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Capacity building in fragile and post‐conflict situations is specially challenging for policy makers in that it represents a situation that needs to be carefully managed. Understanding the dynamic link between capacity building and conflict requires understanding the nature and determinants of conflicts, their duration, intensity and the modalities for their cessation and post‐conflict reconstruction. This study attempted to do that from systemic or theoretical perspective. A major common theme that runs across the literature is that post‐conflict recovery and sustainable development and the associated capacity building exercise in Africa need to have the following four feature: (1) first a broad development planning framework with a fairly long‐time horizon and an overarching objective of poverty reduction; (2) second, social policy‐making in such countries is expected to be distinct from non‐conflict countries. This signals the need to articulate country specific policies and (3) third, intervention in such states requires a high volume of aid flows and (4) forth it need to be preceded by deeper understanding of African societies by donors. This study by outlining such basic issues from theoretical perspective resorted to an outline of three core areas of capacity building that are needed in post‐conflict and fragile states: capacity building to address immediate needs of post‐conflict states, capacity building to address the core economic and political causes of conflict, as well as, capacity building to address issues of finance and financial sector reconstruction. Each of these aspects is discussed in detail in the study. The study underscores the need to view and understand capacity building exercise as part and parcel of a broad developmental problem which requires broader developmental solutions.

This paper aims to explore the state-building attempts in post conflict zones. The neoliberal economic system has dominated the key international organizations such that the latter have designed their approaches for state building based on it. The framework of these approaches focuses on minimal state interventions in the economy and free markets by being as a “one size fits all”. However, several prominent financial institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund that have implemented some of these approaches in various regions resulted in limited success.

This paper is comparing two cases of state building before statehood and sovereignty, and this comparison comes in socioeconomic practices of international players and local governments.

This model has been carried out in Palestine and Kosovo but failed in meeting the expected demands of independence and prosperity. Instead, it resulted in more failures in the markets and caused a decline in the macro and micro economic indicators.

The key reasons for such failures, specifically in Palestine and Kosovo, are believed to be related to the top-down approach of policy-making, the lack of independence and sovereignty and the absence of popular and local participation in policies and plans. In such context, this approach has to be further revised to create a more inclusive participatory and representative model.

Fragile states (FS) are often neglected and categorized as “aid orphans”. In extreme circumstances, they are loaded with aid beyond their absorptive capacity. However, whether they receive little or too much, there is a compelling imperative to coordinate aid aimed at capacity development effectively. In an ever shrinking pot of funds from donors mainly due to the current global economic downturn, it is extremely important to coordinate and harmonise aid delivery. FS cannot afford to waste any money trapped under rubble of multi‐donor aid bureaucracy. Due to the multidimensional nature of fragility, we draw on case studies and interdisciplinary insights from Authority‐Legitimacy‐Capacity (ALC), Country Development Framework (CDF) and other models and frameworks of donor coordination. A number of asymmetries (e.g. technical, cultural and, financial) between donors and recipients need to be addressed. Donors can harmonise their respective Africa strategies reports and give priority to infrastructure instead of focusing exclusively on the social agenda as in the past. FS should fight the local culture of corruption, avoid fungibility, protect vulnerable groups in society, focus on reintegration as well as demobilizing ex‐combatants with employment provisions. Donors should not give mixed signals to recipients and need to be flexible in their operational procedures. Finally, we discuss the implications of key emerging issues that threaten or facilitate sustainable reconstruction, development and poverty reduction in post‐conflict environments.

This chapter examines the relationship between state failure, state-building and regional security through a thick qualitative and historical analysis of a single case: the Russia–Georgia relationship. Its principal finding is that the two sides’ conceptions of state-building contained incompatible identity projects that significantly increased the potential for conflict. This potential emerged in the context of a highly asymmetrical distribution of power in the region. The balancing strategies that Georgia pursued to compensate for this asymmetry aggravated the relationship further and were significant in provoking the August 2008 war between the two states. In making this argument, the chapter begins with a discussion of the relationship between state-building and security. It then turns to an account of the near failure and recovery of the two states and a discussion of the relationship between their state-building projects. It proceeds to situate this unit-level analysis in the regional systemic context. After a discussion of the war itself, the chapter provides concluding remarks on the implications of the conflict for regional security and for the wider discussion of state-building and security. The major implication is that, although state-building is seen as a domestic endeavour, the way in which the project is defined and develops has significant external and regional implications, which may enhance the potential for inter-state conflict. As such, international engagement should take account of the regional environment in efforts to foster the re-building of states.

