Professor David Chandler

The 2002 US National Security Strategy states: 'America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.'

In the aftermath of 9/11 - when the failure of Afghanistan to control its borders was held to have opened the way for al-Qaeda - the state is no longer viewed from a totally negative perspective. In the 1990s, interventionist policies challenged the rights of individual states to self-governance. Today, non-Western states are more likely to be feted by international institutions offering programmes of poverty-reduction, democratisation and good governance. David Chandler argues that state-building, as it is currently conceived, does not work. States without the right of self-government will always lack legitimate authority. The international policy agenda focuses on bureaucratic mechanisms, which can only institutionalise divisions between the West and the non-West and are unable to overcome the social and political divisions of post-conflict states. Highlighting the dangers of current policy - including the redefinition of sovereignty, and the subsequent erosion of ties linking power and accountability - David Chandler offers a critical look at state-building that will be of interest to all students of international affairs.

Lenard Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia 'A provocative and insightful study which raises many important questions about how the international community employs its power and resources.'

Robert M. Hayden, University of Pittsburgh 'A strong, original critique of the Western ideologies of rule that threaten to destroy democracy in order to save it.'

Journal Reviews

Catherine Turner, Ethnopolitics, Vol.6, No.1, pp.155-156 (March, 2007).

Aidan Hehir, International Affairs, Vol.87, No.2, pp.361-3 (March, 2007).

Alex Veit, Development and Change, Vol.39, No.1, pp.176 (January, 2008).

Philipp Rotmann, Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Vol.20, No.4, pp. 262-263 (2007).

Other Reviews

Philip Cunliffe, Spiked-Online, 4 September 2006.

Lee Jones, Culture Wars, 21 September 2006.

Editor's Shelf, Future Islam, November 2006.

Rene Wadlow, Transnational Perspectives, no date.

Other

Cited in Jim Quilty, ‘Ziad Majed discusses the failure of the “Beirut Spring” protests to affect the structure of power in Lebanon’, The Daily Star, 23 May 2006.