Making Peace, Forging Nations, Building Institutions (E027)

Course Organization

Time & Location:

Thursday, 17:15 - 19:00, Rigot

Instructor:

Katia Papagianni
Email: ep236@columbia.edu

Assistant:

Renato Mariani
Office: Rigot 26
Office hours: Monday 14:15 - 16:00 or by appointment
Telephone: 022 908 59 41
Email: mariani4@hei.unige.ch

Course Description

The consolidation of peace in post-conflict countries consists of a large number of complex tasks, including the task of building or strengthening state institutions. The seminar will examine the literature on war termination, nation and state formation, institution building and institutional change with the goal of identifying the challenges facing modern ‘state-builders’. It will also study in depth a few specific countries and investigate the applicability of existing theories. The seminar is geared toward students with a strong interest to conduct research in the area of peace- and state-building.

Requirements

• Six 2-3 page notes on different readings. Students may choose any six of the assigned readings. The notes should succinctly present and critique the argument of the reading. Students should submit the note on the day the reading is assigned.
• One presentation on the week’s readings (not to overlap with reading notes), which will briefly summarize the main arguments in the readings and offer a critique. Presentations should not exceed 10 minutes.
• Take-home mid-term exam consisting of one 6-page essay. Students will have 24 hours to work on the essay.
• 25-page research paper.

Grading

• Research paper: 40% (grade includes timely submission of statement of research and paper outline)
• Take-home mid-term examination: 20%
• Class participation: 20% (including, but not limited to, presentation)
• Notes on readings: 20%

Class Schedule and Course Syllabus

Week 1, October 26, 2006,
Introduction: What are ‘State-Building’, ‘Peace-Building’ and ‘Nation-Building’?

Required reading:

• Roland Paris, “The Origins of Peacebuilding,” Chapter I, in Roland Paris, At War’s End; Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Marina Ottaway and Bethany Lacina, “International Interventions and Imperialism: Lessons from the 1990s,” SAIS Review, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, Summer-Fall 2003.
• Francis Fukuyama, State-Building; Governance and World Order in the Twentieth-First Century, Chapter III, “Weak States and International Legitimacy” (Profile Books, Ltd, 2005).
• Alan Sorensen, “The Reluctant Nation Builders,” Current History, December 2003.
• “From chaos, order; Rebuilding failed states,” The Economist, March 5, 2005.

Optional reading:

• Ronald Paris, “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2, Autumn 1997.
• John Owen, “The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions,” International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 2, Spring 2002.
• Michael Barnett, “Nation Building’s New Face,” Foreign Policy, No. 133, Nov/Dec 2002.
• Marina Ottaway, “Nation-Building,” Foreign Policy, No. 132, Sept/Oct 2002.
• Stephen John Stedman, “Introduction,” in Stedman, Rothchild and Cousens, eds, Ending Civil Wars, The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002).
• George Downs and Stephen John Stedman, “Evaluation Issues in Peace Implementation,” in Stedman, Rothchild and Cousens, eds, Ending Civil Wars, The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002).

Week 2, November 2, 2006,
Keeping the Peace: Overview of key variables and debates

Required reading:

• Barbara Walter, "Designing Transitions from Civil War: Demobilization, Democratization and Commitments to Peace," International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1, Summer 1999.
• Caroline A. Hartzell, “Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars,” Journal of Conflct Resolution, Vol. 43, No. 1, February 1999.
• Virginia Page Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace After Civil War,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 2, 2004.
• Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 4, 2000.

Optional reading:

• Virginia Page Fortna, "Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace," International Organization, Vol. 57, Spring 2003.
• Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie and Donald Rothchild, “Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables,” International Organization, vol 55, no 1, Winter 2001.
• Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter, “Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence,” International Organization, Vol. 56, 2002.
• Roy Licklider, “The consequences of negotiated settlements in civil wars, 1945-1993,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 3, September 1995.
• Barbara Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization, Vol. 51, 1997.
• Suzanne Werner, "The Precarious Nature of Peace: Resolving the Issues, Enforcing the Settlement, and Renegotiating the Terms," American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 43, No. 3, July 1999.

Week 3, November 9, 2006,
Nations and states: what comes first?

