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Can America Nation-Build?

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AlexanderCooley. Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupation. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 2005, 191 pp.

JamesDobbins, John G.McGinn, KeithCrane, Seth G.Jones, RollieLal, AndrewRathmell, RachelSwanger, and AngaTimilsina. America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq.Santa Monica:Rand, 2003, 244 pp.

NoahFeldman. What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation-Building. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2004, 154 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jason Brownlee
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, brownlee@gov.utexas.edu
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Abstract

Post-9/11 security concerns and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq have renewed scholarly interest in nation-building as a form of externally fostered democratization. The selected works assess Iraq and its precursors, seeking general lessons for establishing new democracies. They principally conclude that successful nation-building depends on sustained commitments of time, materiel, and manpower. Although this thesis improves upon earlier studies of democracy promotion, which often treated intentions as determinative, it does not fully reckon with the effect of antecedent conditions on external intervention. As this review addresses, American efforts at nation-building have historically been enabled or constrained by local political institutions. Rather than autonomously reengineering the target society, nation-builders have buttressed bureaucracies and parliaments where they were already available (Germany, Japan) and foundered in countries that lacked such institutions (Somalia, Haiti). In sum, nation-building has been most effective when pursued least ambitiously, amid functioning states with prior experience in constitutional government.

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Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2007

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