work on improving one particular institution rather than the broader state. Further, changes in a particular state institution can also have a wider impact on the political development of a society. In Iraq, for example, the failure to create security institutions that were accountable to the entire population, including Sunnis, undermined the country’s future stability.
This book also offers insight into a fundamental question in political science: When and how can societies achieve political development?22 Many works are skeptical of the ability of foreign efforts to improve institutions. For example, after analyzing the potential for foreign intervention to encourage political development, Fukuyama writes, “We should thus be wary of foreigners bearing gifts of institutions.”23 But the variation in success observed in this book indicates how foreign reformers can at times contribute to political development, especially when they make demands or recommendations that improve state institutions but do not threaten core political interests. The improvements that foreign reformers achieve may not lead to radical or rapid improvements in democracy or the rule of law, but they may be an important first step that sets the stage for longer-term improvements.
DOMESTIC OPPOSITION THEORY
Foreign reformers are not on home turf. The state institutions they seek to reform are staffed by local officials, overseen by local elites, and accountable to the local population. The domestic opposition theory generalizes about the interaction between foreign reformers and these domestic actors. The theory explains how foreign demands or recommendations can threaten domestic interests, when and how domestic actors may support reform or oppose it in different ways, and how their acceptance or opposition shapes the success of reform. Many issues play a role in the domestic politics of societies experiencing foreign reform, but the theory expects two issues—nationalism and the ruling elites’ patron-client networks—to be especially important in motivating domestic opposition. Chapter 2 offers more details of the domestic opposition theory and its hypotheses.
Nationalism refers to the belief that a particular group should have control of its own state.24 Nationalism is a popular ideology in many societies, especially due to the enduring impact of violent conflict. When foreign demands or recommendations threaten the dominant nationalist goals of a major group in a society, my theory expects reform will fail. For example, in Kosovo after