State-building, war and violence : evidence from Latin America

In European history, war has played a major role in state‐building and the state monopoly on violence. But war is a very specific form of organized political violence, and it is decreasing on a global scale. Other patterns of armed violence now dominate, ones that seem to undermine state‐building, thus preventing the replication of European experiences. As a consequence, the main focus of the current state‐building debate is on fragility and a lack of violence control inside these states. Evidence from Latin American history shows that the specific patterns of the termination of both war and violence are more important than the specific patterns of their organization. Hence these patterns can be conceptualized as a critical juncture for state‐building. While military victories in war, the subordination of competing armed actors and the prosecution of perpetrators are conducive for state‐building, negotiated settlements, coexistence, and impunity produce instability due to competing patterns of authority, legitimacy, and social cohesion

Construção de estados: por que não funciona e com o fazê-la funcionar? State building: why it does not work, and how can we make it work?

O autor procura entender por que processos de paz não são eficazes em estabelecer uma paz estável e duradoura depois que conflitos intra-estatais são encerrados. Ele argumenta que a insistência na construção de Estados em regiões marcadas por conflitos intra-estatais pode explicar a falha de grande parte dos processos de paz. Afirma, então, que o "elo que falta" nas explicações apresentadas por boa parte da literatura sobre resolução de conflitos é a questão da construção de identidades. Em seguida, explora como alguns autores lidam com o tema da identidade para defender uma postura influenciada pelos escritos de Habermas sobre comunicação, política e Estado. Na conclusão, avalia o processo de peacebuilding na Bósnia, e afirma que, longe do fracasso que muitos atribuem a esse processo, a intervenção naquele país conseguiu suspender as hostilidades e iniciar um processo político lento que pode levar a uma nova configuração política, diferente do Estado-nação, entre as partes. Finalmente, o autor afirma que o referido processo pode fornecer elementos fundamentais para a transição política agora em curso no Iraque, após a invasão americana em 2003.<br>The author tries to explain why intra-state conflicts are less likely to be successfully concluded by peaceful settlements than inter-state conflicts. The author affirms that his main hypothesis is that those peace processes fail because they insist on building states as the only possible political space. The author argues that the missing link in the existing literature on conflict resolution is the social construction of identities involved in such conflicts. He discusses how different authors deal with identity construction before he settles for a position defended by Habermas, which relies on new ideas on communication, politics and the state. The author concludes his argument by evaluating the Dayton agreement in Bosnia. According to the author, the Dayton agreement cannot be evaluated as a failure since they managed to cease the hostilities and to begin the construction of a new political process that does not necessarily coincide with the state. The author presents the Bosnian evolution as a model to what might happen in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003