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Special ReportJune 2006 | Stabilization and Reconstruction Series No. 2 Transitional Governance: From Bullets to BallotsBeth Cole DeGrasse and Christina Caan Summary and Recommendations
Predeployment requirements for a successful mission should lead the intervenor to
To fulfill this mandate, the mission leader must be able to
Postdeployment requirements call for the intervenor to
The postdeployment requirements for developing political participation call for the intervenor to
IntroductionEffective transitional governance is one of the most formidable challenges facing reconstruction and stabilization missions in war-torn, failed states. Peace can be sustained only when power is attained through political rather than violent means and when government institutions are legitimate. Despite numerous interventions around the world, establishing governance has too often been an elusive goal or an ephemeral achievement. Attaining this objective can involve prolonging the intervention, as was done in Bosnia, or repeating the intervention, as was done in Haiti. When the objective to establish governance fails, the entire mission may collapse, as it did in Somalia. By attending to the governance lessons from the past decade and a half, intervenors can identify and incorporate best practices into the planning and conduct of interventions to help societies move from bullets to ballots effectively and expeditiously. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for establishing governance in states emerging from conflict. The environment international intervenors inherit when mounting reconstruction and stabilization missions will differ widely in scope and scale from state to state. The quality of the peace settlement that permits the mission to operate, including the presence or absence of fundamental power-sharing agreements, can lay the foundation for success or failure. Even with adequate peace settlements, some states lack any semblance of functioning government institutions and have no tradition of civil participation in governance. Other states offer the workable remains of past government institutions and have vibrant civil societies. While conditions do vary, most international intervenors trying to establish transitional governance encounter the following challenges:
The description below of the conditions in Afghanistan in late 2001 provides an example of recurrent challenges facing those who are charged with establishing transitional governance. In late 2001, Afghanistan: had not convened a formal parliament since 1973; suffered from one of the poorest levels of delivery of public services and the lowest health indicators in the world; contained no viable infrastructure; had years of devastating drought and stymied development of natural resources; was a society governed by "rule of the gun" instead of rule of law; had lost both its legal texts and legal documents that governed the state before the war; possessed no functioning national government buildings or equipment, no government institutions at the local level, and no banking sector. (Barnett et al., 2005) Common challenges are exacerbated by two major gaps that consistently plague the implementation of these operations: (1) the failure to move fast enough to stabilize a country and begin reconstruction and (2) the failure to provide sufficient resources and personnel, guided by a strong mandate at the mission's outset. Once a mission deploys, there is a limited time--the window of opportunity--to create law and order, establish governance, provide essential services, and begin to show progress on economic and social reconstruction. Most missions, however, face critical personnel and resource shortages at the outset and fail to meet civilian staff and force requirements for at least six to nine months. The window of opportunity typically closes long before an operation is fully staffed and resourced. The UN mission in Cambodia had "barely 200 UN civil administrators [who] were supposed to supervise 140,000 State of Cambodia civil servants" during the mission (Dobbins et al., 2005). More than a decade later, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, overseeing a country of 26 million, staffed its governance team with fewer than two dozen people. This report provides an overview of many of the lessons and recommendations that have been identified as vital for success in this difficult endeavor. It addresses transitional governance as a two-pronged process, implemented either through direct administration or through power-sharing arrangements, and aimed at achieving two essential goals: (1) to boost the capacity of domestic institutions of government to a level at which they are capable of providing basic security and services to all segments of the population, with only a minimum of outside intervention and in a transparent and accountable manner; and (2) to construct free and fair representative political processes in which individuals participate and compete for power through nonviolent means. These twin requisites of governance are interrelated and cannot be executed sequentially. Where one prong in this process has been ignored or relegated to later phases of the mission, the mission has either stalled or failed. Bosnia offers the example of a mission that created state institutions but failed to erect legitimate political processes. The first mission in Haiti focused on support for political leadership and processes but woefully neglected the institutions of government. As a result of failing to recognize the interdependent nature of these goals, the international community remains mired in Bosnia ten years after the birth of the mission, and has returned to Haiti for a second time. The "Post-Conflict Reconstruction Essential Tasks Matrix" on transitional governance developed for the U.S. government by the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the U.S. Department of State recognizes these two goals and the need for nonsequential implementation, and so does this report.
The report concludes with suggestions for further reading. About the ReportThis report is based on a series of consultations under the auspices of the Transitional Governance Working Group, chaired by Ambassador James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND Corporation, and Daniel Serwer, vice president of the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations at the United States Institute of Peace. The Transitional Governance Working Group is part of the Institute's Filling the Gaps series of working groups, which aims to systematically address the causes of failure in specific areas in reconstruction and stabilization operations and to generate policy options for those in the U.S. government and elsewhere who lead and staff these missions. Filling the Gaps is directed by Serwer and managed by Beth Cole DeGrasse, senior program officer at the Institute. Cole DeGrasse and Christina Caan, research assistant at the Institute, co-authored the report. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policy positions. Of Related InterestThis report is part of a series of special reports that will be issued by the United States Institute of Peace's Filling the Gaps series of working groups. The special reports will address the causes of failure in specific areas in reconstruction and stabilization as well as generate policy options. The other reports in the series (all to be published in 2006) are:
Other items of related interest include:
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