Stability, Security and Development

1. Stability, Security and Development GP3200 August 15, 2013 Governance Dr Robert E. Looney relooney@nps.edu

2. Today • Outline • Finish Afghanistan Country Case • Rand Chapter on Governance (overview) • World Bank Part II The Role of Governance in Breaking the Cycle of Violence • Rand Case Study, Bosnia • Rand Case Study, East Timor

3. Rand Governance Framework • Rand – Establishing Governance in Dilemmas of Intervention

4. Governance: General I • An important objective of stabilization and reconstruction is to support the formation of an effective government that is responsive to the concerns of its citizens • The top priority is to “leave a country at peace with itself and its neighbors.” • Major issues remain: • About the form and shape of governments • How quickly proximate and higher-order goals can be achieved • What should happen when progress on one set of goals (be they objectives concerning rights, development, or security) impedes progress on another set of goals • These issues often loom large in post-conflict nation-building

5. Governance: General II • A tendency for intervening countries to try an remake host nations in their own image • The United States because of its traditions, values and experience tends to go into post-conflict situations with the assumption that • the national-level government should be relatively strong and cohesive • reasonably democratic, holding officials accountable through electoral competition • These assumptions motivated much of the U.S. agenda in post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan • Problem: setbacks have caused the U.S. and its coalition partners to take a much closer look at the viability of their post-conflict aspirations • Now movement afoot to scale back mission from what is optimal to what is feasible, given the limitations of a post-war environment.

6. Governance: General III • Dilemma: since there are factors that post-conflict countries typically lack, well-intended policies can result in unintended or disastrous consequences • Many policies though they might improve a population’s general welfare in the long-run may risk provoking hostilities during implementation: • Example: support for girl’s education in Afghanistan was thought to facilitate economic growth, democracy • Problem many traditional Afghans consider it a stain on their honor to have female family members seen by men who are not immediate relatives • The Taliban have used the schools’ challenge to traditional gender roles as the basis for attacks against teachers and students • If the Taliban successfully exploit the issue of girls’ education and ultimately return to power than rather than liberating women from their inferior status, girl schools may be responsible for returning them to their homes and stripping them of their rights.

7. Governance: General IV • Alternative approach involves adapting expectations and timelines to what can be realistically achieved. • Alternative strategies might include: • Greater investment in teacher training to ensure that before girls’ education is introduced in rural areas, female teachers are available • Building school facilities that can accommodate the modesty requirements of Pardah • Enhancing the value of girls’ education by developing local female employment opportunities that are clearly linked to educational attainment. • These approaches would slow the creation of educational opportunities for girls and women, but those opportunities created would likely be more sustainable.

8. Governance: Recurring Issues • Main question: what features are most fundamental when contemplating post-conflict political development? • Three key features • Stable: Free of internal or external threats to the nation, its constitution, and governmental system • Functioning: Able to make and implement effective decisions and provide core services to the nation’s people • Accountable: subject to censure or removal if officials violated established rules, laws, and rights. • These three features of quality governance are mutually reinforcing and to a limited extent mutually dependent – Factor Tree Diagram • If progress lags in one area it will hamper progress in others Example: poor governance in service provision can undermine stability , or instability can hurt efforts to provide services. • In some cases wealthy governments can overcome development lag in one area by overcompensating in others – Singapore, UAE • Normally post-conflict countries don’t have this luxury

9. Factors Determining the Quality of Governance

10. Governance: Regime Types I • One of the most critical tasks in stabilization operations is creating governing institutions that can maintain security and provide citizens with their basic needs • Most of 1990s little debate over which regime type could best achieve these goals. • Collapse of Soviet Union held up as proof of democracy’s superiority • Problem: the duration and difficulty of democratic transitions, even under the best conditions – let alone in a post-conflict environment was often underestimated. • In early 1990s a string of post-conflict democratization success stores – El Salvador, Mozambique, Namibia – lent support to the pro-democracy arguments • By mid-1990s horror stories of failed-nation building experiences in Angola, Liberia, Somalia and Bosnia • undermined confidence in democratic cure-all – • led to questioning the feasibility of racing toward alleged democracy being always wise.