Required reading:

• Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Chapters 3, 4, 5.
• Ernest Gellner, “Nationalism in a Vaccum,” in Alexander Motyl, ed, Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
• Anthony Smith, “Ethnic Identity and Territorial Nationalism in Comparative Perspective,” in Alexander Motyl, ed, Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
• Charles Tilly, “States and Nationalism in Europe 1492-1992,” Theory and Society, Vol. 23, No. 1, February 1994.

Optional reading:

• Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
• Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Harvard University Press, 1992).
• Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism reframed: nationhood and the national question in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• E.J.Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1789: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Mark R. Beissinger, “Nationalist Violence and the State: Political Authority and Contentious Repertoires in the Former Soviet Union,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 30, No. 4, June 1998.
• Edward Miguel, “Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya versus Tanzania,” World Politics, Vol. 56, April 2004.
• Charles Tilly, “Ethnic Conflict in the Soviet Union,” Theory and Society, Vol. 20, No. 5, Special Issue on Ethnic Conflict in the Soviet Union, October 1991.
• Stephen Shulman, “Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of Nationalism,” Comparative Political Studies, June 2002.

Week 4, November 16, 2006,
Forming and Transforming Nations and Identities

Required reading:

• David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). Chapters 1, 5, 6.
• Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicage: Chicago University Press, 1995). Chapters 3-5.
• Daniel Byman, “Forever enemies? The manipulation of ethnic identities to end civil wars,” Security Studies, Spring 2000.
• David Laitin, “The cultural identities of a European State,” Politics and Society, Vol. 25, No. 3, September 1997.

Optional reading:

• Jeffrey T. Checkel, “Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change,” International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 3, Summer 2001.
• Jeffrey T. Checkel, “Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe,” International Studies Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 43.
• Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’,” Theory and Society, Vol. 29, No. 1, February 2000.
• Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, “Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia,” Daedalus, Spring 1992.
• Dusko Sekulic, Garth Massey, Randy Hodson, “Who Were the Yugoslavs? Failed Sources of Common Identity in Former Yugoslavia,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, February 1994.
• Steve Burg and Michael Berbaum, “Community, Integration and Stability in Multinational Yugoslavia,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 2, June 1989.
• Mark Simpson, “The Experience of Nation-Building: Some Lessons for South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, September 1994.

Week 5, November 23, 2006,
The State and its Origins

Required reading:

• Stephen D. Krasner, “Review Essay; Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No. 2, January 1984.
• Hendrik Spruyt, “The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State,” Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 5, 2002.
• Jeffrey Herbst, “War and the State in Africa,” International Security, Vol. 14, No. 4, Spring 1990.
• William Reno, “War, Markets, and the Configuration of West Africa’s Weak States,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 29, No. 4, July 1997.
• J.P.Nettl, “The State as a Conceptual Variable,” World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 4, July 1968.

Optional reading:

• Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors; An Analysis of Systems’ Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
• Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and the European State (Blackwell Publishing, 1993), Chapters 1-6.
• Pierre Englebert, “The contemporary African state: neither African nor state,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4, 1997.
• William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder: Lynn Rienner, 1998).

Week 6, November 30, 2006,
Accommodating Ethnicity, Culture and Identity through Constitutional Design

Required reading:

• Arend Lijphart, “Constitutional Design for Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2, April 2004.
• Donald Horowitz, “Making Moderation Pay,” in J. Montville, Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Free Press, 1991).
• Donald Horowitz, “Constitutional Design: Proposals versus Processes,” in Andrew Reynolds, ed, The Architecture of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Henry Hale, “Divided We Stand: Institutional Sources of Ethnofederal State Survival and Collapse,” World Politics, Vol. 56, January 2004.
• Rogers Brubaker, “Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet Eurasia: an Institutionalist Account,” Theory and Society, Vol. 23, No, 1, February 1994.

Observation: The two chapters by Horowitz are not included in the Polycopié and will be distributed on the week before this class.
Optional reading:

• Arend Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” World Politics, Vol. 21, No.2, January 1969.
• Arend Lijpart, “Democratization and Constitutional Choices in Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, 1989-1991,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 4, 1992.
• Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
• Donald Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
• Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 1995), Chapters 7&9.
• Kidane Mengisteab, “Ethiopia’s Ethnic-Based Federalism: 10 years after,” African Issues, Vol 29, No 1/2, 2001
• Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Nancy Bermeo, ‘A New Look at Federalism: the Import of Institutions,” Journal of Democracy, Vol 13, No 2 (April 1999).

