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Praise for The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building
No challenge in international relations today is more pressing or
more diﬃcult than that of supporting weak states. James Dobbins, one of the leading practitioners of the art, oﬀers a set ofclear, simple prescriptions for helping to build a stable peace inthe wake of conﬂict and disorder. Drawing on the often painful lessons of recent history, Dobbins brings a new level of rigor
and openness to this essential subject, and provides a useful tool
for all in the United Nations who are engaged in meeting thischallenge.
—Koﬁ A. Annan, United Nations Secretary-General
I cooperated closely with Ambassador Dobbins in facing thechallenges of postconﬂict stabilization in the Balkans and thenAfghanistan, and came to greatly value his expertise. This latest
RAND study draws upon that expertise and demonstrates his
deep insights into the ﬁeld of nation-building.
—Joschka Fisher, Visiting Professor at Princeton University,
former German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
Cogent, concise, and yet remarkably comprehensive in bothits thematic and country coverage, The Beginner’s Guide to
Nation-Building distills the lessons from 24 historical case studies. The resulting wisdom—detailed, accessible, sobering, andinstructive—should guide every policymaker who considers or
prepares for such bold intervention, and every student and analyst who attempts to assess it. This is (and will likely remain forsome time) the essential manual for rebuilding war-torn states.
—Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution,
Stanford University

The value in this Guide is as much in the questions it forces policymakers to ask as in the recommendations it oﬀers. If policymakers had asked before going into Iraq who would maintain law
and order, how quickly could local police and military maintainthe peace, how would local governance be established, or what
would be the source of creating jobs—and found that they had
few answers—then perhaps the whole mission would have beenradically reassessed. The Guide also presents a challenge to ourcivilian institutions and the U.S. Congress. If we hope to manage
the international consequences posed by conﬂict abroad, then wemust build civilian capacities to support governance, the rule oflaw, and job creation, just as we would never expect to ﬁght a war
without training and equipping our soldiers.
—Carlos Pascual, Vice President of the Brookings Institution,
former Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction,
U.S. Department of State
I know of no challenge in international aﬀairs as demanding
as that of state-building—what in the U.S. is called nationbuilding—and none where it is as imperative to learn from ourexperiences—good as well as bad—during the last few years.
James Dobbins has not only guided U.S. policy on some of these
operations, but has also led the groundbreaking work by RAND
to draw the necessary lessons from them. This book will be
required reading for policymakers and practitioners alike.
—Carl Bildt, Swedish Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister,and ﬁrst High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina

THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO

NATION-BUILDINGJAMES DOBBINS, SETH G. JONESKEITH CRANE, BETH COLE DEGRASSE

Prepared for the Smith Richardson Foundation
Approved for public release; distribution unlimited

NATIONAL SECURITYRESEARCH DIVISIONThe research described in this report was sponsored by the Smith
Richardson Foundation and was conducted under the auspices of theInternational Security and Defense Policy Center within the RAND
National Security Research Division (NSRD). NSRD conducts research
and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff,
the Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the Department of theNavy, the Marine Corps, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Intelligence
Community, allied foreign governments, and foundations.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The beginner’s guide to nation-building / James Dobbins ... [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8330-3988-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Nation-building. 2. Nation-building—Case studies. 3. Peace-building.
4. Democratization. I. Dobbins, James, 1942–
JZ6300.B44 2007
327.1—dc22
2006100823

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Foreword

The U.S. occupation of Iraq was marked by a series of unanticipatedchallenges and hastily improvised responses. U.S. oﬃcials did not foresee the looting that accompanied the fall of Baghdad, were not prepared for the disintegration of the Iraqi army or the collapse of mostother Iraqi institutions, failed to appreciate the impact of years of sanctions and misgovernment on the Iraqi economy, and were surprised by
the emergence of organized resistance. U.S. troops stood by while Iraq’s
public property was ransacked. U.S. occupation authorities moved todisband the Iraqi military and dismiss thousands of senior Iraqi oﬃcials. Washington ﬁrst assumed that Iraq’s reconstruction would belargely self-ﬁnancing, and then initiated the largest bilateral U.S. aid
program in history. Responsibility for managing this rebuilding eﬀort
was assigned to the U.S. Department of Defense, an agency without
modern experience in postwar reconstruction.
A casual observer might conclude that the United States lacked
experience in the ﬁeld of nation-building. Appearances to the contrary, however, Iraq was not the ﬁrst but the seventh society in a little
more than a decade that the United States had entered to liberate andrebuild. In 1991, the United States liberated Kuwait. In 1992, U.S.
troops went into Somalia, in 1994 into Haiti, in 1995 into Bosnia, in1999 into Kosovo, and in 2001 into Afghanistan. Six of these sevensocieties were Muslim. Thus, by the time U.S. troops entered Iraq, nocountry in the world had more modern experience in nation-building
than the United States. No Western military had more extensive recent
practice operating within Muslim societies.

iii

iv

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

How could the United States perform this mission so frequently
yet so poorly? To answer that question, one must recall the controversy that surrounded the practice of nation-building when that activity emerged in the early 1990s as the leading post–Cold War militaryendeavor. Between 1945 and 1989, the United States launched a new
military intervention about once per decade. With the end of the Cold
War, the United States suddenly found itself leading a new multinational military intervention nearly every other year. The pace of UN
peacekeeping accelerated even faster, from one new mission every four
years during the Cold War to roughly one new mission every six months
ever since. For both the United States and the United Nations, thesemissions also became increasingly lengthy undertakings, the average
lasting ﬁve to ten years. As a result, by the early years of the current
decade, the United States found itself having to maintain three or four
such missions simultaneously, while the UN was struggling to oversee
as many as two dozen active operations at the same time.
The character of international peacekeeping also changed. During
the Cold War, most U.S.-led interventions involved either prolonged
hot wars, as in Korea and Vietnam, or relatively brief incursions, as
in Panama and Grenada. Most UN peacekeeping missions were quite
limited in size and purpose. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
constraints imposed by superpower competition on both UN- andU.S.-led military operations fell away. As a result, the objectives ofthese missions gradually became more ambitious. No longer were U.S.
and UN forces being used simply to freeze local conﬂicts in place byseparating combatants, monitoring ceaseﬁres and patrolling demilitarized zones. Both U.S.- and UN-led military interventions took on
increasingly ambitious goals, seeking to reunite divided countries by
disarming and demobilizing former combatants, holding elections,and installing democratic governments. Interpositional peacekeeping
had given way to nation-building.
Early setbacks, including the Clinton administration’s eﬀorts in
Somalia and the UN’s mission in the former Yugoslavia, caused many
Americans to become skeptical of the utility of such operations. Congress balked at the expense involved in funding a rising number of
U.S.- and UN-led operations. Facing mounting domestic resistance,Forewordv

the Clinton administration pulled back from its expansive rhetoric infavor of “assertive multilateralism.” Thereafter, that administration justiﬁed each successive intervention not as the new norm for multilateral
action, but as an exceptional response to unique circumstances.
The Clinton administration consequently made only limited
eﬀorts to create an ongoing doctrine for the conduct of such missions,to build a portfolio of best practices, to establish an enduring division of labor among U.S. government agencies, and to build a cadreof experts available to move from one operation to the next. The President did issue a directive (Presidential Decision Directive 56) establishing an interagency process for managing operations of this sort.1
But neither the Department of State nor the Department of Defense
established any standing machinery for carrying them out. Service
in such missions was not career-enhancing. No special training wasprovided. Neither department published guidelines for the conduct ofthese operations.
The Bush administration entered oﬃce even less inclined thanits predecessor to make nation-building a national priority. President
George W. Bush went on record during the 2000 presidential campaign
opposing the use of U.S. armed forces in such missions. His emphasis
was on building a leaner, more agile military capable of ﬁghting andwinning the nation’s wars, by which he meant conventional wars, more
quickly and economically. In consequence, the slow improvement that
had been registered in U.S. nation-building performance through the
1990s, from the low point of Somalia to the increasing professionalism
shown in Haiti, then Bosnia, and ﬁnally Kosovo, was reversed ﬁrst in
Afghanistan and then even more markedly in Iraq.
As the situation in Iraq worsened, the administration itself ﬁnallyrecognized and even acknowledged these early failings. The Departments of State and Defense and the White House have all taken initiatives to build U.S. capacity to conduct nation-building operations. The
Department of Defense has issued a directive making stability operations, that department’s term for nation-building, a core mission for1

See Presidential Decision Directive 56, “Managing Complex Contingency Operations,”
Washington, D.C.: White House, May 1997.

vi

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

the U.S. military, henceforth supposedly to receive the same priority as
preparation for major combat. The Department of State has establishedan oﬃce to prepare for and manage the civilian aspects of such operations. Five years after setting aside his predecessor’s directive establishing the interagency structure for the conduct of these missions, President Bush issued one of his own.2
The U.S. government is not alone in seeking to promote a more
professional approach to nation-building. The United Kingdom,
Canada, and Germany have recently set up oﬃces similar to that established in the Department of State to manage their countries’ participation in postconﬂict stabilization and reconstruction. World leaders,meeting in late 2005, agreed to establish a comparable capacity at the
global level, in the form of the Peacebuilding Commission. That new
institution is intended to better integrate the eﬀorts of the UN and its
family of agencies with those of international ﬁnancial institutions,major donor countries, and troop contributors in the conduct of such
missions.
Western governments thus increasingly accept that nationbuilding has become an inescapable responsibility. However, Western publics remain skeptical. The popular conception of such missions
continues to be shaped by early failures in Somalia and Yugoslavia.
Developments in Iraq have only served to reinforce that skepticism.
This is unfortunate, since the overall nation-building record isencouraging. The United States has taken on the largest and most difﬁcult nation-building challenges. Roughly half its operations have produced both sustained peace and continued democratic governance.
The UN success rate, in generally more permissive environments, isactually somewhat better. Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, Namibia, El
Salvador, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are all at peace today
because U.S., NATO, or UN peacekeepers came in, imposed order,
separated combatants, disarmed and demobilized contending factions,2

See National Security Presidential Directive 44, “Management of Interagency Eﬀorts
Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization,” Washington, D.C.: White House, December 7, 2005.

Forewordvii

organized elections, installed representative governments, and promoted economic and social reconstruction.3
Research from other perspectives substantiates the utility of nationbuilding. Paul Collier of Oxford University and the World Bank, withcoauthor Anke Hoeﬄer, has found international military interventions
to be the most cost-eﬀective means of promoting sustained peace andeconomic growth in societies emerging from conﬂict.4 In the absenceof such an intervention, he notes, most of those nations would eventually relapse into civil war. The University of British Columbia, in its
Human Security Report 2005, ﬁnds that, over the past 15 years, thenumber of wars around the world has declined by half. The numberof dead, wounded, and displaced as a result of these conﬂicts has been
reduced by an even greater proportion.5
Each nation to be rebuilt may be unique, but the nation-builder has
only a limited range of instruments on which to rely. These are largely
the same from one operation to the next. This guide is organized aroundthe main components from which nearly all nation-building missions
are formed, including soldiers, police oﬃcers, civil administrators, andexperts in political reform and economic development. It describes
how such contingents are best recruited and organized, how much ofeach will be required, how long they will be needed, and how they
have been best employed in prior operations. Each chapter ends witha section on sizing or costing, showing how to estimate how much ofthat particular capacity is likely to be needed, and how much it may
cost. The intent is not to suggest that nation-building can be reduced
to a few simple formulas or that success depends on simply marshallingthe necessary resources. Matching aspirations to resources is essential
to success, however. This guide is intended to assist in that process.
3

Paul Collier and Anke Hoeﬄer, “The Challenge of Reducing the Global Incidence ofCivil War,” Copenhagen Consensus Challenge Paper, Oxford: Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford University, April 23, 2004; James Dobbins, Seth G. Jones, et al.,The UN’s Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND
Corporation, MG-304-RC, 2005.

4
5

Collier and Hoeﬄer (2004).

Human Security Centre, University of British Columbia, Human Security Report 2005:
War and Peace in the 21st Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

PrefaceThis guidebook presents a doctrine for conducting eﬀective nationbuilding operations. It is designed to be an accessible handbook that
describes eﬀective policies for rebuilding a nation after—and, in somecases, during—a conﬂict. It is based on historical research into the
conduct of such operations by the United States, Europe, the United
Nations, and other states and organizations over the past 60 years. The
doctrine identiﬁes the most important components of nation-building
operations; describes how these components are interrelated; establishes
the best practices, size, and costs associated with each component; anddraws upon national, international, and nongovernmental sources ofexpertise and capacity in each of these ﬁelds. The doctrine is prescriptive enough to guide speciﬁc operations, but adaptable enough to cover
diverse and varied situations worldwide.
This guidebook is designed to assist the aspiring nation-builder. It
is also intended to assist legislators, journalists, and academics in evaluating current or prospective operations of this sort. It brings together
the best practices from the 16 case studies presented in the RAND
Corporation’s history of nation-building, which comprises the 2003
America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, and the 2005
The UN’s Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq; an additional eight case studies, currently under preparation, are included inthis guidebook.1
1James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, et al., America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MR-1753-RC, 2003; Dobbins,
Jones, et al. (2005).

ix

x

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-BuildingThis research was sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundationand conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy
Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD).
NSRD conducts research and analysis for the Oﬃce of the Secretary of
Defense, the Joint Staﬀ, the Uniﬁed Combatant Commands, the defense
agencies, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the U.S.
Coast Guard, the U.S. Intelligence Community, allied foreign governments, and foundations.
For more information on RAND’s International Security and
Defense Policy Center, contact the Director, James Dobbins. He canbe reached by email at James_Dobbins@rand.org; by phone at 703413-1100, extension 5134; or by mail at the RAND Corporation, 1200
South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050. More information
about RAND is available at www.rand.org.

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxix
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli
CHAPTER ONE

Preparing for Nation-Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER TWO

The Military . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CHAPTER THREE

The Police . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
CHAPTER FOUR

Rule of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
CHAPTER FIVE

Humanitarian Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

xi

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

CHAPTER SIX

Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
CHAPTER SEVEN

Economic Stabilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
CHAPTER EIGHT

Democratization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
CHAPTER NINE

Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
CHAPTER TEN

Conclusion: The Cost of Nation-Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Figures

2.1.
2.2.
2.3.
2.4.
2.5.
3.1.
3.2.
3.3.
3.4.
4.1.
4.2.
4.3.
4.4.
5.1.
5.2.
7.1.
7.2.
7.3.
8.1.
9.1.
9.2.

Demobilization Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Local Military Forces Five Years After Start of Stability
Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Peak Military Levels for Peace Enforcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Peak Military Levels for UN Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Cost of Fielding a Local Military Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Local Police Levels Five Years After Stability Operations. . . . . . . 67
Peak International Civil Police Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Police-to-Military Ratio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Cost of Fielding a Local Police Force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Types of Rule of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Number of Judges and Prosecutors per 100,000
Inhabitants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Number of Corrections Personnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Number of Correctional Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Percentage of Refugees Returning Five Years After
Conﬂict Ceases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Example of Performance Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Inﬂation Following Conﬂict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Prior Declines in Economic Output and Economic
Growth in the First Year Following an Intervention . . . . . . . . . . 181
Foreign Assistance as a Share of Government
Expenditures in Bosnia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Cost of Organizing Elections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Economic Growth Following Conﬂict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Shares of Foreign Assistance as a Percent of GDP in
Postconﬂict Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

xiii

xiv

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

9.3.
9.4.

Disbursement Patterns of World Bank Loans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Gross Investment and Reconstruction Aid as a Share of
Bosnia’s GDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Tables

2.1.
3.1.
4.1.
4.2.
4.3.
4.4.
4.5.
5.1.
5.2.
5.3.
6.1.
7.1.
7.2.
9.1.
9.2.
10.1.

Estimates for Operations in Macedonia and Niger,
Year One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Estimates for an Operation in Macedonia, Year One . . . . . . . . . . . 72
A Comparison of Formal and Informal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
International War Crime Tribunals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Truth Commissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Estimated Numbers of Justice Personnel for
Mozambique, Year One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Estimated Costs of Restoring Judicial Services in
Mozambique, Year One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Sample Humanitarian Planning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Shelter and Site Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Estimates for Operations in Macedonia andMozambique, Year One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Estimated Costs of Restoring Government Services in
Two Postconﬂict Situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
IMF Loans for Postconﬂict Emergency Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Estimated Costs of Supporting Government Services in
Namibia and Sierra Leone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Comparison of Actual and Suggested Levels of Assistancein Namibia and Mozambique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Estimated Gross Fixed Capital Investment andReconstruction Assistance in Namibia and Sierra Leone . . . . . 254
The Costs of Nation-Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

xv

SummaryNation-building, as it is commonly referred to in the United States,
involves the use of armed force as part of a broader eﬀort to promote
political and economic reforms with the objective of transforming asociety emerging from conﬂict into one at peace with itself and its
neighbors. In recent years, the frequency of such operations has greatly
increased. During the Cold War, the United States embarked on a new
military intervention on the average of about once per decade, while
the United Nations launched a new peacekeeping mission on the average of once every four years. Few of these U.S.- or UN-led operations
developed into full-blown nation-building missions. Since the endof the Cold War, the pace of U.S. military interventions has risen to
about one every two years, while the frequency of new UN peacekeeping missions is up to nearly one every six months. The duration of thesemissions has also risen, with most now lasting ﬁve to 10 years. The
eﬀect is thus cumulative: The United States ﬁnds itself overseeing threeor four such interventions simultaneously, while the United Nations
must manage up to two dozen diﬀerent missions at the same time.
The character of these undertakings has also evolved. During theCold War, UN troops were usually deployed to separate combatants,
to police demilitarized zones, and to monitor ceaseﬁres. In recent years,
the objectives for these missions have expanded to include reuniting
divided societies, disarming adversaries, demobilizing former combatants, organizing elections, installing representative governments, andpromoting democratic reform and economic growth. U.S.-led operations have also become larger, longer, and more ambitious in scope.

xvii

xviiiThe Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Despite some notable setbacks, the overall impact of this heightened international activism has been beneﬁcial. International militaryinterventions have proved to be the best, and indeed the only, reliablemeans of preventing societies emerging from civil war from slippingback into conﬂict.1 Since the end of the Cold War, the number of civil
wars around the world has reduced by half. The number of people
being killed, maimed, or driven from their homes as a result of armed
conﬂict has also, at least until recently, dropped even further.
Despite this wealth of experience, the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq
has been marked by a myriad of unforeseen challenges and hastily
improvised responses. Observers might be forgiven for thinking that
the United States had never mounted such an operation. Yet, Iraq was
the seventh major U.S.-led intervention in little more than a decade,having been preceded by operations in Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia,
Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Of those seven societies, six are Muslim,
Haiti being the sole exception. At the commencement of the Iraq occupation, therefore, no Western military had more modern experience
operating in Muslim societies than the U.S. Army and no country had
more experience managing large nation-building enterprises than did
the United States.
Unfortunately, neither the U.S. military nor the government as
a whole had made a systematic attempt over the preceding decade to
reﬂect on the experience of those earlier operations and apply these lessons in preparing for what was likely to be their biggest and most difﬁcult such challenge to date, in Iraq.
This attitude has changed. The administration has acknowledged early missteps in Iraq and has begun to put in place institutional arrangements designed to ensure a more professional approachto such contingencies in the future. Other governments, notably the
UK, Canadian, and German governments, have set up similar structures. The UN has established the Peacebuilding Commission for thesame purpose. These various initiatives are premised on the view thatnation-building has become an unavoidable burden, that its practitioners need to do a better job of applying the lessons from prior missions
1

Collier and Hoeﬄer (2004).

Summaryxix

to an evolving doctrine for the conduct of future ones, and must build
cadres of experts available to go from one operation to the next.
This guidebook is a contribution to that eﬀort. It is organizedaround the constituent elements of any nation-building mission. These
include the military and police contingents, the civil administrators, and the experts on political reform and economic development.
It describes how each of these components should be organized andemployed, how much of each is likely to be needed, for how long, andhow much this may cost. These lessons are drawn largely from the 16
case studies presented in earlier RAND work on nation-building,2 andan additional eight that are currently under preparation for a forthcoming volume that builds on the prior research.

Mission Planning
Planning is a routine military activity, but one less developed among
civilian authorities. The lead-up to most nation-building missions
aﬀords ample time for detailed planning, which should involve boththe civilian and military components of the mission. Among the ﬁrst
issues to be addressed are the mission’s objective, the intended scaleof commitment, and the institutional arrangements for managing theintervention.
Setting the mission objective requires looking beyond its immediate purposes to appreciate the impact that an external military intervention will have on both the society in question and the surrounding
region and to plot an outcome commensurate with the likely scale ofcommitment.
Most interventions are launched for some immediate, usuallynegative purpose, e.g., to halt aggression, civil war, famine, genocide,or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This purpose
may be achieved quite quickly, but the intervening authorities will thenbe left with the more diﬃcult, time-consuming, and expensive task

2

Dobbins, McGinn, et al. (2003); Dobbins, Jones, et al. (2005).

xx

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Buildingof refashioning the society in which they have intervened. The intervention itself will change power relationships within that society andamong its neighbors. Those advantaged by the intervention may begin
to abuse their positions. Those disadvantaged may move to frustrate
the intervening authorities’ purposes.

Co-Option Versus Deconstruction
Broadly speaking, there are two alternative approaches to instigatingreforms that can turn a violent society into one at peace with itself
and its neighbors. One might be labeled co-option, under which theintervening authorities try to work within existing institutions and todeal, more or less impartially, with all social forces and power centers,
to redirect their ongoing competition for power and wealth from violent to peaceful channels. The alternative approach might be labeleddeconstruction, under which the intervening authorities ﬁrst dismantle
an existing state apparatus and then build a new one, in the process
consciously disempowering some element of society and empoweringothers.
Most UN peacekeeping operations aspire to the ﬁrst approach.
Most U.S.-led peace enforcement missions adopt something closer tothe second. A near-perfect exemplar of the co-option strategy would be
the UN mission in El Salvador in the early 1990s. The embodiment of
deconstruction would be the U.S.-led occupation of Germany in thelate 1940s. Most missions fall somewhere between these poles. Peacekeeping, impartiality, and co-option are clearly the less costly approach.
But peacekeeping alone will not halt aggression, civil war, genocide, or
nuclear proliferation, nor can the intervening power remain impartial
in conﬂicts to which it has become a party.
Where to position any given intervention along this spectrum
from deconstruction to co-option depends not just on the needs ofthe society being refashioned, but on the resources the intervening
authorities have to commit to that task. The more sweeping a mission’s
objectives, the more resistance it is likely to inspire. Resistance can beSummaryxxi

overcome, but only through a well-considered application of personnel
and money over extended periods of time. In planning any mission,
therefore, it is essential to ensure a match between ends and means.
Missions that aim to impose peace upon unwilling parties and alter
long-standing power relationships are likely to require much greater
resources than are operations designed to perpetuate existing truces
while drawing contending factions into peaceful but potentially mutually advantageous power-sharing relationships.
Mismatches between inputs, as measured in personnel andmoney, and desired outcomes, as measured in imposed social transformation, are the most common cause for failure of nation-building
eﬀorts. In estimating the resource demands of such operations, thisguide provides ranges that encompass both approaches. The intent is
to assist those planning missions in increasing the necessary personnel and money if committed to promoting sweeping change or to dial
down the objective if resources are likely to be limited.

Institutional Frameworks and Consultative Forums
All nation-building missions involve a mix of national, multinational,
and international actors. The nature of that mix is determined largelyby the purpose and scope of the operation. Even nationally led interventions, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq or the Australian intervention in the Solomon Islands, quickly ﬁnd roles for other national partners, for the UN, and for other organizations. At the other end of thespectrum, no UN-led mission is likely to get very far without the cooperation of regional states and the backing of major powers.
The UN provides the most suitable institutional framework formost nation-building missions, one with a comparatively low cost
structure, a comparatively high success rate, and the greatest degreeof international legitimacy. The United Nations does not do invasions,however, and seldom deploys more than about 20,000 troops in any
given operation. For missions that require forced entry, or that demand
more than a reinforced division of troops, a coalition led by a nation

xxii

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

or by an alliance such as NATO will probably be necessary, at least forthe ﬁrst phase of the operation. However, although NATO is militarilymuch more potent than the UN, it possesses none of the other attributes needed for successful nation-building. Thus NATO-led military
operations will always require the UN or other national and international actors to provide the various civil components without which nonation-building mission can succeed.
Nation-building always requires the integration of national andinternational eﬀorts. Larger missions require several layers of consultative machinery to operate eﬀectively. The ﬁrst, inner circle should
include the major powers that care most about the success of the enterprise and are prepared to commit personnel and money to it. The
second circle should involve the major ﬁnancial donors. The thirdshould involve the neighboring powers. Without such coordination,international eﬀorts are likely to be disjointed, with the various organizations concerned competing for turf while shirking the riskier or lessrewarding tasks.
When nations disintegrate, the competing contenders for power
inevitably turn to external sponsors for support. Faced with the prospect of a neighboring state’s failure, the governments of adjoining states
seek to develop local clientele and back rival aspirants to power. It is,therefore, practically impossible to put a broken state back together if
its neighbors are committed to frustrating that eﬀort. Much as one
may regret and deplore such activity, neighbors can be neither safely
ignored nor eﬀectively barred from exercising their considerable inﬂuence. The adjacent states, after all, suﬀer the consequences of state failure and civil conﬂict most directly. They must shelter the refugees andcope with the endemic diseases, increased criminality, spread of terrorism, and disruptions to their commerce generated by such conﬂicts.
They cannot aﬀord to remain uninvolved. It has always proved wise,
therefore, to ﬁnd ways to engage them constructively, no matter how
unhelpful their activities may have been in the past. Failure to do socan condemn to failure even the most generously resourced operation.

Summary

xxiii

Setting Priorities
The prime objective of any nation-building operation is to make violent
societies peaceful, not to make poor ones prosperous, or authoritarian ones democratic. Economic development and political reform areimportant instruments for eﬀecting this transformation, but will notthemselves ensure it. Rather, such eﬀorts need to be pursued within abroader framework, the aim of which is to redirect the competition for
wealth and power, which takes place within any society, from violent
into peaceful channels.
The ﬁrst-order priorities for any nation-building mission are public
security and humanitarian assistance. If the most basic human needs
for safety, food, and shelter are not being met, any money spent onpolitical or economic development is likely to be wasted. Accordingly,
this guidebook is organized around a proposed hierarchy of nationbuilding tasks, which may be prioritized as follows:• Security: peacekeeping, law enforcement, rule of law, and securitysector reform• Humanitarian relief: return of refugees and response to potential
epidemics, hunger, and lack of shelter• Governance: resuming public services and restoring public
administration• Economic stabilization: establishing a stable currency and providing a legal and regulatory framework in which local and international commerce can resume• Democratization: building political parties, free press, civil society, and a legal and constitutional framework for elections• Development: fostering economic growth, poverty reduction, andinfrastructure improvements.
This is not to suggest that the above activities should necessarily be initiated sequentially. If adequate funding is available, they canand should proceed in tandem. But if higher-order priorities are notadequately resourced, investment in lower-order ones is likely to be
wasted.

xxiv

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Seizing the Moment
The weeks immediately following the arrival of foreign troops tend
to be a time of maximum possibility. The appearance of an intervening force normally produces a combination of shock and relief in thelocal population. Resistance is unorganized, spoilers unsure of their
future. The situation is highly malleable. But the capacity of intervening authorities to capitalize on these opportunities is usually limitedby the absence of many mission components. To take advantage ofwhat has been called the “golden hour” that follows the end of major
combat operations, the intervening authorities need to have at theirdisposal upon arrival a minimum set of assets: enough troops, police,
civil administrators, and humanitarian provisions to secure and supply
at least the capital. These can be followed quickly by judicial and penal
experts with funded plans for the disarmament, demobilization, andreintegration of former combatants and the training or retraining of
the police force.

Soldiers
Soldiers are among the ﬁrst elements of any nation-building mission toarrive. They are often called upon initially to perform many functions
that would be better fulﬁlled by civilian experts, were such experts
available in suﬃcient numbers. Their ﬁrst priority, however, should beto establish a modicum of security in what may be a chaotic situation.
Success in this task will be key to obtaining the population’s support
for the operation and introducing the civilian components of the mission in adequate numbers. Until individuals feel safer with the external
military presence, they will not collaborate in reporting on criminals,
terrorists, and other spoilers. Unless goods, services, and people canagain circulate normally, political and economic reforms cannot begin
to take hold. Intervening forces will normally require help from thelocal police and at least the passive cooperation of the local militaryin establishing a secure environment. Even when available, however,indigenous security services will usually prove incompetent, corrupt,

Summaryxxv

or abusive, requiring close oversight, mentoring, and institutionalchange.
Once a minimal level of security has been established, the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants
should be the next priority. Agreement among the contending parties
to take part in such a process is often a prerequisite for deployment of
an international force. In heavily armed societies with a long traditionof gun ownership, depriving individuals of their small arms may prove
impractical. At a minimum, heavy arms should be gathered, stored, or
destroyed, and the display of small arms by any except state security
forces should be banned. Armed units should be broken up, and individuals should be oﬀered alternative livelihoods. It is important thatthe mission arrive with a plan and adequate funding to perform thesetasks.
In societies with wide-scale unemployment, it will not be possible
to ﬁnd long-term positions for all former combatants. At a minimum,
the reintegration program should supervise and support these individuals for a period long enough to allow units to be broken up and theties among their members to be loosened.
The military component should establish extensive links with thecivilian population. One avenue is through active intelligence collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The second is a program of civic
action, through which military units support humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. Such tasks fall primarily to the civilian agencies,
but the military can often supplement those eﬀorts in useful and visible ways. This must be pursued with some sensitivity, recognizing thathumanitarian organizations attach great importance to maintaining
their impartiality in conﬂict environments and will resist close association with an intervening military force, even one operating on behalfof the UN.
While most postconﬂict societies will have more soldiers thanthey need, they will probably have fewer police oﬃcers than required.
Even as armies need to be scaled back and reformed, police forces needto bolstered and also reformed. The military contingent of the mission
is often involved in the former process and sometimes in the latter,

xxvi

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

although police training functions are better assigned to civilian police
when available.
Forced entries are often the prelude to demanding peace enforcement operations. The entries themselves may not prove particularly
diﬃcult—indeed, in recent decades these have invariably been achieved
rapidly and with minimal loss to the entering force. By contrast, thepostcombat stabilization and reconstruction phase has been much
more time-consuming and costly.
Stabilizing an internally divided society without signiﬁcant indigenous capacity for security can require an external military force of 10
to 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. In circumstances in which theparties to the conﬂict have jointly sought external intervention andare prepared to collaborate with it, that requirement can be potentiallyreduced to one soldier or fewer per 1,000 inhabitants. Where only thislower force ratio is likely to be achieved, deployment should normallybe conditioned upon prior agreement among the contending parties todisarm and disengage.
The cost for ﬁelding a U.S. or NATO force is about $200,000 per
soldier per year. The cost of ﬁelding the typical UN peacekeeping force
is about $45,000 per soldier per year. High-end peace enforcement
operations require a military staﬃng level, on average, 10 times higher
per inhabitant than do standard peacekeeping missions. Clearly, then,peace enforcement is appropriately a last rather than ﬁrst resort, to be
employed only if the stakes are great and the intervening powers highlycommitted.

PolicePublic security is the ﬁrst responsibility of intervening authorities. That
security is sometimes imperiled by contending armies and is always
threatened by criminals, gangs, and violence-prone political groups.
International military forces are best suited for dealing with the ﬁrst
sort of threat, police with the rest.
Military police are better than standard infantry for some public
security functions—such as crowd control—but less well suited thanSummary

xxvii

civilian police for criminal investigations or community policing. On
the other hand, most international civilian police forces are not wellequipped to deal with organized crime or large-scale violence. In many
ways, the ideal police forces for nation-building missions are gendarmerie-type units that combine military discipline with a high level ofinvestigative, forensic, and intelligence collection skills. Unfortunately,
only a few countries maintain such forces and, consequently, they arealways in short supply.
UN peacekeeping forces typically deploy about one police oﬃcer
for every 10 soldiers. These international police forces monitor, mentor,
and train local police forces. Where the local police force has disintegrated entirely, international police may need to undertake law enforcement functions themselves. This requires a much larger contingent ofinternational police, something feasible only for very well-resourced
operations in smaller countries.
Local police will need to be quickly vetted and closely supervised. In the medium term, they will need to be thoroughly reformed
or replaced entirely. In the longer term, the new or retrained police
will need to be mentored, supported, and held accountable. The intervening authorities should arrive with plans, funding, and personnel tobegin performing at least the ﬁrst two functions immediately.
Like the UN, the European Union has developed the capacity
to deploy signiﬁcant numbers of international police oﬃcers. The UN
currently deploys over 7,000 police oﬃcers to postconﬂict areas; theEU has set a goal of being able to deploy up to 5,000. The UnitedStates currently deploys some 300 international police oﬃcers, mostly
in Kosovo. It continues to rely on private contractors for this purpose.
This arrangement is clearly inferior to a system wherein the deployed
police would be U.S. government employees, rather than contractors,
with the greater degree of reciprocal loyalty, discipline, and commitment that relationship implies. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, theUnited States has failed to deploy any civilian police whatsoever.3
3

International police are uniformed police oﬃcers who monitor local police or who themselves enforce the law. Civilian instructors in police training establishments, who may beformer police oﬃcers, are not normally included in this category.

xxviii

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Most postconﬂict societies require at least two of their own
police oﬃcers for every 1,000 inhabitants. The intervening authorities should anticipate the need to rebuild, reequip, and, for the ﬁrst
several years at least, pay a police force of this magnitude. The annual
cost per local police oﬃcer will be approximately three times thatcountry’s per capita GDP. International police, by contrast, cost about$150,000 per person per year. Where the responsibilities of international police are limited to oversight, mentoring, and training of local
police, one for every 10,000 inhabitants may be adequate. Where they
assume a direct law enforcement role, one for every 1,000 inhabitants
may be needed.

Rule of Law
In most nation-building operations, eﬀorts to rebuild the judiciary andcorrections systems have taken second place to police reform. This isunfortunate and counterproductive. Police who lack prisons in whichto put criminals and judges before whom to bring them will inevitably
be left with the invidious choice of either punishing miscreants themselves or letting them go. Either alternative will corrupt and demoralize
the best-trained force.
A ﬁrst-order issue to be addressed in most nation-building missions is what law to enforce. The usual answer is to take the country’s
most recently promulgated criminal code, purge it of obviously abusive statutes, and employ it as the law of the land. In some cases, theintervening authorities may have to go further into the past to ﬁnd acriminal code acceptable to the population. Occasionally, it may haveto promulgate laws of its own. These are decisions that should be madeas part of the preparation for the mission so newly arriving troops andpolice have a clear idea of what rules are to be enforced.
In societies emerging from prolonged civil war, the legal system
will likely have ceased to function. There will be an absence of judges,
and those who are available may be unqualiﬁed. Courts and prisons may have been destroyed, and those that survive may have been
stripped of essentials. As with the police, the short-term objective willSummaryxxix

be to vet the judiciary and corrections staﬀ and oversee their activities,
in the medium term to reform and rebuild both these institutions,and, in the long term, to foster the development of a rule-of-law culture. These activities should proceed in parallel with police reform.
Establishing the balance between retribution and reconciliation
in societies emerging from conﬂict or tyranny presents a particularchallenge. Whom to punish and whom to forgive, whom to exclude
from the new dispensation and whom to co-opt into it are choices thatcannot be entirely avoided.
War crime tribunals provide a judicial vehicle for holding accountable those most responsible for past atrocities. The local society will
seldom be capable of mounting a credible legal process. International
tribunals, on the other hand, are hugely expensive and may lack legitimacy in the eyes of the aﬀected populations. Mixed tribunals, in whichinternational and local judges sit together, can help to address some ofthese diﬃculties.
Lustration represents an administrative approach to the sameproblem. Here the intention is to assess group, rather than personal,
responsibility. The objective is not so much to punish as to exclude theaﬀected group from future inﬂuence, usually by barring them frompublic employment, and sometimes stripping them of other civil rights.
Denaziﬁcation in post–World War II Germany, demilitarization in
Japan, and debaathiﬁcation in Iraq are examples of this process.
Truth commissions lie near the opposite end of the retribution/
reconciliation spectrum. These are nonjudicial inquiries into past
abuses with a view to assessing blame but not levying penalties. In
going this route, society is saying, “We are prepared to forgive, but not
to forget.”
It is clearly easier to exact retribution in circumstances in which
the conﬂict has produced clear winners and losers, particularly if thelosers have lost so badly as to preclude any further resistance. This isseldom the case. In other circumstances, any eﬀort to impose accountability for crimes committed in the course of conﬂict, whether throughjudicial or administrative processes, may occasion more resistance than
the intervening authorities are capable of suppressing.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

War crime tribunals are sometimes employed by the international
community as an alternative to intervention, rather than as an adjunct.
In such instances, tribunals serve principally as a means of assuaging the international community’s conscience without requiring it tocommit the personnel and money needed to actually stop the crimes it
abhors and punish the perpetrators. Proponents argue that the simple
threat of judicial action at some indeﬁnite point in the future will curb
abusive behavior. There is scant empirical support for this thesis.
In the context of nation-building, war crime tribunals and lustration should be employed only in those rare situations in which theintervening authorities are equipped to enforce the outcome and readyto deal eﬀectively with the resultant resistance. Applied in any othercircumstances, the eﬀect is likely to be an increased polarization of thesociety in question and an eventual resumption of violence.