11. Governance: Regime Types II • Democracy, especially power-sharing democracy still dominates recommendations for post conflict regime formation • However emerging concerns about governing capacity of post-conflict democracies have resulted in • the consideration of less democratic options • to rethink how to better sequence liberalization • A number of possible regime types. • Autocracies • Democracies • Power-Sharing Mechanisms • Federalism • Are they consistent with longer-term goals?

12. World Bank Part II • A Roadmap for Breaking Cycles of Violence at the Country Level

13. Breaking Cycles of Violence I • To break cycles of insecurity and reduce risk of their recurrence, need to build legitimate institutions that can provide a sustained level of • Citizen security justice and jobs • Offering a stake in society to groups that my otherwise receive more respect and recognition from engaging in armed voidance than in lawful activities • Transforming institutions – always tough is particularly difficult in fragile situations • 1. countries with a tack record of violence and mistrust, expectations are either too • Low so that no government promises are believed, making cooperative impossible or • High so that transitional moments produce expectations of rapid change that cannot be delivered by existing institutions

14. Breaking Cycles of Violence II • 2. Many institutional changes that could produce greater long term resilience against violence frequently carry short-term risks • Any important shift – holding elections, dismantling patronage networks • Giving new roles to security services • Decentralizing decision making • Empowering disadvantaged groups • Creates both winners and losers • Losers often well organized and resist change • 3. External stress can derail progress

15. Breaking Cycles of Violence III • Creating legitimate institutions that can prevent repeated violence is slow • It takes a generation • Even the fastest transforming countries have taken between 15 and 30 years to raise their institutional performance of a fragile state (e.g. Haiti) to that of a function institutionalized state such as Ghana • The good news – process of transforming institutions accelerated considerably in late 20th century • Making progress in a generation is actually quite fast • Progress at this speed would represent major development gains for countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Liberia and Timor-Leste • Our knowledge on how to break cycles of violence is only partial • World Bank lays out lessons from existing research

16. Fastest Progress in Institutional Transformation

17. Breaking Cycles of Violence IV • Some fundamental differences between fragile and violent situations and stable developing environments • For fragile and violent environments there is: • 1. the need to restore confidence in collective action before embarking on wider institutional transformation • 2. the priority of transforming institutions that provide citizen security, justice and jobs • 3. the role of regional and international action to contain external stress • 4. the specialized nature of external support needed • Institutional transformation and good governance central to these processes work differently in fragile situations • The goal is more focused—transforming institutions that deliver citizen security, justice and jobs

18. Breaking Cycles of Violence V • The dynamics of institutional change are also different. • Good analogy is a financial crisis caused by combination of external stress and weaknesses of institutional checks and balances. • In such a situation, exceptional efforts are needed to restore confidence in national leader’s ability to manage the crisis through • Actions that signal a real break with the past and • Locking in these actions and showing that they will not be reversed

19. Breaking Cycles of Violence VI • Confidence building – concept used in political mediation and financial circles but rarely in development circles – however very important • Confidence building is a prelude to more permanent institutional change in the face of violence – Why? • Low trust means that stakeholders who need to contribute political, financial or technical support will not collaborate until they believe a positive outcome is possible. • Just as violence repeats, efforts to build confidence and transform institutions typically follow a repeated spiral • Countries that moved away from fragility and conflict often do so not through one make or break moment – • But through many transition moments as in a spiral path (figure)

20. Breaking Cycles of Violence VII

21. Confidence Building I • State can not restore confidence alone • Confidence building in situations of violence and fragility requires deliberate effort to build inclusive enough institutions • As Indonesia did in addressing violence of Timor in its recovery of renewed violence in 2006 • Coalitions are “inclusive enough” when they include the parties necessary for implementing the initial stages of confidence building and institutional transformation. • Inclusive enough coalitions work in two ways • At a broad level, by building national support for change and, • At the local level, by promoting outreach to community leaders to identify priorities and deliver programs.

