State-building in Fragile States: Strategies of Embedment Maria-Louise Clausen State-building in Fragile States: Strategies of Embedment PhD Dissertation Politica © Forlaget Politica and the author 2016 ISBN: 978-87-7335-213-7 Cover: Svend Siune Print: Fællestrykkeriet, Aarhus University Layout: Annette Bruun Andersen Submitted May 9, 2016 The public defense takes place September 2, 2016 Published September 2016 Forlaget Politica c/o Department of Political Science Aarhus University Bartholins Allé 7 DK-8000 Aarhus C Denmark Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 11 Maps of Yemen and the Middle East ............................................................................ 14 List of abbreviations and acronyms .............................................................................. 15 Note on transliteration .................................................................................................. 17 Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................. 19 1.1. The case of Yemen .............................................................................................. 22 1.2. State-building: the existing literature and gaps ................................................ 24 1.2.1. Typologies of the state: Defining “fragile state” ......................................... 24 1.2.2. The state-building literature ....................................................................... 26 1.2.3. Intervention and sovereignty ..................................................................... 29 1.2.4. Defining state-building interventions ........................................................ 30 1.3. Contributions to the state-building literature ................................................... 31 1.4. Empirical gaps and contributions ...................................................................... 34 1.5. Limitations of the study ..................................................................................... 37 1.6. Outline of the dissertation ................................................................................. 38 PART I. THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: WHAT SHAPES STATE- BUILDING? ................................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 2. Learning from history: juxtaposing state formation and state- building.......................................................................................................................... 41 2.1. Defining the state ............................................................................................... 42 2.2. Explaining European state formation ............................................................... 43 2.2.1. War makes states ........................................................................................ 44 2.2.2. Capital accumulation and taxation ............................................................ 45 2.3. The state outside of Europe ............................................................................... 47 2.3.1. War makes states, but not so much outside Europe .................................. 47 2.3.2. Capital accumulation and taxation: the globalized economy .................... 51 2.3.3. Summing up: the commonalities between different narratives of state formation ..................................................................................................... 53 2.4. Nuancing the concept of legitimacy .................................................................. 54 2.4.1. Defining legitimacy ..................................................................................... 55 2.4.2. The difficult use of legitimacy .................................................................... 57 2.5. Different sources of legitimacy: the typology .................................................... 59 2.5.1. Internal sources of legitimacy: input and output legitimacy .....................60 2.5.2. Internal sources of legitimacy: descriptive legitimacy .............................. 62 2.5.3. External legitimacy: regional and extra-regional ...................................... 64 2.5.4. Summing up: different sources of legitimacy ............................................ 65 2.6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 3. State-building: the model ........................................................................... 69 3.1. State-building interventions as an ambiguous endeavor .................................. 70 5 Part 1: Internal actors in state-building .................................................................... 75 3.2. Institutions and organizations in state-building .......................................... 76 3.3. Internal actors in domestic power struggles ................................................ 82 Part 2: External actors in state-building .................................................................. 86 3.4. Multiple actors in state-building .................................................................. 87 3.5. How external actors influence domestic politics .......................................... 92 Part 3: The internal and external: the combined model ......................................... 96 3.6. The reality of varying agendas ...................................................................... 96 3.7. Regime reactions to interventions ................................................................ 98 3.8. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 101 PART II. THE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................... 103 Chapter 4. Approach and methodology ...................................................................... 105 4.1. Ontology and epistemology ............................................................................. 106 4.2. Research design ............................................................................................... 109 4.2.1. Subcases as micro-cosmoses ..................................................................... 114 4.3. Data collection .................................................................................................. 117 4.3.1. Data collection: documents ....................................................................... 118 4.3.2. Data collection: interviews and data from the field ................................. 119 4.3.3. Data processing: interviews ...................................................................... 127 4.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 128 PART III. THE FRAGILE STATE CONCEPT ............................................................. 131 Chapter 5. The fragile state concept: the power of definition ..................................... 133 5.1. Analytical framework: Begriffsgeschichte ....................................................... 135 5.2. Analytical framework: essentially contested concepts .................................... 137 5.3. Conceptual analysis of the fragile state concept ............................................. 140 5.3.1. The emergence of a concept: moving from failed to fragile ..................... 141 5.3.2. Summing up: the use of failed and fragile state until 2001 ..................... 146 5.3.3. The fragile state concept after 2001 ......................................................... 147 5.3.4. Summing up: the use of the fragile state concept after 2001 ................... 153 5.4. The conceptual definition of fragile state ........................................................ 153 5.4.1 Selection of documents .............................................................................. 154 5.4.2. How policy documents define fragile states ............................................. 155 5.4.3. How policy documents define the goals of interventions in fragile states ................................................................................................................... 157 5.4.4. How policy documents describe the interaction between external and internal actors .............................................................................................. 159 5.4.5. Summing up: the state of the art or the art of definition ........................ 160 5.5. The indicators of power in a binary world: indexes of fragile states .............. 160 5.6. The consequences of the use of the fragile state concept ................................ 165 5.6.1. Fragility as an internal problem, solvable through external intervention ......................................................................................................... 165 5.6.2. Fragile states as a distinctive recipient of aid ........................................... 167 5.6.3. Fragile states as places where interventions strengthen sovereignty ...... 169 6 5.6.4. What kind of interventions in fragile states ............................................. 172 5.6.5. Opportunities created: the agency of fragile states ................................. 174 5.7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 175 PART IV. STATE-BUILDING: THE CASE OF YEMEN .............................................