Humanitarian Relief
Humanitarian operations often precede nation-building missions, initiated in response to the conﬂict and sustained in many cases throughout
its course. Thus, while the arrival of peacekeepers may signal the opening of an operation for most of its constituent elements, it can signal
the beginning of the end for those engaged in lifesaving humanitarianrelief eﬀorts, as displaced persons are helped to return to their homes,
as refugee camps are closed, and as public services are restored.
Most major humanitarian relief agencies are professionallystaﬀed, highly experienced, and comparatively well resourced. Funding for nation-building is almost always in short supply, but humanitarian relief is the aspect donors are the most inclined to fund. As
a result, relief eﬀorts are usually among the least problematic of any
nation-building mission. We have found no mission whose overall success was compromised by inadequacies in this aspect of its operations.
On the other hand, there are many examples of situations in which
the intervening authorities’ failure to establish a modicum of public
security has made it impossible for humanitarian agencies to com-

Summaryxxxi

plete their tasks or even to sustain lifesaving assistance to threatened
populations.
In cases in which the intervening authorities quickly establish
a reasonably secure environment, relief operations usually proceedsmoothly. Refugees return, sometimes with surprising rapidity. Public
services are gradually restored, including public health services. The
economy revives. Within a year or two, most humanitarian agencies
can pack up and move on to another emergency or shift their emphasis
from lifesaving to developmental activities.
Coordination between military forces and humanitarian organizations is never easy. The number of such organizations has grown
vastly in recent years; not all are of the highest distinction. Humanitarian organizations seek to remain impartial, even when the United
Nations is positioned on one side and local outlaws on the other. This
may seem anomalous, as the same donor governments are often funding the humanitarian eﬀorts and staﬃng the intervening militaryforce. Humanitarian organizations feel strongly, however, that theirability to gain access to exposed populations depends on maintaining
strict impartiality. Accordingly, representatives of such organizations
carefully limit their interactions with international peacekeepers, evenwhen they look to these forces for security.
Coordination becomes particularly diﬃcult when the intervening authorities have failed to establish a secure environment. Then,the usual division of labor between international military forces andhumanitarian organizations is diﬃcult to maintain. Humanitarianorganizations may ﬁnd themselves unable to provide relief in very dangerous areas. International military units may feel compelled to step
into this void and begin delivering relief supplies, in the process blurring
the distinction between combatant and humanitarian worker. While
such arrangements are better than a complete absence of humanitarianrelief, it is generally best if the military and the humanitarian organizations each concentrate on their respective primary tasks: maintaining
security or delivering assistance.

xxxiiThe Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Governance
A society emerging from conﬂict may be able to wait for democracy,
but it needs a government immediately if there is to be any law enforcement, education, or public health care. National governments are usually responsible for regulating and, in some circumstances, providing
electricity and telecommunications. In most instances, municipal governments provide water and sanitation.
Although intervening authorities may sometimes serve initiallyas the government, they will never be in a position to deliver these
services independently. They must rely on host country nationals andlocal institutions to provide public services. The intervening authorities may provide funding, guidance, and oversight, but the teachers,
health workers, and most of the police force must be drawn from thehost country.
The intervening authorities select people and organizations todeliver these services. These individuals and organizations are provided
with funds and inﬂuence. The intervening authorities must be attentive
from the start to ensure that such choices do not discriminate unhelpfully against groups, especially those that were party to the conﬂict.
The intervening authorities need to choose partners carefully with aview to creating a government and distribution of power that will besustainable when the authorities leave.
Many services can best be provided at the local level. Rebuilding government from the bottom up allows new leadership to emerge,
including individuals unassociated with the recent conﬂict. On theother hand, empowering local oﬃcials before the national governmenthas been reconstituted can feed sectarian conﬂict in circumstancesin which the relationship between the center and the periphery isunsettled.
The intervening authorities will have to meet much, and perhaps all, of the initial costs of restoring basic government services. The
requirement for ﬁnancing public health, education, and general government administration can be expected to run about 10 percent of thecountry’s preconﬂict GDP.

SummaryxxxiiiEconomic Stabilization
The resumption of commerce requires the availability of a reasonably
stable medium of exchange. Sustained growth is virtually impossible
in periods of very high inﬂation. Although donors may ﬁnance theresumption of government services initially, it is important to quickly
reconstruct the host state’s capability to allocate that funding andoversee its expenditure and to expand its capacity to collect its own
sources of revenue. The more money that is pumped into government,
the greater the opportunities for corruption, control of which requires
institutions for auditing and accountability and the creation of a professional civil service.
To meet these needs, early attention should be given to creatingor strengthening a central bank, ministry of ﬁnance, and civil service
commission. Occasionally, the decision is made to adopt a foreign currency as the medium of exchange. More often, there is a preference
to keep a national currency to preserve the option of adjusting theexchange rate to better manage economic activity. Among the mostdiﬃcult tasks facing the central bank is ensuring that commercial
banks become and remain solvent.
Donor budget support is required to keep government expenditures and revenue in balance, thereby avoiding the need to print moremoney. Donor conferences are the usual vehicle for ensuring an adequate ﬂow of funding. It is usually best to hold at least two such meetings, the ﬁrst for immediate humanitarian, security, and economic stabilization needs, and the second, a year or two later, to focus upon
longer-term development. The World Bank and the United Nations
Development Programme should be asked to prepare a needs assessment in preparation for these conferences. The International Monetary
Fund should take the lead in establishing or reforming the central bankand providing the wherewithal to manage the currency.

xxxiv

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Democratization
The prime objective of a nation-building intervention is to leave behinda society at peace with itself and its neighbors. Democratization alone
will not ensure this outcome. On the contrary, elections may be polarizing events in already divided societies. In the context of nationbuilding, the process of democratization should be seen as a practicalmeans of redirecting the ongoing competition for wealth and power
within the society from violent into peaceful channels, not as an
abstract exercise in social justice.
Representative institutions based on universal suﬀrage usuallyoﬀer the only viable basis for reconstituting state authority in a manner
acceptable to most of the population. In considering constitutional
design, a ﬁrst step is to analyze the sources of violent conﬂict in thesociety. An exceptionally strong and committed intervening authority may be able to dispossess one group and empower another in an
enduring fashion. In most circumstances, however, success in nationbuilding will depend more on co-option than on the exclusion ofpotential spoilers. In societies divided by sectarian strife, it may be necessary to craft power-sharing arrangements that limit the authority ofthe majority and provide guarantees to minority parties beyond thosefound in more developed democracies.
Democracies come in many shapes and sizes. Left to their own
devices, intervening powers will tend toward replicating their own institutions, while local populations will be inclined to opt for a systemwith which they are familiar, even if that system has served thempoorly in the past. In most cases, it will be better to adapt the familiar
to new circumstances, rather than import wholly new arrangements
unfamiliar to host country citizens.
Ideally, national elections should be preceded by the disarmament,
demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants; the growth ofcivil society; the establishment of independent media; the developmentof political parties; and the holding of local elections. This sequence
may not always be fully achievable. In some instances, the intervening
authorities may be too weak to resist the call from dominant elements

Summaryxxxv

in the society for early elections, or to administer the society without
the support of a government legitimized through the electoral process.
The UN is the best source of expertise on the development oftransitional and permanent political systems. The Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has developed considerable expertise in the promotion of civil society, the establishment of
independent media, and the development of political parties, though
its activities thus far have been limited to Eurasia. Several nations,
including the United States and Germany, maintain publicly ﬁnanced
party-based organizations that specialize in helping foster the development of political parties in emerging democracies. IFES (formerly theInternational Foundation for Election Systems) has organized elections
in dozens of countries around the world under the most challenging ofconditions.

Infrastructure and Development
Postconﬂict societies are attractive candidates for development assistance. Dollar for dollar, aid to nations emerging from war will resultin much higher levels of growth than will the same amount provided
to more settled societies. Postconﬂict societies also can use more assistance, as measured as a share of GDP, than more settled societies can.
Whereas most developing societies cannot usefully absorb assistance
representing more than about 20 percent of their annual GDPs, postconﬂict nations can make good use of aid representing up to 40 percent of their GDPs, and, in the ﬁrst year following conﬂict, up to 70
percent.
The quality of policies adopted by the intervening authorities andthe host government will be as important as the volume of assistancein determining the latter’s utility. Controlling inﬂation, ﬁnancing thegovernment’s budget (in the early years via large-transfer paymentsfrom international donors), creating regulatory and tax systems conducive to growth, reducing or eliminating subsidies, attracting investment, and operating utilities and state-owned enterprises on a sound,market-oriented basis will be essential to fostering sustained growth.

xxxviThe Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Reforms of this nature will necessarily occasion resistance. The processneeds to be managed in ways that draw the society’s major contending
factions into a process of peaceful competition and away from a return
to violent conﬂict.
The term reconstruction, when used to describe the reform of postconﬂict societies, conveys the sense that physical rebuilding of homes,
factories, roads, and power plants destroyed in the war is the prime
need. This is misleading. Even more than infrastructure, nations
emerging from conﬂict need better institutions. In most cases, these
institutions need to be refashioned, not just rebuilt, since it is theold institutions that will have failed in the ﬁrst place. This is as true inthe economic sphere as in the political.
As regards physical infrastructure, the intervening authorities
should give priority to ﬁxing those related to security, health care, education, power, water, and sanitation in an eﬀort to raise these services
to something approaching prewar levels. The focus should be on emergency repair, not new investment. The improvement, as opposed to therepair, of infrastructure should be funded through project ﬁnancing
by international ﬁnancial institutions like the World Bank or other
lenders rather than through bilateral grant assistance. Project ﬁnancing
imposes disciplines that are too frequently absent from schemes fundedwith grant assistance, requiring, as the former does, all the parties toaddress issues of size, cost, and repayment in light of demand, anticipated revenues, and rate setting.
Security is an essential precondition for productive investment.
Money spent on infrastructure and development will be largely wasted
if people, goods, and services are subject to high levels of abduction,
theft, or attack.

Conclusion
The ultimate objective of any nation-building mission is to leave behinda society likely to remain at peace with itself and its neighbors once
external security forces are removed and full sovereignty is restored.
Some level of democratization and economic development is likely

Summary

xxxviito be essential to this desired result. Neither endeavor, however, canensure peace, and either, if pushed injudiciously, can exacerbate rather
than ameliorate the tendency toward renewed violence so prevalent inpostconﬂict societies. If peace is to be created, security is key. Only
when a modicum of security has been restored do prospects for democracy and sustained economic growth brighten.
Most historical nation-building operations have fallen into one
of two categories. Peacekeeping missions have been mounted on thebasis of prior agreement among the warring parties. Peace enforcement
operations have been launched despite the opposition of one or moreindigenous factions. Interventions of the ﬁrst type have typically been
led by the UN; those of the second by a major global or regional power.
Peace enforcement operations typically require 10 times more personnel and money than do peacekeeping operations.
The expense of nation-building is shared among troop contributors, aid donors, and the international community as a whole according
to various burden-sharing formulas. The costs of UN-led peacekeeping
operations are spread most widely. Those for peace enforcement missions fall more heavily on the lead nation and its principal allies. Peace
enforcement is thus not only much more expensive than peacekeeping;
it is particularly so for the lead nation.
As a practical matter, therefore, full-scale peace enforcement
actions are feasible only when the intervening authorities care a great
deal about the outcome, and even then, only in relatively small societies. Thus, the eﬀort needed to stabilize Bosnia and Kosovo has proved
diﬃcult to replicate in Afghanistan or Iraq, nations that are eight to
12 times more populous. It would be even more diﬃcult to mount apeace enforcement mission in Iran, which is three times more populous than Iraq, and nearly impossible to do so in Pakistan, which isthree times again more populous than Iran. Considerations of scale
therefore suggest that the transformational objectives of intervention
in larger societies need to be sharply restrained on account of the much
more modest resources, relative to the population, likely to be available
for their achievement.
Even the lighter, more consensual approach to nation-building
epitomized by UN peacekeeping represents an expensive enterprise,xxxviii

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

although not more expensive than allowing a conﬂict, once halted,
to be renewed. Put diﬀerently, conﬂicts impose greater costs on theinternational community than the expense necessary to ensure that thecycle of violence, once halted for whatever reason, is not renewed.4
Just as no war plan survives contact with the enemy, no nationbuilding plan can survive contact with the nation being built. The
true test of any such planning process, therefore, is not its capacity toforesee every twist and turn of the operation, but rather its success inmatching ends to means.

4

Collier and Hoeﬄer (2004, p. 3); Dobbins, Jones, et al. (2005, p. 247).

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Marin Strmecki for identifying the need for thisguidebook, Nadia Schadlow for helping to make it happen, and theSmith Richardson Foundation for supporting this work throughout its development. We thank the United States Institute of Peacefor allowing Beth Cole DeGrasse to participate in the project, and forthe research support provided by Yll Bajraktari and Emily Hsu. Nora
Bensahel, Larry Diamond, Nancy Lindborg, William L. Nash, Gary
Milante, Robert M. Perito, and Karin von Hippel read all or portionsof the manuscript and provided helpful comments. We thank the following individuals at the United Nations for their assistance: David
Harland, Paula Souverijn-Eisenberg, Antero Lopes, Chika Onaka, andTim Irwin. Several RAND colleagues also oﬀered helpful insights,
including Terrence K. Kelly, Andrew Rathmell, and Olga Oliker.
Nathan Chandler and Anga Timilsina provided key research support
and collected data for the charts and graphs, and Joy Merck provided
valuable administrative support.

xxxix

Abbreviations

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

DDR

disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration

DFID

UK Department for International DevelopmentGDPgross domestic productGPSglobal positioning system

HIV/AIDS

human immunodeﬁciency virus/acquired
immunodeﬁciency syndrome

HUMINT

human intelligence

IFES

formerly the International Foundation for Election
Systems

IMF

International Monetary Fund

INTERFETInternational Force East Timor

KFOR

Kosovo ForceMP

military police oﬃcer

NATONorth Atlantic Treaty OrganizationNGO

nongovernmental organization

OCHA

United Nations Oﬃce for Coordination of
Humanitarian Aﬀairs

xli

xlii

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

OSCE

Organization for Security and Co-operationin Europe

SWAT

special weapons and tactics

UN

United Nations

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc andCultural Organization

UNHCR

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF

United Nations Children’s Fund

UNMIK

United Nations Interim Administration Missionin Kosovo

UNSOM

United Nations Operation in Somalia

UNTAET

United Nations Transitional Administrationin East Timor

USAID

U.S. Agency for International Development

VAT

value-added tax

VIPvery important person

WMD

weapons of mass destruction

CHAPTER ONE

Preparing for Nation-Building

It is rare for nation-building missions to be launched on short notice,in response to unforeseen developments, and thus in circumstancesthat preclude methodical planning. The 1961 UN intervention in theCongo and the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan were two such cases.
More often, the probability of an operation can be foreseen months
in advance. The U.S.-led interventions in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, andIraq fall into this category, as do most UN missions. In such circumstances, advance planning can greatly improve the prospects of success at acceptable cost. Preparations are most useful when they extend
beyond the military sphere to encompass the many civilian components essential to the success of any mission. This presents a challenge,
as civilian agencies involved are both numerous and diverse and arealso less accustomed to the discipline of planning.
Planning for nation-building missions tends to bring together
three types of people. First are the regional experts, those who understand why the society in question is in conﬂict. These experts often ﬁnd
it diﬃcult to envisage substantial change and are consequently pessimistic about the degree of change that may be possible. The second
category is made up of experienced nation-builders. These individuals may know little of the society in question but do understand theprocess by which transformation can be attempted. They are likely toadvise that change for the better is possible, but time-consuming andexpensive to eﬀectuate. The last group is composed of those who know
little of the society in question or of the nation-building process. People

1

2

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Buildingin this third category are most prone to believing that change can beachieved quickly and easily.
Members of this last category are also normally in charge. A decision to launch any military intervention is a matter of great consequence, after all, to be made not by military or civilian experts but by
political leaders. Such leaders cannot be expected to possess expertise
about the region or nation-building. Nor can the general public, whichthese leaders represent and to which they are accountable, be expected
to have this expertise. Sound decisionmaking therefore requires thatpolitical leaders consult both categories of experts: those who understand why the nation in question has failed and those who understandhow to rebuild it. This chapter discusses the issues they should consider
during the consultative process.

Setting the Objective
Military interventions are usually launched with proximate, basicallynegative objectives. Typically, such operations are intended to stop
undesirable events, such as attacks on civilians, genocide, famine, civil
war, or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Oncethese proximate objectives are achieved, the intervening authorities
will face a host of new, sometimes unforeseen, though seldom entirely
unforeseeable, challenges. The United States invaded Germany andJapan to defend itself against attack. NATO intervened in Kosovo toprotect the Albanian majority from Serb oppression. The United States
invaded Iraq to dismantle its WMD programs. Presidents Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman did not intend to commit theUnited States to a long-term engagement in Europe and Asia, structured around alliances with revitalized German and Japanese nations.
NATO did not intend to spend the next decade in Kosovo protecting
the Serb minority from Albanian retribution. The Bush administration
did not anticipate the disintegration of Saddam Hussein’s army, the riseof an insurgency, or the eventual need to referee a widening civil war.
All these twists of fate might have been predicted, but none were,at least not by those planning the respective interventions. Such pre-

Preparing for Nation-Building

3

dictions would have required an ability to look beyond the proximate
objectives of each operation. It would have required recognition thatthe very act of intervention alters, often radically, the power balanceand social dynamic in the subject nation and its region. By virtue of
an intervention, losers suddenly become winners, and winners become
losers. Those who ﬁnd themselves advantaged by the intervention may
exercise their new power without restraint, profoundly embarrassing
their rescuers. Those who ﬁnd themselves disadvantaged are prone
to become spoilers, intent on frustrating the intervening authorities’
purposes.
Interventions have external reverberations as well, creating new
power relationships among neighboring states, motivating some to support spoilers and oppose the eﬀorts of the intervening authorities. As theUnited States committed itself to German reconstruction, the Soviet
Union moved to block or diminish the eﬀectiveness of U.S. policy.
NATO’s intervention in Kosovo emboldened the Albanian minority
in Macedonia to demand a greater share of power in that state. U.S.
interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq greatly enhanced Iran’s regional
inﬂuence. These were probably predictable consequences, although
they were not widely predicted, at least by those planning the interventions. As the United States and the rest of the international community
gain more experience with such interventions, the capacity to look several moves ahead and to understand how interventions will reshape thedomestic and external environment of the nations being rebuilt needs
to improve.

Sizing the Commitment
Most nation-building missions aim to halt a conﬂict, if one is still
under way, and to forestall a resumption of ﬁghting while promoting the emergence of an indigenous government ultimately capableof resuming full responsibility for the security and well-being of its
population. Democratic elections almost always play a role in establishing or consolidating such a government. Unless political and economic reforms have preceded elections, however, balloting may simply

4

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

reﬂect, and even harden, existing social divisions. On the other hand,
the more ambitious the reform agenda of the intervening power, themore resistance is likely to be engendered. Getting this balance right isthe essence of a well-planned operation.
When nation-building missions founder, the problem can usually
be traced to a mismatch between aspirations and commitment. Somalia is a good case in point. In 1992, the United States deployed a powerful force of over 20,000 U.S. soldiers and marines with the exclusive
purpose of protecting the ﬂow of humanitarian relief. This mission
was accomplished without engendering signiﬁcant resistance. In 1993,
Washington reduced its military presence in Somalia by 90 percent,from over 20,000 to some 2,000 troops, but assigned this residual force
the objective of supporting a less capable UN peacekeeping force inan eﬀort to promote grassroots democracy, thereby challenging every
warlord in the country. This mismatch between rising mission requirements and declining military capabilities produced early and dramatic
results. U.S. and UN forces were confronted, bloodied, and ultimately
withdrawn, their mission unaccomplished.
As noted, the more sweeping an intervening authority’s objectives, the more resistance its eﬀorts are likely to inspire. Resistancecan be overcome, but only through the application of personnel andmoney employed wisely over extended periods of time. In planning any
mission, therefore, it is essential to ensure a match between ends andmeans. Missions that try to impose peace on unwilling parties or aim
to alter long-standing power relationships are likely to require muchgreater resources than are operations that seek to perpetuate existing
truces while co-opting contending factions into peaceful but potentially mutually advantageous relationships. Peace enforcement missions of the ﬁrst type typically require 10 times more personnel andmoney than those at the peacekeeping end of the scale.
Most modern U.S.-led nation-building missions have been of themore demanding variety. Most UN-led missions have been of the lessdemanding peacekeeping variety. Of course, those planning a new
mission are unlikely to have complete freedom to choose the sort ofoperation to mount. Peacekeeping alone will not halt genocide, turnback aggression, or prevent the proliferation of WMD. Nevertheless,Preparing for Nation-Building5

the distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement represents a spectrum, not a binary opposition. Even in circumstances inwhich a forced entry may be a necessary prelude to the nation-building
mission, the intervening authorities are likely to have some latitude to
determine how extensively to reorder the targeted society. That decision will in turn help determine how large a pool of spoilers the intervention will create. That calculation should in turn inﬂuence how large
a commitment of personnel and money will be needed to deter or suppress the resultant resistance.
It is not always possible to scale commitments to match aspirations. If resources are limited, as they normally are, ambitions may
have to be scaled down accordingly. Even where ambitious attempts
at social engineering are desired, costlier and less costly alternatives
may be available. Here a comparison of U.S. approaches to post–WorldWar II Germany and Japan is instructive. In Germany, the state wasdismantled and subsequently refashioned from the bottom up. Every
single institution of government was abolished and later recreated. In
Japan, by contrast, nearly all the state institutions were preserved andsubsequently reformed from within. The former approach resulted in
more thoroughgoing social transformation (Germany is reconciledwith its neighbors and its history; Japan is not), but also required much
more personnel, money, and time to achieve.
A similar contrast between the rival strategies of co-option anddeconstruction can be observed in U.S. eﬀorts in Afghanistan and
Iraq. The United States did not invade Afghanistan as part of a grander
scheme to promote democracy throughout Central Asia. U.S. eﬀorts
were focused on preventing Afghanistan from again becoming alaunching pad for global terrorism. Accordingly, U.S. authorities chose
to work with neighboring governments and local Afghan warlords tooust the Taliban, chase down al Qaeda, and install a broadly based
successor regime in Kabul. Only gradually, and somewhat reluctantly,
did Washington assume wider responsibilities for peace enforcementand democracy-building in Afghanistan, and then only in response tostrong urgings from within and without Afghanistan.
By contrast, U.S. objectives in Iraq were much more ambitious
from the beginning. That country was intended to become a model

6

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

for the region. The invasion is to this day presented by Washington
as a ﬁrst step in the democratic transformation of the greater Middle
East. Rather than working with neighboring governments and local
power brokers to form a successor government to Saddam’s regime,
Washington chose to mount a formal occupation with the intention of
introducing major political and economic reforms before holding elections and restoring Iraqi sovereignty. However, U.S. planning in Iraq
assumed that the occupying force that would oversee this immense
experiment in social engineering could be smaller than the initial invasion force designed to topple Saddam and seize the country.
In the end, Washington miscalculated the resources needed forboth these nation-building missions. This miscalculation has proved
particularly costly in Iraq, where the much more ambitious eﬀort atreform occasioned much greater resistance. Afghanistan, although by
no means a model, does demonstrate that lower aspirations can allow
for reduced commitments.

Choosing an Institutional Framework
Modern nation-building requires a mix of military and civilian capacity and national, multinational, and international participation. It
therefore necessitates trade-oﬀs between unity of command and broadburden-sharing. Both are desirable, but each can be achieved only atsome expense to the other. For dangerous, highly demanding operations in which forced entry and conventional combat are likely tobe necessary, the desire for unity of command normally prevails andnationally led coalitions of the willing are the preferred instrument.
For sustained, long-term commitments in reasonably secure environments, considerations of burden-sharing are more likely to predominate, leading to a more prominent role for international institutions.
This mix can shift over time. A number of missions have begun with anationally led entry phase, followed by an internationally led consolidation and transformation phase.
Transition from a nationally led entry force to an internationally led peacekeeping mission can secure greater legitimacy and local

Preparing for Nation-Building

7

acceptance for the intervention, as well as broader burden-sharing.
Sometimes these sequential handoﬀs result in several external forces
operating in the same area with diﬀerent missions and diﬀerent rules ofengagement. This occurred in Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan.
This is an unsound practice, engendering duplication and risking confusion, miscommunication, and, in some instances, unnecessary casualties. A better model is that followed by the United States in Haiti in
1994 and by Australia in East Timor in 1999, in which the U.S.- andAustralian-led entry forces, respectively, were drawn down and incorporated into the subsequent UN-led peacekeeping force.
Many international institutions have the capacity to contributeto nation-building operations, but only a few are structured to deploy
military forces. These include the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, and the African Union. The UN has the widest experience. NATO has the most powerful forces. The EU has the widest
panoply of civil capabilities. The African Union possesses none of theseadvantages.
Among international organizations, the United Nations has themost widely accepted legitimacy and the greatest formal authority. Its
actions, by deﬁnition, enjoy international sanction. Alone among organizations, it can compel its member governments to fund operations,even requiring contributions from those opposed to the intervention
in question. The United Nations has the most straightforward decisionmaking apparatus, and the most uniﬁed command-and-control
arrangements. The UN Security Council is smaller than its NATO,EU, or African Union equivalents. It takes all decisions by qualiﬁed
majority; only ﬁve of its members have the capacity to block decisions
unilaterally. Once the Security Council determines the purpose ofa mission and decides to launch it, further operational decisions areleft largely to the Secretary-General and his staﬀ, at least until thenext Security Council review, generally six months thereafter. In UN
operations, the civilian and military chains of command are uniﬁed
and integrated, with unequivocal civilian primacy and a clear line ofauthority from the UN Secretary-General through the local civilian
representative to the local force commander.

8

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

The UN is a comparatively eﬃcient and cost-eﬀective force provider. In its specialized agencies, it possesses a broad panoply of civil
as well as military capabilities needed for nation-building. All UN-led
operations (up to two dozen are routinely under way at any one time)
are planned, controlled, and sustained by a few hundred military andcivilian staﬀers at UN headquarters in New York. Most UN troops
come from developing countries whose costs per deployed soldier area small fraction of those of any Western army. In 2006, the United
Nation deployed over 70,000 soldiers and police oﬃcers in 19 countries at a cost of some $5 billion per year. This made the UN the second
largest provider of expeditionary forces in the world, after the UnitedStates but ahead of NATO, the EU, or the African Union. In one year,
the cost to the UN of these 19 missions was approximately equivalent
to what the United States spent in one month in Iraq.
Needless to say, the UN also has its limitations. While the UN
Security Council is more compact than its NATO and EU counterparts, it is regionally and ideologically more diverse, and therefore
subject to blocking in the face of strong East-West or North-South
diﬀerences, as proved to be the case with Kosovo in 1999. On theother hand, the Kosovo operation was the sole occasion, since 1989,
when either NATO or the EU agreed on an intervention but the UN
Security Council did not. Since 1989, the UN Security Council has
agreed to launch more than 40 operations, while the NATO Council
has agreed to three and the Council of the European Union to two. In
2002, the United States and the United Kingdom calculated that they
actually had a better hope of securing UN support for their invasion of
Iraq than they did of gaining endorsement from either NATO or theEuropean Union.
The broad latitude enjoyed by the UN Secretary-General and his
local representatives in the operational control of blue-helmeted operations facilitates unity of command, but also serves to limit the willingness of some nations to contribute. NATO and EU procedures oﬀer
troop-contributing members much greater day-to-day inﬂuence overthe use of their contingents than do those of the UN. Western governments accordingly favor these institutions for peace enforcement missions where the level of risk to their units is high.

Preparing for Nation-Building

9

Similarly, the austere nature of UN headquarters staﬃng forpeacekeeping operations keeps costs down but limits the organization’s
capacity to plan and support large or highly complex missions. As apractical matter, the United Nations’ capacity to mount and sustain
expeditionary forces tops out at about 20,000 soldiers, or a reinforced
division. These forces always require permissive entry. The United
Nations does not do invasions, although it has frequently authorizedothers to conduct them.
NATO, by contrast, is capable of deploying powerful forces inlarge numbers and of using them to force entry where necessary. But
NATO has no capacity to implement civilian operations; it depends on
the United Nations and other institutions or nations to perform all thenonmilitary functions essential to the success of any nation-building
operation. NATO decisions are by consensus; consequently, all members have a veto. Whereas the UN Security Council normally makes
one decision with respect to any particular operation every six months
and leaves the Secretary-General relatively unconstrained to carry outthat mandate during the intervals, the NATO Council’s oversight ismore continuous, its decisionmaking more incremental. Member governments consequently have a greater voice in operational matters, andthe NATO civilian and military staﬀs have correspondingly less. Thislevel of control makes governments more ready to commit troops toNATO for high-risk operations than to the United Nations. It also
ensures that the resultant forces are often employed conservatively.
National caveats limiting the types of missions to which any one member’s troops may be assigned are a fact of life in all coalition operations, but have lately proved even more pervasive in NATO than in
UN operations. NATO troops are much better equipped than most of
those devoted to UN operations and are correspondingly more expensive. The resultant wealth of staﬀ resources ensures that NATO operations are more professionally planned and sustained, but the proportion of headquarters personnel to ﬁelded capacity is quite high andcorrespondingly more costly.
EU decisionmaking in the security and defense sector is also by
consensus. The European Union has a leaner military and politicalstaﬀ than NATO does, in part because it can call on NATO, if it

10

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

chooses, for planning and other staﬀ functions. The EU, like the UN,
but unlike NATO, can draw upon a wide array of civilian assets essential to any nation-building operation. Like NATO soldiers, EU soldiers
are much more expensive than their UN counterparts. EU decisionmaking mechanisms, like those of NATO, oﬀer troop-contributing
governments more scope for micromanaging military operations on a
day-to-day basis than do the UN’s.
Half or more of all nation-building operations take place in subSaharan Africa. Several African organizations, most recently the African Union, have organized peacekeeping missions. No African Union
member country has the capacity to conduct large-scale expeditionary
operations. The African Union’s eﬀorts therefore tend to be even more
dependent on U.S. and European support than are those of the United
Nations. In consequence, the United States and its European allies may
end up paying a larger share of the bill for African Union operations
than for UN operations, despite their lack of membership in the former
organization. While African Union interventions may be more acceptable to the host countries than ones headed by the UN, NATO, or theEU, this is probably for the wrong reason; the receiving government
has opted for the weaker presence and less exigent oversight.

Establishing Consultative Forums
No international organization, not even the United Nations, possesses
all the capabilities needed for eﬀective nation-building. The United
Nations has the ability to perform military, humanitarian, and political tasks, but generally shares responsibility for reconstruction and economic development with institutions such as the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF), which are outside the UN familyof agencies. NATO has an even more limited palette of capabilities,
basically providing only military forces. The World Bank, the IMF,
regional development banks, and the European Union all have substantial capabilities in the area of reconstruction and the provision ofﬁnancial assistance. Coordination among these various organizations
depends heavily on guidance from their principal member states. ItPreparing for Nation-Building

11

usually makes sense, therefore, for the governments with the greatest
stakes in a mission to meet regularly to coordinate plans and ensurethat the various international organizations involved are collaboratingeﬀectively. Failing such oversight, these organizations will expend agood deal of energy competing for turf while shirking the high risk of
expensive tasks.
Neighboring states always have a profound eﬀect, for better orworse, on the outcome of nation-building operations. These countries
cannot aﬀord to remain uninvolved: It is they that must harbor the refugees and cope with the crime, corruption, terrorism, epidemic disease,and commercial disruption that violent conﬂict engenders. Neighbors,
therefore, can neither be safely ignored nor eﬀectively barred from exercising their considerable inﬂuence.
When states fail, contenders for power invariably seek foreignsponsors, while neighboring governments back one faction or anotherin an eﬀort to preserve their inﬂuence. When these governments backdissident elements and collaborate with spoilers, the task of the intervening authorities is greatly complicated and, indeed, often irremediably compromised. It is wise, therefore, to ﬁnd ways to engage neighbors
constructively. This does not mean accepting troop contributions fromadjoining states. That is almost always a bad idea, raising as it does the
specter of permanent partition or border adjustments. It does mean
giving neighboring governments a forum through which to express
their opinions and pursue their legitimate interests in a transparent
fashion.
In the mid-1990s, NATO nations recognized that they could
not put Bosnia back together without the active cooperation of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo
Tudjman, the two men personally responsible for the genocide NATOwas trying to stop. In late 2001, the United States recognized that it
could not install a broadly based successor regime to the Taliban without the active support of those neighboring nations that had been tearing Afghanistan apart for several decades. The success of both theseeﬀorts depended on creating a favorable regional climate, requiringthat the United States engage its adversaries as well as its friends.

12

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

In the Balkans, the United States and its allies created the Peace
Implementation Council, which accorded each of Bosnia’s neighbors
a role in overseeing its transformation. In Afghanistan, the United
Nations established the “six plus two” forum, bringing together all ofthat country’s neighbors, along with the United States and Russia. It
was this group that formally launched the process of establishing a
successor regime to the Taliban. Its principal member governments all
participated actively in helping choose and install that government.
When organizing a large-scale nation-building eﬀort, it generally
makes sense to create several concentric forums. At the core are themajor powers contributing troops and money to the operation. The
next circle widens to include all the major ﬁnancial donors, whether
or not they have also committed troops. The third circle includes all
the neighboring states. Consensus should be sought and built from theﬁrst to the second, and ﬁnally to the third groups.
Setting Initial Priorities

All nation-building operations must move quickly to ﬁll a security
vacuum, deal with severe humanitarian distress, repair inadequate
capacity for governance, and restore economic activity. Such missions
require several components in addition to the military, including a
police contingent to monitor existing local police and train and develop
new police forces; humanitarian relief agencies; civil administrators;
and experts in the ﬁelds of ﬁnance, reconstruction, development, anddemocratization. Ideally, all these elements should arrive at the sametime, ready to operate at full strength from day one. Unfortunately,
this ideal is never achieved, forcing the intervening authorities to phasein these operations as capacity becomes available.
In any society emerging from conﬂict, security, economic growth,and political reform are interdependent. Most programmatic objectives
can be achieved only if others are as well. Yet money must be allocated, projects sequenced, and targets set, ideally against some hierarchy of objectives. With inﬁnite personnel and money, it might be possible to launch and fully fund all desired activities simultaneously. Asa practical matter, choices must be made among competing priorities.
Humanitarian relief and the establishment of a secure environment

Preparing for Nation-Building

13

are normally the intervening authorities’ ﬁrst priorities. Humanitarian relief is usually provided in some measure in the midst of conﬂict.
Consequently, relief agencies are often on the ground and operatingeven before the ﬁrst peacekeeper arrives.
Nation-building missions are not launched to make poor societies prosperous, but rather to make warring ones peaceful. Prosperity
and security are linked, but the linkage is stronger in one direction
than the other. Security is a prerequisite for economic growth. The
economies of societies in civil conﬂict almost invariably contract, while
also reducing the growth rates of surrounding states. Societies emerging from such conﬂict will usually experience positive growth even
if they receive no economic assistance. Security, even in the absenceof economic assistance, will thus produce some economic growth,
while economic assistance in the absence of security will produce neither peace nor prosperity.
This is not to suggest that postconﬂict societies do not need orcannot use economic assistance. On the contrary, they are attractive candidates for development aid. Their absorptive capacity is perhaps twice as high as that of a more peaceful society at the same levelof development. Further, the rate of additional growth likely to beachieved as a result of such aid is also much higher than it would be ina more settled society.
Studies do suggest a correlation between poverty and societal
conﬂict. Economic growth is thus an important factor in forestalling a
return to conﬂict. Nevertheless, in most conﬂicts, people are not killing each other because they are unemployed. Rather, they are unemployed because they are killing each other. The initial priority for any
nation-building mission, therefore, is to establish a secure environment
in which people, goods, and services can begin to circulate more freely.
Given those conditions, economic activity will resume and incomes
will rise. They will rise even faster if security is accompanied by aid andsound economic policy.
Those responsible for managing the early stages of any nationbuilding operation need to give priority not to the reconstructionof physical infrastructure, but to rebuilding the society’s capacity to
govern and secure itself. Except in unusually well-ﬁnanced operations,

14

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

infrastructure improvement, beyond that needed to restore basic public
services, and large-scale employment-generating schemes are unlikely
to yield beneﬁts commensurate with their costs. The longer-term beneﬁts of infrastructure improvements can ordinarily be realized throughproject ﬁnancing from international ﬁnancial institutions that exist forthis purpose. Make-work schemes to generate short-term employment
have little lasting impact and are generally too expensive to reach thebulk of the population.
There is an important exception to this principle: The employment of former combatants should be treated as a security task rather
than an economic or developmental objective. These individuals may
be among the least deserving members of society and are probably also
among the least promising recipients of vocational training. But theiremployment should be placed among the intervening power’s highest
priorities, not because it contributes to economic growth, but because
it bolsters security, oﬀering former combatants an alternative to violent
crime or continued resistance.
Once security has been reestablished and the population’s basic
human needs addressed, other aspects of the mission should receive
increased emphasis, including the resumption of public services,
democratization, and economic development, in more or less thatorder of priority. This is not to suggest that such steps need be sequential. When resources permit, they should be pursued simultaneously.
Higher-priority needs should be adequately resourced, however, before
lower-priority ones are funded, because when ﬁrst-order objectives are
not met, money spent on second-order priorities will be wasted.
On this basis, a rough hierarchy of nation-building tasks can be
identiﬁed as follows:• Security: peacekeeping, law enforcement, rule of law, and securitysector reform• Humanitarian relief: return of refugees and response to potential
epidemics, hunger, and lack of shelter• Governance: resuming public services and restoring public
administration

Preparing for Nation-Building

15• Economic stabilization: establishing a stable currency and providing a legal and regulatory framework in which local and international commerce can resume• Democratization: building political parties, free press, civil society, and a legal and constitutional framework for elections• Development: fostering economic growth, poverty reduction, andinfrastructure improvements.
Seizing the Golden Hour

The weeks immediately following the arrival of foreign peacekeepers
tend to be a time of maximum possibility. The appearance of an intervening force often produces a combination of shock and relief among
the local population. Resistance is unorganized, spoilers unsure of
their future. The situation is, in consequence, highly malleable. But theintervening authorities’ capacity to capitalize on these opportunities isinevitably limited by the absence of many components of the mission.
To take advantage of this “golden hour” that often follows theonset of “peace” and the arrival of international forces, the mission
leadership will need to have at its disposal upon arrival a minimum setof assets, including troops, police, civil administrators, and humanitarian workers, followed quickly by judicial and penal experts withfunded plans for police training and for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants.
Nation-building missions are usually launched in circumstancesin which local security forces have disintegrated or have been discredited. Whatever remains of the local police force will need to besupervised closely while new oﬃcers are trained. These jobs are best
undertaken by international civilian police rather than by the military. Accordingly, an eﬀort should be made to deploy civilian police
along with soldiers in the ﬁrst wave of any nation-building operation.
If civilian police are lacking, a large number of military police oﬃcers(MPs) should be included in the initial peacekeeping force. Before theﬁrst boots hit the ground, plans for a police training facility should
be drawn up, instructors selected, a location chosen, and the program
funded.