22. Confidence Building II • Persuading stakeholders to work collaboratively requires signals of a real break with the past. For example: • Ending political or economic exclusion of marginalized groups, • Cracking down on corruption or human rights abuses • Creating mechanisms to lock in these changes and show that they will not be reversed. • In moments of opportunity or crisis, fast and visible results also help restore confidence in the government’s ability to deal with violent threats and implement institutional and social change. • Collaboration with NGOs and state private sector partnerships can extend the state’scapaity to deliver.

23. Transforming Institutions I • Actions in one area can support results in another. • Security operations can facilitate safe trade and transit an the economic activity that creates jobs • Services delivered to marginalized groups can support perceptions of justice • Transforming institutions that deliver citizen security, justice and jobs • A limit to the amount of change societies can absorb at any one time • In fragile situations, many reforms need a buildup of trust and capacity before they can be successfully implemented • Getting the balance right between “too fast” and “too slow” transformative action is critical.

24. Transforming Institutions II • Some basic lessons emerge from successful country transitions • First -- Prioritizing early action to reform institutions responsible for citizen security, justice and jobs is crucial • as in Singapore’s post independence development • Stemming illegal financial flows from the public purse or from natural resource trafficking is important to underpin these initiatives • Pragmatic best fit approaches adapted to local conditions will be needed – examples • Lebanon restored the electricity needed for economic recovery during civil war though small private sector networks – albeit at high cost • Haiti’s successful police reforms in 2004-2006 focused on ousting abusers from the force and restoring very basic work discipline

25. Transforming Institutions III • Second, focusing on citizen security, justice and jobs means that most other reforms will need to be sequenced and paced over time, including political reform, decentralization, privatization and shifting attitudes toward marginalized groups • Systematically implementing these reforms requires a web of institutions (democratization for example requires many institutionalized checks and balances beyond elections) and changes in social attitudes • Several successful political transitions such • As devolution -- that underpins peace in Northern Ireland and • Democratic transitions in Chile, Indonesia or Portugal • Have taken place through a series of steps over a decade or more. Exceptions, but in most situations systematic and gradual action appears to work best.

26. Addressing External Stresses I • External stresses – • Infiltration of organized crime and trafficking networks, • Spillovers from neighboring conflicts and • Economic shocks • Are important factors in increasing the risk of violence • Often institutions needed to respond to them are general weak • Addressing external stresses therefore needs to be a core port of national efforts for violence prevention and recovery • Means – mediation, human rights and security assistance, a well as humanitarian and development aid

27. Practical Policy and Program Tools I • Core message in the World Bank report is that: • the particular manifestation of violence at any one time is less important than the underlying institutional deficits that permit repeated cycles of violence – and that • Successful approaches to address political communal and criminal violence have much in common • The mix of different types of violence does affect strategy • Inequality among ethnic, religious or geographical groups is important as a risk for civil conflict • Employment programs and services would thus target equity and bridging opportunities among these groups • But organized criminal violence, inequality between rich and poor matters more • Violence with strong international links – organized crime, international recruitment into ideological movements – requires greater international cooperation

28. Practical Policy and Program Tools II • Each country needs its own assessment of risks and priorities to design the best fit strategy and programs • International assessment tools such as post-conflict/post crisis needs assessments can identify the risks and priorities. • These assessments could be strengthened by • Adapting assessments regularly and frequently at different transition moments – including when risks are increasing, not only after a crisis • Identifying priorities from a citizen and stakeholder perspective through focus groups or polling surveys as • South Africa did in developing its reconstruction priorities • Or as Pakistan did in assessing the sources of violence in border regions • Being realistic about the number of priorities identified and timelines

