Statebuilding and State-Formation: The Political Sociology of Intervention

This book examines the ways in which long-term processes of state-formation limit the possibilities for short-term political projects of statebuilding.

Using process-oriented approaches, the contributing authors explore what happens when conscious efforts at statebuilding ‘meet’ social contexts, and are transformed into daily routines. In order to explain their findings, they also analyse the temporally and spatially broader structures of world society which shape the possibilities of statebuilding.

Statebuilding and State-Formation includes a variety of case studies from post-conflict societies in Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as the headquarters and branch offices of international agencies. Drawing on various theoretical approaches from sociology and anthropology, the contributors discuss external interventions as well as self-led statebuilding projects. This edited volume is divided into three parts:

Part I: State-Formation, Violence and Political Economy
Part II: Governance, Legitimacy and Practice in Statebuilding and State-Formation
Part III: The International Self – Statebuilders’ Institutional Logics, Social Backgrounds and Subjectivities

The book will be of great interest to students of statebuilding and intervention, war and conflict studies, international security and IR.