State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century

Author - Francis Fukuyama ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Cornell University Press was reviewed on 23-Jul-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Cornell University Press. Weak or failed states like Somalia and Afghanistan are quietly causing some of the world´s most pressing problems and will continue to do so, according to political analyst Francis Fukuyama. In this elegant, sobering critique based on his 2003 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, Fukuyama uses a simple, two-dimensional model of "stateness" to analyze why states fail. He focuses on what countries can do, rather than using some theoretical model of what they ought to do. Fukuyama describes the supply of and demand for government institutions, why states often don´t deliver what their "customers" want and the organizational pathologies that prevent developing nations from "getting to Denmark," development theory parlance for achieving an efficient, transparent and legitimate government. Overall, the book is a mixed bag, mostly filled with solid diagnoses, but sometimes merely providing gooey think tank truisms. Nevertheless, we recommend this brief, skeptical examination to anyone who wants to understand one of the huge challenges of twenty-first century statecraft: how to prevent weak states from exacerbating such problems as AIDS, famine, poverty, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.¤

2) Hardcover Book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Cornell University Press. Francis Fukuyama, in an important slender volume, sees nation building as the process of helping to ". . .create self-sustaining democratic political institutions and robust market-oriented economies. . . ." He draws a critical distinction between "nation building" and "state building." The former refers to ". . .creating or repairing all the cultural, social, and historical ties that bind people together as a nation." The latter, in contrast, aims at ". . .creating or strengthening such government institutions as armies, police forces, judiciaries, central banks, tax-collection agencies, health and education systems, and the like." The two are not the same--but are interdependent one upon the other.

Fukuyama argues that the process must proceed in two stages: first, the country must be stabilized, with the provision of humanitarian assistance, rebuilding of infrastructure, disaster relief, and economic development. Only then, second, comes the building of self-sustaining political and economic institutions that can support competent democratic governance and economic growth. Thus, nation building involves stabilization of ties that bind a people together as well as supporting the construction of government institutions.

This is a real challenge and not one that can be done easily, without much effort and care. In short, eny effort at democratic nation building must be done with patience and making sure that prerequisites are in place before trying to introduce the full regalia of democracy.
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3) Hardcover Book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Cornell University Press. This book seems like an introductory political science book but its language is simple enough for a general audience to understand. Everyone who has an interest in the political background and details of the current World events can find a lot of interesting discussions.

The author often tends to schematize some ambiguous concepts and ideas very successfully, e.g. the graphs of "strength of state vs. scope of state functions" and "specificity vs. transaction volume" are some outstanding cases. He argues some political events and concepts belonging to WW-2 and post-WW-2 era and makes very lucid and sensible connections with the current events.

He is known to be one of the major theorists of the American neo-conservative political movement, but it seems like he apologetically and implicitly admits the colossal mistakes and their current consequences. This should not be the standpoint of a well-known political scientist. One day, he vehemently supports some certain political ideas and actions, he admits his fault the next day, which is a huge inconsistency on his part. How are people supposed to believe and trust him, when he comes up with new theories?

He argues that weak states create black holes of political (and also economic) instabilities and chaos, and powerful states (like the US) has a right to intervene their affairs, if they feel they pose a threat. Saving human lives could be a very strong legitimate reason for these actions (e.g. Bosnia, Kosovo etc.), but if the powerful states renounce all the international laws, UN resolutions and most importantly the sense of "justice", it could also lead to very unpleasant, festering and chaotic situations (e.g. Iraq).

Although there are many points that I do not agree with him, he also makes some very sound and reasonable comments. I must also say he wrote a thorough and well-researched book, with a lot of citations from other resources, namely it is well-written from a scientific perspective, but different people will, naturally, have different opinions about the ideas he proposed.¤

4) Hardcover Book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Cornell University Press. One of the main contributions of this book is the underappreciated distinction between state-building and nation-building. Anyone interested in democractic nation-building ought to consider reading this volume. A clear analysis with obvious implications for American policy in places like Iraq. This is part of an increasing body of work on nation building that, collectively taken together, provides a good handle on the difficulties in creating democracy where previously there was none (and see the work of Paris, Dobbins, Somit, etc.)¤

5) Hardcover Book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Cornell University Press. This was disappointing reading for me--after a rather abstruse (but perhaps technically useful to some) delineation of various factors involved in analyzing "state building," the application to any real situations was extremely thin and nothing new. Nor was much "meat" put on the skeleton. It reminded me of university situations where publishing periodically is a necessity. (However, the subject area is only an interest of mine--my Ph.D. is in a different field.)¤

6) Hardcover Book State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Cornell University Press. Francis Fukuyama famously predicted "the end of history" with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states. The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. "Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world’s most serious problems," he believes. He traces what we know—and more often don’t know—about how to transfer functioning public institutions to developing countries in ways that will leave something of permanent benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned. These are important lessons, especially as the United States wrestles with its responsibilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.

Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of "stateness." He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community may legitimately intervene to prop them up.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 20-Aug-2008, 08014429239780801442926, 830-8

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