Week 7, December 7, 2006
Statement of research topic due in class on Dec 7.
The statement should include the question you want to research, the evidence you will use in answering the question, and possible country(ies) you are interested in studying. It should not be more than one page.

Building and Changing Institutions

Required reading:

• James G. March; Johan P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 78, No. 3, Sept. 1984.
• Paul Pierson, “The Limits of Design: Explaining Institutional Origins and Change,” Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Vol. 13, No. 14, October 2000.
• Gerard Alexander, “Institutions, Path Dependence and Democratic Consolidation,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 13, No. 3, July 2001.
• Jon Elster, “Constitution-Making in Eastern Europe: Rebuilding the Boat in the Open Sea,” Public Administration, Vol. 71, Issue 1/2, Spring/Summer 1993. Pages: 169-200.

Optional reading:

• Paul Pierson, "Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 2, Jun., 2000.
• Douglass C North and Barry R. Weingast, "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England." Journal of Economic History, 1989.
• Douglas North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981).
• Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and Barry Weingast, Analytic Narratives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
• Paul R. Milgrom, Douglass C. North, and Barry R. Weingast, “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Medieval Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs,” Economics and Politics, Vol. 2, March 1990.
• Paul Milgrom, Barry Weingast and Avner Greif, "Coordination, Commitment and Enforcement: The Case of the Merchant Gild," The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 102, No. 4, August 1994.
• Andrew P. Cortell and Susan Peterson, “Limiting the Unintended Consequences of Institutional Change,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 34, No. 7, September 2001.

Week 8, December 14, 2006,
Is externally-led state-building possible?

Required reading:

• Stephen D. Krasner, “Sharing Sovereignty; New Institutions for Collapsed and Failed States,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1, Fall 2004.
• James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 4, Spring 2004.
• William Zartman, ed, Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, Conclusion (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995).
• Michael Barnett, “Building a Republican Peace; Stabilizing States after War,” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4, Spring 2006.
• Roland Paris, At War’s End; Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Chapter 10, “Toward More Effective Peacebuilding: Institutionalization Before Liberalization.”

Optional reading:

• Marina Ottaway, “Rebuilding State Institutions in Collapsed States,” Development and Change, Vol. 33, No. 5, 2002.
• Simon Chesterman, You the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration and State-building (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Jon C. Pevehouse, “ Democracy from the Outside-In? International Organizations and Democratization,” Vol. 56, No. 1, Summer 1995.

Week 9, December 21, 2006,
3-5 page paper outline due on Dec 21

Secession and Partition Instead of Putting States Back Together? The debate over Iraq

Required reading:

• Chaim Kaufmann, “When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth Century,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2, Autumn 1998.
• Nicholas Sambanis, “Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature,” World Politics, Vol. 52, July 2000.
• Stephen Biddle, “Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2, March/April 2006.
• Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Chaim Kaufmann, Leslie H. Gelb, and Stephen Biddle, “What to do in Iraq: A Roundtable,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006.
• “Iraq gets ever closer to all-out civil war; The idea of a managed partition is plausible but dangerous,” Financial Times, August 7, 2006.
• Gareth Stansfield, “Divided, Iraq might just have a chance; It is three years since Saddam was toppled, and civil war now seems inevitable,” The Sunday Telegraph, March 19, 2006.

Optional reading:

• Jeffrey Herbst, “Responding to State Failure in Africa,” International Security, vol 21, no 3, Winter 1996-97, 131, 139.
• Chaim Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International Security, Vol 20, No 4, Spring 1996.
• David Laitin, “Secessionist Rebellion in the Former Soviet Union,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol 34, No 8, October 2001.
• Jeffrey Herbst, “The Creation and Maintenance of National Boundaries in Africa,” International Organization, Vol 43, No 4, Autumn 1989.

Week 10, January 12, 2007,
Bosnia and Herzegovina

Required reading:

• Roland Paris, At War’s End; Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Chapter 6, “Bosnia and Croatia: Reinforcing Ethnic Divisions.”
• Sumantra Bose, “The Bosnian State a Decade After Dayton,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, Autumn 2005.
• Marcus Cox, “Bosnia Case Study,” in Charles Call, ed, Building States to Build Peace (International Peace Academy, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007).
• David Chandler, ‘Introduction: Peace without Politics?’ International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, Autumn 2005.
• John J. Mearsheimer, “The Only Exit from Bosnia,” The New York Times, October 7, 1997.
• Thomas L. Friedman, “Blank on Bosnia,” The New York Times, October 16, 1996.