29. Core Tools I

30. Core Tools II

31. Core Tools III

32. Core Tools IV

33. Bosnia

34. Bosnia I • Prior to its 1991 declaration of independence, Bosnia had been a reasonably harmonious multiethnic republic a harmonious multiethnic state • Leaders had no desire to secede from Yugoslavia • Once Slovenia and Croatia proclaimed independence • Bosnia faced a choice between remaining with a Yugoslav state dominated by Serbia or following the other two republics out. • When Bosnia chose to leave, its Serb population encouraged by the government in Belgrade revolted • From 1992 to 1995 the Bosnian Serb army supported by Serbia, captured majority Serb-populated Bosnian territory and purged many Bosnian Muslims and Croats • Strategy aimed at creating a contiguous Bosnian Serb state bordering on Serbia with an ethnically homogenous Serb population

35. Bosnia II • Bosnian Croat and Muslim armies and militias fought an initially losing and ultimately stalemated battle against the Serb advance • After three years of unsuccessful diplomacy and ineffectual UN peacekeeping mission, US and its allies backed by limited NATO airstrikes forced the belligerents to negotiating table • Result was the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 which left belligerent leaderships in power by ended violence through compromise: • Bosnian territorial integrity but with a very high degree of autonomy for the country’s warring ethnic groups. • Accords ratified concept of three distinct “peoples” and created two political territorial entities within the Bosnian state • Muslim/Croat dominated Federation of Bosnia and a Serb dominated Republic Srpska.

36. Bosnia III • A major effort to stabilize, democratize, and reconstruct Bosnia ensued • US and European allies were highly successful at altering the geopolitical environment that had sparked the war • Had less success in overcoming internal ethnic divisions and antagonisms that provided fuel for the war and that the war greatly intensified • With regard to reconstruction • The devastation of war combined with legacy of Bosnia’s communist past meant international authorities would have to simultaneously restructure and rebuild. • Necessary to generate the growth needed to underpin peace • Bosnia received the world’s highest level of international aid per capita for several years after Dayton

37. Bosnia IV • Initial efforts focused on rebuilding destroyed infrastructure – cost 6 billion Euros in aid the in the first five years. • To ensue price stability a currency board was established with an international staff in management roles • Distributing aid was complicated that Bosnia lacked a functioning central government • Compelled donors to work with local officials many of whom were extreme nationalists • Thus a persistent risk that aid that was intended to weaken the nationalists would end up in their pockets • At same time cutting off aid to nationalist dominated regions risked making their situation worse giving credibility to the nationalists' claim of unfairness.

38. Bosnia V • Beginning roughly in 2000 as levels of aid began to decline, the international focus shifted from economic assistance to broader economic development strategies • Efforts at post-communist transformation accelerated with international lenders focused on privatization and restructuring • The High Representative for Bosnia made “jobs and justice” centerpiece of his tenure • Even before his arrival in 2002 many experts felt that sluggish economic growth was one of the main obstacles to lasting peace • Introduced a “bulldozer initiative” aimed at clearing out legislation that inhibited private sector growth • After he left in 2006 however, these efforts were not fully sustained

39. Bosnia VI • Outcomes • Peace and generous external assistance produced very high growth rates through the late 1990s. • As aid flows dried up, Bosnia was able to sustain respectable growth rates, comparable to those in its neighborhood. • However its economy remains hobbled by high levels of corruption and patronage-driven inefficiencies • Despite initially high annual growth rates, economy had recovered to only 60 percent of its pre-war level by 1999. • Inflation was low, the currency board (monetary authority) had helped enable the development of domestic capital markets • Ten years after Dayton, Bosnia’s GDP had tripled, exports had risen tenfold

