DefinePK

Abstract

Interventionist state-building practice is guided by the Western notion of a centralized, bureaucratized Weberian state that exercises a monopoly of power over violence within its territory. A conventional top down understanding of state building is, in turn, manifested in attempts at constructing security sector apparatuses, a centralized bureaucracy for tax collection, service provision, and political institutions based on liberal democratic lines. State building is hence theorized as strengthening of democratic forms of political participation and carried out in practice through bringing in Western democratic forms of governance practices, including constitutional guarantees of individual rights, elections, political parties, civil society and the like. Liberal political order is accompanied by reforms in the economic field. In the building of liberal political and economic order, paradoxes emerge because despite aiming for stability, Western democratic and market reforms may not blend well with the local cultural, traditional and economic norms and practices in intervened failed states. This paper attempts to bring out the various paradoxical practices in the liberal order and their resultant destabilizing and slowing impact on the state building efforts. The framework of this paper is designed around five sections. After introduction, Section two divulges into the paradoxes resulting from liberal state-building models in post conflict and intervened states. Section three focuses on liberalization paradoxes in post-2001 state building exercise in Afghanistan. Section four briefly attempts to address the issue of how to address the liberalization paradoxes in intervened conflict states. And the last section provides the conclusions.