ASOK05328U The Geo-politics of State-building

We hear it time and again in the news and in communiques from international forums: “The institutional development of states is the only path to long term stability.” In this course we take our point of departure in sociological theory and plunge into the exiting world of state-building. Participants will be presented with state theory and several cases that can inspire to making individual assignments. In order to grasp and evaluate the concrete efforts of state-building we use political geography to aid our political sociological framework. We thus commence with an introduction to political geography in reference to cases. We start with Denmark to take something familiar, but then we move to Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia in order to get a feeling for the difficulties involved in the quest for building states with some hard cases. State-building can be learned and is a lot of fun. In the field there are jobs for individuals with a variety of competences and focus. Sociologist, anthropologist and geographers with special competences and some knowledge in the field are in high demand. This course will make participant able to orient themselves better in the field and the jungle of global governance organizations involved in state-building.

State-building is a surprisingly concrete exercise. We read Francis Fukuyama´s excellent little book State-building from 2004, but in order to get deep into the substance of the matter we also read the practitioner James Dobbins: The Beginners Guide to Nation-Building. Participants can expect a thorough introduction to the use of political geography and state theory. Central concepts are hegemony, interconnectedness, interdependence, place, nation, state, political system, social cohesion, power, and inequality. Of main theoreticians we use Daniel H. Duedney, Michael Mann, Martin Shaw and John Agnew.

In first part of the course we grasp state-building in reference to a familiar case, namely a north western nation-state, in this case Denmark. In state-building Denmark is a special case due to the essay “Getting to Denmark” raising the question: “How can we build a modern nation-state where political corruption is low.” When we come to understand the steps of development of Denmark from the 11^th century till today, we get an idea of an ideal type development with all the crisis and necessary adjustments on the path to where it is today. We read amongst other things Lars Bo Kaspersens essay: “How Denmark became Democratic.” When we come to the difficult cases of the present day, we have a sort of blue print for development in mind, but come to realize that state-building is a delicate matter, that takes color from its geographic location and the global world order. A short introduction to the current world order and the current norm of statehood distributed through that order is given in order to complete the introduction into political geography with a concrete geo-political focus.

In the second part of the course we work with operationalization of state theory and making problem statements for individual or group assignments. We make a seminar midterm in order to make sure to make good and workable problem statements to guide individual assignments. A central aspect of state-building is long term facilitation of social cohesion. Here participants will be invited to make use of sociological theory and to use their respective competences in the formation of problem statements. The main case in this section will be Iraq (2005-2013), but there will also be reference to numerous other cases as we go along operationalizing the theory for use in analytical work. Participants will be aided in the search for literature that will fit their individual assignments. 

In the third part of the course we rehearse our focus and operationalized theory on cases like Somalia and Bosnia. Here participants will find inspiration for their own analysis while seeing the conceptual apparatus in action. In this section the weight will be on grasping state-building from a practical point of view where we go about it in a how to do fashion. Bosnia has a concrete history of state-building. The case of Somalia gives us the possibility to work with scenarios in reference to a complex reality. We end by distributing draft essays to opponents and Kondrup for feedback before assignments are handed in. This is in order to give participants the freedom to evaluate the choices they have made in their respective analysis and make sure the essays meet formal demands. Literature will be case specific articles in the field of state-building.