16

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Police cannot perform eﬀectively without courts in which to try
criminals and prisons in which to keep them. These institutions, too,
will almost certainly be found to be highly defective, if not entirely
absent. It is important, therefore, that programs to reform the justiceand penal systems be initiated simultaneously with police training. If
these three eﬀorts do not move forward in tandem, newly trained andreformed police will have to either let those criminals they arrest go or
punish them extrajudicially. Either response will quickly demoralize
the best-trained police force and undermine public security.
While local police establishments need to be reformed andstrengthened, local militaries need to be scaled back. Among the mosturgent tasks in any intervention are separating armed adversaries anddemobilizing former combatants. Putting in place, as quickly as possible, a program to register such individuals, gather personal data on
them, and provide for their immediate livelihoods will contribute tosecurity in the short term while providing the basis for longer-term
decisions regarding the size and nature of the state’s new security forces.
Drawing up and funding a plan for disarmament, demobilization, andreintegration of former combatants should feature prominently on any
preintervention checklist.
Perhaps most importantly, the intervening authorities need toarrive with a carefully thought out set of mission objectives commensurate with the resources to be committed and appropriate for the challenges to be confronted. If the population can be made to feel that its
security is enhanced by the intervening presence, it will be inclined tocollaborate. If potential spoilers are faced with overwhelming force andoﬀered peaceful avenues to pursue their interests, resistance may beminimized. If neighboring states are drawn into the process of deﬁning
the mission, they will be less likely to undermine its eﬀorts.
It has often been said that no military plan survives ﬁrst contact with the enemy. Similarly, no nation-building plan can expect tosurvive ﬁrst contact with the society being rebuilt. The function ofplanning is not to plot an operation from start to ﬁnish, but rather
to assemble the necessary resources and establish objectives achievable
within those limits. The test of any nation-building plan is not whether

Preparing for Nation-Building17

it accurately predicts future events, but whether it provides the nationbuilder the resources and ﬂexibility needed to meet such challenges as
they develop.

CHAPTER TWO

The Military

The presence of foreign military forces is a unique feature of nationbuilding, distinguishing these operations from other forms of politicalor economic intervention. International military forces can separate
contending parties, disarm and demobilize former combatants, substitute for or supplement local police, secure borders, deter external interference, and reform or create new indigenous military forces. Theirprimary objective should be to establish a secure environment in whichpeople and goods can circulate freely, licit political and economic
activity can take place free from intimidation, and external donors
can bring ﬁnancial resources and expertise to bear to promote political
reform and economic growth. Most nation-building endeavors havebeen multinational. They have involved military coalitions formed forthe purpose by an ad hoc group of nation-states, the United Nations,or regional organizations such as NATO or the African Union.

Key Challenges
Planning and Preparation. As a ﬁrst step, the intervening authorities need to acquire suﬃcient information on potential security threats,
the organizational structure of local security forces, and sociopoliticalconditions within the country that may aﬀect military operations. Keyquestions include the following: How many military and other security forces are necessary to establish law and order? How many of theseshould be international forces, and how many should be local forces?
What should their primary tasks be? Much of this information will

19

20

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

need to be gathered for the combat phase in cases in which forced entry
is believed necessary.
Public Security. Providing for public security is essential to gaining any population’s cooperation. Only when the local population feels
safer because of the presence of international forces will citizens likely
collaborate with the intervening authorities. Even when an intervention is welcomed by the great majority of the local population, theintervening military forces must anticipate the emergence of criminaland extremist elements intent on preying on the population and frustrating the objectives of the intervening authorities. It is essential thatpolitical and military steps be taken immediately to deter, dissuade,or prevent these criminal and extremist elements from evolving intoa source of organized and violent resistance. Failure to preempt thedevelopment of overt violent resistance can result in the transformationof the stability mission into a counterinsurgency campaign.
Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration. The disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants are important priorities. DDR programs have been developed fortribal militias in Afghanistan, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, the Resistencia Nacional Moçambicana inMozambique, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. These programs
have met with mixed success. Militias often strongly resist disarming
and demobilizing. The success of such programs hinges on the consent, support, and participation of local political and military leaders, including political representatives of the warring parties. Strong
international forces can, to some extent, compensate for weak consent
among the parties. But under any circumstances, signiﬁcant attention
needs to be given to providing the parties political and economic incentives to cooperate, as well as establishing a framework for international
military oversight of the process.
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. According to
British Colonel C. E. Callwell, a military historian,
It is a very important feature in the preparation for, and the carrying out of, small wars that the regular forces are often working

The Military

21very much in the dark. . . . What is known technically as “intelligence” is defective, and unavoidably so.1

Nation-building operations demand greater attention to civilian
considerations—political, social, economic, and cultural factors in anarea of operations—than do more conventional oﬀensive and defensive
operations. Military commanders must expand intelligence preparation
beyond geographical and force capability considerations. Key missions
are not just combating insurgent or criminal forces, but may be restoring basic services or encouraging public support. Cultural informationis critical in gauging potential reactions to the operation, avoiding misunderstandings, and improving the operation’s eﬀectiveness. Changes
in the behavior of the population may suggest a need to change tactics
or strategy. Biographical information and leadership analysis help toimprove understanding of adversaries, their methods of operation, andhow they interact with their environment. Knowledge of the ethnic
and religious factions in the area of operations and the historical background of the conﬂict is vital to mission success.
Civic Action. As Mao Tse-Tung argued, “The richest source ofpower to wage war lies in the masses of the people.”2 If spoilers are able
to separate the population from the government and acquire its active
support, they increase the likelihood of an insurgency. In the end, theexercise of political power depends on the tacit or explicit agreement of
the population or, at worst, on its submissiveness.3 Consequently, stability operations must seek to separate spoilers from their support baseby helping indigenous governments provide security and essential services to the population. This often means that military forces become
involved in civic action or small-scale reconstruction programs. These
activities can include a wide variety of projects that range from helping
1

C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, Wakeﬁeld, UK: EP PublishingLtd., [1906], 1976, p. 43.

2 Mao Zedong, Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung, Peking, China: Foreign Languages Press, 1963, p. 260.
3

Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, Daniel Lee, trans.,
New York: Praeger, 1964, p. 8; David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, New York: Praeger, 1964, pp. 7–8.

22

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

the indigenous government oﬀer basic health care to the local population to rebuilding schools, government buildings, and hospitals.
Security-Sector Reform. Existing military and police forces
will almost certainly have to be rebuilt, in some cases from scratch.
At the conclusion of any conﬂict, the number of soldiers will usually
be in excess of the society’s needs, while the number of police oﬃcers is likely to be in deﬁcit. One will have to be decreased while theother is increased. Quality and control are at least as important as numbers in reconstituting state security forces. End-state goals need to beestablished to provide the society adequate numbers of police oﬃcers
and military personnel to meet its security needs without overburdening its ﬁscal resources.

Best Practices
Planning and Preparation

Key components of advanced preparation include intelligence, command-and-control arrangements, education, and training. Several
types of intelligence are needed for stability operations. The ﬁrst concerns the country’s current and potential security threats, including
an analysis of the root causes of the conﬂict. These causes may be a
result of economic conditions, interethnic disputes, or other factors. A
second type of intelligence involves information on the organization of
local military and police forces and of other armed combatants. Who
are they? How are they organized? How eﬀective have they been? How
does the population perceive them? A third category of intelligence
relates to social, political, and cultural conditions in the country. International military forces need to be sensitive to such issues as the roleof women in the local society, the importance of tribal aﬃnities, andreligious practices.
Unity of command is as desirable in a stability operation as inwar. Planners should attempt to maintain unit integrity to the extent
possible. Most military forces train as units and are much better able
to accomplish a mission when deployed as a unit. By deploying as anexisting unit, forces are able to continue to operate under established

The Military

23

procedures, adapting these to the mission and situation as required.
When personnel and elements are drawn from various units, they areless eﬀective. It takes them more time to adjust to the requirements ofthe mission.
Political and other considerations often lead to divided command
arrangements in stability operations. In Sierra Leone in 1999–2000,
British forces operated independently in support of a UN military
mission. In 2003 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an EU force
operated in support of, but independently from, a larger UN force.
In Afghanistan, two separate coalitions operated in increasingly close
proximity—one led by the United States and the other led by NATO.
While such arrangements may maximize the capacity of national governments to control or circumscribe the activity of their troops, they
increase the risk of losses through either fratricide or failure to rendereﬀective and timely support. The activities of these separate forces canbe deconﬂicted, but only at the cost of additional command time andeﬀort and with unnecessary friction.
The education of commissioned and noncommissioned oﬃcers
is a key component of stability operations. Preparation requires diﬀerent skills and a diﬀerent mindset from major combat operations. Of
particular importance is recognizing the need for popular support anddesigning a strategy that ensures public security and basic humanitarian needs for the population. Education for such operations should
begin with basic leadership training and culminate at the senior service
or academy level. Education on stability operations should ensure thatleaders at all levels understand the objectives, principles, and characteristics of stability operations, and can plan and conduct these operations.
Leader education should include discussions, lessons learned, and situational exercises, and should culminate with senior leaders performingin command or staﬀ positions during stability operation exercises.
Training should ensure that individuals and units have the necessary skills for the mission and that the staﬀs can plan, control, andsupport the operation. Depending on the anticipated operation, predeployment training should include individual skills training; situational
training exercises; ﬁeld training exercises; combined arms live-ﬁreexercises; mobility exercises; command post exercises; and simulation

24

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

exercises to train commanders, staﬀ, and units. If there is suﬃcient
time prior to actual deployment, predeployment training for units
should culminate in a joint training exercise based on the anticipatedoperation. The unit tasked with the operation should participate in
the exercise with the supporting units with which it normally deploys,
and, if possible, with the next-higher headquarters for the actual operation. Once deployed, and if the situation allows, military skills training
at the individual and unit levels should continue. Training following
redeployment should again focus on the unit’s missions. There may
not always be time to train soldiers for a speciﬁc operation, but a wellprepared force can adapt to stability operations under the leadership ofcommissioned and noncommissioned oﬃcers in these operations.
Public Security

International interventions are invariably launched to deal with a security gap that has emerged: Either a civil war is under way, public orderhas broken down, or a regime is abusing its own citizens or threatening its neighbors. In general, in the immediate aftermath of civil orinterstate wars, a period of anarchy ensues in which groups and factions seek to arm themselves for protection. Some may also have oﬀensive intentions and want to impose their ideology on others, seize theproperty of rival factions, or exploit public resources for private gain.4
Whatever the antecedent circumstances, the intervening military force
will almost always need to provide some measure of public security,either because the indigenous security institutions have disintegrated
or because they have been discredited as a result of abusive behavior.
A key element in ﬁlling this security gap is to quickly vet and deploy
indigenous security forces. Even minimally competent, vetted indigenous forces can be extremely beneﬁcial in quickly establishing a minimal level of order. These forces speak the local language, are familiar
4

Barry Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conﬂict,” in Michael E. Brown, ed.,Ethnic Conﬂict and International Security, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993,
pp. 103–124; Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding: A
Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 4,
December 2000, pp. 779–802 [p. 780]; Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After
Civil Conﬂict, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 161–163.

The Military

25

with the culture, and may be more trusted than international forcesby the local population. The use of local security forces brings with it
attendant problems of potential human rights abuses and diﬃculties
in separating out those found to be unsuitable for a reformed police
force or military. Nevertheless, it is usually preferable to rely on ﬂawed
local security forces, provided these are closely monitored, than to cede
the streets to criminals and political extremists. Only an exceptionallylarge and well-equipped external intervention force can expect to fully
substitute for such local capacity.
If the intervening authorities do not move quickly to provide
for public security, the resultant vacuum will be progressively ﬁlled
by criminal and extremist elements. The longer such elements are left
unchallenged, the more opportunity they have to organize, gain conﬁdence, intimidate the population, cow any remaining local security
forces, and present an enduring threat to the intervening authorities.
As discussed in Chapter One, international interventions can proﬁt
from a “golden hour.” This is an initial period during which the shockof their arrival, the relief at the end of conventional combat, and uncertainty about the future can help secure for the intervening authorities a high degree of local cooperation, a degree of cooperation thatis likely to diminish over time. To the extent that international forces
arrive quickly, in suﬃcient numbers, and with well-conceived plans for
rapidly expanding public security, this “golden hour” can become theperiod during which the intervening powers’ authority is consolidated,
and that of local and transnational spoilers is marginalized.
The contrast between the international community’s experiencein Bosnia and Kosovo in the late 1990s is illustrative. In the former,
local police remained responsible for public security while international
military forces separated combatants and enforced disarmament anddemobilization. In Kosovo, by contrast, the international community
was compelled to assume responsibility for law enforcement from theﬁrst day of the intervention. In Kosovo, the international community
deployed a much larger number of international police oﬃcers, but thesociety was still plagued by disorder and high levels of violent crime.
On the other hand, Kosovo has probably come further than Bosnia
in creating a professional, honest, multiethnic police force because it

26

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

could start from scratch. Thus, while the Kosovo approach may haveits advantages, it is only feasible in relatively small societies in which
the international community is ready to make a relatively large investment. Replicating the Kosovo approach in Iraq, for instance, with apopulation 12 times larger, would have required the deployment of
60,000 international civil police oﬃcers, a number far exceeding thetotal number of such police currently deployed worldwide.
Once military forces have been deployed to help ﬁll the security
gap, they conduct a range of operations: basic law enforcement, counternarcotics, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and miscellaneousfunctions such as securing elections. International forces engaged instability operations may not have to conduct all of these tasks. But
they will likely have to conduct many of them and may need to conduct all of them. Local security forces should be associated with such
missions as soon as possible; leadership should be transferred to themas quickly as their capacity permits.
Intervening military forces should be prepared to conduct law
enforcement operations and to support, reinstate, and establish civil
authorities. Law enforcement operations should be designed to restore
stability to the point at which indigenous forces and international police
can eﬀectively enforce the law and reinstate civilian authorities. Basictasks include patrolling streets; guarding key public buildings, weapon
depots, and other infrastructure such as oil facilities; and monitoring
borders. Military forces may be given the authority to detain peoplesuspected of criminal or unlawful actions. Interpreters and military
police oﬃcers should be used when possible. Military forces may also
be asked to capture war criminals.
Military forces should be prepared to counter drug traﬃckers andother organized criminal groups. Virtually all stability operations have
faced serious problems with organized crime. In general, military forces
may be asked to help detect, monitor, and counter the production, trafﬁcking, and use of illegal drugs and other substances. They may also
be asked to target the infrastructure—personnel, materiel, and distribution systems—of illicit entities. This may involve searching areas
and apprehending personnel, conﬁscating contraband, or interdicting
smuggling operations. Operations may be as simple as using check-

The Military

27

points to search personnel and vehicles, or may involve more complex
missions such as cordon and search operations. Searches, apprehensions, and seizures must be legal and in compliance with the mandateor agreement worked out at the beginning of the operation.
Terrorism may pose a signiﬁcant security challenge. Combating
terrorism involves both oﬀensive and defensive operations. Oﬀensive
actions usually involve strikes and raids against terrorists and theirinfrastructure. They are generally conducted by special operations
forces that are organized and trained for this purpose. Defensive actions
should aim to reduce the vulnerability of individuals and property toterrorist acts and should include response and containment by indigenous military forces. This usually involves improving the capabilities
and resources of indigenous personnel in such areas as crisis management, airport security, terrorist ﬁnancing, and border control. Militarycommanders are responsible for planning, resourcing, training, exercising, and executing counterterrorism measures.
Military forces may assist in holding elections. This may include
providing administrative support and security at polling stations andvoter registration centers, as well as creating an environment that permits refugees and internally displaced persons to vote. The integrity ofelections is typically the responsibility of the election commission. But
military commanders should work with the appropriate international
and local agencies during elections to help ensure that integrity, especially since those who stand to lose power may use violence to destabilize or discredit elections.
Finally, demining has been important in establishing security
during stability operations in such countries as Afghanistan, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, and Namibia. Antipersonnel landmines cause serious injuries to civilians, including blindness, burns,
destroyed limbs, and shrapnel wounds. Most of these countries alreadyhad mine-clearing programs before their respective interventions.
These were run by the UN or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
In addition to supporting demining, normally a civil function, international military forces should provide education on mine awarenessand train host-nation personnel to survey and mark mineﬁelds and toclear mines. Military specialists, such as explosive ordnance disposal

28

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

personnel, may be called on to destroy unexploded ordnance, such asshells and rockets.
Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration

Successful DDR of former combatants hinges on the consent, support,
and participation of local political and military leaders. These include
the political representatives of the state and warring parties, militarycommanders, and warlords. Strong international forces can, to someextent, compensate for weak consent among the parties. But only avoluntary process is likely to be very eﬀective. Consequently, the intervening authorities need to pay attention to providing the parties political and economic incentives to cooperate, as well as arranging for thenuts and bolts of this process.
Under most disarmament programs, combatants hand overweapons to international or local authorities, who are responsible for
their collection, safe storage, disposal, or destruction. Disarmament
generally involves three steps: (1) a weapon survey; (2) weapon collection; and (3) weapon storage, reutilization, or destruction. A weapon
survey is necessary to answer vital planning questions at an early stage:
Approximately how many weapons are there? Who is expected to turnthem in? Who controls weapons outside the armed forces? For weapon
collection programs to be successful, advice and assistance from explosive ordnance disposal and ammunition specialists is needed. Weapon
collection programs should minimize the risks of loss posed by the
movement, management, and storage of collected arms. Programs may
involve exchanging weapons for food, goods, or money. Those running the program need to create storage areas large enough to secure,store, inspect, and possibly destroy weapons and materiel. Space mustbe allocated to support a security force and administration capabilities, such as accounting for materiel stored, collected, transferred, or
destroyed. The program needs to maintain logs accounting for personnel or units surrendering materiel. Security and accountability are
critical. Disarmament may include seizing ammunition, collecting anddestroying weapons and supplies, closing weapon and ammunition factories, and preventing resupply.

The Military29

Demobilization entails disbanding a formerly armed unit or
reducing the number of combatants in an armed group. It can also
involve disassembling—and then reassembling—the host country’s
armed forces. Demobilization entails registering, counting, and monitoring combatants, and then preparing them for discharge (see Figure2.1). The process of demobilization comprises diﬀerent scenarios, fromindividual combatants ﬂowing through temporary centers to the collection of soldiers in camps designated for this purpose. The dwelling
time in the camps should be as short as possible and should lead to a
direct transition to reintegration. If the capacities of the reintegration
programs are insuﬃcient, the implementation of these measures will bedelayed. Until then, the combatants should remain in the camp. Some
camps are dissolved years after demobilization, since they provide reliable maintenance and take care of the ex-combatants. International
forces can play an important role in demobilization in several ways:• Provide intelligence support and overall security during
demobilization.
• Provide incentives for forming, arming, and training a competent
new defense force under government control.
• Support information operations.
• Provide liaison coordination teams to local commanders as a conﬁdence-building measure.
Reintegration is the process under which combatants reenter thecivilian workforce. The objective of reintegration programs is to assist
ex-combatants in their social and economic reintegration into civiliansociety so that they do not return to banditry or violence. Programs
need to incorporate into their plans the community in which the excombatant will settle. Matching the skills and needs of the individual to the receiving community can mean the diﬀerence between an
individual who becomes a productive member of a community andan ex-combatant who resorts to violence and crime. One of the ﬁrst
steps of reintegration programs should be to provide training; employment; shelter; and, where appropriate, land to ex-combatants. The
demand for land cannot be addressed solely within a DDR program.

30

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 2.1
Demobilization Steps(To new army)

Army
Decision todemobilize

Camps

Discharged

Reintegration

Guerrillas

DisarmSustain andprepareSOURCE: Adapted from Colin Gleichman, Michael Odenwald, Kees Steenken, andAdrian Wilkinson, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration: A Practical Field
and Classroom Guide, Frankfurt, Germany: Druckerei Hassmuller Graphische Betriebe,
2004.
RAND MG557-2.1

Reintegration programs should be linked with existing programs for
agricultural training and land distribution to facilitate access to land.
The military may not be the appropriate actor to lead reintegration eﬀorts, which are probably better handled by civilians. However,military forces have nonetheless provided temporary jobs to former
combatants. In the Balkans, for example, NATO forces employed
ex-combatants for such short-term jobs as painting, repairing sidewalks, repairing roads, and picking up garbage. Over the long run,however, reintegration programs need to incorporate a training component, since many ex-combatants have few marketable skills. There
will be considerable diﬀerences in the social and educational proﬁles of
ex-combatants. Target groups can be diﬀerentiated on the basis of age,sex, marital status, formal qualiﬁcations, work experience, and education. Training should improve the chances for ex-combatants to ﬁnd
better-paying employment. Business training and small credits may be
used to support those who want to set up their own businesses.

The Military

31

Employment creation schemes are seldom a productive use ofdonor resources following a conﬂict. The exception to this rule is forformer combatants. Finding alternative sources of livelihood for these
individuals is an important security concern and should be addressed
accordingly. Based on past behavior, former combatants may well be
the least deserving elements of society. However, they remain the mostnecessary to assist if renewed conﬂict is to be avoided. While long-term
employment of former combatants should be the goal, this may not
be realistic. The minimum objective should be to detach these individuals from their former associates long enough to prevent them fromeasily reassembling, rearming, and again posing a threat of renewed
conﬂict.
An alternative to demobilization is to integrate some former combatants into new or reformed local security units. These units will
require careful vetting and oversight. International authorities should
be careful not to build new security forces larger than the country can
aﬀord to maintain over the longer term. In most cases, the host state
will not have the resources to pay for and maintain its own security
forces for several years following the intervention. If the intervening
authorities also fail to do so, these new units will themselves become asource of insecurity and renewed conﬂict.
Critical to an eﬀective DDR program is the process of registering
the former combatants and providing each some source of livelihood
while the process goes forward, either in the form of a stipend, inkind payment, or alternative employment. Once the former combatants have been registered, and have had their immediate needs caredfor, the process of deciding which are to be demobilized, which are to
be reformed into new units and retrained, and which are to be oﬀeredalternative civil employment or vocational training can proceed at amore deliberate pace. One does not need to begin the process knowing exactly how many former combatants will be discharged and how
many retained, as long as all the former combatants are rapidly identiﬁed and assured an interim source of livelihood while their longer-term
prospects are determined.

32

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

Stability operations require multidisciplined, all-source, fused intelligence. Human intelligence (HUMINT) is usually the most useful way
to gather information in stability operations. Interpreters, low-levelsource operations, debriefs of indigenous personnel, screening operations, and patrolling are good sources for assessing the economic andhealth needs, military capabilities, and political intent of adversaries.
Military commanders should emphasize to all personnel the importance of being conscious of sources of intelligence and should provide
basic guidelines to improve their intelligence-gathering capabilities.
Medical personnel must be aware of Geneva Convention restrictions
against their collecting information of intelligence value except thatwhich is observed incidentally while accomplishing their humanitarian duties.
However, a single-source approach cannot support all requirements. Manned and unmanned aerial intelligence sensors can provide
valuable information when other means of collecting intelligence are
not available. Remote sensing systems can provide information on terrain, weather, and other environmental factors. Data from space systems can be used to update antiquated maps and provide up-to-date
locations of facilities and obstacles. Sensors on space and aerial platforms can also monitor terrestrial force movements and assist in treaty
veriﬁcation. Communication systems can provide secure, reliable dissemination of intelligence and other information where there are few
or no existing civilian communication systems.
Counterintelligence should support operations even if no welldeﬁned threat exists. Adversary HUMINT eﬀorts focus on gaining
access to international military personnel and operations informationby providing services such as laundry, cooking, driving, and translating. Adversaries or spoilers may also attempt to exploit other membersof the local populace who interact with international forces.
Surveillance and reconnaissance may be employed to determine the disposition, activities, and intentions of civilian populations(hostile and neutral) and uniformed or irregular threats. Reconnaissance for information collection and security should continue throughout the operation. Forces conducting domestic support operations must

The Military

33

know the legal limitations when acquiring information on civilians.
In many instances, international organizations and nongovernmental
humanitarian agencies have been in the area of operations long before
international military forces. These organizations produce reports,
have Web sites, and maintain databases. These organizations haveoften conducted surveys of mineﬁelds using global positioning system(GPS) data. International forces can access much of this information
before deploying. Military commanders should communicate andcoordinate with these organizations to become familiar with the cultures and sensitivities of the local population. This means establishingtrust and good relations with international and nongovernmental organizations before an operation so they are willing to share information.
Civic Action

The nature of stability operations places military forces in direct contact with civilians, local and government oﬃcials, and NGOs. These
relationships make humanitarian and civil-military operations critical to any stability operation. As noted previously, international andnongovernmental organizations—not military forces—should normally take the lead in providing humanitarian assistance. But military forces are often the ﬁrst international personnel on the groundand have become increasingly involved in humanitarian operations.
In addition to providing a security shield for early humanitarian relief
and reconstruction activities, civil aﬀairs units of the military can help
provide health care, supply food and water to the population, deal withmines and hazardous materials, institute quarantine measures in theevent of communicable disease outbreaks, guide the return of refugees, and perform emergency repairs of infrastructure. In Afghanistan,for example, military forces worked closely with civilian personnel inprovincial reconstruction teams. Projects implemented by these teams
included roads, water supply plants, irrigation systems, government
administrative buildings, schools, health clinics, and micro–powergeneration plants. Military forces need to include personnel with thelanguage and background skills necessary to work eﬀectively with awide range of oﬃcial and civilian actors in a dynamic, complex, andsometimes murky environment.

34

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building“Team Village” missions have been used eﬀectively in some stability operations. Team Village refers to a group of personnel—usuallya mix of civil aﬀairs and psychological operations personnel—tasked
with conducting civil-military operations within a larger campaign.
Many include tactical HUMINT teams, interpreters, military police,
media and public aﬀairs personnel, medical personnel, and local forces.
Health care operations can be particularly successful in winning support from the local population. International military forces may
encounter lines of patients seeking treatment for everything from mild
bumps and bruises to more serious injuries and illnesses. These canbe treated from the back of the high-mobility multipurpose wheeledvehicles or in more secured compounds.
Security-Sector Reform

The military component of any mission usually contributes to therebuilding of a local military, either by promoting the reform and professionalization of an existing military force or building a new militaryforce. The military has also participated in eﬀorts to rebuild the police
in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan, though it is usually preferable for the civil element of the mission to organize such training.
A ﬁrst step in building or rebuilding a security unit is vetting
those who are retained for past human rights abuses, corruption, andability. Vetting is important in verifying that soldiers and police havenot been involved in major human rights violations, are not corrupt,
and have achieved at least a minimal level of competency. Individuals
who successfully pass through the vetting process are likely to require
retraining, new equipment, and a period during which international
supervisors monitor their performance. Blanket exclusions on the basisof membership in political parties or other groups are not usually agood way of undertaking vetting. In Iraq, the decision to ban ranking Baath Party members from public-sector employment meant thatlarge numbers of senior oﬃcers in the defense and interior ministries
and security-related services were released from duty, not to mention
thousands of schoolteachers and other mid-level functionaries. Some ofthese individuals were apolitical and had only become party members
as a condition of employment. Vetting can be challenging: Interna-

The Military

35

tional and local military forces and personnel may be unable to accurately evaluate applicants because of the loss—or absence—of central
government ﬁles and databases. International staﬀ should be employedin these capacities until it is clear that indigenous personnel can execute these responsibilities eﬀectively.
Training of indigenous forces should create skills necessary foreﬀective operations and maintenance of equipment, assist in developing the expertise needed for eﬀectively managing the defense establishment, and foster development of an indigenous training capability. Infantry training includes basic riﬂe marksmanship; platoon- andcompany-level tactics; use of heavy weapons; and engineering, scout,and medical skills.
There are three primary methods of training. The ﬁrst includes
mobile training teams, which are used when a host nation requires
on-site training or needs surveys and assessments of training requirements. These teams may be single-service, joint, special operations
forces, or conventional forces. But they must be tailored to the hostcountry’s needs. A second method involves technical assistance ﬁeld
teams deployed for extended periods to train host-nation personnel
on equipment or in speciﬁc military skills. The third method includes
international military education and training outside the host nation.
This involves bringing local military personnel to other countries toattend training and education programs. Training abroad is often provided on an individual basis for more senior oﬃcers.
Equipment needs will vary by country. International militaryforces may assist host-nation militaries to design, implement, and integrate command, control, communications, and computer systems tocounter likely security threats. Military commanders must consider
sustainability issues when providing equipment, as well as interoperability with existing equipment. Host nations may request expensive
equipment as a status symbol when improved training and professionalism among the existing force would enhance the overall strength ofthe military. Service support is usually integrated with equipment support. It includes any service, test, inspection, repair, training, publication, technical assistance, or other aid used to furnish military assistance. Many types of service teams exist. Quality assurance teams

36

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

inspect equipment to ensure that it remains mission-capable. Technical assistance teams respond when the host nation has diﬃculty with
imported equipment.
Institutional development also requires building the capacity ofministries of defense to support the armed forces; building command,
control, and coordination capabilities; improving management, personnel, and ﬁnancial processes; reforming military legal codes; andtransforming the armed forces’ logistical tail. Institutional development in a postconﬂict state must be tackled within the wider context
of public administration reform. Leadership training is a critical component. The aim should be to staﬀ defense ministries with a signiﬁcantnumber of civilians, as well as to tie the armed forces into the civil service by adopting budgeting and management practices similar to thosein other parts of the government. Sustainability is a critical element ofinstitutional development. In the immediate postconﬂict phase, external involvement is likely to be signiﬁcant. However, reforms will be
successful only if they are embraced by the host government, ministryof defense, and armed forces.

Key Actors
With few exceptions, most post–Cold War stability missions are conducted by multinational coalitions—sometimes under the commandof a lead nation, sometimes under the control of an international institution. Ad hoc coalitions oﬀer the lead nation maximum control, in
exchange for which it must also bear most of the expense and risk.
Coalitions overseen by international organizations spread the burdenof expense and risk more widely, but also disperse responsibility fordecisionmaking. Sometimes one type of coalition can give way to theother. For example, the United States led ad hoc coalitions into Somalia in 1991, into Haiti in 1994 and again in 2004, and into Afghanistan in 2001. The ﬁrst three operations were quickly turned over to theUnited Nations, and the last is in the process of being turned over to
NATO.

The Military37

Operations requiring forced entry normally call for a coalition
led by single major power capable of providing most of the command,
control, and enabling forces. Most such coalitions are organized speciﬁcally for a particular operation, although NATO also meets thisdeﬁnition. In situations in which permissive entry and some level ofacquiescence among the contending parties can be anticipated, theUnited Nations oﬀers the best combination of competence, legitimacy,
cost-eﬀectiveness, and burden-sharing.

SizingIn settled societies, the ratio of military personnel to local inhabitants
generally ranges from 0.2 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants to nearly 1 per
1,000 inhabitants. Examples include the Philippines (0.8), the UnitedStates (0.2), Chile (0.2), Britain (0.3), Japan (0.5), and South Africa(0.8).5 Postconﬂict societies are likely to need a higher proportion of
military personnel, though probably considerably less than that underarms when the conﬂict ceases. Figure 2.2 shows military-to-population
ratios for eight postconﬂict societies ﬁve years after stability operations
began (or, in the case of Afghanistan, as of this writing). They ranged
from a low of 0.3 in Mozambique to a high of 7.7 in Cambodia, with anaverage of three soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. The highest ratios wereusually in countries with high levels of violence or criminality. Afghanistan is an outlier with signiﬁcant violence but few soldiers, probably
because local and tribal militias are not captured in the ﬁgures.
International forces must be large enough to maintain order; capable of training indigenous forces; and have a robust intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability down to the small-unit level.
Peace enforcement requires a much greater commitment of militaryforce than do more benign types of operations, such as peacekeeping.
However, entry by force is by no means the most demanding aspectof the operation. For a well-equipped Western force, the conventional
5

Christopher Langton, ed., The Military Balance, 2006, London: International Institutefor Strategic Studies, 2006.

38

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 2.2
Local Military Forces Five Years After Start of Stability Operations

Soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants

8.0

7.7

6.0
5.4
4.4

4.0

3.7

2.3

2.0
1.2
0.9
0.3

q
Ira

fg
A

Ea

st

ha

ni

st

Ti
m

on
Le
ra
er

Si

an

or

e

e
bi
am

M

oz

m
Ca

qu

a
di
bo

ad
lv
Sa
El

N

am

ib

or

ia

0

SOURCE: Data compiled from the International Institute for Strategic Studies; United
Nations, Department of Peacekeeping Operations; Jane’s Online; U.S. Departmentof State, Afghan Progress Reports and Iraq Weekly Progress Reports; and UN
Secretary-General’s reports to the United Nations Security Council.
RAND MG557-2.2

battle, if any, is likely to prove the quickest and least costly aspect of theoperation. In some cases, the mere threat of force may be suﬃcient togain entry (as in Haiti in 1994); in some cases, air power may largely be
suﬃcient (as in Kosovo in 1999); and in other cases, air power in support of indigenous forces in addition to small numbers of international
forces may suﬃce (as in Bosnia in 1995 and Afghanistan in 2001).
Even where conventional ground operations prove necessary, the numbers required will probably not approach those needed to subsequently
stabilize the society.
Figure 2.3 shows peak levels of international military forces ineight stability operations. High levels of forces have generally tended tocorrelate with high levels of security and order and low levels of casualties. Failure to deploy suﬃcient numbers in a peace enforcement operation can lead to incipient local resistance taking organized and violent
form, as has occurred in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

The Military

39

Figure 2.3
Peak Military Levels for Peace Enforcement
101

Soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants

25
20

20

19

15

10
7
5

5

5
4
1

3)

q

(2

00

4)

st
ni

Ira

an

(2

00

0)
(2

00

5)

so
A

fg

ha

Ko

Bo

sn

ia

vo

(1

99

4)

ti
ai
H

ia
al
m

(1

99

2)
(1

99

5)
94
(1

n
pa
Ja

So

G

er

m

an

y

(1

94

5)

0

SOURCE: Data compiled from Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation ofGermany, 1944–1946, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1975;
U.S. Department of the Army, Strength of the Army, weekly report series, STM-30,
Washington, D.C., December 1, 1946; International Institute for Strategic Studies;
United Nations, Department of Peacekeeping Operations; Jane’s Online; Oliver
Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Encyclopedia of International Peacekeeping
Operations, Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1999; United Nations, Department of
Public Information. Population data, U.S. Census Bureau International Data Base.
RAND MG557-2.3

In situations in which the parties have ceased ﬁghting more orless of their own accord and have been persuaded to invite in an international military mission, personnel needs can be signiﬁcantly lower,
on occasion fewer than one foreign soldier per 1,000 inhabitants. In
these circumstances, the international authorities are not imposing, butfacilitating, a settlement. The international force is not choosing sides,
but attempting to maintain peace between contending factions withthe cooperation, or at least the acquiescence, of each. Public security isleft mostly in the hands of local forces. Figure 2.4 illustrates the peaklevels of international military forces in eight UN stability operations.

40

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 2.4
Peak Military Levels for UN Operations
34

20

15

10

10

3

3
2

9)
99

0)

or
st
Ea

er

ra

Le

Ti
m

on

ia

e

(2

00

6)
(1

99

3)

Sl
n
er
Ea

M

st

m

am

av

bi

bo

on

di

qu

a

e

(1

99

3)
(1

99

1)
(1

or
Ca

El

Sa

lv

ad

ib
am
N

99

9)

ia

(1

98

1)
96
(1

o
ng
Co

0.4

0.1

0

Si

1

(1

5

oz

Soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants

25

SOURCE: Data compiled from Ziemke (1975); U.S. Department of the Army (1946);
International Institute for Strategic Studies; United Nations, Department of
Peacekeeping Operations; Jane’s Online; Ramsbotham and Woodhouse (1999);
and United Nations, Department of Public Information. Population data, U.S.
Census Bureau, International Data Base.
RAND MG557-2.4

Force levels in some UN operations—such as Congo, El Salvador,and Mozambique—were signiﬁcantly lower, at one or fewer soldiers
per 1,000 inhabitants. Many of the UN operations cited, including
Namibia, El Salvador, and Mozambique, were nevertheless successful
despite lower troop numbers because the contenders had exhausted
themselves and were ready to cooperate.
The size, capability, and cost of an international military force
that intervenes for the purpose of a heavy peace enforcement operation are substantially greater than in a light peacekeeping scenario,
consistent with the international community’s experience with these
two types of operations. For the heavy peace enforcement scenario, weThe Military41

calculated the number of soldiers using the average number of international military personnel deployed in the ﬁrst year of eight peace
enforcement operations.6 For the light peacekeeping scenario, we used
the average number of soldiers in the ﬁrst year of six peacekeeping
operations.7 This resulted in an average of 13 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants for peace enforcement operations, and two soldiers per 1,000
inhabitants for peacekeeping operations.
The necessary size of the international force should be determinedby the scope of its mission or, alternately, the scope of its mission should
be limited by the likely size of the available force. Only when large
numbers of well-equipped, capable soldiers are available can the intervening authorities prudently embark on rapid and thorough reformof a nature that fundamentally redistributes power, thereby directly
challenging powerful and entrenched interest groups in the society.
In the majority of cases, the ratio of foreign troops to population falls
well below 13 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, and success depends on
co-opting local power brokers, reconciling contending factions, andpromoting gradual reform. This will require redirecting competition
for wealth and power in the society from violent into peaceful channels without threatening the complete eclipse of any important faction,community, or interest group.

