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Can America Nation-Build?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jason Brownlee
Jason Brownlee
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, [email protected]
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Abstract

Post-9/11 security concerns and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq have renewed scholarly interest in nation-building as a form of externally fostered democratization. The selected works assess Iraq and its precursors, seeking general lessons for establishing new democracies. They principally conclude that successful nation-building depends on sustained commitments of time, materiel, and manpower. Although this thesis improves upon earlier studies of democracy promotion, which often treated intentions as determinative, it does not fully reckon with the effect of antecedent conditions on external intervention. As this review addresses, American efforts at nation-building have historically been enabled or constrained by local political institutions. Rather than autonomously reengineering the target society, nation-builders have buttressed bureaucracies and parliaments where they were already available (Germany, Japan) and foundered in countries that lacked such institutions (Somalia, Haiti). In sum, nation-building has been most effective when pursued least ambitiously, amid functioning states with prior experience in constitutional government.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , January 2007 , pp. 314 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2007

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References

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20 A focus on capacity ameliorates the risk of retrospectively imputing intentions based on outcomes, for example, seeing “genuine effort” where success obtained. At the same time, research on nation-building still needs to take into account the motivations and goals of foreign occupiers. Full consideration of a nation-builder's motives is a serious issue itself, but one that falls outside the scope of this review because it is not an analytic emphasis of the chosen books. The contribution of the selected works lies in their evaluation of nation-building capacity and their insight into how that capacity shapes the boundaries of achievable outcomes. Future scholars may revisit the issue of intent and investigate how the objectives of nation-building are intertwined with the attempt at changing local society.

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30 The authors under review seemingly disagree about the total number of cases that count in assessing American nation-building efforts. Whereas they all include the same few cases of successful nation-building (for example, Germany, Japan), they differ in the number and type of unsuccessful cases they recognize. For example, Dobbins and his team limit themselves to post-World War II experiences, whereas Pei and his coauthors address the many early-twentieth-century U.S. interventions as well. These discrepancies are not randomly or evenly distributed. The omitted cases fall mainly at lower values of the dependent variable, raising the risk of a truncated sample and biased inferences. The only fully satisfactory solution to this problem will be for future scholars to concur in definitively specifying the full universe of cases. Pending such an agreement, analytic gains in robustness and reliability argue for considering the fullest range of nation-building efforts, thereby maximizing the number of observations and the range of variance in outcomes while maintaining internal validity around the shared definition of nation-building as imposed democratization. On truncation and selection bias, see Collier, David and Mahoney, James, “Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research,” World Politics 49 (October 1996), 61–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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36 The U.S. government would seem to provide a case of multidivisional hierarchy, but Cooley notes that truly federal systems are nonhierarchical ("H-form” in organizational theory) (pp. 27–28).

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54 Woodward (fn. 1), 234.

55 Recalling Ikenberry's work, it would seem that Bremer was unable to “dominate” the population or to “bind” U.S. forces with Iraqis into a “mutually acceptable postwar order.” See Ikenberry (fn. 31), 50–51.

56 Woodard(fn. 1), 264.

57 In the next chapter Feldman writes: “The nation builder will not stand directly for election, so it follows as a matter of course that he can never be as accountable as elected politicians can be” (p. 100).

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39 At points contradictory statements follow one another: “In the end . . . not we, but the Iraqis, will have to run these institutions and make them work-and there is just too much that we do not understand about the complexities of Iraqi politics and society. My skepticism, however, does not lead me to conclude that we should abandon any role in the process whereby institutions must be designed”; Feldman, 82.

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64 The Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization was created on August 5, 2004. Its principal mission “is to lead, coordinate and institutionalize U.S. Government civilian capacity to prevent or prepare for post-conflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife, so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy”; http://www.state.gOv/s/crs/ (accessed March 12, 2007).

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66 Dahl (fn. 18), 200.

67 Ibid., 201.