Capacity development in fragile environments in Africa has often proven to be a complex undertaking. This has largely been because of existing knowledge gaps on what exactly causes fragility of states, the economy and society. The liberal peace development model that generally informs post‐conflict reconstruction and capacity development has a limited conception of fragility by narrowly focusing on the national dimensions of the problem, promoting donor‐driven solutions, emphasizing minimal participation of beneficiary actors in the identification and prioritization of capacity development needs, and by subcontracting the design and management of projects and programs. The resulting capacity development impact has generally been disappointing. In the absence of homegrown strategic plans, stakeholder participation and ownership, international development partners have all too often addressed capacity gaps by financing training, supply of equipment and professional exchanges of parliamentarians and parliamentary staffers. These efforts usually achieved their presumed number targets but tended to ignore addressing the larger issues of political economy within which capacity development take place. However, the recent re‐conceptualization of parliamentary capacity development as a development of nationally owned, coordinated, harmonized, and aligned development activities seems to be gaining growing attention in Africa. As the experience of Rwanda eloquently demonstrates, capacity development is essentially about politics, economics and power, institutions and incentives, habits and attitudes – factors that are only partly susceptible to technical fixes and quantitative specifications. These structural factors have to be negotiated carefully and tactfully.

How can we account for the actual state of capacity building in Africa? This paper attempts to respond to this question, building on the existing literature and statistical data available both within and outside the continent. Using the arguments put forward by different national and international institutions around the world, it is possible to trace the path followed by the capacity building process in Africa around change and human capital theories. Following the creation of ACBF in 1991 and thanks to the intervention of a number of development partners, capacity building practices have significantly influenced the functioning of African States, the implementation of educational systems, the expansion of microfinance, and the impact of multilateral trade negotiations. This paper suggests that capacity building in Africa still requires urgent and vigorous actions towards a qualitative and quantitative of scientists, for the coordination of the dispersed efforts made by various regional and sub‐regional institutions, and for the strengthening of individual and collaborative programmes aimed at developing African human resources in Africa.

The seminal literature on state formation proposes a model of “co-opt and expand” to explain the rise of centralized nation-states in modern and early modern Europe. Building on this literature’s distinction between direct and indirect rule, other analysts have expanded the scope of this model to explain patterns of state building in the non-Western world, particularly in the construction of centralized authority in postcolonial and postimperial contexts. According to this literature, the failure of central rulers to co-opt local elites has frequently produced weak states lacking capacities of rule in their peripheries. Using archival materials to examine the Albanian state’s relatively successful penetration of the country’s highland communities during its early decades of national independence, this article suggests that state building can proceed along an alternative path called “co-opt and bind,” in which state builders “bind” peasant communal institutions to the institutional idea of the nation-state to legitimize and implement state building goals. The article identifies three mechanisms used by early Albanian state builders to generate legitimacy and institute political order in its remote communities, including disarmament, the institution of new forms of economic dependency, and the invocation of peasant cultural codes of honor.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

Charles Tilly argues that continuous wars and preparation for wars motivated early European rulers to extract resources from their subject populations, thereby expanding states’ infrastructure and establishing mechanisms to enable negotiations with societies. State capacity was thus strengthened. Tilly's argument has inspired a wave of scholarship to reconsider state building in various regions of the Third World. Analysts of the Third World employ two theoretical elements inferred from Tilly to account for the failures of many Third World states. One is that without continuous international wars (as early modern Europe had), there would be no capable and effective states. The other element is that availability of foreign aid from the global powers so unique to the Cold War Era exempted Third World states from extracting resources from their societies. I call these analyses Tillian theories of the Third World.

Tillian analysts acknowledge that the capable state in Taiwan during the Cold War stood out from its Third World counterparts. However, the Tillian generalization of the Third World does not account for Taiwan's state-building path. Taiwan's experience is situated in a perplexity between the two variables above: On the one hand, Taiwan resembles early modern European state formation with high military expenditures and a huge standing army prepared for war. In the Tillian model, this condition enhances state capacity. On the other hand, Taiwan was a huge US aid recipient in the Cold War, second only to South Korea. In the Tillian model, this degrades the state's effectiveness, contrary to Taiwan's experience. Solving this puzzle will revise Tillian logics of state building. That, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, through literature review and presentation of empirical evidences, I suggest some analytical directions for future research to enhance our understanding of Taiwan's state-building trajectory in particular and of Third World states in general.