40. Bosnia VII • By 2011 more than 15 years after Dayton, Bosnia’s per capita GDP had risen to a level below that of Macedonia, which had been the least developed area before Yugoslavia broke apart • Bosnia’s economic situation still leaves much to be desired. • A decade after Dayton, income still less than it had been in 1989 – a level to which it had yet to return by 2011 • Bosnia’s rate of convergence toward EU norms has also been slower than that of other aspirants for EU membership • The IMF estimated unemployment to be 23 percent in 2008, with low overall labor force participation rates. • The poverty rate had fallen from 18 percent in 2004 to 14 percent in 2007, although this was still significantly higher than in Serbia

41. Bosnia VIII

42. Bosnia IX • What local factors posed the greatest challenges? • 1. Geographical and Geopolitical • The support of Bosnia’s neighbors, Serbia and Croatia for their ethnic brethren within Bosnia the critical factor that gave rise to and perpetuated the conflict • US and European pressure focused on ending that support and that culminated in the peace treaty • 2. Cultural and Social • Whether or not war in Bosnia was caused by ethnic hatred is matter of dispute • However clearly initiated and fought on ethnic lines • War greatly intensified ethnic social and physical divisions

43. Bosnia X • Physical divisions some extent addressed through programs to help refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their homes • Externally driven efforts to rebuild ethnic trust were largely unsuccessful • 3. Economic • Economic deterioration of the former Yugoslavia considered by some to have been a contributing cause of the conflict • By war’s end the Bosnian economy was shattered and • At same time saddled with the legacy of an inefficient socialist economic system

44. Bosnia XI • War profiteering contributed to the expansion and enrichment of criminal groups with transnational ties and linked to political patronage networks • These links inhibited both economic and political reforms. • To reinforce the peace, foreign donors spent huge sums on rebuilding infrastructure and worked to create new monetary and financial systems. • Generous external assistance fed high growth rtes in he early post-conflict years; • Then the rates settled down to regional norms. • However the prospects for further economic advancement remain hobbled by corruption and patronage driven inefficiencies.

45. Bosnia XII • 4 Political • Particular nature of the prewar socialist system in former Yugoslavia encouraged the development of patronage networks • In Bosnia these were reinforced during the conflict • Became linked with ethnically oriented political parties • Helped support nationalist parties’ victories in successive post-conflict elections • Nation-building efforts encountered the most-egregious nationalist political behaviors but did not dismantle the power behind them • The accommodation of nationalist political forces in the structure of the peace agreement proved difficult to reverse • These forces have so far been held in check by international present in Bosnia

46. Bosnia XIII • 5 Institutional • Bosnia was not nearly as lacking in bureaucratic capabilities as many post-conflict countries. But • Implementing the institutional scheme laid out in the peace agreement was highly problematic • Political crises repeatedly erupted over interveners’ efforts to construct statewide institutions of government • Progress was eventually made in ethnically integrating (to the brigade level) and professionalizing the military and in some others state institutional development but many gaps remain • Without stronger and more auhoritative state-level institutions prospects for integrating into the EU and NATO – which would help maintain incentives and pressures for holding Bosnia together remain slim.

47. Bosnia XIV

48. Bosnia XV • Summing up • Bosnia no longer economically dependent, bur remains without the capacity to govern itself unaided • Nation-building in the leteral sense of creating a single national identity based on a common historical narrative and sense of values has made little progress • Efforts to build institutions have achieved somewhat more – most pubic services are performed by governmental institutions to at least regional norms • But only with the international community continuing to push forth institutional development • Hopefully the country will continue to slowly converge toward European norms of governance and behavior in the international system

49. East Timor

50. East Timor: Overview I • September 1999 international community deployed first of several peacekeeping missions to East Timor • Purpose was to prepare East Timor for independence from Indonesia • First – Australian-led, UN-mandated force • Month later by the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). • UN mandate very broad: • Overall responsibility for the administration of East Timor • UNTATE also charged with enforcing law and order and setting up a new administration.