Costs
Intervening powers must anticipate funding not only their own
expenses, but also most of the expenses for local security forces overthe ﬁrst several years of an intervention. The indigenous government,
if there is one, is in most cases unlikely to have suﬃcient revenue toequip, maintain, and pay for a professional army and police force. If

6The eight operations were East Timor, Eastern Slavonia, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia,
Kosovo, and Iraq. We excluded the two outliers—Germany on the high end and Afghanistan on the low end—from the average.

7

The six operations were Congo (in the 1960s), Namibia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra
Leone, and El Salvador.

42

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

local security forces do exist, they are likely to be funding themselves
through various forms of corruption and extortion, living in a symbiotic relationship with the criminal and extremist elements they are supposed to be combating. Until such links are broken, these forces willremain a source of insecurity.
The international cost burden may be borne by the following:(1) U.S. and other high-end Western forces conducting peace enforcement operations and (2) UN forces engaged in peacekeeping, not peace
enforcement. We ﬁrst estimate the cost of deploying peace enforcement
forces based on the cost of coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban regime,
respectively. Using data on the force size and cost of these operations,
we calculated the average cost per soldier for military and civilian personnel, personnel support, operational support, and transportation.
We estimate that annual costs are approximately $200,000 per soldier
per year for peace enforcement operations.8 These costs would be somewhat lower in a more benign environment, like Bosnia or Kosovo.
Second, we estimated the cost of deploying UN soldiers for nonenforcement missions based on four operations: Haiti, Sierra Leone,
Congo, and Liberia.9 We calculated the average per-soldier cost bycompiling information on personnel costs for military observers and8

Data are from U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Oﬃce, Estimated Costs of Continuing
Operations in Iraq and Other Operations of the Global War on Terrorism, Washington, D.C.,
June 25, 2004. We thank Adam Talaber at the Congressional Budget Oﬃce for his assistance with the calculations.

9

Data compiled from United Nations General Assembly, “Budget for the United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti for the Period from 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2006 andExpenditure Report for the Period from 1 May to 30 June 2004: Report of the SecretaryGeneral,” A/59/745, 59th session, agenda item 155, March 18, 2005b; United Nations General Assembly, “Performance Report on the Budget of the United Nations Mission in Sierra
Leone for the Period from 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004: Report of the Secretary-General,”
A/59/635, 59th session, agenda item 136, December 21, 2004b; United Nations General
Assembly, “Performance Report on the Budget of the United Nations Organization Mission
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the Period from 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004:
Report of the Secretary-General,” A/59/657, 59th session, agenda item 127, March 4, 2005a;and United Nations General Assembly, “Performance Report on the Budget of the United
Nations Mission in Liberia for the Period from 1 August 2003 to 30 June 2004: Report of
the Secretary-General,” A/59/624, 59th session, agenda item 134, December 20, 2004a.

The Military

43

military contingents, as well as on what the UN calls “operationalcosts.”10 These include a combination of transportation, infrastructure,and other costs. We estimate a cost to the UN of roughly $45,000 per
soldier per year.11 The major diﬀerence between U.S./Western and UN
costs is that UN soldiers are paid by their own governments according
to their own national rank and salary scale. The contributing countries
are reimbursed by the UN at a ﬂat rate of a little over $1,000 per soldier
per month. The UN also reimburses countries for equipment and otheroperational costs.
Costs for building and maintaining a local military force include
those for personnel, equipment, facilities, operations, and oversight,
including the costs of staﬃng a ministry of the defense. Figure 2.5
shows the total costs of ﬁelding a national military force for 14 diﬀerent countries. We express each in terms of cost per soldier as a multipleof the country’s per capita GDP. To arrive at these ﬁgures, defense
ministry budgets from the 14 countries were converted into U.S. dollars and divided by the number of soldiers in the military. These persoldier costs were then compared to per capita GDP in dollars converted at market exchange rates. RAND found that, on average, thecost per soldier averaged roughly seven times a country’s per capita
GDP at market exchange rates.
What does this analysis imply for the military component of stability operations? To illustrate, assume the that United States and European countries lead a peace enforcement mission to Macedonia, whichin 2006 had a population of 2 million, to halt a hypothetical civil
war in that country. Using three soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, theaverage number in postconﬂict societies cited previously, Macedonia
would ultimately need 9,000 of its own soldiers to maintain security.
10 We aggregated costs for facilities and infrastructure, ground transportation, air trans-

portation, naval transportation, communications, medical services, and special equipment.
Since the UN does not disaggregate the operational costs of military personnel from civilian
personnel, our estimates may slightly overstate per-soldier costs. However, military personnel account for the majority of operational costs.
11 The per-soldier cost was approximately $32,395 for Sierra Leone, $49,692 for the Congo,$51,201 for Liberia, and $45,540 for Haiti. The average was $44,775, which we rounded to$45,000.

44

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 2.5
Cost of Fielding a Local Military Force

Ministry of defense cost per soldier(as a multiple of per capita GDP)

25

20

15

10

5

A

rg

en
Co tina
lo
m
Co bi
a
st
a
Ri
El
Sa ca
lv
ad
G or
eo
rg
ia
Jo
Ka rd
za an
kh
Ky sta
rg
n
yz
st
N an
a
So m
ut ibi
a
h
A
fr
i
Th ca
ai
la
nd
Tu
rk
ey
U
kr
a
Zi
i
m ne
ba
bw
e

0

SOURCE: International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2004–
2005, London: Taylor and Francis, 2004.
RAND MG557-2.5

Macedonia’s per capita GDP in 2006 was approximately $8,000. Multiplying $8,000 by seven, then multiplying by 9,000 soldiers, gives a projected annual budget of $500 million. This is a very rough estimate ofwhat would be needed to operate the Macedonia defense establishment
following a postconﬂict intervention.12 In addition, using the average
number of international soldiers (13) per 1,000 inhabitants cited earlier, Macedonia would need approximately 26,000 international force
personnel. We then multiply this number by our estimate of $200,000
per soldier noted previously (assuming as we do that the international
force in this case is predominantly Western), giving a total interna12 The estimating equations for peace enforcement missions are as follows:

number of local soldiers  3 r population / 1, 000
cost of running ministry of defense  per capita GDP r 7 r number of soldiers
number of international soldiers  13 r population / 1, 000
cost of international military  number of soldiers r $200, 000.

The Military45

tional military cost of $4 billion per year. Consequently, the total costof deploying a major U.S.-led stability operation to Macedonia could
approach $4.5 billion in the ﬁrst year alone. Table 2.1 summarizes theresults of this analysis and includes comparable estimates for a UN-led
stability operation to Niger.13 These estimates are meant to provide aﬁrst cut at estimating numbers and costs for the full range of international and local military operations in the aftermath of an externalintervention.
Table 2.1
Estimates for Operations in Macedonia and Niger, Year One

MissionCost of Running
Number of Local Defense Number of Cost of Int’l
Total
Local Soldiers Establishment Int’l Soldiers
Force
Expenditure
Needed(2006 US$)
Needed(2006 US$) (2006 US$)

Peace
enforcement
mission to
Macedoniaa

9,000

500 million

26,0004 billion

4.5 billion

Peacekeeping
mission to
Nigerb37,500200 million

25,000

1 billion

1.2 billion

SOURCE: RAND calculations.
a The calculations for Macedonia assume a population of 2 million and a per capita

GDP of $8,000 (Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2006, Washington,
D.C., 2006).
b The calculations for Niger assume a population of 12.5 million and a per capita
GDP of $800 (Central Intelligence Agency, 2006).

13 The estimating equations for peacekeeping missions are as follows:

number of local soldiers  3 r population / 1, 000
cost of running ministry of defense  per capita GDP r 7 r number of soldiers
number of international soldiers  2 r population / 1, 000
cost of international military  number of soldiers r $45,000.

CHAPTER THREE

The Police

Societies emerging from war face a variety of threats from extremist andcriminal organizations. Indigenous capacity to meet these challenges isalmost always inadequate and sometimes nonexistent. The insertion ofinternational military forces may suﬃce to halt open conﬂict, separate
combatants, and begin disarmament. However, even if these eﬀorts
achieve success rapidly, the local population will be vulnerable to criminals and extremists who seek to undermine the emerging order. Crime
often rises, particularly in circumstances in which repressive regimes
and abusive security establishments have been dismantled. The failureof the intervening powers to establish law and order will reduce theconﬁdence and willingness of the population to cooperate with intervening authorities and enhance the inﬂuence of criminals and spoilers. It may contribute to overt resistance when spoilers are suﬃciently
emboldened to engage in terrorist or insurgent tactics.
Over the past 15 years, international police have become a standard element of stability missions, representing some 10 percent of thepersonnel of most current UN-led operations. International police play
an important role in the oversight and training of local police forces.
In cases in which the domestic security establishment has disintegrated
or has been irremediably compromised, international police perform
direct law enforcement roles until reliable local police units can beassembled and trained. There are three major categories of international police: military, civil, and gendarmerie (the latter shares characteristics of the ﬁrst two).

47

48

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

In conventional combat operations, MPs expedite the forward andlateral movement of combat resources and ensure that military commanders get forces, supplies, and equipment when and where they areneeded on the battleﬁeld. MPs conduct reconnaissance and intelligence
operations to obtain information on routes and terrain from which
enemy forces can inﬂuence troop movement. They may take charge ofprisoners of war, detainees, and dislocated civilians, registering themand providing detention facilities or shelter. MPs may also conduct law
enforcement tasks, such as responding to civil disturbances, conducting raids, investigating traﬃc accidents, and searching vehicles.
Most international civilian police are drawn from active or retired
members of national and local law enforcement agencies of contributing
countries. They are usually recruited as individuals rather than units.
They are more likely than military police to have substantial experience in criminal investigation, crowd control, forensics, and community policing. They include regular police and specialized units, suchas special weapons and tactics (SWAT) and counternarcotics forces.
They are not subject to military discipline and will typically be lessheavily armed than military police—if they are armed at all. Borderpolicing is a specialized police function normally performed by personnel speciﬁcally trained and equipped for that purpose. Border policing
serves two distinct functions: border control (staﬃng and monitoring
border crossing points in cooperation with immigration and customs
authorities) and border patrol (monitoring the green space between
checkpoints, often with military support). Gendarmerie or civil police
should not be expected to perform duties related to border security
without receiving specialized training and relevant equipment.
Gendarmerie forces are designed to function as civil police inpeacetime and military police in wartime; they thus share characteristics of both types of units. When serving on stability missions,these police are typically deployed in formed, nationally distinct units
that have their own command-and-control arrangements. This contrasts with civil police, who are often deployed as individuals in mixed,
multinational units. Gendarmerie forces operate under military discipline; they are generally more heavily armed than civil police. They arealso trained in sophisticated criminal investigative techniques. They

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49

have experience in riot control, counternarcotics, and counterterrorism. They are often employed in combating organized crime in theirhome countries. This makes gendarmerie units especially well suitedfor bridging the gap between military and civil security tasks in stability operations. However, only a few countries—such as France, Italy,
Spain, and the Netherlands—have gendarmerie forces.
Civilian police are the best choice, when available in suﬃcientnumbers, for the oversight, training, monitoring, and mentoring of
local police forces. Gendarmerie units are particularly useful in circumstances in which international police are called on to exercise
a direct law enforcement role, engage in crowd control, or confront
large-scale organized crime. There are seldom enough gendarmerie
units to meet the demand; civilian police are often in short supply
as well, particularly early in an operation. Consequently, the militarycomponent of the mission is often called upon to impose public order,
a task for which military police are generally better suited than are
standard infantry units.

Key Challenges
Predeployment Planning. International police should be deployedin conjunction with or in the immediate aftermath of the insertion of
military forces. This will require preparation even before the operation commences, and several questions will need to be addressed.
What objectives and strategies should international authorities
adopt? What kind of posture should be established to deal with potential insurgents, criminals, and other spoilers? How many police oﬃcers
should be deployed? What rules of engagement and standard operatingprocedures should be adopted? What types of equipment will police
need? How much will the deployment cost? Adequately answering
these questions before the intervention is critical to preventing a security
gap. Numerous operations have experienced a debilitating deployment
lag, since it takes time to acquire funding, personnel, and equipment
when needed. These planning steps can be extremely challenging, but

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

are necessary to maximize the likelihood of a smooth transition frommajor combat to stabilization.
Law Enforcement and Public Security. The prime responsibilityof any police force is to enforce the law and provide for public security.
In the aftermath of conﬂict, these tasks may fall directly on the intervening authorities, and in particular on its police and military forces.
Timing can be critical. As noted in Chapter One, the immediate aftermath of major combat is sometimes called the golden hour. During thisperiod, eﬀorts by outsiders can prevent—or trigger—a spiral of conﬂict that becomes an insurgency. Intervening early with overwhelming
force is easier than trying to retrieve a deteriorating security situation
when consent is declining and spoilers are on the oﬀensive.
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. Gathering suﬃcient intelligence may be extremely diﬃcult in the early stages of stability operations. Chapter Two addressed intelligence challenges forthe military; this chapter examines intelligence for police units. While
there is some overlap between the two, intelligence is challenging—andimportant—for both. In past operations, HUMINT has provided the
majority of actionable intelligence. But this requires devoting suﬃcient
time and resources to penetrating criminal and insurgent groups, aswell as building a network of informants. The police element of stability missions should contain criminal intelligence specialists, along withthe funding and the authority needed to conduct such operations.
Recruiting, Vetting, and Training Police. In some instances, a new
local police force will need to be recruited in its entirety, as was necessary in East Timor in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum for selfdetermination. In other instances, existing forces must be vetted andnew recruits will need to replace those dismissed for prior abuses. In
some cases, both may be done simultaneously; that is, the old force isretained and vetted as an interim measure, while an entirely new force
is recruited and trained from scratch. Background checks are needed
to weed out oﬃcers and applicants who have committed crimes. Thisis particularly important when recruits are drawn from former combatant formations that have abused the civilian population. Vetting
can be extremely diﬃcult. There is often little reliable information on
the background of individuals or units. Documents may have been

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51

destroyed by the ministry of interior—or never existed to begin with.
In addition, most intelligence services do not systematically collectinformation on mid- and lower-level police oﬃcers.
Infrastructure and Equipment. Local police forces are likely torequire everything from new uniforms to transport and communication equipment. There is a strong tendency in the donor community
to equate police eﬀectiveness with the acquisition of advanced technology. A sophisticated forensic lab may be useful in some instances,
but it will do little to improve criminal investigation unless there is a
trained staﬀ to run it and police have the skills to collect evidence ina timely fashion. This means that international authorities have to help
build infrastructure and provide equipment that is sustainable over thelong run.
Institutional Reform. Depending on the nature and state of thelocal police, the intervening authorities may choose to reform andrebuild the existing establishment or to dismantle what is left of it andbegin anew. The former is usually easier and faster, while the lattermay result in more thorough reform. Sometimes there is no choice. In
Somalia, East Timor, and Kosovo, the police force had disintegrated
or been withdrawn. Postconﬂict environments are often the most conducive to changing the system and culture of internal security bodies.
They frequently provide a “window of opportunity” to rebuild internal security forces from scratch, giving policymakers the opportunityand power to make signiﬁcant reforms. In virtually all major postconﬂict stability operations since World War II, internal security bodies—
especially the police—have been partially or wholly rebuilt.
Long-Term Development. Once an initial eﬀort to reform an
existing police force or establish a new one has begun to produce
results, eﬀorts should shift to developing the skills needed to sustain
professional institutions and practices. Intervening authorities shouldemphasize training the trainers. Lasting reform will require training
and mentoring at many levels over extended periods of time. Viable
reform needs to take place in an atmosphere of support from the local
government, including the leadership of key ministries. Sustained andcommitted leadership by top policymakers in the host state, including
ministry of interior oﬃcials, is critical for improving the eﬀectiveness

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

and accountability of police and internal security forces. Signiﬁcantreform cannot be implemented from below against the indiﬀerence or
hostility of senior managers. When political will for reform is lacking,international police training programs have had little or no success.

Best Practices
Predeployment Planning

One of the ﬁrst decisions during the planning phase is to establish amandate for the police—especially whether the police should be armed
and have arrest authority or be unarmed and have no arrest authority.
This decision is typically made by political authorities, not by mission
planners. Both types of missions may have a mandate for local security reform, including the restructuring of local police institutions andretraining of local police. Recently, the UN has deployed hybrids, missions in which some police units (such as gendarmerie) are armed andhave limited executive authority while others (such as general police)
are unarmed and serve as monitors and trainers. In most postconﬂict
cases, the use of armed police with executive authority is preferable,
since local police are often unable or unwilling to provide police services. Executive missions can then transition to monitoring missions as
local police forces become more competent. Police monitors are severely
limited in their functions and, as Bosnia demonstrated, powerless if thelocal police refuse to cooperate. Failure to adequately empower international police will throw more of the burden of law enforcement onto
the military component of the mission. When in doubt, it is preferable
to plan for the more robust alternative.
Police planners also need to collect, analyze, and disseminate
information on a wide variety of issues to appropriate personnel. They
should collect information on all aspects of the host country’s police:
its historical role and functions, organizational structure, accountability, and eﬀectiveness. They should also collect information on the speciﬁc cultural environment, contemporary political issues, and potential
security threats that the police may encounter.

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53

Another critical element during the planning phase is the placement of the police in the mission chain of command. If there cannot
be unity of command, as there is in most UN missions, with both themilitary and police components answering to the Secretary-General’sSpecial Representative, then there should be clear command relationships between the military and police elements in the mission. Police
headquarters should be collocated with the military. Police (including
gendarmerie) should participate in mission planning for operations.
Police-military cooperation is critical to the success of any stability operation, especially if several military, gendarmerie, and international and local police forces are involved in establishing security,each with its own chain of command. The civil police chain of command begins with the reporting oﬃcer up through formal ﬁrst-line
supervisory channels to the civilian police commissioner. This chainof command should be adhered to strictly if information is to movereliably along the lines of communication. The same should apply withregard to orders, instructions, and directives passed down from thecivilian police headquarters. The civilian police commissioner should
exercise ﬁnal and complete control over all international civilian police
personnel and their operations. The commissioner may delegate such
authority as necessary to maintain the eﬃcient operation of the civilian
police component. Key subordinates may include a director of operations who controls the communication center; specialized units such
as SWAT teams; an information system that tracks crimes, suspects,
and convicted felons; and a director of investigations, who oversees
forensics and a central criminal investigation unit. It may also include
several operational layers:• civilian police headquarters with support staﬀ to facilitate ﬁeld
operations• regions (districts or divisions), usually determined by local police
administrative headquarters, supervised by an international civilian police regional commander with support staﬀ
• police stations, which report to regional headquarters.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

A critical issue that needs to be decided during the planningphase is whether police are subordinate to military or civilian command. The problem is confusing capacity with mandate and authority.
In Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO multinational specialized units (composed of French gendarmerie and Italian carabinieri) were subject tomilitary rules of engagement like other military forces. They could perform public-order functions—such as patrolling, information gathering, and riot control—but could not engage in law enforcement functions such as criminal investigations and arrests despite being fully
trained and equipped to perform them. U.S. military police were partof NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) and were subject to military rules ofengagement. In Kosovo, the civilian UN specialized units (including
the Spanish guardia civil and Romanian national gendarmerie) had theauthority to perform both public-order and law enforcement functions.
French gendarmerie served as members of embedded units in French
KFOR, in the multinational specialized unit (constabulary), and in the
United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)
police as individual oﬃcers performing civil police functions.
Gendarmerie units are capable of acting within a military or civilian command chain. If available, these units need to be assigned to
one or the other element of a mission. In the early stages of an operation, when civilian assets are scarce and the military component has
primary responsibility for public security, it may be desirable to placegendarmerie units under military command. As lead responsibility forlaw enforcement shifts from the military to the civil side of the mission, however, so should the necessary assets, including the gendarmerie units.
Law Enforcement and Public Security

International police may need to assume law enforcement responsibilities, especially when indigenous police have disintegrated during theconﬂict or have been discredited because of their abusive behavior. A
key to law enforcement is determining which legal code to enforce.
This is discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. Establishing which
legal codes and laws are to be applied should occur prior to deploy-

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55

ment. Purging and reforming existing penal codes is an early postintervention priority.
Policing tasks may include coordinating with the military to ﬁght
or deter insurgent groups, patrol borders, secure roads, investigate andbreak up criminal organizations, or even direct traﬃc. Law enforcement is particularly important in combating organized crime. In previous stability operations—such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, andIraq—organized criminal enterprises began or resumed activities following the arrival of the international intervention force. Without theability to conduct sophisticated investigations and incarcerate andtry major crime ﬁgures, the international eﬀort will fail to curb thepower of key spoilers. International police forces must include oﬃcers
skilled in investigating organized crime and forensics units for analyzing evidence.
In addition, international police may be required to conductmobile patrols and provide area security in sensitive locations, such as
ports, airports, bridges, and border-control points. They may provide
security for election candidates and high-ranking oﬃcials, as well as
polling stations during elections. They may also help oversee the movement of refugees and displaced persons and provide protection during
humanitarian assistance eﬀorts. Gendarmerie units may be necessary
to respond to situations that require forces speciﬁcally trained andequipped to deal with civil disturbances, terrorism, drug traﬃcking,and organized crime. In contrast to most international civil police,these specialized units typically deploy with their own weapons, transport, communication, and logistical support.
Interoperability among international police units and between thepolice and military components of the mission is a particular challenge.
The diﬀerent contingents are likely to have diﬀerent capabilities, equipment, doctrine, culture, language, legal and policy constraints, andcommand-and-control arrangements, while their home governments
may have diﬀering political objectives. Orchestrating police operations
requires standardized procedures, communication capabilities, equipment, and liaison within the constraints of operations security. Coordination is the key to mission accomplishment. A civil operations center
may help meet this requirement. It provides access for other agencies

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Buildingin need of police assistance and coordination, including NGOs, majorinternational organizations, and host-nation authorities and agencies.
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

Chapter Two discussed the importance of intelligence, surveillance,and reconnaissance operations for the military. This chapter focuseson the police. While there is inevitably some overlap between the two,
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance are critical for police ingenerating information on hostile and criminal groups in the area of
operations, as well as on the environment (including weather, terrain,
and civil considerations) and the performance of local police forces.
Police generally require tactical intelligence—actionable information related to civil disturbance and crime. A key challenge is often
how to declassify military or other intelligence in a timely manner that
does not compromise sources and methods. Police routinely collecttactical intelligence that can be useful to other parts of the international mission. Timely and accurate intelligence facilitates identifying
and exploiting opportunities and depends on aggressive and continuous reconnaissance and surveillance. Cultural information is critical ingauging potential reactions to the operation, avoiding misunderstandings, and improving the eﬀectiveness of the operation. Changes in the
behavior of the population may suggest a need for change in tactics or
strategy. Biographical information and leadership analysis are key tounderstanding potential adversaries and their methods of operation.
Knowledge of the ethnic and religious factions and the historical background of the host country are important for achieving the objectivesof the operation.
As with the military, the police should seek to acquire the capacity for collecting and collating intelligence by setting up an intelligencecollection and analysis center—perhaps collocated with the military.
Such a center poses diﬃculties in a multinational environment and
one in which civilians and military need to operate together. Humansources are likely to provide the most useful information. Interpreters, low-level source operations, debriefs of locals, screening operations,and patrolling are the primary sources for assessing the capabilities andintentions of criminals and other security threats to the state. Police

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57

oﬃcers should emphasize to all personnel the importance of always
being intelligence-conscious and should provide basic guidelines toimprove their intelligence-gathering capability. Surveillance and reconnaissance may be employed to determine the disposition, activities, andintentions of civilian populations (hostile and neutral) and uniformed
or irregular threats. Reconnaissance for information collection andsecurity should continue throughout the operation. Success requires
integrating all available information from civilian and other sources.
However, police must also be informed and mindful of the legal limitations and those imposed by the mission leadership when acquiring
information on civilians.
In many instances, international and nongovernmental organizations may have been in the area of operations long before international
police. These organizations can provide valuable information throughthe reports, Web sites, and databases that they produce or maintain.
For example, these organizations often collect GPS data on mines andunexploded ordnance. International police can access much of thisinformation before deploying. However, these organizations and theirrepresentatives may resist being employed as a source of intelligence.
Because of the nature of their work, humanitarian organizations feelthat they must keep their distance from intervening authorities, especially international police or military. To the extent possible, police
should foster communication and share information with these organizations. These organizations can be especially valuable in helping theinternational police force become more familiar with the cultures andsensitivities of the local population.
Recruiting, Vetting, and Training Police

Given the mutual suspicions and vested interests of most contending factions, intervening authorities should generally take charge ofvetting—or at least closely monitor the process. Recruitment standards
should be fair and transparent. Starting salaries should be adequate to
attract appropriately qualiﬁed candidates, provide a decent standardof living, and thereby reduce incentives for corruption. In most countries, police salaries range from two to approximately four times the
per capita GDP. Where ethnic or sectarian diﬀerences have driven past

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

conﬂicts, police recruitment must reach out to marginalized communities. Eﬀorts to recruit women and minorities will set a positive example and emphasize a break with the past.
A new force will require both basic and specialized training. An
existing force will require substantial retraining to instill respect forhuman rights and the rule of law. It may also need to develop theskills necessary to maintain public security without recourse to morecustomary methods of arbitrary arrest, torture, and indeﬁnite pretrial
detention. Prior to any intervention, plans should be made and funding identiﬁed for a robust training eﬀort. Suitable training sites should
be located, a curriculum drawn up, and training staﬀ hired. Assumingthat such preparations are made, recruitment for the new or renewed
police force can begin within a few weeks of the intervention. The
training curriculum should include the following areas:• basic police procedures, such as patrolling and crime-scene
protection• physical security• corrections• civil disturbance operations• customs operations• traﬃc control• use of force• special-unit training, such as counterdrug or counterterrorist
operations• human rights.
It may also be important to begin to develop an independent
forensic capacity, including the ability to conduct ﬁngerprint identiﬁcation and basic evidentiary forensic testing. The construction offorensic crime labs and the training of relevant police oﬃcials in basic
explosive detection, as well as in preserving evidence for prosecution,
are also important.
Field training should ideally occur under the supervision of international police oﬃcers. Police academy graduates should complete aﬁeld training program that includes periods in the classroom as well as

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59

on-the-job experience. Kosovo is a useful example: The 19-week ﬁeld
training program included six weeks of classroom instruction after
graduation from the police academy. Basic police training normallyrequires at least several months, followed by extensive on-the-job training, conducted under the oversight of international police experts.
Pressure for rapid deployment sometimes results in more accelerated
schedules. In Iraq, the most extended basic course of instruction waseight weeks, and many new police oﬃcers were ﬁelded with considerably less training. Not surprisingly, the resulting standards of performance were unacceptably low. Even with extended basic training, newpolice will function poorly unless led and mentored by experienced
oﬃcers. International police can play these roles to some extent, but
an early start is needed to identify and develop local leadership. Candidates for such positions may be drawn from among the more capable
new recruits, the existing police forces, or from individuals with legal
or other relevant experience. Selecting, training, and mentoring suchindividuals will shape the resultant force decisively; it cannot be started
too early.
Infrastructure and Equipment

Local police forces are likely to require everything from new uniforms
to transport and communication equipment. Examples of appropriate
nonlethal and lethal assistance include the provision of communication equipment such as radios, protective gear such as helmets and ﬂak
jackets, handcuﬀs, vehicles such as police cars and jeeps, and handguns. The construction and rehabilitation of police infrastructure andfacilities presents a more straightforward task than achieving a change
in the culture of the police force. An important guide will be in providing infrastructure and facilities through a development lens. Where
police aid missions are managed by Western personnel with little development experience, the tendency has been to import state-of-the-art
solutions in prison design, communication equipment, or weaponry.
These may be inappropriate for the local context. After international
police depart, the country may not be able to cover the cost of maintenance or replacement or may not have the technical ability to conduct
repairs.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Many donors are reluctant to provide weapons for police. In somecases, international arms embargoes adopted prior to the intervention
may remain in existence, as in Liberia, raising another obstacle. Weapons provided should be appropriate for local circumstances rather thandictated purely by availability or the most common weapons in use in
the donor country. If the intervening military and international police
units have prepared themselves to provide for public security for someextended period, it may be feasible and desirable to phase in weaponry
for a new local police force gradually. On the other hand, if local police
are to be the ﬁrst line of defense against criminal and extremist elements in the society, it makes little sense to arm them less well thantheir adversaries.
Institutional Reform

Institutional reform includes either reforming the current police andministry of interior or building a new institution largely from scratch.
There are three factors that should be considered. First, is there enoughleft of the old police organization to provide a basis for rebuilding?
Second, how discredited and unpopular is the current police force
with the local population? Third, how likely is it that the intervening
powers will dispose of enough military and police resources to provide for public security during the lengthy time needed to build a newpolice force?
Even the most incompetent and corrupt local police force will
normally be regarded by an intervening power as better than nothing. Assuming that such a force exists, the decision is then whether torebuild a new force on the foundation of the old or to rebuild a completely new force while retaining the old for an interim period. In El
Salvador, UN civilian police oversaw the elimination of the militarycontrolled national police force over a 24-month period and supervised the construction of a new national civil police force under civilian
command. UN police were also responsible for overseeing the abolishment of several other branches of the police, such as the national guard,
treasury police, and national intelligence directorate, which operated
under military command. A similar process was undertaken in Haiti
in the mid-1990s, where the old police force, an element of the Haitian

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Army, was disbanded slowly over a two-year period during which anentirely new force was trained and deployed.
In most instances, the choice has been to build upon the foundations of the old police force rather than to start anew. This is less disruptive and requires less initial investment on the part of the intervening authorities. To the extent that the old police force has been evenmoderately successful in dealing with common crime, this approach
may also minimize the increase in violent crime that often accompanies the reform of abusive security establishments. On the other hand,building reformed institutions on the foundations of existing ones isless likely to ensure a thorough break with patterns of corruption andabuse or to provide the public with an image of a new start.
However abusive or incompetent the old security establishment
may be, intervening authorities cannot aﬀord to disband it unlesssomething is immediately available to take its place. Thus, where international police are not likely to be available in suﬃcient numbers, disbanding the local police force is not going to be a viable option, however desirable such a step may be in principle.
There is no universally accepted template for structuring national
and local police forces. Some countries, such as the United States andIndia, have a decentralized policing structure with independence ofcommand at the state and local levels. Other countries, such as France,
maintain a more centralized police establishment with a single centerof control. Both approaches can produce eﬀective, democratic policing. Intervening authorities need, therefore, to devise solutions thatdeliver order and accountability in the particular social, cultural, andpolitical setting in which they are needed. Structural questions thatneed to be tackled include the degree of national centralization overthe police force and the decision whether to create a gendarmerie that isfunctionally and organizationally distinct from the police and military.
It is generally better to deﬁne solutions responsive to local needs andexpectations than to try to replicate the intervening power’s domesticarrangements.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Long-Term Development

Once an initial eﬀort to organize the new police force has begun to
produce results, the focus of training should shift to developing longterm skills needed to sustain professional institutions and practices.
Intervening authorities should emphasize training the trainers. Field
training programs, long-term mentoring, continuous professional education, and management and specialist training are key to institutionalizing reformed practices, attitudes, and new skills among the local
police. At least as important is ensuring that the ongoing training
drives a change in culture among local police. One way to achieve thisresult is to encourage local police oﬃcials to observe practices in democratic states and consider the adaptability of such practices to theircountry. This may be a better option than encouraging international
advisors to import systems and procedures wholesale from their homejurisdictions.
Responsiveness and accountability are critical aspects of institutional development. Responsiveness is the ability of the police totake its cues from individual members of the public, not simply fromthe government. The most obvious example of responsiveness is theimplementation of a 911-type emergency system like that used in the
United States. Such a system demonstrates the power of the individual
to summon police assistance regardless of social and political standing. Responsiveness brings two advantages. It shows that police areaccountable to diverse interests, including those from minority ethnic
groups. It also shows that the authority of the state will be used in theinterest of the people.
Accountability is measured by the police authority’s submission toand acceptance of outside supervision. Courts, legislatures, the media,
ombudsmen, and complaint processes are all outlets of accountability. Accountability is critical because it demonstrates that police areultimately responsible to laws, not simply to the government of the
moment. Law enforcement must be held accountable to an independent and eﬀective judiciary. The police must not enjoy immunity fromprosecution. They should be required to obtain warrants from a judge
before conducting activities like searches or wiretapping. To hold police
accountable for their actions, it is also important to develop policy doc-

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uments and operational manuals that are grounded in national law andinternational standards and to ensure that these procedures and standards are fully integrated into all aspects of police training.
Sustainability is the ﬁnal element of institutional development.
In the immediate postconﬂict phase, external involvement is likely
to be signiﬁcant. But reforms will take root only if there is a transition to local responsibility. This can occur only if the force created canbecome ﬁscally sustainable. It makes little sense to use international aid
to build a large police force and buy expensive equipment if the hoststate has to slash the budget and police numbers within a few years
when the aid dries up. It is also important to encourage the development of local support for the reforms being introduced. Measures suchas civic education and transparency programs may help citizens cometo expect eﬀective, honest, and impartial service from the police. If thepolitical process allows citizens to articulate these expectations, there
is a greater likelihood that the reform program will be sustainable in
the long term.
Corruption will reduce the eﬀectiveness of the police. It can be
as much a problem for international personnel as it is for local governments. Steps need to be taken to increase transparency in awarding
international and local contracts, monitoring ﬁnancial transactions,and holding accountable those who are guilty of crimes, including
local and international police oﬃcials.

Key Actors
Two international organizations are structured to deploy international
police: the United Nations and the European Union. The UN currently deploys over 6,000 international civil police oﬃcers to multiple operations and has extensive experience in the ﬁeld. The EU organized an international police mission to Macedonia and took over UN
police operations in Bosnia. Neither the UN nor the EU has a standing police force. Rather, they manage police missions, and police are
made available for international missions by individual countries. Several other international organizations have also been involved in the

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

police component of stability operations. For example, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) organized a successful police training establishment in Kosovo.
The United States organized a civilian police component of the1994 operation in Haiti. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the United Nationsorganized the civilian police component while NATO supplied themilitary component of the mission. The U.S. Department of State
funded and managed the U.S. police deployments to Haiti, Bosnia,
and Kosovo, employing a contractor, DynCorp, to recruit and pay theindividual U.S. police oﬃcers. The oﬃcers involved were either active
or retired members of state or local police forces.
The U.S. government has not sought in any systematic way to tap
federal law enforcement agencies for recruits for such missions. Neither has it made provisions to compensate state and local law enforcement agencies for personnel released for such duty. As a result, theUnited States has developed little capacity to deploy civil police oﬃcers
in formed, cohesive units; is unable to recruit individual police oﬃcers in suﬃcient numbers; and must rely on other nations or its own
military to perform functions such as SWAT, riot control, counterterrorism, and counternarcotics where such capabilities are needed. U.S.
diﬃculty in deploying civilian police is also caused by the absence ofa systematic eﬀort to reach out to the many thousands of law enforcement personnel throughout the country. Those who do volunteer forsuch operations tend to become involved informally, through word of
mouth, leading many potential sources of personnel untapped. The
decentralization of the U.S. law enforcement system makes this a signiﬁcant challenge. The inability to mobilize civilian police for stability
missions has negatively aﬀected the performance of U.S.-led missionsin Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the 1994 intervention in Haiti, the United States organized
an international police element of over 1,000 oﬃcers from among a
coalition of the willing, before turning these functions over to theUnited Nations six months later. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the UN
provided the police elements of the international mission, about
2,000 strong in the former and 5,000 in the latter. In Afghanistan

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and Iraq, the burden of ensuring public security and organizing areformed Iraqi police establishment has fallen almost exclusively on
U.S. military police and other U.S. military units even less preparedfor such responsibilities. This solution has had mixed success; in bothcountries, there has been a dramatic increase in common crime. In
Afghanistan, organized crime, in the form of drug production, may
account for up to 40 percent of the country’s GDP.
Throughout the 1990s, foreign police training was done by
the U.S. Department of Justice International Criminal Investigative
Training Assistance Program, under the oversight of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.
Historically, the U.S. military has provided limited police training in
the context of stability operations, despite legislative prohibitions thatmake clear that the Congress is not comfortable with the U.S. military having such a role. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has
greatly increased its responsibilities for police training. Other nations
have established substantial police training missions, including Germany in Afghanistan, Italy in Albania, and Britain and France in a
number of their former colonies. The United States runs a regional
police training establishment in Budapest, the International Law
Enforcement Academy.
International police are drawn from countries with a wide variety of policing techniques, skill sets, positions on human rights anddemocratic policing practices, cultures, and approaches to hierarchy
and rank. Before deployment, they should undergo testing and orientation, including physical training, psychological testing, ﬁrearms
and defensive tactics training, and a variety of short modules covering peace operations and regional politics and history. Before deployment, civilian police personnel should be made familiar with international standards that apply to a broad range of public security andhuman rights functions. They should have some understanding of
the general diﬀerences among legal systems based on the Napoleoniccode, English common law, and sharia, as they may relate to the mission at hand. They should also be trained in techniques for eﬀective

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monitoring and mentoring. Based on UN practices, at a minimum,
police oﬃcers should receive the following specialized training:• basic individual and collective crowd-control techniques and procedures, with special attention given to weapon training, maneuverability, and negotiation• basic individual and collective training related to other special
police functions, including hard entry, vehicle checkpoints, building security, VIP protection, and escorts• basic map reading, use of GPS, truck driving, and radio
procedures• competency in the language of the mission, usually English or
French• mine awareness.

