STATE BUILDING OR STATE TRANSFORMATION? RISK MANAGEMENT AT THE FRINGES OF THE GLOBAL ORDER SHAHAR HAMEIRI BA (HONOURS) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University 2009 Abstract This thesis develops a new framework for explaining the effects and possible trajectories of state building interventions (SBIs). This is for both examining specific interventions and learning about the precise nature of the post-Cold War global order – how power is distributed, exercised, constrained and challenged within and between states. In the post-Cold War years, but particularly since the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, so-called failed states have become a central security concern for policymakers. In tandem, there has been an influx of practitioner and scholarly interest in international ‘state building’. Prevalent approaches to state building are premised on a static conception of the state and therefore seek to evaluate SBIs in terms of whether they help create ‘more’ or ‘less’ state. In contrast, this thesis examines SBIs as a new mode of governance in the global political economy that is transformative of both intervened and intervening states, leading to the creation of a transnationalising and transnationally regulated form of statehood. Based on a conception of the state as a site of social and political struggle this study examines the ways in which SBIs affect the distribution, production and reproduction of political power in intervened states: Who rules and how? What social and political conflicts are engendered or exacerbated by SBIs, and how are they managed? What alliances and coalitions support the production/reproduction of power relationships associated with SBIs? The thesis provides a conceptual framework for understanding the complex governance terrain SBIs open up. SBIs are conceptualised as multilevel regimes – sets of social and political relationships, institutions and ideas – that exist simultaneously within and outside intervened states. While preserving the formal sovereignty of intervened states, these regimes are nevertheless established to shape political outcomes by limiting the political choices available to domestic leaders. This is operationalised by opening up and shifting power to multilevel spaces of governance within the apparatus of these countries. Through case studies from Australia, Solomon Islands and Cambodia, the thesis analyses the politics of SBIs and their broader implications for contemporary statehood. Ultimately it establishes that regardless of whether SBIs are successful or otherwise in achieving their stated objectives they are associated with the emergence of increasingly authoritarian, hierarchical and anti-competitive forms of political rule, both within and between states. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................ v Table of Contents ........................................................................................ vi Abbreviations ........................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Case study selection and approach .......................................................................... 8 Chapter One Contemporary Approaches to State Building and Their Limitations: Towards a New Framework ..................................................................... 13 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 13 Evaluating the effects of state building interventions: Current debates and their limitations ................................................................................................................. 15 The capacity building debate ................................................................................ 16 The sovereignty debate .......................................................................................... 31 State building interventions: towards a new approach ........................................ 40 Conclusion................................................................................................................. 45 Chapter Two State Building Interventions as Risk Management: State Transformation and Multilevel Regimes ................................................ 47 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 47 Risk management and state transformation ......................................................... 49 State building interventions as multilevel regimes: conceptual and theoretical issues .......................................................................................................................... 57 State building and legal exceptionalism: the ever-changing demands of risk management .............................................................................................................. 69 Conclusion................................................................................................................. 74 Chapter Three The Emergence of State Building: State Transformation and the Globalisation of Risk ................................................................................. 77 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 77 The failure of the humanitarian interventions of the early 1990s ....................... 81 The return to the state in development theory and policy ................................... 88 Neoliberalism and the transformation of Western states ..................................... 96 The globalisation of risk and the localisation of risk management ................... 104 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 110 Chapter Four Who Intervenes and Why? State Transformation and Meta- Governance .............................................................................................. 113 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 113 Actors and multilevel regimes ............................................................................... 117 Public actors in state building interventions ....................................................... 124 Private actors in state building interventions ...................................................... 127 vi Nongovernmental organisations ........................................................................ 130 Consultants .......................................................................................................... 135 Private Military Companies and the Privatisation of Security .......................... 138 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 141 Chapter Five The Australian Federal Police and the (Meta) Governance of Disorder in the Australian State’s New Regional Frontier ................................. 143 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 143 The Australian state and the Australian Federal Police..................................... 146 The neoliberalisation of the Australian state: disaggregation and new modes of coordination ......................................................................................................... 147 Whole of government and the Australian national security apparatus ............ 151 The AFP’s new policy role and accountability requirements ........................... 153 The International Deployment Group and the Australian state’s new frontiers .................................................................................................................................. 159 The contours of the Australian state’s regionalisation...................................... 160 The AFP and Australian regionalisation ........................................................... 168 IDG operations and the limits to regulatory regionalisation in practice .......... 171 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 175 Chapter Six The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands: State Transformation and Its Limitations ...................................................... 179 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 179 RAMSI and its critics ............................................................................................ 182 State transformation and RAMSI: politics as risk, anti-politics as risk management ............................................................................................................ 194 The limits to RAMSI’s state transformation: bringing politics back in ........... 207 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 216 Chapter Seven One State, Two Regimes, No Conflict? Patronage, State Building, and the Anti-Pluralist Politics of