Optional reading:

• Richard Kaplan, “International Authority and State-Building: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Global Governance, Vol. 10, No. 1, Jan-Mar 2004.
• David Chandler, ‘Imposing the ‘Rule of Law’: The Lessons of BiH for Peacebuilding in Iraq’, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer 2004).
• Elizabeth M. Cousens, “From Missed Opportunities to Overcompensation: Implementing the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia,” in Stedman, Rothchild and Cousens, eds, Ending Civil Wars, The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002).

Week 11, January 19, 2007,
Liberia and Sierra Leone

Required reading:

• Mike McGovern, “Liberia Case Study,” in Charles Call, ed, Building States to Build Peace (International Peace Academy, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007).
• William Reno, “Reinvention of an African Patrimonial State: Charles Taylor’s Liberia,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1995.
• William Reno, “Political Networks in a Failing State; The Roots and Future of Violent Conflict in Sierra Leone,” Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, 2003.
• “Liberia and Sierra Leone: Rebuilding Failed States,” International Crisis Group, December 8, 2004, Africa Report No. 87.

Optional reading:

• Michael Chege, “Sierra Leone: The State that Came Back from the Dead,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 3, Summer 2002.
• “Sierra Leone: The State of Security and Governance,” International Crisis Group, Africa Report, No 67, September 2, 2003.
• International Crisis Group, “Rebuilding Liberia: Prospects and Perils,” Africa Report No 75, January 30, 2004.

Week 12, January 26, 2007,
Somalia

Required reading:

• Ramesh Thakur, “From Peacekeeping to peace enforcement: The UN Operation in Somalia,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol 32, No 3, Sept 1994.
• Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst, “Somalia and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 1996.
• Ismail I Ahmed and Reginald Herbold Green, “The heritage of state and war in Somalia and Somaliland: local-level effects, external interventions and reconstruction,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1999.
• Ken Menkhaus, “Somalia Case Study,” in Charles Call, ed, Building States to Build Peace (International Peace Academy, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007).
• International Crisis Group, “Can the Somali Crisis be Contained?” Africa Report No 116, August 10, 2006.

Optional reading:

• Charles Krauthammer, “Trusteeship for Somalia; An old -- colonial -- idea whose time has come again,” The Washington Post, October 9, 1992.
• Ken Menkhaus, “State Collapse in Somalia: Second Thoughts,” Review of African Political Economy, No 97, 2003.
• Terrence Lyons and Ahmed I Samatar, Somalia : state collapse, multilateral intervention, and strategies for political reconstruction (Washington, DC: Brookings Institutions, 1995).
• Virginia Luling, “Come Back Somalia? Questioning a Collapsed State,” Third World Quarterly, Vol 18, No 2, 1997.
• Abdi Ismail Samatar, “Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Convention,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, Dec 1992.

Week 13, February 2, 2007,
Degrees of Secession: Kosovo and Somaliland

Required reading:

• Alexandra Gheciu, “International Norms, Power and the Politics of International Administration: the Kosovo Case,” Geopolitics, Vol. 10, 2005
• Tim Judah, “Kosovo’ Moment of Truth,” Survival, Vol. 47, No. 4, Winter 2005.
• Charles Kupchan, “Independence for Kosovo,” Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2005.
• International Crisis Group, “Somaliland: Democratization and its Discontents,” July 28, 2003.
• International Crisis Group, “Somaliland: Time for African Union Leadership,” Africa Report No 110, 23 May 2006.

Optional reading:

• Alexandros Yannis, “The UN as Government in Kosovo,” Global Governance, Vol. 10, No. 1, Jan-Mar 2004.
• Richard A. Falk, “Kosovo, World Order and the Future of International Law,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 93, No. 4, October 1999.
• Florian Bieber, “A Degree of Independence,” Transitions Online, March 6, 2006.
• Fatmire Terdevci, “Surviving Without the UN,” Transitions Online, July 3, 2006.