SizingIn most societies, the ratio of police to total population ranges from150 to 300 police oﬃcers per 100,000 inhabitants, with an average of
225. Examples include the Philippines (148), the United States (244),
Chile (195), Britain (234), Japan (182), Turkey (254), and South Africa(287).1 Postconﬂict societies tend to suﬀer from high levels of social
conﬂict and common criminality, suggesting a need for police numbering in the higher end of this range. More urbanized societies also
require higher levels of policing. Figure 3.1 highlights the police-topopulation ratios in 11 postconﬂict societies ﬁve years after stability
operations began. In over half the cases, there were more than 200
police oﬃcers per 100,000 inhabitants. The highest levels occurred incountries with signiﬁcant violence or criminality, including Cambodia
at 582, Bosnia at 429, and Iraq at 366. The low number in Haiti reﬂects

1 United Nations Oﬃce on Drugs and Crime, The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime
Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, Vienna, 2002.

The Police

67

Figure 3.1
Local Police Levels Five Years After Stability Operations
582

Police per 100,000 inhabitants

600
500

429

400

366

300

272

244
211

200

175

147

137
105

100

75

st

q

ni

Ira

an

vo
A

fg

ha

Ko

so

or

e

Ti
m

on
Ea

ra
er
Si

st

Le

sn

ia

ti
Bo

H

ai

e
qu

a
am

bi

di
M

oz

m

bo

ad
Ca

lv
Sa
El

N

am

ib

ia

or

0

SOURCE: Data compiled from International Institute for Strategic Studies; United
Nations, Department of Peacekeeping Operations; Jane’s Online; U.S. Department ofState, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Afghan Progress Reports, and Iraq
Weekly Status Reports; and UN Secretary-General’s reports to the United Nations
Security Council. Police levels are after two years for Iraq and after three years for
Afghanistan.
RAND MG557-3.1

that country’s inability to fund a more substantial force, combined witha decline in international assistance for police. This dearth of police in
Haiti contributed to the breakdown in security that occasioned anotherinternational intervention in 2004.
In cases in which local police do not exist or are hopelessly compromised, international police and military forces may need to carry
the burden for public security. In Kosovo, the United Nations deployednearly 5,000 international civil police personnel, 250 per 100,000
inhabitants, while NATO also deployed a signiﬁcant number of military police. Figure 3.2 illustrates the range of international police
deployments. In such cases as Kosovo and East Timor, there were no
indigenous police available. In El Salvador and Cambodia, local police
undertook most public-order functions. In cases such as Afghanistan

68

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 3.2
Peak International Civil Police Levels
350
Police per 100,000 inhabitants

314

300
250
202

200
165

150
116

112

100
50

32
0

0

11

1

7

13

2

0

0

Ja

Co

G

er

m

an

y
ng pa
N
n
a o
El mib (196
Sa ia 5)lv
(1
Ca ado 990)
mr
bo (19di 92
M So a (1 )oz ma
9am lia 94)
bi (1
qu 99
Ea
e 5)
st
(1
er
n Hai 995
Sl
ti
)
av
(
on 1995i
Bo a (1 )sn 99
Ko ia ( 8)Ea so 200
vo 0)s
Si t Ti
er m (200ra o
1
Le r (2 )
on 00
e 2)
A
fg (200
ha
4
ni )
st
an
Ira
q

0

2

SOURCE: Data compiled from Robert M. Perito, The American Experience with Police
in Peace Operations, Clementsport, Canada: Canadian Peacekeeping Press, 2002;
International Institute for Strategic Studies; United Nations, Department of
Peacekeeping Operations; Jane’s Online; Ramsbotham and Woodhouse (1999);
United Nations, Department of Public Information; Robert B. Oakley, Michael J.
Dziedzic, and Eliot M. Goldberg, eds., Policing in the New World Disorder: Peace
Operations and Public Security, Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 1998.
Population data, U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base.
RAND MG557-3.2

and Iraq, the absence of both local and international police prevented
the establishment of a secure environment, despite signiﬁcant military
deployments. Figure 3.3 illustrates the ratio of international police tomilitary personnel in 16 diﬀerent operations. UN-led operations suchas those in Namibia, Cambodia, Mozambique, and East Timor have
had the highest ratios of police to soldiers; U.S.-led operations in Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, and Iraq have had the lowest. The UnitedStates has generally used military police and regular troops to performthe functions that civilian police perform in UN-led operations.

The Police

69

350

334

300
250
212

200

184
165

150
121
99

100

82

50

38

34

20
0

0

12

0

0

y
ng pa
N
n
a o
El mib (196
Sa ia 5)lv
(1
Ca ado 990)
mr
bo (199d2
M So ia (1 )oz ma
99
am lia 4)
bi (1
qu 99
Ea
e 5)
st
(1
er
H
n
ai 995Slti)av(
on 1995i
Bo a (1 )sn 99
Ko ia 8)(Ea sov 200
st
o 0)
(
Si
er Tim 200
ra o
1)
r
Le (2
on 00
e 2)
A
fg (200
ha 4)
ni
st
an
Ira
q

0

1

Ja

Co

G

er

m

an

Ratio of police to military in thousands

Figure 3.3
Police-to-Military Ratio

SOURCE: Compiled from data in Figures 2.3, 2.4, and 3.2.
RAND MG557-3.3

International civilian police deployment can be divided into
two types for sizing and costing purposes. The ﬁrst are comprisedof unarmed police, whose activities are limited to advising, training,monitoring, and mentoring.2 The second includes armed police witharrest authority.3 The average deployment of the ﬁrst, more limited
type has been 23 police oﬃcers for every 100,000 inhabitants. The
average deployment of the second type has been 161 oﬃcers for every
100,000 inhabitants.

2

The cases include Congo (in the 1960s), Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Somalia,
Mozambique, Haiti, and Sierra Leone.

3

The average was 161 per 100,000 inhabitants. Afghanistan, Germany, and Japan were
excluded from the average because no civilian international police were deployed to thesethree countries.

70

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Costs
Intervening powers must anticipate funding much or all of the costs for
public security in the ﬁrst several years of any intervention. The local
government is unlikely to have the revenues needed to perform suchfunctions, even assuming that it has the competence to do so. Local
security forces that do exist are likely to be funding themselves throughvarious forms of corruption and extortion, living in a symbiotic relationship with the criminal and extremist elements they are supposed
to be combating.
In situations in which international police are assuming a direct
law enforcement role, a general rule has been to deploy at least 100
international police per 100,000 inhabitants. The precise number
varies signiﬁcantly depending on the security environment in the hostcountry, strategic objectives, rules of engagement, and the conditionof the existing police force. There are several types of costs for deploying international police: personnel, procurement, and operation andmaintenance costs. The personnel costs for international police varydepending on the country of origin. Currently, the United States pays
between $80,000 and $100,000 per police oﬃcer per year—roughly$90,000 on average—as part of most UN or other stability missions.
These costs include a base salary plus completion bonuses and hazardous duty pay. In addition to personnel costs, the UN also budgets
approximately $65,000 per person for procurement, operations andmaintenance, and other related expenses for civilian police missions.4
We thus estimated the cost of deploying a well-trained international
police oﬃcer as roughly $155,000 per year.
Costs for building and maintaining a local police force include
those for personnel, equipment, facilities, operations, and oversight,
including the cost of staﬃng a ministry of interior. Figure 3.4 shows thetotal costs of ﬁelding a national police force in 15 diﬀerent countries,
expressed as the cost per police oﬃcer, as a multiple of each country’s
per capita GDP. To arrive at these ﬁgures, interior ministry budgets
4

Statistics provided in an interview with a member of the Civilian Police Division, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations, New York, October 7, 2005.

The Police

71

Figure 3.4
Cost of Fielding a Local Police Force

Ministry of interior cost per police ofﬁcer(as a multiple of per capita GDP)

7
6
5
4
3
2
1

c
Tu a
r
k
A
rg ey
So en
ut tinahA
Sw fric
az a
ila
U nd
kr
Ky ai
rg ne
yz
st
G an
e
Ka or
za gia
kh
st
N an
am
Zi
i
m bia
ba
bw
e
Jo
Ph rd
ili an
pp
in
es

Ri

bi
Co

st

a

m
lo

Co

El

Sa

lv

ad

or

a

0

SOURCE: Data courtesy of each country’s ministry of interior in response to RAND
requests.
RAND MG557-3.4

from the 15 countries were converted into U.S. dollars and divided by
the number of police oﬃcers in the national force. These per–police
oﬃcer costs were then compared to per capita GDP in U.S. dollars
converted at market exchange rates. We found that, on average, thecost per police oﬃcer of running a ministry of interior is roughly 3.2
times a country’s per capita GDP at market exchange rates.
What does this analysis imply for postconﬂict nation-building
operations? To illustrate, assume that the international community
intervenes in Macedonia. It had a 2006 population of 2 million. Using
the average number of police oﬃcers (225) per 100,000 inhabitants,
cited earlier, Macedonia would need 4,500 police oﬃcers. Macedonia
has a per capita GDP of $7,800. Multiplying $7,800 by the ratio 3.2,
and then by 4,500 police oﬃcers, gives a projected annual budget of
approximately $100 million needed to operate the police and ministry of interior following an intervention. Were local policing capabili-

72

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

ties to have collapsed to the point at which international police wereneeded to conduct law enforcement operations, intervening authorities might deploy international civilian police. Using the estimate of
161 armed international police oﬃcers per 100,000 inhabitants citedpreviously, Macedonia might need approximately 3,200 international
police oﬃcers. Multiplying this number by $155,000—our estimatedcost of deploying an international police oﬃcer for one year—gives a
total cost for an international police presence of approximately $500
million per year. For a smaller force of unarmed international police
to conduct training and mentoring, approximately 460 police oﬃcers
would be necessary. This works out to approximately $70 million peryear for international civilian police oﬃcers. Table 3.1 summarizes theresults.5
Table 3.1
Estimates for an Operation in Macedonia, Year One

OperationType

Cost of Running
Ministry of
Cost of Int’l
Total
Number ofInterior
Number of Police Force Expenditure
Local Police(2002 US$)Int’l Police (2002 US$) (2002 US$)

Peace
enforcement
operation to
Macedonia

4,500

100 million

3,200

500 million

600 million

Peacekeeping
operation to
Macedonia

4,500

100 million

460

70 million

170 million

SOURCE: RAND calculations.
NOTE: Data for Macedonia are from Central Intelligence Agency (2006).

5

The estimating equations for police missions are as follows:
number of local police  225 r population / 100, 000
cost of running ministry of interior  per capita GDP r 3.2 r number of police
number of international police (peace enforcement)  1661 r population / 100, 000
number of international police (peacekeeping)  23 r population / 100, 000
cost of international police  number of police r $155,000.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rule of Law

The rule-of-law sector includes the courts, ministry of justice, correctional system, legal statutes, and other institutions that ensure, in
Aristotle’s words, “a government of laws, not men.”1 It also includes
the police, addressed in the preceding chapter. Rule of law refers to an
ideal that ensures fairness, justice, and equality before the law. Rule oflaw also implies preventing oﬃcial arbitrariness.2 Almost by deﬁnition,
rule of law will have broken down in any postconﬂict society, which
is often characterized by nonfunctioning courts, substandard prisons,inadequate salaries for judges and other personnel, insuﬃcient operating budgets, and poor training.
Protecting private property and enforcing contracts are critical tothe operation of a market economy. Ideally, under the rule of law, regulations are intelligible; there are eﬀective dispute-resolution mechanisms
and a predictable legal framework in which commercial disagreements
can be resolved and property protected. Key legal provisions include
procedures for setting up limited-liability companies, contracts, andmechanisms for resolving commercial disputes. Security also requires

1This chapter does not examine the international legal framework regarding the decision
to intervene in a country, such as acquiring international legal authority for an intervention
from the United Nations Security Council. While an important topic, the primary focus of
this chapter is on building rule of law once major combat has ended.

2

On deﬁnitions of the rule of law, see Richard H. Fallon, Jr., “‘The Rule of Law’ as aConcept in Constitutional Discourse,” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 1, January 1997,
pp. 1–56; and Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 1: Rules and Order,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

73

74

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

a functioning justice system that is able to prosecute criminals anddetermine innocence or guilt on the basis of objective rules of evidence.
Better policing will not sustain a secure environment if the judiciary is
incompetent or corrupt, sentencing is arbitrary or politicized, or prison
conditions are inhumane. Failure to establish a viable justice system
has plagued many eﬀorts to reconstruct police and security forces. The
rule of law improves human rights conditions by ensuring due process, equality before the law, and judicial checks on executive power.
Without the rule of law, arrests and detentions are arbitrary, there is noeﬀective mechanism for preventing torture or extrajudicial execution,individuals or groups may be free to take the law into their own hands,
and abuses may go unpunished.

Key Challenges
Preconﬂict Legal Planning. There is often a paucity of informa-tion on the status of a postconﬂict society’s justice system. Personnel
working for NGOs who have spent signiﬁcant time in the country may
provide useful advice. What are the characteristics of the legal system?
How eﬀective has it been? What are the key challenges? How should
the international community prioritize and sequence eﬀorts to rebuild
rule of law?
Establishing Applicable Law. What law should apply? If thesociety has long been in conﬂict, there may be competing codes. As
Figure 4.1 indicates, a wide range of legal sources may be used. Societies may rely predominantly on formal law, informal or tribal law,or some combination of the two. In many postconﬂict settings, such
as Afghanistan and Somalia, village councils and tribal elders haveplayed the primary role in resolving disputes and meting out justice—especially in rural areas. The formal justice system may be weak, lacklegitimacy, or serve only a small portion of the population. Customary
law is used widely in many parts of the world. It often survives conﬂicts more intact than the formal courts. Customary law may play aRule of Law

75

Figure 4.1
Types of Rule of Law

Informal law

Mixed law
(informal in rural areas/
formal in urban areas)

Formal law

RAND MG557-4.1

complementary role in providing justice and a nonviolent means forresolving disputes during the postconﬂict phase. International actors
have often tended to ignore customary law in administering postconﬂict justice, as it may be controversial and contrary to international
standards.
Recruiting, Vetting, and Training Judges and Lawyers. A frequent diﬃculty in recruiting, vetting, and appointing legal personnel
is identifying candidates who have the necessary professional experience and are politically acceptable to the general public. Ethnic, tribal,
or religious cleavages may create a signiﬁcant challenge to choosing
judges because communities may not give their consent to the processunless they have adequate representation.
Building Infrastructure and Providing Equipment. Most states
emerging from conﬂict have suﬀered damage to their rule-of-law infrastructure. As one lawyer involved in eﬀorts to reconstruct the justicesystem in East Timor argued,
The pre-existing judicial infrastructure in East Timor was almost
entirely destroyed. Most court buildings were burned and looted,
all court oﬃce equipment, registers, records and archives, and—indispensable to the practice of the legal profession—law books,
case ﬁles and other legal resources were dislocated or burned.3

These all need to be restored.

3

Hansjörg Strohmeyer, “Building a New Judiciary for East Timor: Challenges of a Fledgling Nation,” Criminal Law Forum, Vol. 11, No. 3, September 2000, pp. 259–285 [p. 268].

76

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Improving the Corrections System. In postconﬂict settings,
pretrial detention facilities and prisons are often in poor condition.
Compounding this problem, donor states may be reluctant to become
involved in rebuilding a system with a reputation for signiﬁcant humanrights violations. Following the overthrow of the Taliban regime, theAfghan prison system collapsed. Prisons were physically crumbling
after years of neglect and lacked trained, qualiﬁed staﬀ. Prison staﬀ
struggled to hold thousands of people, many for long periods, in poor
conditions. These conditions violated international standards relating
to the treatment of detainees. Detention facilities in Kosovo were alsopoor. Most prewar prisons were damaged by bombs or arson; somedetainees ended up in police holding cells or in NATO tents behindbarbed wire. Few were held in facilities that were built for long-term
detention.
Establishing a Rule-of-Law Culture. Many justice systems arecharacterized by the absence of judicial independence, political elites
who use the judiciary to serve their own interests, and entrenched corruption. The executive and judicial branches often compete for management of the judicial system, with the ministry of justice and thesupreme court vying for control. Training judges and other legal personnel, providing technical assistance, and helping rebuild infrastructure are unlikely on their own to ﬁx a system debilitated by corruption
and political interference.
Supporting Transitional Justice. Virtually all conﬂicts involve
human rights abuses. In many cases, these abuses are widespread andsystematic. Transitional justice incorporates a range of approaches thatsocieties undertake to deal with legacies of abuse as they move from aperiod of violent conﬂict or oppression toward peace and respect forindividual and collective rights. In making such a transition, societies may have to confront the painful legacy of the past to achieve asense of justice for all citizens, establish or renew civic trust, reconcile people and communities, and prevent future abuses. However, war
crime trials, truth commissions, and other types of transitional justice
can also trigger nationalist backlashes and revive tensions.

Rule of Law

77

Best Practices
Preconﬂict Legal Planning

Planning should begin with a comprehensive needs assessment. Capable individuals and organizations should be identiﬁed to quickly draft
new legislation in accordance with internationally recognized standards and with the country’s tradition. To facilitate this eﬀort, international actors should develop standby arrangements with partner agencies such as the United Nations, the World Bank, universities, andNGOs. These agencies may be asked to help prepare drafts of initialneeds assessments that would be ﬁnalized by international actors inconcert with lawyers from the host country.
A body of legislation related to basic law enforcement may need to
be developed as part of a quick-start package. Readily applicable criminal procedures and criminal codes, as well as a code regulating theactivities of the police, have been essential to civilian police activities
during the early phases of stability operations. Civilian police, including international police, need to have a well-deﬁned legal frameworkin which to act. They need clearly spelled-out legal provisions to carryout their daily law enforcement activities eﬀectively and without fear of
breaching the law. They also need a clear legal framework under which
the future local police force will be trained. Newly appointed judges,
prosecutors, and lawyers must be educated on the applicable law to execute their functions. An indispensable initial step is for international
actors to draft and put in place interim laws governing criminal procedures and other core areas of police activity. Examples include arrestand detention and searches and seizures.
Several critical enablers can, if put in place in advance of an operation, facilitate the rapid imposition of law and order. These include rosters of trained judicial specialists and penal oﬃcers available for rapid
deployment, advanced training in various justice and reconciliation
tasks, standard operating procedures and contingency plans, standing
capacities for material and private-sector support, and memorandumsof understanding among key international actors.

78

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Planners need to be aware of common and civil law traditions in
the countries in which they will be operating. Common law systems
are developed from custom and began before there were any written
laws. The courts continue to adjudicate based on common law. Civil
law developed in Rome out of Justinian’s corpus juris civilis. Today,
the diﬀerence between civil and common law lies less in codiﬁcationand more in the approach to codes and statutes. In civil law countries,
legislation is seen as the primary source of law. By default, courts basetheir judgments on codes and statutes. Courts thus have to reason on
the basis of the general rules and principles of the code, drawing analogies from statutory provisions to ﬁll lacunae and to achieve coherence.
In common law countries, rulings from past cases are a primary sourceof law.
Establishing Applicable Law

There is often little or no functioning justice system in the immediate
postconﬂict phase. Uncertainty about applicable law causes great confusion. For instance, what laws should govern the apprehension andtrial of criminal suspects? How should disputed property claims be
resolved? A vacuum in the rule of law should be avoided by establishingat least interim judicial provisions concerning the detention and hearings of individuals apprehended on criminal charges. One key elementof applicable law is the establishment of a viable constitution.
Past operations, such as those in East Timor and Kosovo, demonstrate that, where the justice sector has completely broken down,
rapid deployment of military lawyers can help ﬁll the vacuum until
civilian authorities are available to take over. The advantage of such anarrangement is that military lawyers can be deployed with the troops.
Military lawyers would have to be in a position to execute legal functions immediately, including authorizing arrest, detention, prosecution, and initial adjudication, without engaging in the time-consuming
task of assembling and familiarizing themselves with local laws. Such
military arrangements should remain in place only for a limited andclearly deﬁned period of time, until responsibility can be handed overto an adequately functioning civilian body. Any such arrangements

Rule of Law

79will have to accord strictly with internationally recognized humanrights and other relevant legal standards. The role for the military as
an emergency provider of law enforcement includes the constructionof emergency detention facilities.
The most immediate task is to choose an applicable system oflaw at least for the near term. Judicial appointments; legal training;
and the performance of judicial, prosecutorial, and other legal functions depend on the existence of a clear body of applicable law. In theabsence of a clear body of applicable law, international actors may haveto draft regulations indicating which previously existing laws still apply
or set forth entirely new laws. International lawyers may be required toengage in interpreting the penal code or the criminal procedure code
through the lens of international human rights. This means applying
provisions that meet international standards while eliminating thosethat do not. Obtaining all the legislation that constitutes the applicable
body of law and translating it so that international experts can assist
their local colleagues are also major challenges.
There is often a temptation to use the applicable law in place
during and before the war, mutatis mutandis. This generally means
ensuring that existing laws conform to internationally recognizedhuman rights standards and do not conﬂict with the international
actors’ mandate. It also involves reconciling regulations promulgatedby the mission with existing law. Using the current applicable law may
be sensible in most conditions. In East Timor, UN personnel decided
that Indonesian laws would remain applicable. After a review of existing legislation, UN personnel abrogated several laws, such as those governing antisubversion and capital punishment. The most pressing need
was for a mechanism to review the arrests and detentions that had
been carried out by the Australian-led International Force East Timor(INTERFET). However, the UN civil police force was facing a growing number of ordinary crimes, including violent assault, rape, andmurder. INTERFET had established a temporary arrest and detention
system that was run by military personnel but was neither mandated
nor equipped to try, convict, or sentence criminal oﬀenders. The United

80

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), theUN-led successor mission, needed to install a civilian mechanism thatwould provide the minimum judicial functions required upon arrestand detention.
Using the applicable law in place during and before the war may
not be practical in all situations, especially in cases of interethnic conﬂict. Kosovo oﬀers a useful lesson. After the 1999 NATO-led militaryintervention, UNMIK faced the challenge of governing 1.8 million
people in a devastated region with no functioning courts, prisons, or
police and a legacy of ethnic bitterness between the Serbs and Kosovar
Albanians. UNMIK decided to resolve the problem of applicable law bymaking it the same as the law that was applicable before the NATO air
campaign began. UNMIK Regulation 1999/1 stated, “The laws applicable in the territory of Kosovo prior to 24 March 1999 shall continue
to apply in Kosovo,” insofar as those laws did not conﬂict with internationally recognized human rights standards or other UNMIK regulations.4 This approach led to serious problems. For Kosovo’s Albanianmajority, the applicable laws before the bombing campaign were “Serblaws,” a symbol of Serbian oppression of Albanians. A crisis ensued
as Albanians protested the decision and Albanian judges refused toapply these laws. Six months after issuing Regulation 1999/1, UNMIK
declared that the new applicable law in Kosovo would be the law inforce on March 22, 1989, immediately before Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic put an end to Kosovo’s autonomous status.
In Afghanistan, the legal system put in place after the collapseof the Taliban regime was derived from the 1964 constitution and
was amended by the Bonn Agreement of December 2001. In addition to the set of laws based on the 1964 constitution, applicable law
in Afghanistan included a mix of customary law and sharia-based
law that had evolved over the previous 120 years. The three bodies
of law—state law, sharia law, and customary law—overlapped andprovided implementation challenges. The Afghan case demonstrates
that international and local actors may have to be ﬂexible in creating
4

United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, Regulation No. 1999/1, “On
the Authority of the Interim Administration in Kosovo,” July 25, 1999.

Rule of Law

81

applicable law. As such, key areas in which to establish formal legislation include the following:• public administration• civil procedural law• traﬃcking, organized crime, and counternarcotics• corruption• corrections• property ownership• juvenile oﬀenders and child protection• immigration and nationality• vehicular traﬃc• commercial codes for partnerships, corporations, recognition offoreign entities, bankruptcy, contracts, and antitrust• civil service.
A related issue is what to do about informal or customary systems. How should international actors design rule-of-law programs forcountries that rely on customary law? There is no single answer. Legal
reform should include limiting the authority of informal law mechanisms in some areas, especially criminal justice, because it can be subverted and manipulated by local power-holders. Connections between
the formal and informal systems may need to be designed, perhaps bycrafting procedures for courts to conﬁrm the results of dispute settlements of using customary means of justice. In the short term, fostering the informal system makes more sense than trying to expand theformal system to remote regions. Disputes among neighbors—such as
over water rights and livestock ownership—may be left to traditionallaw, at least temporarily. Criminal disputes—especially those involving violent crime—usually need to be adjudicated through the oﬃcial
system of justice. A number of postconﬂict law programs have ﬁrst
focused on standing up the legal system in major urban areas, then
expanding it to rural areas. Citizens also need to be educated about
their rights under the constitution and the use of courts. Table 4.1
explains several key diﬀerences between formal and informal systems.

82

Area

Formal System

Informal or Customary System

SystemCould be based on common or civil law

Often council of tribal elders

Source of law

Secular law, or perhaps Islamic jurisprudence

Tribal tradition

Decisionmakers

Judges render a decision that can be appealed
to the court of appeals

Local elders consider the case but result often
must be consensual; proceedings frequently
continue until consensus is reached

Geographic reach

Sometimes limited to major urban areas

Varies, but often in rural areas

Objective

Resolve the immediate dispute between
the parties

Focus of the dispute may be the family, clan, or
tribe rather than the individual; object is often
to restore relationship between parties who
must continue to live together

Civil versus criminal cases

Criminal: Prosecuted by government prosecutor; Often no distinction between civil and criminal
action for compensation of the victim is part of cases; any wrong is a disruption of the social
the same case and is pursued by prosecutor
fabric; imbalance can sometimes be rectiﬁed by
the transgressor transferring something of value
Civil: Local justice ofﬁcer may be theto the wronged party
gatekeeper; assists plaintiff in paperwork andmay reject case; may be some linkage withcustomary sector

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Table 4.1
A Comparison of Formal and Informal Systems

Rule of Law

83

Recruiting, Vetting, and Training Judges and Lawyers

In view of the practical and symbolic signiﬁcance of recruiting andappointing judges and lawyers in a postconﬂict environment, it is essential to proceed in a transparent manner to ensure legitimacy. Capablecandidates have to be identiﬁed at all levels. Vetting and appointment
have to be made in accordance with objective, veriﬁable criteria andmerit, while also ensuring political or ethnic balance. This frequently
involves having international jurists assist local personnel in cataloging
the qualiﬁcations of judges and lawyers. Experienced jurists interview
potential judges and lawyers and assess their competency and qualiﬁcations. The absence of trained legal professionals in past postconﬂict
environments suggests that outside expertise would be beneﬁcial. The
process has to be transparent and based on a sound legislative framework. In Kosovo, East Timor, and Afghanistan, the establishment of
independent judicial commissions was the primary mechanism for theselection of judges and prosecutors. It served as an important safeguard
for appointing the judiciary. The commissions were designed as autonomous bodies. They collected applications from candidates, with a law
degree as a minimum requirement. The commission then selected candidates for judicial or prosecutorial oﬃce on the basis of merit andmade recommendations on appointments.
In some cases, the intervening authorities may need to establish
a judiciary whose composition reﬂects the various ethnic communities. No reconciliation eﬀort, including the prosecution and trial ofindividuals charged with human rights violations, can succeed without
an independent, impartial judiciary that enjoys the conﬁdence of the
population. A lack of trained individuals can present a major challenge,
as illustrated by the case of East Timor. During Indonesia’s occupation,
no East Timorese lawyers were appointed judges or prosecutors. The
UN established the Transitional Judicial Service, comprised of three
East Timorese and two international experts. Because of the lack oftelephone, radio, and other forms of communication, the UN resorted
to leaﬂet drops by airplanes and word of mouth to search for qualiﬁed
lawyers. Within two months, several dozen qualiﬁed East Timoresewith law degrees were found. From this group, 60 applied for positions.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

The ﬁrst eight Timorese judges and two prosecutors were sworn in on
January 7, 2000.
The intervening authorities need to meet standards for due process and fair trial. They should help recruit, appoint, and ensure theprovision of adequate legal counsel to the detainees. This is of particular importance when those arrested belong to speciﬁc ethnic or
political groups or are suspected of grave human rights violations andwhose cases could become politically sensitive. In Kosovo, UNMIK
identiﬁed lawyers from diﬀerent ethnic backgrounds who were qualiﬁed and willing to serve as defense counsel in such cases. UNMIK provided each detainee with a list of names from which the detainee could
choose. The number of detainees far exceeded the number of available
lawyers, however. In East Timor, Section 27 of UNTAET Regulation
2000/11 expressly recognized the right to legal representation and theobligation to ensure eﬀective and equal access to lawyers.5 UNTAET
set up the nucleus of a donor-ﬁnanced public-defender system.
There has been wide variation in the training and capacity ofjudges and other legal personnel in past stability operations. A dearth ofexperienced judges and lawyers places a burden on international actors
to ensure that adequate legal and judicial training programs are put inplace. The objective should be to ensure that the few available judges
and lawyers are prepared as soon as possible to perform their functions. Donors should set up quick-impact training and mentoring programs in core issues such as pretrial standards, the conduct of hearings,
and the drafting of detention orders. Expert advice on drafting laws,
including information on models from other countries, should be provided to revise existing laws, criminal codes, and regulations, as well as
to write new ones. Historically, donor programs to revise the legal code
have targeted the commercial code—banking regulation, taxation,
antitrust, bankruptcy, and foreign investment—as part of economic
reform programs. These programs are of less immediate importancefollowing a conﬂict. Aid providers can help improve the legal profession by strengthening bar associations to become active advocates for5

United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, Regulation No. 2000/1, “On
the Organization of Courts in East Timor,” March 6, 2000.

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85

judicial reform and stricter ethical and professional standards for lawyers. Legal training can be provided in the following ways:• Conduct a series of short, compulsory, quick-impact training
courses for judges, prosecutors, and public defenders prior to their
appointment. These courses can range from one to several weeks
in duration.
• Provide mandatory, ongoing training for judges, prosecutors, andpublic defenders upon their appointment to oﬃce. This training
should present and review relevant substantive law, procedurallaw, and courtroom management.
• Establish a mentoring scheme in which a pool of experienced
international legal practitioners familiar with civil law systems
serves as “shadow” judges, prosecutors, and public defenders without actually exercising judicial power.
• Establish a judicial training center that functions independentlyof the government and helps deﬁne the legal curriculum.
• Provide training for prosecutors and investigators and establish
national special units for crimes such as money laundering andasset forfeiture, drug traﬃcking, corruption, and human rights
abuses.
Professional legal training extends beyond technical assistance.
It should focus not only on conveying legal and practical skills but
also, equally important, on fostering an appreciation of the role of the
judiciary in society and the beneﬁts of a culture of law. In societies inwhich there is little respect for the formal rule of law and in which thelaw is widely perceived as yet another instrument for wielding control
over the population, the importance of independence and impartialityof the judiciary has to be taught.
Building Infrastructure and Providing Equipment

An important step in establishing rule of law is the construction andrefurbishment of court buildings and oﬃces. A preliminary task should
be to inventory and assess courts, law schools, legal libraries, and bar

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

associations. Assistance should target the following key infrastructure:• buildings housing the supreme court, ministry of justice, andattorney general’s oﬃce
• court buildings at the provincial and local levels• judicial training academies• oﬃces for justice personnel.
In addition, furniture, computers, legal texts, stationery, ﬁling
cabinets, and oﬃce supplies and equipment may also be in short supply.
Basic laws should be printed and distributed to all courts and prosecutors, the ministry of justice, NGOs, and the police. They should also
be available on CD-ROM and posted on the ministry of justice Web
site for citizens.
The judicial system needs to be rebuilt at both the national andlocal levels. At the national level, the permanent institutions of justice
may be in serious need of both reform and resources. The intervening
authorities need to ensure that the courts adopt common procedures,
ensure merit-based advancement, and provide oversight. The highest
level of the judiciary should be reappointed and approved by a parliamentary committee to ensure that basic standards are met. At the
local level, assistance should focus on establishing “pockets of competence”—judicial institutions in key provincial and district centersthat function properly. This limited number of locations should beresourced with proven staﬀ, buildings, and communications. Once
functioning, these pockets would be perceived as legitimate and attract
cases and citizens from other districts. They could also liaise with tribal
or customary legal systems to ensure that disputes resolved in thoseforums protect individual rights. Eventually, the number of pockets
should increase as both demand and resources rise. In countries inwhich judges and prosecutors need to handle cases involving terrorism,
drug traﬃcking, or organized crime, they will need protection fromthreats of violence and assassination.

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87

Improving the Corrections System

The corrections system is an important—though often overlooked—
area. Intervening authorities or the host-country government need toprovide pretrial detention facilities, prisons, and corrections personnel.
Most civilian police and military deployed as part of the intervening
force are not generally trained or equipped to work as prison wardens.
Corrections personnel have to be recruited, vetted, and trained according to internationally accepted standards.
Constructing prisons needs to be a priority. A functioning correctional system is necessary if law enforcement is to be eﬀective. Despite
the reluctance of many donors to ﬁnance prisons, correctional facilities generally need to be built or reconstructed. Intervening authorities
must make a concerted eﬀort to convince donor countries to provide
funds for this task. The intervening authorities should provide for asuﬃcient number of professional international prison guards and wardens in mission planning and budgeting. Juveniles should be accorded
special rights according to international standards, such as the United
Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile
Justice (often referred to as the Beijing Rules),6 which require giving
juveniles special protection and holding them in separate facilities fromadult defendants. Accused juveniles should accordingly be separated
from adults and their cases brought to the court for adjudication as
speedily as possible. Women should be provided with separate pretrial
detention centers and prisons from men.
Establishing a Rule-of-Law Culture

Training judges and other legal personnel, building infrastructure, andassisting with institutional reform are necessary aspects of rebuilding
rule-of-law systems. But these alone are not suﬃcient. Rule-of-law assistance to Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia over the last
several decades has not been as eﬀective as hoped. Assistance programs
6

The Beijing Rules, adopted by the United Nations in 1985, provide guidance to states forthe protection of children’s rights and respect for their needs in the development of separate
and specialized systems of juvenile justice. See United Nations General Assembly, “United
Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (‘The Beijing
Rules’),” A/RES/40/33, 96th plenary meeting, November 29, 1985.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

have generally not been followed by host-government initiatives in pursuit of deeper and more comprehensive reforms.7 Rule-of-law programsin Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Iraq
focused on judicial training, rewriting constitutions and key legislation, and providing other forms of structural and technical assistance.
These programs have not worked particularly well. Proposed changes
often encounter deep resistance from local actors.
Promoting the rule of law involves creating new norms and changing culture as much as it does creating new institutions and legal codes.
Without a widely shared cultural commitment to the idea of rule oflaw, courts are just buildings, judges just public employees, and constitutions just pieces of paper. In most postconﬂict societies, the traditionof using the law to equitably resolve disputes is weak or does not exist.
In such societies, well-intentioned eﬀorts by outsiders to establish ruleof law solely by creating formal structures and rewriting constitutions
and statutes often have little or no long-term eﬀect.
Key challenges include the power of the executive or other power
brokers over the justice system, corruption, and fear of violence because
trials involve terrorists or organized criminal gangs. In El Salvador, UN
and other international oﬃcials ran into deep resistance to reforming
the rule-of-law system from the supreme court, which retained a decisive voice in selecting or removing lower-court judges. For many judges
who have spent their careers in dysfunctional systems, the possibilityof a reformed judiciary may not be appealing. Judges, no longer able
to rule their courts as personal ﬁefdoms, may have to stop receiving
bribes, sit through training sessions, face the potential for dismissal,
and sever close-knit political ties. These judges often drag their feetwhen implementing reforms. Afghanistan has lacked practical experience with judicial independence and the political ethos to support it.

7

Thomas Carothers, ed., Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: In Search of Knowledge, Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006; Jane Stromseth, David
Wippman, and Rosa Brooks, Can Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 1999.

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89

Combating corruption is a critical part of rebuilding the judiciaryand establishing a culture of rule of law. Corruption undermines democratic institutions, retards economic development, and contributes topolitical instability. Corruption attacks the foundation of democratic
institutions by distorting electoral processes and perverting the rule oflaw. Economic development is stunted because investors are discouraged. Entrepreneurs are discouraged from starting small businesses
because they ﬁnd it diﬃcult to overcome the “start-up costs” imposedby corruption. Corruption is facilitated by low salaries for judges, lawsthat permit corrupt behavior, signiﬁcant executive inﬂuence over the
judiciary, and poor security protection of judges, especially from terrorists or organized criminal gangs. Measures to mitigate corruption
include• increasing judges’ salaries• training programs for judges and lawyers held on a regular basis• enacting anticorruption legislation• imposing legal constraints on unjustiﬁable variations in criminal sentences in similar cases, including the creation of judicial
handbooks containing sentencing standards and principles andthe collection of statistics on sentencing patterns• ensuring that government contracts for goods and services areawarded through open competitive bidding; the contracting
authority must provide all bidders and the general public witheasy access to information about tender opportunities, selection
criteria, the evaluation process, the terms and conditions of thecontract and its amendments, and the implementation of the contract and the role of intermediaries and agents• ensuring that judicial oﬃcers take responsibility for minimizing
delays in the conduct and conclusion of court proceedings andfor discouraging activities of the legal profession that cause undue
delay; judicial oﬃcers should institute transparent procedures sothat the judiciary, the legal profession, and litigants can ﬁnd out
the status of court proceedings

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building• ensuring the protection of judges and lawyers involved in thetrials of terrorists or major criminals, as well as establishing a witness protection program.
Reform cannot include only top-down initiatives, but bottom-up
as well. This includes drawing in public-interest law groups, humanrights organizations, and NGOs engaged in judicial reform. It may
also include sponsoring training for the media and other citizenoriented projects. Most traditional rule-of-law programs focus on political and economic elites: Judges, lawyers, and politicians are targeted fortraining programs. But for rule of law to exist, the law’s “consumers”—
ordinary people—need to be convinced of the value of legal institutions and educated in what it can do. In many troubled societies, only
a tiny slice of society uses formal legal institutions. In Sierra Leone,
courthouses existed only in major cities. Most disputes, especially inthe countryside, were handled informally by tribal elders. Changes
to the formal legal code had little relevance to most people’s lives. Several types of programs may be eﬀective in reaching beyond cities andelites where informal law predominates. Some of these programs, suchas building a strong civil society, can play an important role by keeping
government oﬃcials accountable. Strengthening and informing themedia, NGOs, and other civil institutions is often seen as a distinct
task from rule-of-law promotion, but it is deeply intertwined. The following are several programs that have been eﬀective in the past:• Access: Implement programs that seek to educate non-elites about
the law and legal institutions and give people access to these
institutions to resolve problems. Such programs include legal
aid oﬃces that oﬀer free or low-cost legal advice and representation; pro se projects that train people to represent themselves; andparalegal-based projects that train and employ people with somelegal training, but who are not lawyers, to serve as advocates andmediators.
• Mediation: Oﬀer services to help resolve conﬂicts through mediation to enable people to resolve disputes without using formal
legal institutions.

Rule of Law

91• Media: Strengthen responsible and independent media, thereby
helping to discourage corruption and abuse. Programs that focus
on training journalists in investigative techniques may be particularly helpful.
• NGOs: Provide ﬂedging NGOs with the resources and training
necessary to begin functioning. NGOs can help foster the rule oflaw by serving as monitors and advocates, as well as by helping toensure an educated and engaged citizenry.
• Youth population: Provide assistance to university programs thatwill shape the next generation of legal professionals. Law schools
and law clinics can play a particularly important role in inculcating the value of rule of law into emerging professionals.
• Outreach: Innovative outreach programs can help create a senseof shared ownership if they solicit ideas for new laws and institutions across society. A successful example involved eﬀorts made bySouth Africa’s ﬁrst postapartheid government to involve ordinary
people in designing the nation’s new constitution. Billboards, pop
songs, and cartoons explained the process by which the constitution was being written and urged people to write or call special
toll-free numbers with their thoughts on what the constitution
should say.
• Women and minorities: Programs that seek to empower women
can have spillover eﬀects on economic development and peacerelated activities. Ethnic and religious minorities should be aprime focus of rule-of-law programs. Like young people, actualor perceived marginalization drives minority groups into the roleof spoilers. Focusing on minorities in rule-of-law programs helps
give them the tools to protect themselves in ways that do notundermine social stability.
Supporting Transitional JusticeIn postconﬂict settings, international and local leaders face diﬃcult
tradeoﬀs between the need for reconciliation among contending parties and the desire to impose accountability for large-scale crimes committed in the course of that conﬂict. At one end of the spectrum, the92

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Buildingemphasis can be put on retributive justice through the device of war
crime tribunals. At the other end, the emphasis may be put upon reconciliation, in the hope either that time will heal the wounds createdby earlier atrocities, or alternatively, that in time the nation will become
strong enough, and cohesive enough, to face its past and itself impose
accountability for those crimes. Between the extremes of judicial punishment, on the one hand, and full impunity, on the other, lie a coupleof other options. One is lustration, a nonjudicial means of depriving
some segment of the population access to power. A second is a truth
commission, a nonjudicial eﬀort to ﬁx responsibility without attendantpunishment.
War Crime Trials. War crime tribunals are established by courtsof law to try individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against
humanity. They aim to bring major perpetrators to justice. Table 4.2
lists all major international war crime trials since World War I. Proponents argue that war crime trials help establish long-term peace inseveral ways:• purging threatening leaders• deterring war criminals• rehabilitating countries and governments• placing the blame for atrocities on individuals rather than onwhole ethnic or other groups• establishing the facts about wartime atrocities.
Proponents of war crime trials argue that a country can never be
stable while dangerous leaders are still at large and not held accountable. For public attitudes to shift, this line of argument runs, criminal
leaders must be tried, their aura of mystery shattered by showing their
weaknesses, and their prestige deﬂated by the humiliation of going on
trial. Second, proponents believe that war crime trials can help deter
potential criminals. In 1944, near the end of World War II, the War
Refugee Board’s John Pehle wrote, “The failure to punish the criminals

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93

Table 4.2
International War Crime Tribunals
Country

Year Established

Germany

1919

Turkey1919

Germany

1945

Japan

1945

Yugoslavia

1993

Rwanda1994

East Timor

1999

Sierra Leone

2000

of World War I may well have removed a deterrent to the commission of brutalities against civilian populations in this war, including
the mass murder of the Jews.”8 Third, some argue that trials can help
rehabilitate renegade states. The rehabilitation of Germany after WorldWar II was one of the great political successes of the century, turning afascist enemy into a democratic ally. The Nuremberg trials are believed
to have made an important contribution to this success. Fourth, trials
also allow individuals to be blamed for crimes, not whole ethnic or
religious groups. The wounds opened by war may heal faster if collective guilt for atrocities is expunged and individual responsibility is
assigned. Fifth, trials may also help establish the facts about what happened. A well-established historical record makes it diﬃcult to denythat atrocities ever happened.
The evidence for these claims is mixed. Purging threatening leaders can be an important part of reforming a conquered country, but
it may require a serious security commitment to ride out a possible
nationalist backlash. This is especially true since international tribunals
may be viewed as foreign-imposed justice. Although some regimes and8

Pehle to Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., August 28, 1944, in Bradley F. Smith, ed., The American Road to Nuremberg: The Documentary Record, 1944–1945, Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1982, p. 22.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

individuals may be deterred by the threat that they may be prosecutedfor war crimes, others bent on mass slaughter have shrugged oﬀ thosewarnings. Trials may help rehabilitate a defeated country, but only as
one element in a broader program of national reconstruction. Even in
postwar Germany, Nuremberg was only one element in a broader allied
program of denaziﬁcation, reeducation, and reconstruction. International tribunals have not been able to prosecute more than a handful ofguilty individuals, so trials do not always succeed in putting the blame
where it belongs. After a war, large numbers of war criminals may overwhelm the capacity of war crime tribunals to try these cases. War crime
tribunals almost always help establish the facts about atrocities, and afundamental part of all forms of justice is oﬃcial acknowledgment ofwhat happened. A well-established historical record does make it morediﬃcult to deny that atrocities occurred, but this objective can also be
achieved by nonjudicial means.
A recent trend in transitional justice is to move away from international tribunals toward hybrid courts with national participation,
located in the aﬀected countries. Hybrid courts are often consideredmore legitimate by domestic audiences, have greater potential fordomestic capacity-building by involving local jurists directly in thework of the court, may be better able to demonstrate the importance ofaccountability and fair justice to local populations, and can be muchless expensive to operate. Domestic prosecutions, if they are conductedin a manner widely viewed as legitimate and fair, can help demonstrateaccountability in a direct way to domestic audiences. Alternatively, theInternational Criminal Court may be used. It was established in 2002
and is a permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court intended
to promote rule of law and ensure that the gravest international crimes
do not go unpunished. It has jurisdiction over individuals accused of
genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes if states with jurisdiction are unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute these cases
themselves.
Lustration. An alternative or addition to judicially imposed penalties for past behavior is the administrative step of barring a wholeclass of individuals from public employment, political participation,and the enjoyment of other civil rights. Denaziﬁcation in Germany,

Rule of Law

95

demilitarization in Japan, and debaathiﬁcation in Iraq are examplesof this form of sanction. Compared to judicial action, it is simpler toadminister, since no proof of wrongdoing is required and no evidence
beyond that of membership in a proscribed organization is necessary.
To the extent that there is any avenue for redress, the burden of proof
rests with the petitioner.
On the other hand, the process is arbitrary by design. Any eﬀort
to ameliorate this eﬀect by providing a path for rehabilitation requires
an administrative apparatus capable of adjudicating the resultant
claims in an impartial and reasonably expeditious manner. The UnitedStates established such processes in Germany and Japan but failed to
do so in Iraq. In cases in which the class to be proscribed has beenthoroughly defeated, totally discredited, and deprived of any possibility for resistance, lustration may be an eﬀective means of ensuring thatthose in question are not able to regain their former inﬂuence overtime. In cases in which the aﬀected individuals retain inﬂuence andare strongly rooted in the society, their exclusion is likely to occasion
signiﬁcant resistance.
Truth Commissions. Truth commissions are bodies set up to investigate a past history of human rights violations. They focus on the past.
The events may have occurred in the recent past, but a truth commission is not an ongoing body akin to a human rights commission. Truth
commissions normally investigate a pattern of abuse over a set periodof time rather than a speciﬁc event. According to their mandate, truth
commissions are usually given parameters of investigation in terms of(1) the time period covered and (2) the type of human rights violations
to be investigated. Truth commissions are temporary bodies, usuallyoperating from six months to two years. When a truth commission
completes its work, it submits a report. Its parameters are establishedat the time it is formed. Truth commissions are oﬃcially sanctioned,
authorized, or empowered by the state. This, in principle, allows thecommission to have greater access to information, greater security, andgreater assurance that its ﬁndings will be given serious consideration.
Table 4.3 provides a list of past truth commissions.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Table 4.3
Truth Commissions
Country

Dates of Operation

Period Covered

Uganda1974

1971–1974

Bolivia

1982–1984

1967–1982

Argentina

1983–1984

1976–1983

Uruguay

1985

1973–1982

Zimbabwe

1985

1983

Uganda1986–1995

1962–1986

1986

1972–1986

Nepal

1990–1991

1961–1990

Chile

1990–1991

1973–1990

Chad

1991–1992

1982–1990

Germany

1992–1994

1949–1989

El Salvador

1992–1993

1980–1991

Rwanda1992–1993

1990–1992

Sri Lanka

1994–1997

1988–1994

Haiti

1995–1996

1991–1994

Burundi

1995–1996

1993–1995

South Africa

1995–2000

1960–1994

Ecuador

1996–1997

1979–1996

Guatemala1997–1999

1962–1996

Nigeria

1999–2001

1966–1999

Peru

2000–2002

1980–2000

Uruguay

2000–2001

1973–1985

Panama

2001–2002

1968–1989

Yugoslavia

2002

1991–2001

East Timor

2002

1974–1999

Sierra Leone

2002

1991–1999

Ghana

2002

1966–2001

Philippines

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97

Truth commissions can be helpful in compiling a comprehensive
account that addresses the broader context of the conﬂict and the factors that contributed to atrocities. They usually oﬀer an opportunity
for direct participation by a large number of victims. They may seek
to promote the reintegration of lesser perpetrators into the community
through reconciliation agreements. The goal of such eﬀorts is not toprosecute or punish, but to disclose the facts about abuses. Truth commissions have frequently led to conditional amnesties. Amnesties canvary with respect to timing as well as conditions. An amnesty can be
declared prior to the establishment of a commission or passed after it
has ﬁnished its work. It can be unconditional and extend to all ranks
or conditional upon cooperation. Without some form of amnesty, thecommission will likely encounter widespread, serious opposition frompolitical and former military leaders.
Truth commissions have several potential drawbacks. Most do
not include prosecution. A sense of incompletion is likely to prevail
without prosecution of the perpetrators identiﬁed by a truth commission. Amnesties often lead to popular resentment, since they beneﬁtperpetrators of atrocities. This is especially true when a sweeping apriori amnesty is granted, in which case the commission may be seen as
a ﬁg leaf with no punitive, and little restorative, power. Governments
do not always agree with the ﬁndings of truth commissions, undercutting the credibility of their results. In El Salvador in 1993, the government dismissed the truth commission. Members of the supreme court
denounced it, and Defense Minister Rene Emilio Ponce referred to it
as “insolent.” Less than a week after the truth commission report was
released, the Salvadoran National Assembly approved blanket amnesty
for all abuses committed during the civil war.
Eﬀective truth commissions should involve the following:• Sponsorship: The credibility of truth commissions is aﬀected by
the choice of sponsorship, by the timing of its establishment, andby the groups involved in its creation and design. The legitimacyof sponsorship depends on the name under which the commission is established and how civil society is involved in creating orsponsoring the commission.

98

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building• Mandate: The mandate of a truth commission deﬁnes its purpose,
powers, and limitations. Key components of the design of a truth
commission are the scope of the investigation, the time horizon,
legal powers of investigation, whether it will identify names,
access to state and military ﬁles, and the purpose and scope of its
recommendations.
• Composition: The commissioners appointed are highly visible andoften seen as representing the seriousness of the eﬀort to face pasthuman right abuses. Their reputations are a crucial factor in theeﬀectiveness of a truth commission. In some cases, the inclusionof instrumental members may enhance the commission’s credibility and perceived impartiality. Key choices in selecting commissioners include the number, professional background, gender, andethnic diversity of its members.
• Resources: The material and human resources of a commission areimportant prerequisites for the eﬀectiveness of its operations. The
number, qualiﬁcation, and reputation of a commission’s staﬀ, as
well as the money, equipment, and time allocated for its work
will aﬀect how many cases will be investigated, the depth of theseinvestigations, and the geographic scope of the investigations.
• Proceedings: The proceedings are determined by the mandate andresources allocated. Key aspects of a commission’s proceedings
are assessments of communities’ and victims’ needs, cooperation
with civil society, the visibility of the hearings, the risks of participating in hearings, the number of cases presented to the commission, and media coverage.
• Dissemination of ﬁndings: At the end of a commission’s tenure,
it issues and disseminates its ﬁndings and recommendations. In
some cases, the commission’s cumulative knowledge has beenshared only with the leader of the country. In most cases, theﬁndings have been published. One way to share the commission’s
insights is to publish a report that documents key ﬁndings.
Choosing Among Options. There are several factors to be considered in determining where along the spectrum from “forgive andforget” to “try and punish” intervening authorities may wish to posi-

Rule of Law

99tion their eﬀorts to promote reconciliation and justice. In cases inwhich the conﬂict was civil in nature, the intervening authorities havean opportunity to judge the temper of the population, which may behungry for justice, or which may, on the contrary, be so war-weary as
to prefer overwhelmingly to put the past behind it.
Another critical calculation is the level of commitment the intervening authorities are prepared to make to carry out their chosen
policy. International tribunals are extremely expensive, with the trialof a single individual often costing millions of dollars. Beyond the
direct cost of mounting such a process, there is also the implied cost of
its enforcement. The more intervening authorities commit themselvesto rapid and far-reaching reform, the more resistance their eﬀorts arelikely to engender. War crime tribunals can be viewed as the ultimate
form of enforced transformation, one in which members of the previous ruling elite are deprived not just of their power and property, butof their freedom or even their lives. Any such eﬀort is likely to encounter resistance not just from the individuals concerned, but from theirfamilies, associates, and supporters. In cases in which the ratio of intervening force to local population is very high, war crime tribunals may
be an eﬀective means of both providing exemplary justice and promoting long-term social change. Even in such circumstances, however, theopportunity costs need to be considered, given the many other claims
on available economic and personnel resources.
Too often, war crime tribunals are employed not as an adjunct toeﬀective peace enforcement but as an alternative. In Bosnia, Rwanda,
and more recently in Darfur, the international community has pursued
war crime prosecutions not in the aftermath of an intervention in aneﬀort to halt the abuses in question, but as alternative to such intervention. This has allowed the international community to respond to
public pressures to do something about a mounting tragedy without
actually committing the troops and money needed to halt it. To theextent that such palliatives actually succeed in deﬂecting public opinion and reducing pressures for more forceful action, the result may be
the exact opposite of that ostensibly intended, awarding the perpetrators further time to carry forward their abusive projects. For those reasons, we recommend that they resort to international tribunals only in

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situations in which the intervening authorities are prepared to enforce
the results in an enduring and conclusive fashion.
Many of these considerations apply equally to any process oflustration. Assessing collective rather than individual guilt is obviously cheaper and easier to administer, but, to the extent that the category of individuals aﬀected is larger, it may actually stimulate evengreater resistance requiring commensurately greater eﬀorts to counter.
In Japan, the United States purged 0.29 percent of the population. In
Germany it purged almost nine times more, 2.5 percent of the population. The United States also had a soldier-to-population ratio in Germany ﬁve times higher than in Japan. In Japan, most of those purged
were rehabilitated within a few years, and the entire program wascountermanded as soon as Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952. In
Germany, the eﬀect both on the individuals concerned and on the society as a whole was more lasting. In Iraq, the original U.S. debaathiﬁcation decree was too sweeping, as its authors now acknowledge, while
the United States never put in place an eﬀective process for review
and rehabilitation. These early decisions almost certainly contributed
to a level of resistance that the U.S.-led coalition was unprepared tocounter.
Whatever option is chosen, unless norms of accountability are
institutionalized domestically by strengthening national legal institutions, the long-term impact of transitional justice proceedings will belimited. In some cases, such as Rwanda, war crime trials have had little
impact on eﬀorts to strengthen rule of law. Donors provided resources
to investigate and try individuals accused of war crimes, but did notprovide additional resources to improve judicial capacity. One of thedownsides of the international criminal tribunals in Yugoslavia and
Rwanda has been their failure to contribute to building domestic judicial capacity on which the money committed to those tribunals mightwell have been better spent. Major donors, international organizations,and NGOs all have important roles to play in promoting rule of law.
Individual donors may take responsibility for supporting the development of certain sectors. The U.S. Department of Justice, for instance,
has units that specialize in building both police and judicial establishments in postconﬂict countries.

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101

Key Actors
There are at least three types of international actors that should be
involved in rule-of-law eﬀorts. The ﬁrst are donor states. They are able
to provide greater resources than are NGOs and major internationalorganizations to encourage the development of rule of law. But theirgoals and policies may be strongly inﬂuenced by political and geostrategic considerations, which can conﬂict with best practices. In somecountries, such as the United States, several government entities are
involved in training individuals involved in rule-of-law activities: theU.S. Department of Justice (including the Oﬃce of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training), the U.S. Agency forInternational Development, the U.S. Department of State (including
the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Aﬀairs),
and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In some stability operations, donor
states have agreed on a “lead nation” setup for rule-of-law eﬀorts. Italy
played this role in Afghanistan. Italy was supposed to provide ﬁnancial
assistance, coordinate external assistance, and oversee reconstruction
eﬀorts in the rule-of-law sector to improve eﬃciency and coordination.
In practice, this approach did not work well. Italy simply lacked theexpertise, resources, interest, and inﬂuence needed to succeed in suchan undertaking. Large international organizations, such as the United
Nations and the World Bank, have signiﬁcant expertise and experiencein fostering the development of rule of law. The United Nations Oﬃce
on Drugs and Crime has been involved in eﬀorts to advance counternarcotics through improvement in the criminal justice system. The
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been involvedin a variety of programs to build rule of law during nation-building
operations, oﬀering training in such areas as international standards onhuman rights and criminal law, humanitarian law, gender justice, childprotection, and codes of conduct. The World Bank promoted eﬀorts toimprove governance and investment codes.
Many NGOs specialize in the rule of law, providing training,helping to draft legal codes, building courts, or providing equipment.
On the other hand, the rising number of NGOs has led to coordination problems in rebuilding the rule of law. NGOs may also have a

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

wide range of goals and approaches that diﬀer from those of the hostgovernment, major international organizations, or donor states. These
challenges create a strong impetus to design institutional arrangementsthat increase eﬃciency and help overcome coordination and collaboration problems.

SizingRegarding international personnel, we recommend the provision of one
advisor for every 10 judges, one mentor for every 30 prosecutors, andone advisor for every prison. These are meant to be rough estimates.
They were determined by assessing and balancing cost constraints, theavailability of international justice advisors, and the need for mentoring in past nation-building operations.
To estimate the number of local judges, prosecutors, and corrections personnel needed for a well-functioning justice sector, we compared data from nearly a dozen countries. We chose these countries
so as to include wide variation in geographic location, type of justicesystem, population size, and economic conditions. As Figure 4.2 illustrates, numbers of judges vary widely, from 25 judges per 100,000
inhabitants in Germany to 0.15 in Ethiopia, with an average of six per
100,000 inhabitants across the group. The variation is a function ofseveral factors, such as the capacity and strength of the central government; the number of criminals and others moving through the justicesystem; and whether the country uses a formal, informal, or mixed
legal system. The number of prosecutors also varies, from a high ofnearly 12 per 100,000 in Albania to 0.23 in Ethiopia. The average
number is six prosecutors per 100,000 inhabitants.
As Figure 4.3 illustrates, the number of corrections personnel also
varies signiﬁcantly across countries. The data include numbers of staﬀ
working in adult and juvenile prisons, penal institutions, and correctional institutions. Numbers range from 12 corrections personnel per
100,000 inhabitants in Japan to 76 in the United Kingdom, with anaverage of 42 per 100,000 inhabitants. Not shown in the ﬁgure, theratio of corrections personnel to prisoners ranges from roughly one

Rule of Law

103

Figure 4.2
Number of Judges and Prosecutors per 100,000 Inhabitants
25

Number per 1,000 inhabitants

16
JudgesProsecutors

14
12
10
8
6
4
2

m
do

Ki

ng

Tu
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fr

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G

hi

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0

SOURCE: United Nations Ofﬁce on Drugs and Crime (2002).
RAND MG557-4.2

corrections staﬀ member for every two prisoners in Germany and theUnited Kingdom to one staﬀ member for every eight prisoners in El
Salvador and South Africa.9 As a general rule, the higher the number ofprisoners per capita, the wider the disparity in the ratio of corrections
personnel to prisoners. Figure 4.4 shows comparative data on the numbers of adult and juvenile prisons, penal institutions, and other correctional institutions. Total numbers range from approximately 0.14
correctional institutions per 100,000 inhabitants in Japan to a high of
0.78 in Azerbaijan. These numbers can vary depending on the amountof international assistance, capacity of the indigenous government, theuse of formal law, and the number of individuals moving through—and convicted by—the court system.

9

United Nations Oﬃce on Drugs and Crime (2002).

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 4.3
Number of Corrections Personnel

Number of corrections personnel
per 100,000 inhabitants

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

m

Ki

ng

Tu
r

do

ke

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a
fr
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A

ra

d

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te

So

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ud

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pa

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Ja

an

or

er
G

Sa

lv

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Ch
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rb
ze
A

A

lb

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0

SOURCE: United Nations Ofﬁce on Drugs and Crime (2002).
RAND MG557-4.3

Costs
Intervening powers need to anticipate funding some or most of theexpenses of the justice sector over the ﬁrst several years following anintervention. The indigenous government, if there is one, is likely tolack suﬃcient revenue to pay judges, prosecutors, and corrections personnel; to build and maintain physical infrastructure; or to run thelegal system.
We estimated the costs of international personnel by evaluating
the costs of deploying justice and other civilian personnel during fourstability operations: in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Liberia.10 We
10 Data are compiled from United Nations General Assembly (2004a, 2005a, 2004b,

2005a).

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105

Figure 4.4
Number of Correctional Institutions

Number of adult prisons and othercorrectional institutions per
100,000 inhabitants

0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1

m

Ki

ng

do

ke

y

a

Tu
r

fr
h

A

ra

d

ut

U

ni

te

So

iA
ud

Sa

ic

a
bi

n
pa

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Ja

er

m

an

or
ad
lv

Sa

G

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Ch
El

n
rb

ze
A

A

lb

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an

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ia

0

SOURCE: United Nations Ofﬁce on Drugs and Crime (2002).
RAND MG557-4.4

calculated the average cost per person by compiling information on
personnel and operational costs. The latter includes a combination oftransportation, infrastructure, and other costs.11 We estimate that it
costs roughly $185,000 per person to deploy international personnel
engaged in establishing rule of law, including personnel and operational costs.12 We estimated domestic costs by noting that, on average,
countries spend approximately 0.26 percent of their GDPs on their jus-

11 We aggregated costs for facilities and infrastructure; ground, air, and naval transporta-

tion; communications, medical services, and special equipment. Since the UN does not
disaggregate the operational costs of military personnel from those of civilian personnel, ourestimates may slightly overstate per soldier costs. However, military personnel account formost operational costs.
12 The costs per person were approximately $154,195 for Congo, $292,285 for Haiti,$163,486 for Liberia, and $122,680 for Sierra Leone. This averaged out to $183,162; werounded to $185,000.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

tice sectors, exclusive of police.13 We use this average of 0.26 percent of
GDP to estimate the cost of running a typical national justice system.
What does this analysis imply for the rule-of-law component ofstability operations? To illustrate, we evaluated the cost of a hypothetical intervention in Mozambique. In 2006, that country has a population of approximately 20 million. Using the average number of judges(6), prosecutors (6), and corrections staﬀ (42) per 100,000 inhabitants, we estimate that Mozambique would need a total of 1,200 judges,
1,200 prosecutors, and 8,400 corrections staﬀ. Using the average offour correctional institutions per million inhabitants, we estimatethat Mozambique would need a total of 80 major correctional institutions. Mozambique had a GDP of $26 billion in 2006. Assumingthat Mozambique should spend 0.26 percent of its GDP on the justicesector, Mozambique’s ministry of justice would need approximately$68 million annually to function eﬀectively. Mozambique would alsoneed an average of one international mentor for every 10 judges, one
mentor per corrections facility, and one mentor for every 30 prosecutors. This translates to a total of 240 international justice personnel.
Since we estimate that each justice oﬃcial costs approximately$185,000, this translates to a total international cost of nearly $45
million. These estimates are meant to provide a ﬁrst cut at estimating
numbers and costs for the full range of international and local employees engaged in the justice sector in the aftermath of an external intervention. Tables 4.4 and 4.5 show these results.

13 There was a substantial range in spending among the 17 countries we analyzed. The

standard deviation was 0.22. Countries included Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa,
Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. We chose these countries to ensure variation in
geographic location, type of justice system, population size, and economic conditions.

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107

Table 4.4
Estimated Numbers of Justice Personnel for Mozambique,Year One
Personnel or Institution

NumberLocal judges

1,200

Local prosecutors

1,200

Local corrections staff

8,400

Local correctional institutions

80

International advisors

240

SOURCE: RAND calculations.

Table 4.5
Estimated Costs of Restoring Judicial Services in Mozambique, Year One
Division of Costs

Justice Shareof GDP

GDP(2006 US$)

Total Expenditure(2006 US$)

Indigenous costs

0.26

26 billion

68 million

International costs——

45 million

SOURCE: RAND calculations.
NOTE: Amounts may not sum due to rounding.

CHAPTER FIVE

Humanitarian Relief

The humanitarian component of stability operations involves preventing large-scale loss of life by providing emergency food, shelter,
clothing, and medical services to the local population. In most
instances, relief agencies have already been on the ground and were
providing humanitarian assistance throughout the conﬂict. The broad
objective of humanitarian eﬀorts should be to save lives, alleviate
human suﬀering, and minimize displacement. In most postconﬂict
situations, large numbers of people have been displaced. The challenge
for the international community is in providing for existing and newly
displaced people, then beginning the process of encouraging people toreturn home or ﬁnd new, permanent places in which to settle. Most
major humanitarian relief agencies are professionally staﬀed and comparatively well resourced. Funding for nation-building is always inshort supply, but humanitarian relief is one area that donors are mostinclined to fund. As a result, virtually no nation-building operation has
been compromised by inadequacies in humanitarian relief. But there
are numerous examples in which the intervening authorities’ failure
to establish a modicum of public security has made it impossible forhumanitarian agencies to complete their mission or even to sustain
their assistance to threatened populations.

Key Challenges
Conducting Preintervention Planning. Humanitarian missions
usually take place under extreme time constraints, with little time and

109

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few opportunities to think strategically about planning once operations
begin. This makes it important to establish plans in advance, if possible.
Key challenges include gathering systematic and actionable information on humanitarian conditions prior to an intervention, coordinatingplans across a wide range of governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and ensuring the preintervention mobilization of postconﬂict humanitarian resources. Since there is not always suﬃcient time
to conduct planning activities, pre-positioning supplies and developing
established systems are critical to eﬀective relief operations.
Responding to Crises. Intervening authorities may have to deal
with at least ﬁve types of acute humanitarian challenges. First, war
can increase the likelihood of communicable diseases, which may
reach epidemic proportions if not treated quickly. Diseases such as
cholera and dysentery have been particularly prevalent in postconﬂict settings. Second, famine and drought can present signiﬁcant anddire challenges. In Somalia, U.S. and UN oﬃcials had to provide
suﬃcient food and water to much of the population in a country inwhich the water system had collapsed and much of the agricultural
infrastructure—such as irrigation pumps and food processing plants—
had been destroyed by looting. Third, war usually displaces large populations. As discussed later, international and indigenous relief workers
need to quickly provide food, shelter, and other assistance to refugees
and internally displaced persons. Fourth, combat destroys roads, hospitals, public buildings, and other infrastructure needed to distribute
food and provide medical care. During the course of war, the electric
power system is often seriously damaged. As electricity is needed topump water, operate sewage plants, refrigerate medicines, and operate clinics, the collapse of the electric power system creates serious andacute health problems. Transportation infrastructure, such as bridges,
roads, ports, and railway systems, may be heavily damaged. Finally,
intervening authorities may have to deal with traumatic injuries fromland mines, unexploded ordnance, and weapons.
Establishing Coordination Arrangements. Coordinating donor
states, international organizations, and NGOs involved in humanitarian relief eﬀorts is challenging. As one World Bank study notes, virtually all humanitarian relief eﬀorts suﬀer from “a lack of an overarchingHumanitarian Relief

111

nationally-driven plan to which all donors agree, resulting in fragmentation, gaps or duplication in aid-ﬁnanced programs.”1 Poor coordination can have serious consequences by scattering assistance among
a greater number of projects so that relief workers fail to tackle key
priorities.
Assisting Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. Refugees
and internally displaced persons are often the greatest humanitarian
challenge facing intervening authorities in postconﬂict societies. Highconcentrations of displaced people are breeding grounds for epidemics, and they face the prospect of starvation if food cannot be provided
to them. Large numbers of destitute people create frictions with theirhosts. Residents of surrounding areas have sometimes attacked refugees
and refugee camps, forcing the intervening authorities to provide security as well as food and shelter. In some cases, people are displaced not
because they were civilians ﬂeeing the scene of the battle between two
armed groups, but because they are themselves the objects of attack,either for the purpose of extermination or to cause them to ﬂee, so
as to cleanse an area ethnically. Organized military or paramilitaryforces may terrorize the target population to induce them to move. The
combatants may have forcibly deported groups, evicting people at gunpoint. In other cases, populations may ﬂee because the security environment has deteriorated so much that they believe it is safer to leavethan stay. Violence is not always overt. Large numbers of people ﬂed
regions of Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, and Cambodia becauseof land mines. Mines also discourage people from returning home after
the ﬁghting ceases.
Making the Transition from Relief. The humanitarian relief eﬀort
usually ends within several months following a conﬂict. By that time,
many of the displaced have gone home or found new homes. Refugee camps are closed. International humanitarian organizations havebegun to pack their bags. At this point, intervening authorities are
1

United Nations Development Group and World Bank, An Operational Note on Transitional Results Matrices: Using Results-Based Frameworks in Fragile States, New York, January 2005, p. 2. See also Olga Bornemisza and Egbert Sondorp, Health Policy Formulationin Complex Political Emergencies and Post-Conﬂict Countries: A Literature Review, London:
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, November 7, 2002.

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faced with the challenge of moving from emergency relief eﬀorts toproviding government services on a sustained basis. It is important
to shift as quickly as possible into longer-term transition and development. However, this shift is rarely a linear one. Rather, it is usually a process of going backward and forward as dictated by levels of
stability—often diﬀering geographically within a country—or bywaves of renewed conﬂict.
Creating Measures of Effectiveness. Policymakers and practitioners need to measure the eﬀectiveness of humanitarian eﬀorts. If theycannot measure performance, they cannot assess success or failure,
making midcourse corrections diﬃcult. One of the most signiﬁcantchallenges in measuring eﬀectiveness is identifying appropriate—and
inappropriate—quantitative and qualitative metrics.

Best Practices
Conducting Preintervention Planning

Humanitarian operations often take place under tight time constraints.
If those in charge of the operation have not planned carefully beforehand, once it commences, there are few opportunities and little time tothink strategically about the operation, making it important to plan inadvance. The intervening authorities should set key objectives, tasks, andtimelines, and compile relevant information on past and current living
conditions of the population. This should include assembling necessary
material and equipment, such as medical kits, water, tents, blankets,and food, as well as making logistical arrangements to transport material and equipment to target areas. Table 5.1 oﬀers a sample planningmatrix for humanitarian missions. Key steps include reaching a consensus on objectives, establishing a coordination unit that includes a lead
actor, preparing cost estimates, and training humanitarian teams. In
many cases, agencies are already on the ground when nation-building
operations begin and have been there throughout the conﬂict. Consequently, one of the key challenges is coordinating among humanitarian agencies and collating the assessment data collected by them.

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113

Table 5.1
Sample Humanitarian Planning Process
Summary

Description

Preparatory phase

Take a variety of preparatory steps, such as conducting
an initial needs assessment. As with all subsequent steps,
local leaders should be involved as much as possible inplanning and implementation. This should also include
pre-positioning blankets, water, medicine, and otherhumanitarian supplies.

Key objectives andscope

Outline the key objectives of the humanitarian effort.

Coordination

Establish at least an interim institutional arrangement for
coordinating assistance, including the appointment of alead actor.

Planning document

Establish a coherent planning document detailing whatshould be achieved in each sector and how this can be
done. Such a planning framework is best derived by
way of an outcome-based approach. It should provide
a comprehensive deﬁnition of the principal objectives,
vision, and scope of the effort, as well as the priority
sectors.

Assess impact ofcross-cutting factors

Conduct an analysis of security, political, economic, andother factors that may impact humanitarian efforts. For
example, who will provide security for humanitarianagencies?

Timelines

Establish deadlines for completion of key humanitarian
activities, taking into consideration that the time required
may vary depending on the data, materials available,
assessments already completed, and initial conditions.

Cost estimates

Develop realistic and comprehensive cost estimates.

Funding arrangements

Establish institutional arrangements for the quick
disbursal of funds, and establish statutory grant-making
authority to humanitarian response teams, if necessary.

Prioritization andsequencing

Prioritize key sectors in line with the initial needs
assessment and sequence steps. This may include
identifying key issues that cut across health and otherareas (such as gender, environmental, and HIV/AIDS
issues).

Stafﬁng

Form a primary group of experts who collect data andanalyze the humanitarian needs of the country and who
are responsible for developing and extrapolating sectoral
analyses, planning frameworks, and technical reports.

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Table 5.1—Continued
Summary

Description

Logistics

Make logistical arrangements to transport material andequipment to target areas, hire contractors to supportand implement humanitarian efforts, and pre-positionmaterial and equipment for quicker disbursal. This may
also include making arrangements to ensure the quick
disbursal of funds.

Implementation andassessments

Implement plans and programs, monitor performance,and make necessary corrections. This may include
assembling necessary material and equipment, such as
medical kits, water, and food.

Lessons learned

Compile major insights and lessons learned.

SOURCE: Uwe Kievelitz et al., Practical Guide to Multilateral Needs Assessments in
Post-Conﬂict Situations, New York: United Nations Development Programme, World
Bank, and United Nations Development Group, August 2004.

Nation-building operations take place in countries with a wide
range of cultural and social conditions. International personnel must
be aware of these conditions and ﬁnd ways to balance them withhumanitarian concerns. In Afghanistan, traditional beliefs about medicine, nutrition, and hygiene led to erroneous conclusions about what
constituted safe health practices. Some Afghans believed that any
moving water was clean and liquids should be withheld from children with diarrhea. The propensity to marry girls oﬀ at a young age,a reluctance to spend money and resources on health care for daughters and wives, inequitable distribution of food within the family,
frequent physical violence toward women and children, and a reluctance to educate girls and women also added to the complexity ofmoving from relief to development. Contextual knowledge is critical to ensuring that inappropriate assistance, such as small shelters toextended families, is not provided. In Haiti and Somalia, the international community was strongly criticized for having an incomplete
grasp of social and cultural realities and for attempting to impose aWestern health system. The majority of Haitians and Somalis, par-

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115

ticularly in rural areas, received their health care from traditional
practitioners and healers—not from formal health care systems.2
In virtually all nation-building operations, some international
institutions and NGOs are likely to have been involved in humanitarian eﬀorts before and during the conﬂict. Through experience, theseorganizations and personnel have developed a good understanding of
the humanitarian challenges within the country. Since reliable statistical information on humanitarian conditions is often unavailable, priorknowledge is crucial for developing programs. Bilateral donors, international institutions, and NGOs should recruit actors with in-country
experience to assist in planning and developing assistance programs.
Pre-positioning material and supplies facilitates rapid delivery
and saves lives. Purchasing and pre-positioning personal hygiene kits
and emergency health kits helps prevent the spread of disease. Identifying the types and quantities of materials requires an assessmentof local health clinics and hospitals, the availability of pharmaceuticals, and immunization rates. Water and sanitation supplies, including potable water, water jugs, and water treatment units, have to bereadied. A successful emergency response requires adequate supplies
of water, as well as sanitary waste disposal and wastewater removal.
Pre-positioning requires an assessment of water and sanitation facilities that reach all major populations centers and of supplies of potablewater. Food has to be made available to satisfy the nutritional needs ofthe population. Emergency shelter and supplies have to be provided tovulnerable populations. Planners need to estimate the potential numbers and movements of refugees and internally displaced persons. They
must then procure suﬃcient plastic sheeting, tents, blankets, and otheremergency shelter material. In general, pre-positioning should be done
well in advance of a humanitarian emergency. Standard supplies can bewarehoused at central locations and then drawn down as needed.

2

Seth G. Jones, Lee H. Hilborne, et al., Securing Health: Lessons from Nation-Building Missions, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG-321-RC, 2006.

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Responding to Crises

Once humanitarian assistance eﬀorts begin, the immediate focus should
be on dealing with at least ﬁve issues: communicable disease outbreaks,
famine and drought, major ﬂows of refugees and internally displaced
persons, building key infrastructure such as the electric power system,
and weapons (including WMD). Priority should be given to these areas
because a failure to manage them eﬀectively may severely aﬀect thehealth and welfare of the population, and numerous other humanitarian eﬀorts will fail if these elements are not addressed ﬁrst.
The ﬁrst step for humanitarian workers is to respond to theoutbreak—or potential outbreak—of communicable diseases quickly
to forestall epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, hepatitis,
measles, giardiasis, and brucellosis. Children under ﬁve and pregnant
women are particularly vulnerable. In Iraq, the country experienced
increased rates of infectious diseases in the immediate aftermath of
the 2003 conﬂict. The World Health Organization reported the ﬁrst
outbreak of cholera in al Basrah on May 15, 2003. There was also widespread reporting of pertussis and diphtheria—especially in the south.
The possibility of outbreaks of communicable disease makes it important to establish a disease surveillance system that allows public healthagencies to monitor disease incidence and plan responses. Surveillancesystems collect and monitor data on disease trends and outbreaks sothat public health personnel can protect the population’s health.
Second, famine and drought require an immediate response.
Humanitarian organization personnel need to assess the most vulnerable and aﬀected areas, then rapidly disburse emergency food andwater to the aﬀected populations. In some cases, humanitarian workers may have to recreate food distribution systems. In Iraq in 2003, forexample, 60 percent of Iraqis depended on the rations provided by theoil-for-food program. U.S. planners attempted to disrupt the system
as little as possible during the war and to reestablish it as quickly as
possible after the conclusion of hostilities. Security is required to protect relief workers, since food and water may be tempting targets forwarlords and other spoilers. Aid agencies usually seek ambient security, rather than convoy security, to maximize impartiality. In Somalia,
the lack of security halted relief eﬀorts in 1991. Many of the inter-Humanitarian Relief

117

national relief agencies withdrew their personnel. By 1991, only theInternational Committee of the Red Cross and a small number ofNGOs remained in Somalia to provide food and medical assistancein response to the emerging humanitarian crisis. Conditions improved
somewhat over the next few years, when the United Nations and theUnited States deployed forces to protect aid workers. After unsuccessful attempts to stabilize the security environment and negotiate withwarlords, the United Nations ﬁnally determined that sustaining aneﬀective humanitarian relief and peacekeeping operation was impossible. United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNSOM II) forces
departed the country in March 1995.
Third, humanitarian workers strive to minimize refugee ﬂows
and numbers of internally displaced persons. Once a person is displaced, he or she becomes much more vulnerable to disease and violence. Population displacements are aﬀected by the manner and duration of the war and the extent to which the ﬁghting produces internal
political upheaval. International organizations, NGOs, and statesneed to put in place mechanisms and resources to respond to worstcase scenarios. Examples include the stockpiling of adequate food,water, medical supplies, and clothing, as well as plans for distributing
these items. Contingency planning should also include dealing withneighboring countries that may try to close their borders and tighten
policies against refugees. Without communicating with all actors
involved in responding to population displacements, the humanitarian assistance eﬀort risks delays in mobilizing and pre-positioning
critical materials for displaced people. Without prior coordination, theintervening authorities also risk conducting redundant and irrelevant
planning and operations, as well as encouraging counterproductive
competition and turf battles.
Fourth, some infrastructure may have to be built or refurbishedquickly to prevent a humanitarian crisis. The objective at this stage
should not be a long-term and thorough reconstruction of the transportation, power, water, and sanitation systems. Rather, it should be tofocus on areas that must be ﬁxed immediately to prevent a signiﬁcantdeterioration in conditions. For example, the electrical network may bein poor condition, making it virtually impossible for hospitals, water

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

treatment facilities, and sanitation systems to function. Critical transportation infrastructure, such as roads, railways, ports, and bridges,
may have been destroyed. The lack of some of these may impede thedelivery of potable water, medicine, and other supplies. Humanitarianand relief workers need to focus on ﬁxing infrastructure that directly
aﬀects humanitarian eﬀorts.
Finally, humanitarian workers need to focus on treating traumatic
injuries and responding to the use of weapons. A signiﬁcant portionof the population may need to be treated for traumatic injuries fromsuch events as land mine explosions. The use of WMD presents a particular set of challenges. In the event of chemical or biological attacks,
rapid response is critical, since deaths and injuries can escalate quickly.
Response eﬀorts should mirror what is sometimes called consequence
management by emergency responders. In short, preventing an acutehumanitarian crisis usually requires the following items:• food• medicine and medical supplies to treat injuries and disease outbreaks and to prevent the further spread of communicablediseases• water treatment equipment and supplies, including chemicals• sanitation materials, including latrines and hygiene kits
• emergency shelters, blankets, cooking utensils, and infant-carekits.
Security, basic infrastructure, education, governance, and economic stabilization all aﬀect the extent of humanitarian crises. Nobel
prize–winning economist Amartya Sen argues that the links among
these sectors are empirical and causal:[T]here is strong evidence that economic and political freedoms
help to reinforce one another. . . . Similarly, social opportunities
of education and health care, which may require public action,complement individual opportunities of economic and politicalHumanitarian Relief

119participation and also help to foster our own initiatives in overcoming our respective deprivations.3

Humanitarian eﬀorts are particularly sensitive to security throughdirect eﬀects, such as the inability of patients to visit doctors, andthrough indirect eﬀects, such as the inability of health care facilities tofunction properly. The absence of security can impede progress in thereconstruction of water treatment plants and hospitals, slow immunization campaigns, restrict delivery of needed supplies to health carefacilities, and aﬀect the labor force by not protecting health care providers from intimidation. Fear of attack by looters prevented healthcare professionals and patients in Iraq from going to health carefacilities. Looters stole equipment and destroyed medical records,
and facilities became overburdened by the ﬂow of patients. The workof NGOs, international organizations, and contractors was slowed or,in some cases, halted. In Afghanistan, NGOs frequently suspended,cancelled, postponed, or downsized humanitarian programs as a resultof security issues. In 2004, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without
Borders) closed all of its medical programs in Afghanistan following afatal attack on one of its vehicles in Badghis province. The converseis also true: The establishment of security can facilitate humanitarianeﬀorts.
In short, response eﬀorts to acute humanitarian crises—such ascommunicable disease outbreaks, famine and drought, population displacement, destruction of critical infrastructure, and use of WMD—
may be closely linked with other developments. International organizations, NGOs, and states may need to spend time and resources
refurbishing hospitals and clinics, training staﬀ, and providing equipment. But unreliable power or unstable security conditions can undermine these eﬀorts. In addition, there is often a short window available
for stabilization after the ﬁghting stops. In Iraq, for example, there
were only a few months during which key actors could move about
freely and work with aﬀected communities.

3

Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, New York: Anchor Books, 2000, p. xii.

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Establishing Coordination Arrangements

The coordination of humanitarian eﬀorts is a challenge. In some ways,
coordination and planning were simpler in Germany and Japan following World War II because there were fewer actors. In Germany, theU.S. military government had to coordinate eﬀorts only with those
local German authorities they had empowered and a few NGOs, suchas CARE, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and theUnited Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The numberof actors involved in humanitarian eﬀorts has increased greatly since
the end of the Cold War. The greater the number of actors, the morediﬃcult coordination becomes—what is sometimes called the collective
action problem.4 In Iraq, 80 NGOs registered with the United Nations
Humanitarian Information Center database; they were engaged in over
300 projects. However, only a small percentage of NGOs are usuallyable to stay beyond the initial provision of acute assistance and operate
in severely compromised environments.
Coordination is needed between the civilian and military authorities, among international actors, and between international and domestic actors. The United Nations Oﬃce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aﬀairs (OCHA) has a mandate to coordinate, though this often
proves diﬃcult on the ground.
Civil-Military Coordination. International and nongovernmentalorganizations—not military forces—should ordinarily take the leadin providing humanitarian assistance. They are better trained andequipped for humanitarian eﬀorts and are generally viewed as more
impartial than military forces. Traditionally, there has been a distinction between the military and civilian domains, built on the international law distinction between combatants and noncombatants.
However, militaries have increasingly become involved in humanitarian operations, leading to tension between militaries and NGOs. In
Afghanistan, NGOs objected to the provision of humanitarian aid by
U.S. military forces and objected even more strongly when those mili-

4

Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 2.

Humanitarian Relief

121tary personnel conducted operations out of uniform, creating confusion between civilian and military actors.5
NGOs have traditionally raised at least two broad objections tomilitary forces participating in humanitarian relief.6 First, they argue
that such activities transgress the principle that relief should be provided by impartial parties. As the code of conduct for the International
Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement states, nongovernmental
humanitarian agencies are “agencies which act independently fromgovernments.” It continues,
We will never knowingly—or through negligence—allow ourselves, or our employees, to be used to gather information of apolitical, military or economically sensitive nature for governments or their bodies that may serve purposes other than thosewhich are strictly humanitarian.7

Some relief agencies argue that blurring the line between relief workers
and soldiers places their personnel at greater risk from attacks by warring parties.
Relief agencies also note that military forces are not experts inhumanitarian relief and have diﬀerent priorities. They often use assistance for “hearts and minds” operations, prioritizing the delivery of
aid based on criteria other than need. Substantial military involvement in the delivery of humanitarian (and reconstruction) assistancecan become particularly problematic during the transition phases,
during which the groundwork is laid for longer-term recovery. In someinstances, military eﬀorts may create more harm than good, jeopardiz-

5

Olga Oliker et al., Aid During Conﬂict: Interaction Between Military and Civilian Assistance Providers in Afghanistan, September 2001–June 2002, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND
Corporation, MG-212-OSD, 2004.

6

See, for example, Jane Barry and Anna Jeﬀerys, “A Bridge Too Far: Aid Agencies and theMilitary in Humanitarian Response,” Network Paper No. 37, London: Humanitarian Practice Network, January 2002.

7

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, “Code of Conduct for
the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief,”
Geneva, Switzerland, 1994.

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ing long-term development projects and relationships with the local
people. Relief eﬀorts may distract the military from its primary mission and responsibility of providing security.
All these objections have some merit, and military involvementin the delivery of humanitarian relief always needs to be considered
carefully. However, the military may have engineering and medical
capabilities that can be of real use in a relief eﬀort. Further, there may
be situations in which security is so bad that only the military candeliver assistance. Such situations are, however, prima facie evidence
that the military component of the mission has failed in its primaryrole, the establishment of a secure environment.
Ideally, the military and the humanitarian agencies should bothfocus on their primary responsibilities, providing security and providing relief, respectively. Further, both sides need to work together toestablish guidelines that protect as much as possible the impartiality ofNGOs. Thus,• NGOs should not serve as implementing partners of the military
in conducting relief activities.
• Military personnel should not wear civilian clothing when conducting humanitarian operations.
• NGO personnel should not travel in military vehicles.
• Militaries and NGOs should not locate their facilities together.
• NGO personnel should not go to military bases for recreationor other activities not associated with the mission. They arelikely to be seen by local residents if they fraternize with military
personnel.
• Military forces should concentrate on their highest-priority mission, which should be public security. To the extent that theysucceed, humanitarian agencies and NGOs will subsequently becapable of meeting the population’s emergency needs.
Some types of civil-military coordination do not compromise
the impartiality of NGOs. For example, NGO personnel can participate in security brieﬁngs conducted by the military, though a common
concern is that the bulk of military information is classiﬁed and notHumanitarian Relief

123

able to be shared with NGOs. If this barrier can be overcome, bothsides can share information on security conditions, operational sites,
the locations of mines and unexploded ordnance, humanitarian activities, and population movements. This information sharing should be
for the purpose of facilitating humanitarian operations. Often, NGOs
establish liaison arrangements with military oﬃcials before and during
military operations to ensure that humanitarian installations and personnel are protected. One example is the stationing of InterAction (anumbrella humanitarian NGO association) representation at U.S. Central Command during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
Military forces may provide protection for convoys (although usually
only in extreme cases), assist in delivery, and provide evacuation assistance for medical treatment or for withdrawal from a hostile environment. The military often has the capability to help to secure areas inwhich humanitarian organizations are working. They may also havethe means to assist in delivering aid, such as rapid deployment of large
numbers of personnel, equipment, logistics, and supplies.
Coordination Among International Actors. Because of the proliferation of international organizations and local, national, and international NGOs involved in humanitarian eﬀorts, coordination among
civilian agencies is essential. A lead actor should be put in charge of
coordinating humanitarian activity. This actor could be the local
government, a donor state, or an international or nongovernmentalorganization. As noted earlier, OCHA has a mandate to coordinate
such eﬀorts. In Kosovo, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) was assigned this responsibility. The lead actor
approach is usually the most eﬃcient option, since it creates a uniﬁed command-and-control structure. However, it can be diﬃcult toagree on a lead actor, since donor states, international institutions, andNGOs generally have diﬀerent advantages, priorities, and interests. If
there is no agreement on a lead actor, international and local actors canestablish a coordinating body involving the main national and international actors and the principal NGOs. This body’s role should be
to coordinate and oversee joint assessments, establish key objectives
and strategies, prioritize steps, oversee implementation, establish joint

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

oﬃces, and simplify procedures such as setting common reporting andﬁnancial requirements.
Humanitarian workers should share lessons learned and bestpractices in coordinating mission activities. International actors should
coordinate with those institutions and NGOs that were involved inhumanitarian relief before and during the conﬂict. Such experience
provides an invaluable understanding of the ways in which people procure food, shelter, water, and health care; the condition of the population; and the major humanitarian challenges facing the country. International and local actors should avoid pitfalls that have complicatedpast humanitarian eﬀorts. They should minimize personnel changes.
Frequent changes in UN personnel, humanitarian coordinators, andmilitary and relief personnel increase the problems of coordination.
Failure to agree on common objectives is another problem. Major discrepancies in the objectives of states, international organizations, andNGOs can make it diﬃcult for donor states and international organizations to determine which NGOs are most eﬀective and worthy of
support.
Coordination Between International and Domestic Actors.

International and domestic actors may wish to form an advisory council composed of representatives from both parties to guide the overall
humanitarian strategy and facilitate coordination. This council could
establish functional committees from key humanitarian sectors, suchas those addressing the needs of refugees, which would be responsible
for sharing information and creating partnerships.
Assisting Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons

A primary goal of nation-building operations should be the returnof refugees and internally displaced persons. Indeed, some nationbuilding operations have been organized principally for that purpose.
The number of refugees in past nation-building operations has varied
widely. In East Timor, the violence that followed the September 1999
referendum displaced close to 80 percent of the territory’s population. Approximately 265,000 East Timorese became refugees; another
500,000 escaped to the interior of the country. In Kosovo, more thanhalf the population was displaced, and a quarter ﬂed or were driven out

Humanitarian Relief

125of the country in 1999. In Iraq, few people left their homes despite predictions of a humanitarian crisis.8 As ﬁghting escalated in Iraq, however, displacement eventually occurred. U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) Disaster Assistance Response Teams were
deployed to Iraq, but, since signiﬁcant humanitarian assistance was
unnecessary, they focused on assessing needs, working with military
civil aﬀairs personnel, and granting funds for community projects.
Civilian relief agencies should take the lead in returning refugees
and internally displaced persons. International militaries can help provide a secure environment in which those civilian and international
agencies can do their work. They also may provide limited relief andassistance when these agencies do not have the presence or capability
to act on their own, such as during the early phases of a war. However,once combat operations wind down, relief agencies are usually capableof operating on their own. Civilian agencies should abide by the principle of non-refoulement. No refugee should be sent to a country inwhich his or her life or freedom would be threatened because of race,
religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Figure 5.1 shows the percentage of refugees who returned to theircountry within ﬁve years following the end of conﬂict in 13 nationbuilding operations. A low level of refugee return is often a sign of continued conﬂict, as in Somalia, Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan.
Assisting refugees and internally displaced persons involves several
steps. First, humanitarian workers need to assess the nature of the challenge. Before the intervention, key tasks include identifying the factorsthat are likely to increase or decrease the number of displaced people,
aﬀect their choice of destination, and aﬀect the conditions in which
they live. Second, humanitarian workers should assemble and train
humanitarian response teams. These teams should assess the immediate humanitarian needs of displaced people, coordinate the provisionof relief eﬀorts, and allocate local grants for relief projects. Third, agencies need to pre-position and stockpile supplies in the region. Critical materials include water, pharmaceuticals, shelter, blankets, and8

Dobbins, Jones, et al. (2005).

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Percent of refugees returning after
5 years (or most recent year available)

Figure 5.1
Percentage of Refugees Returning Five Years After Conﬂict Ceases
100

100

98
90

90

85

83

80

73

72

70
60

53

50

50
39

40
30
22

20

13

12

10

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an
st
ni

ha

A

fg

Ko

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st

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er

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ia

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m

al

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So

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ad
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0

SOURCE: Data compiled from U.S. Department of State, Occupation of Germany:
Policy and Progress, 1945–1946, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce,
1947; UNHCR statistical yearbooks; Federal Statistical Ofﬁce, Yugoslavia, Statistical
Yearbook of Yugoslavia 1997, Belgrade, 1997; and U.S. Committee for Refugees
refugee surveys.
RAND MG557-5.1

food. Fourth, humanitarian agencies can help international forces
involved in combat to design military campaigns to minimize displacement. International forces coordinated with humanitarian agencies in
Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Humanitarian “mapping programs”
can be a key element of this process. They involve military outreachto humanitarian organizations to identify important facilities, suchas hospitals and cultural and historical sites. Militaries can also provide international and nongovernmental organizations with a phone
number or the address of a Web site through which to nominate targets
to be placed on a “no-strike” list.
Most humanitarian agencies have adopted a common set of standards for assisting refugees and displaced persons—as well as for otherhumanitarian activities such as water, sanitation, hygiene, nutrition,

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127

and food aid. These standards, which are often referred to as Spherestandards, are designed for use in disaster response and are applicablein a range of situations in which relief is required. They are designed to
be used in slow- and rapid-onset situations, rural and urban environments, and developing and developed countries.9
Shelter and site planning often pose speciﬁc problems. Refugees
or internally displaced persons arriving in an area settle down in various locations. In some cases, they take an unoccupied site and createa camp. In others, they spread out over a wide area and establish rural
settlements or are hosted by local communities. A poorly planned campor settlement can easily become a pathogenic environment. Overcrowding and poor hygiene are major factors in the transmission of
epidemic diseases. Lack of adequate shelter deprives the population ofprivacy and exposes them to rain, cold, heat, and wind. Camps usuallypresent a higher risk than refugee settlements, since they tend to become
overcrowded and it is less likely that basic facilities—such as waterand health care services—will be available when people arrive. To
reduce health risks, site planning and organization should take place
as early as possible to minimize overcrowding and maximize theprovision of relief. Shelters must be set up as rapidly as possible to protect refugees from the elements and facilities installed for sanitationand food. These activities must be initiated within the ﬁrst week of
the intervention. Relief agencies are usually faced with either a displaced population that has spontaneously settled in a camp prior
to the arrival of relief agencies or an empty site that can be set up
prior to the arrival of displaced people. Whichever is the case, prompt
action must be taken to improve the site and its facilities. Poor organization in the early stages may lead to a chaotic, overcrowded campthat creates substantial health risks. An ideal site is rarely available. The
choice is generally limited, since the best sites will already be inhabitedby local communities. Table 5.2 highlights key issues to consider.
The preferred way to end displacement is for people to return totheir original homes or, if these have been destroyed, to their communities voluntarily. This is usually possible once conﬂict ends. The
9See, for example, Sphere Project, The Sphere Handbook, Geneva, Switzerland, 2004.

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Table 5.2
Shelter and Site Planning
Issue

Explanation

Security andprotection

The settlement must be in a safe area (e.g., one free ofmines) and away from any war zones.

Water

Water must be available either on the site or close by.

Space

The area must be large enough to ensure sufﬁcient personal
space and to minimize disease conditions. Thirty square
meters per person is considered satisfactory.

Accessibility

Access to the site by trucks and other vehicles must be
possible during all seasons.

Environmental
health risks

Health workers should avoid camps or settlements close to
breeding sites for mosquitoes and other carriers of serious
diseases. Where such areas cannot be avoided, pests shouldbe eliminated through spraying or other means.

Local population

Every effort should be made to avoid tensions between local
and displaced communities.

Terrain

The terrain should slope to provide natural drainage forrainwater and sewage from the site.

ﬁrst movements are often spontaneous, led by a single member ofthe family. The rest of the household may follow later. Families usually need help with transportation and require food and basic tools torestart their lives. If they ﬁnd their houses burned, ﬁelds destroyed,or land occupied by others, humanitarian agencies should work toensure that returning refugees and displaced persons—as well as theircommunities—receive proper assistance. Particular attention should be
devoted to preventing and dealing with ethnic conﬂict, as well as assisting vulnerable groups such as widows, orphans, and the disabled.
Making the Transition from Relief

The goal of humanitarian eﬀorts is to provide for the immediate needsof the population. Once these have been satisﬁed, the humanitarianeﬀort should be wound down. This progression from relief to development is usually not linear or uniform and requires ﬂexibility. Fromthe earliest stages of relief assistance, programs are most eﬀective when
beneﬁciaries are involved in the design, management, and implemen-

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129

tation of the assistance program. This approach becomes particularly
critical when transitioning to longer-term development approaches.
Ideally, transition programs strengthen the local community’s voice
while enabling local and central governments to assume substantial
responsibility. Indeed, a key objective of postconﬂict nation-building
should be to reach a “tipping point.” This is the point at which thenational and local governments begin to assume substantial responsibility for providing government services.
After World War II, it took Germany approximately two and ahalf years to reach the tipping point. By January 1948, German authorities had taken over full responsibility for the provision of local services, including health services, from the U.S. Oﬃce of Military Government. But U.S. advisors continued to observe, inspect, advise, andreport on health activities. Haiti has never reached the tipping point.
The United States largely withdrew in 1997 after three years, and the
UN a couple of years later. The Haitian government never developed
the capacity to eﬀectively provide government services. There was nofunctioning ministry of health or administrative personnel within theministry who could receive donor support, oversee ﬁnancial administration, and ensure eﬀective implementation. Haiti lacked trained
health care workers and civil servants in the public sector. Many Haitian professionals had left the country, and the remaining personnel
were often poorly trained and had little experience in administrationor government. Aid organizations and donor states frequently funneledresources through the NGO community. Training indigenous personnel is a critical aspect of the handoﬀ. Otherwise, the programs “neither
reﬂect favorably on the host government nor will they remain eﬀective
after withdrawal of outside forces.”10
Governance is important for long-term sustainability. In countries
with a strong governance capacity, long-term reconstruction may be
more rapid. Since national contributions and ownership are likely to behigh, planning can be oriented beyond the short term (0 to 18 months)
to include medium-term (18 to 36 months) recovery and development
10 Robert J. Wilensky, Military Medicine to Win Hearts and Minds: Aid to Civilians in the

Vietnam War, Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Tech University Press, 2004, p. 132.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

needs. In countries with weak capacity, national and private humanitarian and development institutions usually do not have the ability
to provide services eﬀectively. In Somalia, for example, warlords did
not support relief eﬀorts and attacked, looted, and extorted paymentsfrom relief convoys. Humanitarian assistance had the perverse eﬀectof exacerbating tensions among rival groups within the country thatwere competing for control of scarce resources. In Afghanistan, mostof the country has historically been controlled by tribes and local warlords, and since its establishment in late 2001, the Karzai government
has made only limited progress in delivering public services, including
security, to much of the country.
Creating Measures of Effectiveness

Program management entails tracking inputs, outputs, and outcomes.
Inputs are the resources utilized, such as the amount of ﬁnancial assistance provided, the number of international personnel deployed, andthe amount and type of equipment and material supplied. Outputs
are the results generated by the program. Examples include the numberof doctors and nurses trained, as well as the number of hospitals andhealth centers built or refurbished. Outcomes are measures of the eﬃcacy of the program.11 Outcome measures include the percentage ofdisplaced people who return home, death rate, infant mortality rate,
infectious disease rate, and the percentage of the population suﬀeringfrom malnutrition. Are these rates improving, deteriorating, or remaining constant as humanitarian assistance is being provided? Since theseoutcome measures may not always be readily available, tactical, shortterm measures serve to give policymakers some indication of performance. Examples include the percentage of children under one year ofage who have been immunized; the percentage of births with skilledattendance; percentage of the population with access to basic healthservices within two hours; and the percentage of health facilities thatreport “stock outs” of essential drugs. Building such assessments into
11 See Harry P. Hatry, Performance Measurement: Getting Results, Washington, D.C.: Urban

Institute Press, 1999; and William T. Gormley, Jr., and David L. Weimer, Organizational
Report Cards, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

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131

humanitarian assistance programs makes it possible for donors todesign assistance programs better. The most basic measures in acuteemergencies are simple mortality and morbidity indicators—including
the avoidance of signiﬁcant infectious disease outbreaks.
Figure 5.2 shows a performance matrix that nation-building
missions could create. It lists key inputs, outputs, and outcomes overtime. Any competent performance matrix should include informationthat has been gathered on baseline conditions. It can be used to track
performance over the course of humanitarian assistance to monitor
whether conditions are improving or deteriorating.
There are six major steps to compiling performance metrics forhumanitarian assistance programs.12 First, inputs and outputs need tobe tied to outcomes. Second, good indicators are simple. They mustcome in a clear format and be easy for all stakeholders to interpret. Thisis especially true in fragile states, where national capacities are very
limited, communications between stakeholders are usually diﬃcult,and the political dynamics may create fractures through which complex information could be lost or misused. Third, performance indicators should be selective. There must be a limited number of focused
Figure 5.2
Example of Performance Matrix

Inputs

Outputs

Outcomes• Amount ofﬁnancial
assistance• Number ofinternational
advisors• Amounts and typeof equipment,
pharmaceuticals,
and othermaterial delivered• Number and qualityof doctors, nurses,
and other personnel
trained• Number and qualityof health facilities
built or refurbished• Institutional
development andreform of ministryof health• Percentage ofrefugees returned• Death rate
• Infant mortality rate
• Infectious diseaserate• Percentage of
population
suffering frommalnutrition

RAND MG557-5.2

12 See, for example, United Nations Development Group and World Bank (2005).

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targets, and they must be prioritized to oﬀer sequenced strategic direction. Fourth, performance metrics should guide policy actions anddonor interventions across all areas where lack of progress carries
the risk of reversing recovery—from political and security issues to theeconomy and health. Fifth, indicators should get suﬃcient donor buyin to translate promises into ﬁnancial commitments, disbursements,
and priority technical assistance. This type of buy-in may help to avoid
the fragmentation of donor assistance and its associated ineﬃciencies.

Key Actors
At least three major groups of actors should be involved in humanitarian eﬀorts: major international organizations, NGOs, and donor
states.
The ﬁrst group includes large international organizations, especially those within the United Nations’ family of agencies. The United
Nations has a number of a organizations that play critical roles inhumanitarian assistance: UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund),
UNHCR, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, and the Oﬃce of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Aﬀairs.
Some tackle speciﬁc problems, such as the distribution of food orother provisions for refugees. Others, like UNICEF, focus on a speciﬁc group, in this case children. In Kosovo, all humanitarian activities
were put under the direction of a Deputy Special Representative of the
UN Secretary-General who was nominated by UNHCR. This individual was able to bring to bear the resources of his own organizationand had the authority to coordinate the eﬀorts of other UN, national,
and nongovernmental agencies. This model worked well and should beemulated where possible.
Many NGOs specialize in speciﬁc areas of humanitarian relief,such as providing emergency medical care, delivering food or water, or
setting up camps. NGOs range from large international organizations,such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red CrescentSocieties, to much smaller organizations. NGOs often have very speciﬁc knowledge about the country or region of concern. At the same

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133

time, NGOs can also pose challenges. The rising number of NGOs hascreated coordination problems. As noted earlier, these problems createa strong impetus to establish institutional arrangements that increase
eﬃciency and help overcome coordination and collaboration problems.
NGOs may also have a wide range of goals and approaches that diﬀer
from those of the local government, major international organizations,other NGOs, and donors. Most highly experienced NGOs are partof networks, such as InterAction, an alliance of U.S.-based NGOs, or
the International Council for Volunteer Agencies. Membership is often
overlapping, and these networks comprise the primary actors in any
emergency. They have established standards and membership criteria
and have been the drivers in many of the key performance initiatives.
Several U.S. government entities are involved in humanitarianeﬀorts, including USAID; the Bureau of Population, Refugees, andMigration at the U.S. Department of State; and Department of Defense
forces involved in humanitarian assistance and stabilization eﬀorts.
Donor states’ goals and policies may be driven by political and geostrategic considerations rather than strictly by considerations of need. The
pursuit of these goals may sometimes result in programs at variancewith best practices viewed from a purely humanitarian perspective.

Costs
To assess humanitarian costs, we examined the per capita relief costsin the ﬁrst year of four nation-building operations: Afghanistan, Sierra
Leone, Haiti, and Liberia. The data come from OCHA’s Financial
Tracking Service.13 We compiled the total amount of humanitarian

13 United Nations Oﬃce for Coordination of Humanitarian Aﬀairs, Financial Tracking

Service, Web-based, global humanitarian aid database, updated daily. The Financial Tracking Service is a global, real-time database that collects all reported international humanitarian aid (including that for NGOs and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, bilateral aid, in-kind aid, and private donations). It breaks down humanitarian costs
into a variety of sectors: food, multisector, health, coordination and support services, humanrights, agriculture, economic recovery, water and sanitation, shelter and nonfood items, education, and mine action and other security.

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assistance and divided this by the population of each country, yielding
an average ﬁgure of $34 per person.14 This suggests that, on average,
nation-building operations require a commitment of $34 per person
to respond to a range of humanitarian challenges aﬀected such needs
as food, health, water, sanitation, and shelter. The actual ﬁgure for an
operation would, of course, depend on speciﬁc conditions within the
country and the extent of the humanitarian disaster. But this estimate
oﬀers a useful ﬁrst cut. To illustrate, we evaluated the cost of a hypothetical intervention to Mozambique, which in 2006 had a population of 19,686,505. Using the average cost of $34 per capita, we estimate that Mozambique would require approximately $700 million inhumanitarian assistance in the ﬁrst year of the stability operation. We
also evaluated the cost of an intervention to Macedonia, which had apopulation of 2,050,554 in 2006. Using the average cost of $34 percapita, we estimate that Macedonia would require approximately $70
million in humanitarian assistance in the ﬁrst year of the operation.
Table 5.3 highlights the results.
Table 5.3
Estimates for Operations in Macedonia and Mozambique, Year One
Population(2006)

Estimated Humanitarian
Expenditures(2006 US$)

Peace enforcement mission
to Macedonia

2,050,554

70 million

UN-led mission to
Mozambique

19,686,505

700 million

Hypothetical Intervention

SOURCE: United Nations Ofﬁce for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Financial
Tracking Service. Population data, Central Intelligence Agency (2006).
NOTE: Based on an average cost of $34 per capita. Amounts may not sum due torounding.

14 The amounts included $61 per person for assistance in Afghanistan, $12 in Sierra Leone,$9 in Haiti, and $52 in Liberia.

CHAPTER SIX

GovernanceSocieties emerging from conﬂict may be able to wait for democracy,
but they need a government immediately to provide law enforcement,
education, and public health care. Electricity, telecommunications,water, and other utilities also require a government to regulate them,and, in some instances, to provide the service. Sometimes the intervening authorities initially serve as the government. However, they will
never be in a position to deliver these services without relying on hostcountry nationals and local institutions to provide attendant government services. The intervening authorities provide funding, guidance,and oversight and select people and organizations to provide services,
but teachers, health workers, and the police force must be drawn fromamong host-country nationals. By their selection, these individuals
and organizations acquire funds and power. The intervening authorities need to ensure that their choices do not exacerbate existing discontents, especially among those groups that were party to the conﬂict.
The intervening authorities need to choose partners carefully with aview to creating a government and distribution of power that will survive their departure.

Key Challenges
Establishing a Transitional Administration. If an acceptable government is already in place at the time of the intervention, the intervening authorities may be able to focus on strengthening and reforming it
rather than creating a new government. However, if the state has failed

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or has been overthrown, the intervening authorities may have to govern
the country in its stead. Alternatively, the intervening authorities may
choose to immediately constitute an interim government through amechanism other than election—by co-option, appointment, or consultation. The ﬁrst approach is the most common, but the latter two
approaches have also been used frequently. In all instances, this ﬁrst
government is transitional, a makeshift arrangement designed to prepare the way for a more legitimate and more capable successor.
Restoring Public Services. In all societies, even the poorest, governments are expected to provide basic public services: security, staterun education, public health care, and the construction and maintenance of roads. During conﬂict, the provision of these services is
disrupted and, in some cases, ceases. By opening and operating schools
and public health clinics, the intervening authorities not only restart
the provision of important services, they also send a signal that times
have changed: The country is becoming more stable. Wages paid toteachers, health care workers, and other government employees put
money into the local economy, as these individuals purchase food andother locally produced goods and services and provide ﬁnancial support to friends and relatives. Paying the wages of teachers and healthcare professionals supports respected leaders who are often voices formoderation. Reopening schools has the additional advantage of getting
children oﬀ the streets.
Most nation-building missions are short of personnel and otherresources at the beginning of the intervention. They are poorly equipped
to satisfy demands for public services. A lack of administrative capacity severely constrains the ability of the intervening authorities and thehost government to organize, pay for, and deliver government services.
In an environment of scarce funds and administrative ability, donors
and governments have to prioritize expenditures, focusing on those services that have the greatest eﬀect on quality of life and those that canbe delivered most eﬀectively.
Setting Up Local Governments. In many countries, outlying
regions are diﬃcult to access. Citizens in these regions prefer to have
local or regional governments provide services and address their concerns because they are more accessible or may be more representativeGovernance137

of the ethnic or religious composition of the area. But local governments may have collapsed during the conﬂict. The intervening authorities, usually located in the capital city, are often too far away or too
focused on rebuilding the central government to pay adequate attention to reconstituting local governments. Because smaller towns areoften inaccessible, lack amenities for international civil servants, or
do not present immediate challenges, they are neglected. Yet, creating
capable, representative local governments may be key to preventing a
return to conﬂict.

Best Practices
Establishing a Transitional Administration
Conduct Predeployment Assessments. To create or bolster anexisting transitional administration, the intervening authorities needto assess how the past and current governments operated. The UnitedStates often deploys assessment teams under the auspices of USAID
through its Disaster Assistance Response Teams to evaluate the capabilities of host governments. Other countries and international organizations do the same. These assessments are usually conducted based on
the type of assistance needed. One team analyzes humanitarian needs
while another assesses the logistical requirements for transporting relief
supplies into the country. Combining these assessments into an overall
evaluation of the capabilities of the host government is a major challenge. Multidisciplinary teams, augmented by teams of ﬁnancial auditors to gather and assess ﬁnancial information, are needed to conduct
assessments shortly after the intervening authorities enter the country
so that an eﬀective strategy to set up or bolster an interim administration can be devised.
Assessments should include factors such as the key motivationsof the conﬂict. The assessments must evaluate the weaknesses of theexisting government institutions to combat illicit economic activity,
especially activities that ﬁnance spoilers. The assessment must evaluate how warlords, militias, and other spoilers might be integrated into
legitimate institutions, marginalized, or eliminated from positions of

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power. These groups must also be progressively separated from illicit
sources of ﬁnancial support and military power. The following key factors should be taken into consideration:• size of the country and its demographics• situation in the country prior to the intervention• nature of the conﬂict that led to the intervention• impact of the conﬂict on the population, especially in areas suchas health, population displacement, and employment• condition of key infrastructure• presence and capacity of government institutions• political traditions• availability of human capital in the country• preexisting laws
• state of law and order• degree of corruption in society, especially within government
institutions• type and scale of legal and illegal ﬁnancial resources• presence of militias, warlords, criminal organizations, and otherspoilers• type, amount, and location of natural resources• ethnic, tribal, religious, and other potential ﬁssures in the
country.
Writing the Mandate. Most nation-building missions, including
those undertaken by coalitions of the willing, operate under a mandate from the United Nations Security Council. In cases in which
the United Nations is leading the operation, that mandate tends tobe rather detailed, carefully setting out the mission’s objectives andauthority. Mandates should spring from an honest assessment of which
institutions need to be created and which indigenous and international
actors should contribute. Those chosen to lead international missions
should play an important role in developing the mandate. A UN mandate can be beneﬁcial in setting up new government institutions. It signals that the international community has agreed that the operation islegal and morally justiﬁed. The absence of an explicit mandate and, inGovernance139

particular, an explicit UN mandate, increases the likelihood that locals
will view the nation-building mission as illegitimate.
The contrast between strong and weak mandates is illustrated by
the missions in East Timor and Haiti in 2004. In East Timor, UN
Security Council Resolution 1272 established a clear mandate in 1999
that gave the United Nations signiﬁcant power to build government
institutions:[The UN Security Council] decides to establish, in accordancewith the report of the Secretary-General, a United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which will
be endowed with overall responsibility for the administration of
East Timor and will be empowered to exercise all legislative andexecutive authority, including the administration of justice.1

All powers were concentrated in the hands of Sergio Vieira de
Mello, the transitional administrator. UNTAET had the authority to
do everything from sign treaties to stamp passports at the Dili airport.
It was treated as a de facto government by countries and internationalorganizations, with the power to negotiate projects, disburse funds,
and make reporting arrangements. The UN Security Council resolution also gave the UN mission the power to provide security, establish an eﬀective administration, assist in the development of civil andsocial services, and ensure coordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance. To accomplish these activities, the UN Security Council established a governance and public administration component, ahumanitarian assistance and emergency rehabilitation component, anda military component of the mission.
By contrast, the United Nations adopted a much weaker mandatefor Haiti in 2004 through UN Security Council Resolution 1542. The
resolution stated that the United Nations would support the constitutional and political process under way in Haiti; assist the transitional
Haitian government in its eﬀorts to bring about a process of national
dialogue and reconciliation; assist the government in its eﬀorts to orga1

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1272, on the situation in East Timor,
4,057th meeting, October 25, 1999.

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nize, monitor, and carry out free and fair elections; and assist the government in extending the state’s authority throughout Haiti and insupporting good government locally as well as nationally.2
These disparate mandates reﬂect more the diﬀering levels of commitment of the international community than the needs of the societies in question. In 1999, the UN membership was ready to pourlarge resources into the small receptacle of East Timor. In 2004, it was
not ready to do the same for Haiti, a larger but perhaps even needier society. Regrettable as this may seem, experience suggests that it isbetter to match the mandate to the anticipated level of commitment
than to the needs of the recipient state. Providing a broad mandate
without the resources needed to fulﬁll it inﬂates expectations andincreases the probability of failure.
Coordination Among International Actors. A key task for any
mission is to address the challenge of coordinating among international actors by establishing umbrella structures; regular consultative
processes among key institutions; and centralized, transparent reporting mechanisms to monitor the disbursement of aid and the results ofprograms. Over the past 15 years, intervening authorities have used avariety of arrangements to combine unity of purpose, while also promoting broad international participation.
Coordination Between International and Local Leaders. Mechanisms should be set up between the mission and the host-country
authorities. These mechanisms will diﬀer depending on whether there
is an interim indigenous government or an international administration with indigenous “advisors.” The head of the mission needs toconsult with key donor states, the Secretary-General of the United
Nations, and local leaders to arrive at acceptable mechanisms.
In cases in which the intervening authorities exercise sovereignfunctions, the leader of the mission may create an advisory council
composed of local leaders. As the central advisory body of the mission,
the council can help guide the overall strategy for political cooperation between the mission and the various political leaders. To ensure2

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1542, on the question concerning Haiti,
4,961st meeting, April 30, 2004.

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cooperation from the former contending militaries, the international
force commander may establish a joint military committee with the
top military commander of each force. This committee focuses on
the execution of key military tasks and problems involved in sharing
information and coordination. To assist in civil administration, UN
missions often set up joint functional committees for education, healthcare, transportation, and other sectors. These committees enable local
actors to participate in decisionmaking and implementation.
In East Timor, for example, the UN mission established the
National Consultative Council, a political body consisting of 11 East
Timorese and four international members, during the transition period
to independence. The National Consultative Council agreed on a seriesof regulations required to establish eﬀective administration in the territory, including setting up a legal system, establishing a judiciary, adopting a national currency, putting in place border controls, setting up atax system, and creating a consolidated budget for East Timor. The
National Consultative Council then adopted a regulation establishinga transitional cabinet composed of four East Timorese and four international representatives.
In Kosovo, indigenous leaders and UNMIK created the Joint
Interim Administrative Structure. The UN appointed local counterparts to UNMIK administrators in Kosovo, ensuring that there wasadequate representation among Kosovo’s ethnic communities. The Joint
Interim Administrative Structure was composed of three elements:
the Oﬃce of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General; theKosovo-wide oversight and advisory bodies representing Kosovo’s institutions and political groupings; and the Pristina-based departments
responsible for administration, service delivery, and revenue collection.
The careful cultivation and integration of the Albanian Kosovar andSerb moderates helped abate interethnic tensions. The Joint Interim
Administrative Structure became operational about nine months into
the mission, with oﬃces, organizations, and staﬀ. In the later stagesof the mission, in the aftermath of general elections, the Provincial
Institutions of Self-Government were established, which took overadministrative functions previously conducted by UNMIK.

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Building Mission Staff. One of the most diﬃcult tasks facing
any intervening authority is to deploy suﬃcient numbers of competent staﬀ. Experienced personnel are critical for eﬀective governance.
In Kosovo, as in most nation-building operations, ﬁnding enough personnel to reach “mission strength” was a long, arduous process. The
United States suﬀered even more acutely from such shortages anddelays in seeking to staﬀ the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.
While intervening authorities may be able to identify qualiﬁed personnel, the most diﬃcult challenge is often in convincing them to go andthen to stay once there.
Restoring Public Services

Resuming the provision of government services is a key step toward
restarting growth. Security, which is provided by the legal system (e.g.,
police, prisons, prosecutors, courts); public health; and primary andsecondary education are the most important such services.
In most postconﬂict situations, the restoration of government services starts at the top and bottom simultaneously; ﬁlling in the middle
is less urgent. Starting at the top, the intervening authorities are often
involved in selecting and appointing ministers and department heads.
Where possible, host-country nationals should be appointed. Foreign
nationals do not know the host-country bureaucracy (to the extent thatit still exists) and usually do not speak the local language. Therefore, thebureaucracy can more easily ignore their decisions. In some instances,in East Timor, Kosovo, and Iraq, for example, the intervening authorities gave executive authority to foreign nationals. The use of foreign
advisors was dictated by the absence of a cadre of locals with the requisite experience, as was the case of East Timor and Kosovo, or who were
not trusted by the intervening authority, as was the case in Iraq. Political sensitivities, especially where one ethnic group has dominated past
governments, also may dictate an interim period during which expatriate staﬀ has executive authority. This is especially important in societiesin which one ethnic group, sometimes a minority, has dominated othergroups, monopolizing key positions in the bureaucracy and channelingresources to its compatriots. The intervening authorities can help breakGovernance143

this pattern through the use of foreign advisors or staﬀ and the introduction of more meritocratic hiring conditions.
One of the more successful options for staﬃng ministries has
been to recruit nationals who have international work experience.
Finance ministers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Liberia have had previous experience in international banking. The current ﬁnance ministerof Liberia (as well as the president) worked at the World Bank. These
individuals, if they do not have too much political baggage, are often
able to communicate eﬀectively with host-country nationals, elites,
and the populace, while maintaining open lines of communication
with the international donor community. They have to contend withcharges of “carpetbagging,” returning to their country of origin toenrich themselves in the postconﬂict environment, but by introducing
transparent contracting procedures and payments and improving government services, these charges can be dampened.
The choice of ministers, expatriate or local, is a choice about who
is to make decisions. When a host-country government exists or can be
set up quickly, it, not the intervening authorities, needs to make decisions on the provision of government services. If host-country nationals do not make and are not responsible for decisions, they can and arelikely to overturn them in the future. Policy reversals waste time anddisrupt government operations. A lack of local control results in a lackof local responsibility: Implementation of decisions made by foreign
nationals may lag or not take place at all. Kosovo and Bosnia’s indigenous leaders have successfully derailed eﬀorts to restructure their electric power utilities, in part because they did not ever make the decision
their own. It is often better to take more time up front to gain consensus and create an acceptable permanent solution to a problem, even in
the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict, than to use stopgap measuresthat may never be fully implemented and are eventually overturned.
Where the intervening authorities believe that foreign nationals
are necessary to run government operations, locals need to be recruitedand mentoring relationships need to be established as soon as possible.
In these instances, clear lines of responsibility and a clear timetablebased on the performance of local appointees need to be establishedearly on, laying out when and how authority will be transferred to the

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emerging host government and its ministers. In East Timor, a moreaggressive mentoring program and a more rapid transfer of authority tohost-country nationals might have made the transition to local control
more successful. Mentoring programs, provided that the advisors andministers establish a good rapport, are useful, especially in core ministries (ministries of security, justice, ﬁnance, education, and health,and the central bank). Good advisors provide counsel on best-practice
policies and management procedures, often from their own experience,
and act as liaisons with the intervening authorities.
Because of the potential inﬂuence these individuals can wield,
care needs to be taken to recruit the best possible advisors. Because
experienced individuals may be unable or unwilling to make multiyear
commitments, it is sometimes useful to designate a donor country orinternational institution as the lead agency responsible for each core
ministry. The lead country or institution is responsible for recruiting
and funding the senior advisor as well as for coordinating international
assistance to the ministry. This designation provides institutional continuity when personal continuity is not practicable. However, the senioradvisors should report to the intervening authorities. The intervening
authorities should have the right to request that the lead country or
institution dismiss an advisor, and such a request should be honored.
Utilities. The intervening authorities face the immediate problem of turning on the lights and water in the aftermath of a conﬂict.
Garbage collection, electrical power, water, sewage, and public transportation are also important. Rudimentary service levels can often be
restored by locating and working with key employees. When thoseindividuals cannot be found, expatriate staﬀ will need to be broughtin until local replacements can be trained. In all cases, utility experts
should arrive with the ﬁrst contingent of the intervening authorities.
Once a skeletal staﬀ has been assembled, it needs to ascertain
which components of the system are operable (e.g., garbage trucks,
generators, transformers, pumps) and the availability of fuel and othersupplies. The intervening authorities may need to jump-start the provision of power and water by supplying funds and assisting the utility
in procuring and installing vital missing parts. In some instances, theintervening authorities will need to import portable generators or bringGovernance145

in clean water to provide interim services. These activities are usuallyprovided as humanitarian assistance rather than administered as programs to rebuild government.
Utilities tend to be capital-intensive; purchasing or repairing
equipment tends to be expensive. Although donors may be able torestore some services almost immediately, improving the reliability andgeographical coverage of these services is a long-term problem of development and cannot be solved in the ﬁrst postconﬂict stage.
Resuscitation of payment systems for utilities should be high on
the list of priorities. It is not the job of the intervening authorities toprovide levels of service common to developed countries, but rather
to restart the provision of power and water and to support the system
so that supplies are provided at sustained preconﬂict levels. As soon
as the lights are turned on and water begins to ﬂow, the utility needs
to bill and collect compensation for the provision of services. Otherwise, service will once again deteriorate. In Kosovo, blackouts remaincommon seven years after the intervention because the utility fails toreceive full payment for service.
Collection is not an easy task: Theft of power and water are standard practices in many developing countries and utility tariﬀs are contentious political issues. But by setting up billing and collection services in conjunction with the renewal of the power and water supplies
and cutting oﬀ consumers who fail to pay, the intervening authorities
lay the foundations for increasingly comprehensive payment systems
further down the road.
In many postconﬂict countries, preconﬂict service levels werevery low. Liberia has not had electric power or water service for over 15
years. Service in Afghanistan is very spotty. By implementing rational
pricing schemes and ensuring collection, the intervening authorities
will provide the resources to ensure fewer future interruptions in supplies of electricity and water. Continuity of supply is more important
than cost for facilitating economic growth. For example, it is better fora dairy to pay more for electricity and have continuous access to refrigeration than to pay less and suﬀer the losses caused by the abrupt lossof refrigeration due to ﬂuctuating power supplies.

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To restart the operation of utilities, the intervening authorities
may need to hire new managers with international expertise or outside
consultants to serve as mentors to current managers. Although extensive reorganization often needs to wait until a later date, these individuals can initiate some organizational changes, including setting up
separate units in charge of distribution to ﬁnal customers. These distribution units are responsible for collecting funds to pay for power orwater from the larger utility. If insuﬃcient funds are raised, the utility
can cut oﬀ service to the unit, providing motivation for collection andpayment by customers. Without this discipline, provision of electric
power, water, and other such services will be slow to improve.
Education. In most postconﬂict societies, the education system
has deteriorated. Educated elites, including teachers, have emigrated.
Children have attended school sporadically, if at all, resulting in large
gaps in their education. School buildings have been damaged. Schoolbooks and supplies have disappeared. Some children have taken partin the conﬂict with all the terrible psychological consequences thatentails.
To create a functional educational system, ﬁrst and foremost,competent teachers have to be hired and motivated to teach. Providing
teachers with competitive salaries is the most eﬀective way of attracting educated individuals to the profession. Although salaries need tobe commensurate with the resources of the country, by paying teachers
at least as much as educated civil servants in other departments, thehost country should be able to attract high-caliber teachers to schools.
In those instances in which educated individuals are in short supply,
the intervening authorities can assist the host government to set up“crash programs” for training high school graduates or talented grammar school graduates in the basics of teaching. Donors should fundteacher salaries and teacher-training programs and, where needed, support the renovation of damaged schools and the construction of newschools. The ﬁrst reconstruction programs should be concentrated inareas that have suﬀered most during the conﬂict. New or refurbishedschools send a powerful signal that the times have changed. This said,
not every dilapidated school should be renovated. In depopulated areas,some damaged schools should be abandoned.

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Most educational systems function better with curriculum guidelines and national testing rather than a rigid national curriculum.
Local conditions and student preparation may vary dramatically acrosseconomic, ethnic, and social groups. Teachers need to have some ﬂexibility in addressing these diﬀerent populations. In countries with morethan one ethnic group, courses on history, language, and literature willneed to be tailored to the various groups, and curricula will need to be
developed in the various languages.
Along with attractive salaries, teachers need to be held accountable for performance, especially in postconﬂict environments where
hiring standards may need to be looser. National tests to measure
educational performance are useful for measuring student progress
and teacher performance. Tests are especially important in secondary
school, where examination results should be used for providing graduates with credentials.
Although national testing and suggested national curricula help
ensure that minimal standards are met or exceeded, local involvement and control have also been shown to improve educational results.
The education ministry needs to set clear qualiﬁcations for principals,consonant with the availability of applicants, and establish transparent competitions for positions. However, the local community shouldinterview candidates and be given the authority to select principals froma group of qualiﬁed candidates. Parents should be encouraged to meetwith teachers and extend their compliments and criticisms to the principal. Principals need to exercise ﬁnancial and operational control overtheir schools. Providing schools with payments per attending pupil isa useful way of directing money to successful schools. State audits andmonitoring are necessary to ensure that funds are expended appropriately and that enrollment and attendance records are accurate.
In many postconﬂict societies, remedial education programs areneeded for individuals whose education was interrupted by the conﬂict, as well as for adults who have lacked opportunities to improvetheir skills. Remedial education programs can be especially importantfor former combatants or older students whose education has been disrupted. Limited tuition grants can be useful in adult education. Under
these programs, students enroll in a course, often taught privately. The

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government pays part or all of the student’s tuition, but full payment
is predicated on the student completing the course satisfactorily. Programs in which the student has to make partial payment are likely to
be more successful than programs in which the state pays the entire
cost, as students tend to make a greater investment of time and eﬀort
when they use their own funds. They also shop harder to ﬁnd coursesthat provide the highest value for their investment. This holds true evenin very poor societies.
Governments face diﬃcult choices concerning tertiary educational
institutions in postconﬂict societies. Reviving a national university or
opening a university for an ethnic minority that was party to the conﬂict make important political statements. In Macedonia, government
support for an Albanian language university was key to fostering support for conciliation. But universities are expensive to operate. Faculties
have usually dispersed and facilities have been damaged. In societies inwhich education levels are low, the social beneﬁts of money spent on
primary or secondary education are frequently higher than those fromcomparable expenditures on university education. Globally, there isconsiderable capacity in tertiary education. Most postconﬂict societies
would be better oﬀ concentrating resources on primary and secondary
schools than on state-run universities, at least until economic growth
has created a stronger tax and funding base.
Donors and the host-country government have several options forencouraging post-secondary school study other than the expansion ofstate-run universities. Donors may choose to provide scholarships tostudy abroad for high-scoring secondary school graduates, especiallyin areas such as science and engineering, for which expensive laboratories and facilities are needed. Such a division of labor permits the hostgovernment to concentrate its resources on teacher training or businesseducation, if those skills are in short supply. The state may also wish toencourage the use of private educational institutions for post-secondarytraining. Private or public, schools at all levels need to be subject tostandards. Testing and school inspections are two means of ensuring
minimal standards; demanding that schools go through independent
accreditation programs is also helpful.

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149

Health Care. Following a conﬂict, systems of public health andhealth care delivery are often in shambles. Employees have gone unpaid;
many have left their jobs. Facilities have been damaged or destroyed.
The government has lacked funds to purchase pharmaceuticals andother supplies, and distribution channels have been disrupted. Vaccinations and programs for expectant mothers and infants have been
stopped.
Even where public delivery and ﬁnance systems function eﬀectively, a considerable share of health care services are procured and paid
for privately. Because health care can be so expensive, the host-country
government, in conjunction with the intervening authorities, needs tocarefully plan and decide what the role of the government should be in
ﬁnancing and providing health care. Systems need to be designed suchthat they can be sustained when assistance declines.
In postconﬂict countries, especially lower-income ones, the initial focus should be on primary health care. Goals for primary healthcare should be immunization, treatment of injuries and infectious diseases, maternal and infant health care, the provision of vitamins andother nutritional supplements, and management of chronic illnesses
such as diabetes and heart disease. To deliver these services, the intervening authorities, host government, and ministry of health need toestablish or reconstruct clinics throughout the country. In the earlystages, choices of sites are likely to be dictated by existing facilities,
even if they are damaged. However, the intervening authorities and thehost government need to create a planning mechanism for siting clinics
based on population, access, and ethnic divisions. In regions of conﬂict, setting up separate clinics serving the diﬀerent groups may reduce
tensions, especially if languages diﬀer.
Clinics, even if funded by the government, are often better run
by private providers, including NGOs and private doctors. In Afghanistan, the health ministry subcontracts clinic operations to the private
sector;3 NGOs were considered better able to run these clinics than was

3

Alistair J. McKechnie, “Humanitarian Assistance, Reconstruction and Development in
Afghanistan: A Practitioners’ View,” CPR Working Paper No. 3, Washington, D.C.: World
Bank, March 2003, p. 11.

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the nascent Afghan government. Directors should be given responsibility for budgets and personnel. Regulated copayments are often usefulfor curbing overuse of health services. Payments from the national government to the clinics should be based on the number of clients served
and the types of illnesses treated. Hiring decisions should be made on
a competitive basis. In the likely event that qualiﬁed applicants arein short supply, provisional qualiﬁcation standards can be applied. In
many postconﬂict societies, the intervening authorities will turn toforeign candidates to ﬁll the need for doctors, other trained personnel, and clinic directors. Donor funding can be utilized to set up incountry training courses coupled with on-the-job training to remedy
some of the shortages of qualiﬁed health care professionals.
The intervening authorities should reopen some acute care facilities to provide general hospital services. Specialized mental and physical rehabilitation services are necessary to help the population overcome traumas stemming from the conﬂict. National planning for
health care delivery is of even greater importance for secondary andtertiary health care than for primary care because of the cost of hospitals and more sophisticated clinics. The capital costs of these facilities
are large; operating costs are even larger over the life of the facility. The
host government needs to make sure that facilities are properly sized
and located and that health care delivery modes other than throughhospitals are utilized so as to create an eﬃcient, ﬁscally sustainable
health care system. As with clinics, government payments should bemade based on services rendered, not on a facility’s budget. Donors
often need to play a role in providing technical assistance to help makethese diﬃcult decisions. However, the ﬁnal decisions need to be madelocally and presented as such.
Outpatient delivery systems are generally more cost-eﬀective thanhospitals for many types of health problems. However, cases that might
be handled in outpatient clinics in wealthier societies require overnighthospital stays in postconﬂict countries. Patients are unlikely to havesuitable transport home following treatments. Their homes may lacksewage service and clean water. One option for postprocedure care is to
set up sanitary hostels adjacent to clinics or hospitals, as an alternative
to keeping patients overnight in acute care hospitals. These facilities

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can be designed such that family members can nurse patients, easingpressures on staﬀ and improving quality of care.
Tertiary care facilities, which have advanced operating rooms
and use more sophisticated medical techniques, are expensive tobuild and operate. Following a conﬂict, many countries lack the personnel, equipment, supplies, and funds to run such facilities. Amongthe cases we have analyzed, only the southeastern European countries
and Iraq had much capacity to provide tertiary care.
In light of all the other demands for resources in postconﬂict societies, investing heavily in tertiary care facilities is often a poor use ofresources. It is better to set aside funds to help individuals travel toand receive care from facilities in other countries. The quality of careis likely to be higher and the number of patients that can be treated
per dollar spent is likely to be higher. In Iraq, the Coalition Provisional
Authority proposed to construct a children’s hospital in al Basrah. If
constructed, this one hospital would absorb the entire construction
budget of the ministry of health and a very appreciable share of theministry’s total operating budget. A small portion of the funds needed
to build and operate such a hospital could be used to send a comparable
number of children to nearby Persian Gulf states where several modern
hospitals already exist.
Focusing Assistance. Traditional approaches to development arepoorly adapted to restarting government services in postconﬂict societies. Traditional assistance projects often entail creating prototype projects that, if successful, would be replicated elsewhere in the country.
These types of projects are expensive in terms of management time:
Host-government oﬃcials are expected to run the current system whileobserving, tweaking, and ultimately introducing successful prototype
projects throughout their areas of responsibility.
Management time and resources are so scarce in postconﬂict situations that it is often better to resuscitate a poorly functioning existing system than to try to set up a new program. For example, theﬁrst order of business after the invasion of Iraq was to ensure thatthe food-rationing system was up and running, despite its many faults.
When old systems are so broken that they cannot be repaired, the hostcountry government and intervening authorities need to plan carefully

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for the transformation of the current system into a new system andthen methodically replace the old with the new, giving civil servantsadequate training and the tools necessary to undertake their new jobs.
Half-completed projects have even more pernicious consequences inpostconﬂict situations than in the normal course of events.
In planning such projects, less is often more. Donors often fund
too many projects. In a society that is recovering from war, almost
any project would improve the lives of the people of the country. But
each additional project comes with costs: project design, consultants
who set up and run the project, project oversight, audits, and supervision. In the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict, assistance needs to befocused on restoring security by getting the legal system up and running; reopening primary and secondary schools; ensuring that publichealth institutions are operating; and seeing to it that the new government is putting in place systems that will enable it to operate eﬃciently,
eﬀectively, and transparently. At this stage, projects to reform pension
systems, create a stock market, or develop higher education tend to
distract from rather than contribute to the eﬀective provision of government services. It is better to carefully plan the comprehensive transformation or improvement of a current system (giving everyone new
textbooks, for example) than start dozens of prototype projects thatcannot be fully implemented in the near future. A substantial amountof resources could be saved by focusing on a few major tasks and sticking with them until completion rather than letting a hundred ﬂowers
bloom.
Setting Up Local Governments

Because they are frequently more honest, more eﬃcient, and better
able to communicate with international donors than are representativesof national or local governments, international NGOs are often theintermediaries of choice to distribute postconﬂict assistance. NGOs
are more likely to ensure that assistance goes directly to those most in
need, not into the pockets of government oﬃcials. Despite these advantages, to the extent possible, assistance should be channeled throughthe government, national or local. The key task of postconﬂict reconstruction is to create functional governments. Although NGOs mayGovernance

153

serve as intermediaries with nascent local governments and mentor andmonitor local oﬃcials, they cannot replace government.
Involving local governments in reconstruction is an importantmeans through which oﬃcials gain experience in budgeting, contracting, and overseeing projects. In most postconﬂict situations, aid budgets are the primary sources of money for investment projects run by
local governments. In Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, they have been
almost the only source. Local government authorities should manage
operational and capital budgets as soon as appropriate controls are
introduced. Contracting should be handled through or in conjunction with local governments rather than directly with NGOs. Better
to use assistance funds to set up systems, train, and provide incentives
for government operations to improve than to channel funds to NGOs
that will eventually be superseded by these same governments.
In some instances, most notably in Iraq, intervening authorities
have been reticent to devolve authority to local governments becauseof fears of setting political precedents in periods when new constitutions are being written. Even in the absence of a constitutional framework, devolving budget and management authority to local governments is generally a good idea. It leads to better provision of services
and the development of a cadre of local leaders, provides local experience with management, and teaches political leaders how to respond to
local constituents. It also can assist in creating a better foundation for
the resolution of grievances that contributed to the conﬂict. Regionallybased insurgencies, such as in Sudan and Congo, are driven in partby perceptions that a distant, venal, incompetent central governmentis exploiting the region. By fostering the development of local governments that recognize the sovereignty of the national government but
are responsive to local interests, some of the drivers of the conﬂict may
be dissipated. The decentralized structure that has emerged in Afghanistan appears to have helped dampen some potential conﬂicts in thatcountry. Local government can also serve to make antagonistic groups
work together. In Eastern Slavonia, committees comprised of representatives of all ethnic groups were charged with managing government
services. By providing incentives to representatives of these diﬀerent
groups to work with each other to solve concrete problems, the process

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Buildingof reconciliation was begun. On the other hand, donors need to support the emergence of local governance in accordance with some overall strategy for dealing with the issue of central versus regional powerin societies in which these issues are in dispute.
The intervening authorities and the host government can foster
the role of local authorities by providing direct budgetary support
and the authority at the local level to select and contract out small-scalereconstruction projects, including road improvements and schools.
International donors and the host government need to provide proper
ﬁnancial and project oversight, including performance and ﬁnancial
audits, and insist on competitive bids. Because the intervening authorities will lack the staﬀ to provide hands-on guidance and oversight, inmany cases, activities designed to foster the development of local government should be subcontracted to NGOs. In mixed communities,
local governments should be designed such that all groups have a voice.
In these communities, the process of making local decisions about theprovision of services can force antagonistic groups to work with eachother and can hopefully lead to reconciliation.
Education and publicly provided health care are best fundedat the national level so that regional diﬀerences in incomes and economic activity do not lead to dramatic diﬀerences in service quality. Authority over these institutions should, therefore, generally be
split. The national government should set performance and budget
guidelines and audit and monitor these institutions to see thatthese guidelines are respected. Because the principal of the local school
and the director of the local clinic need to have budgetary and management authority and responsibility, local control should be conﬁned
to hiring, ﬁring, and evaluating directors, not engagement by local
government oﬃcials in the management of these operations. In many
instances, it makes sense to contract out the provision of health services to nongovernmental providers. Bids need to be evaluated locallyto ensure that the local authorities have conﬁdence in the provider, andcentrally to ensure that the government receives value for the money.
In several instances, international and host-country civil servants have created innovative programs to stand up local governments.
They have focused on capacity-building and local government–level

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provision of services, in contrast to past practices, when development
agencies had planned and administered local reconstruction projects.
Several international actors are often involved in establishing local governments and encouraging local participation. In some cases, international military forces are the only international personnel in rural
areas, and they work with locals to restore basic services. Some bestpractices have come from the creative instincts of these military oﬃcers. Others have been developed by specialized agencies that deploy
as soon as security allows and adapt models from previous operations
to local conditions. The UNDP, the World Bank, government agencies
such as USAID and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), contractors, and NGOs focus on the development oflocal governance.
In Afghanistan, the United Nations has created a standardized
package for local government that includes materials needed to establish a post oﬃce, police station, mayor’s and governor’s oﬃces, andbank, as well as communication equipment. This package was complemented by a civil service package that included materials on literacy
training, databases and computers, and a startup package of basic oﬃce
supplies. The Oﬃce of Transition Initiatives in USAID provided substantial reconstruction money for the restoration of ministries, including materials such as paint, chairs, desks, oﬃce supplies, and books.

Key Actors
Several actors are involved in building governance capacity. In mostnation-building missions, the UN or a lead nation governs directly orhelps local leaders establish a government. Rarely do these leadership
responsibilities fall to others. One exception is Bosnia, where the international community created an ad hoc international entity, the High
Representative, following the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords.
Beneath the lead entity, a variety of international organizations
are involved in governance: UN agencies such as UNDP; regionalorganizations such as the Asian Development Bank, the European
Union, and OSCE; and other major international organizations such

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as the World Bank. Individual donor states usually become involved ingovernance through their international development agencies. NGOs
and private contractors, which routinely work for the United Nations
and donor states, assist in various governance activities. NGOs andcontractors usually specialize in speciﬁc areas of governance, such asbuilding civil services.
Because of its ﬁnancial resources and expertise, the World Bank
should take the lead in restoring utilities. The bank should provide utility experts to be included in the ﬁrst contingent to enter the country.
These individuals can be recruited and paid through donor-country
assistance programs. On the advice of the World Bank, the head of theintervening authorities should appoint a high-level deputy to coordinate and manage this part of the assistance program.

Sizing and Costs
International Presence. Unlike the police and military components, there are no comparable benchmarks for numbers of international civil servants needed to help resuscitate the governments ofpostconﬂict societies. There is also little information on costs. This isdue to the number of actors involved in governance, and partly due
to variations in support by donor states. For example, Liberia, whichdrew broad support from the international community, received $253
per capita in assistance in 2005 and 2006 to help run the government.
It has one civilian UN staﬀ member for every 2,000 Liberians. In contrast, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations
devoted $18 per capita in 2005 and 2006 and had one UN civilianstaﬀ person for every 20,000 people. From these examples, it is clearthat the budget and staﬀ allocated to these missions are based more on
donor interest, available resources, and competing priorities elsewherein the world than on any uniform needs assessment.
Resurrecting Government Services. To estimate the potential
costs of providing education, health care, and government operations for one year, we analyzed existing spending patterns on the part

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of developing countries using data from the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report 2004 on shares of GDP spenton education and public health; detailed budget information on expenditures on education, health, and government operations were takenfrom IMF Country Reports for 27 developing countries; informationon per capita GDP at market exchange rates was calculated or extracted
from data in the IMF’s International Financial Statistics Browser
and from the World Bank Country Statistical Information Database.4
We found that, on average, developing countries spend 4.2 percent of
GDP on education, 2.6 percent on public health, and 3.6 percent on
general administration.5
These averages were used to generate best-practice estimates ofdonor spending needed to restart government operations in postconﬂict societies under the assumption that donors would have to pay for
all government operations in the ﬁrst year following a conﬂict. Because
GDP is depressed in postconﬂict situations, the lower level of per capita
incomes in the ﬁrst year following a conﬂict may underestimate thelevel of support needed. We argue that due to diﬃculties in disbursing
money quickly and eﬀectively, this percentage is the level of aid likely
to be eﬀectively absorbed by the host country.
Table 6.1 applies this methodology to estimate what should havebeen provided for government services in two societies following conﬂicts: Namibia in 1990, a middle-income developing country; and4 United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2004, New York,
2004; International Monetary Fund, reports by country, information current in mid-2006;
International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics Browser, available by subscription through the International Monetary Fund; International Monetary Fund, Country Statistical Information Database, information current in mid-2006. Data collected on
the following: Argentina, Cambodia, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana,
India, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines,
Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda,
Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.
5

We averaged data from 99 countries to calculate the share of GDP on education, 117 forshare of GDP spent on public health, and 17 countries for share of GDP spent on public
administration. Standard deviations were 2.06, 1.52, and 2.38, respectively. Sources forthese data were United Nations Development Programme (2004); national budgets available
from International Monetary Fund, reports by country, information current in mid-2006.

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Table 6.1
Estimated Costs of Restoring Government Services in
Two Postconﬂict Situations

Share of GDP (%)

OptimalExpenditure($ millions)

Education

4.2

130.9

Public health

2.6

80.7

General administration

3.6

111.3

Total

10.4

322.9

Education

4.2

27.8

Public health

2.6

17.1

General administration

3.6

23.6

Total

10.4

68.6

Country and Activity

Actual Total
Assistance($ millions)Namibia, 1990

154.6

Sierra Leone, 2000

189.9

NOTE: All dollar amounts are in 2002 U.S. dollars. Amounts may not sum due torounding.

Sierra Leone in 2000, a poor developing country. If donors had covered
all the costs of providing education, public health, and general administration for one year after conﬂict ended in these two countries, theywould have needed to budget $323 million in the case of Namibia and$69 million in the case of Sierra Leone in 2002 dollars. The diﬀerencesin expenditures are due primarily to diﬀerences in per capita incomes
and therefore labor costs in the two countries. The table also shows
how much assistance was actually provided to these two countries for
all purposes in the ﬁrst year after the conﬂict ended.
How accurate and useful are these estimates? The ﬁgures for thecosts of education are probably the most precise. Percentages of GDP
devoted to education are fairly uniform across low- and medium-income
developing countries, averaging 3.98 and 4.28 percent, respectively.
Because education is so labor-intensive, using 4.2 percent of GDP yields
a fairly robust estimate of potential costs in this area, though it would

Governance159

not cover the costs of a large program to repair or build new schools.
The ﬁgures on public health expenditures are also useful, although
this methodology underestimates the cost of importing pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies. In poor countries, citizens frequently
cannot aﬀord these items and therefore do without. In a postconﬂict
environment, the international donor community would likely provide
supplies, increasing donor costs. The ﬁgures for general administration
are high. Many developing countries spend relatively large amounts on
government administration; their government bureaucracies are often
overstaﬀed. Estimates of the expenditures needed to run the government based on current expenditure patterns include these excess costs.
The data collected for these estimates are derived from the budgetary
categories of general public services, general administration, or civil
administration. These are catchall categories that are often ill deﬁned
and may contain expenditures on security or the armed forces thatare estimated elsewhere in this volume. Finally, the sample size, 17,from which these expenditures were calculated is much smaller than
the samples used to calculate the estimates for expenditures on education and health care with a corresponding reduction in reliability.
Despite these failings, this methodology provides a useful ﬁrst
estimate of the potential costs of funding education, health care, andgovernment operations for one year postconﬂict. The methodology
also should help control future spending in these areas. Postconﬂict
societies are almost invariably poor. When the operation ends, the governments of these societies will have to fund these services. By sizing
expenditures in accordance with per capita GDP, donors should help
prevent inﬂation of wages and salaries of civil servants to levels that thecountry will not be able to support.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Economic Stabilization

To stabilize the economy after conﬂict and create conditions for economic growth, the intervening authorities need to create an environment in which individuals can safely and proﬁtably engage in economic activity. In most instances, normal commerce will have broken
down as the risk of assault, hijacking, kidnapping, or robbery makes
daily life, especially travel, dangerous. Labor markets will have been
disrupted as people leave some regions and overwhelm others, seeking secure places to live. Property will have been stolen or destroyed.
Farms will have been abandoned. Utilities will have ceased to function
as providers go unpaid and equipment is broken. The national currency
will have been debased, and, because it is unable to collect suﬃcienttaxes, the government may have resorted to printing money to ﬁnanceits operations.

Key Challenges
Stabilizing the Currency. Sustained growth is virtually impossible

in periods of very high inﬂation. During such periods, businesses andconsumers spend much of their time attempting to preserve the valueof their assets either by converting domestic currency into more stableforeign currencies, or by using it to purchase goods, services, or physical assets as quickly as possible. Because inﬂation makes possible large
losses or windfall gains due to lags between sale and payments, ﬁnancial success is often dictated more by the timing of payments thanby improvements in products and services. Because of uncertainties

161

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concerning prices, businesses continually grapple with decisions about
what is or is not proﬁtable to produce. The increased uncertainty curtails investment and output. Curbing inﬂation is therefore an essential
precondition for renewed economic growth.
Paying for It All. In the initial postconﬂict period, the local economy will be unable to generate suﬃcient tax revenues to pay for a levelof government services that should be feasible once the economy has
recovered. Attempting to raise tax revenues to a level suﬃcient to provide anticipated levels of government services is generally self-defeating:
Increasing taxes may end up reducing revenues as economic activity iscurtailed or gravitates to the untaxed, informal economy. As noted in
Chapter Six, during this initial period, donors are often called upon tocover the gap between realistically attainable levels of tax revenues andthe much higher costs of government operations. Establishing requisite
levels of funding, identifying sources of these funds from donors, getting donors to honor their commitments, and monitoring and ensuringthat donated funds are spent properly are necessary steps to ensure thatgovernment operations resume.
Building Capacity, Establishing Accountability, and Combating
Corruption. Postconﬂict societies are mostly poor and undeveloped.

Even among those government employees available to work, levels ofcompetence will be low, and corruption high. Former employees haveto be retrained and new ones hired. Revenue is the foundation of political authority. Audits of ﬁnancial ﬂows inside and outside the state
help those who govern understand from where revenues are derived
and where expenditures have gone. They help illuminate the nature of
the resistance to political authority and how it is ﬁnanced. An eﬀective
strategy to prevent or halt illicit economic activity and generate legal
sources of revenue can be designed and implemented only if government oﬃcials can track ﬁnancial ﬂows.
Corruption is a particularly serious challenge. It has a supply side
(those who give bribes) and a demand side (public oﬃcials who takethem). Grand corruption involves high-level oﬃcials with discretionary
authority over government policy, procurement decisions concerning
large government contracts, or the sale of government assets. Petty corruption involves lower-level oﬃcials who make decisions about enforc-

Economic Stabilization

163

ing (or not enforcing) regulations. Corruption hampers economic
growth, disproportionately burdens the poor, undermines the rule oflaw, and reduces respect for and the credibility of the government. It
needs to be minimized if the economy is to recover rapidly.

Best Practices
Stabilizing the Currency

To curb inﬂation, the central bank must slow or temporarily stop printing money so as to reduce monetary emissions. Exchange rate policies
can play a crucial role in the process of reducing inﬂation by restoring faith in the national currency and thereby changing inﬂationary
expectations. In all postconﬂict societies, residents substitute foreign
currencies, usually dollars or euros, for domestic currency for savingsand larger transactions. When suﬃcient foreign currency reserves areavailable, the central bank can restore faith in the national currency
by pegging it against a widely used, stable foreign currency, thereby
bringing down the rate of inﬂation more quickly. Bosnia, for example,
eﬀectively reduced inﬂation by pegging its new currency, the K-mark,to the deutsche mark, and later the euro, through a currency board.
If suﬃcient reserves are not available from the IMF or from foreign currency loans or grants from foreign donors or other international ﬁnancial institutions, the central bank must ﬂoat the currency,
curbing inﬂation through monetary policy alone. Among postconﬂict
societies, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Mozambique ﬂoated their currencies. As the central bank gains reserves, it may manage the ﬂoat so
as to prevent large ﬂuctuations in value. Mozambique’s central bankhas tempered exchange rate ﬂuctuations by intervening in the foreignexchange market. Initially, Iraq had a ﬂoating rate, but as reserves haverisen, the Central Bank of Iraq now operates an implicit peg.
Where a well-accepted foreign currency has replaced the local
currency for daily transactions, citizens may favor its wholesale adoption. In Kosovo, the new monetary authorities, under the guidanceof the IMF, replaced the Yugoslav dinar with the deutsche mark andthen the euro, the foreign currency in widest use. El Salvador has

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replaced its former national currency with the U.S. dollar. However, inmost cases, the monetary and ﬁscal authorities prefer to keep a national
currency so as to preserve the option of adjusting the exchange rate to
manage economic activity. There is also the practical matter of distributing and keeping an adequate supply of smaller bills and coins incirculation, if the issuing country is far away. In Kosovo, large quantities of small-denomination deutsche mark bills and even coins were
imported into the country to provide suﬃcient currency for smallertransactions.
In some instances, the currency may have been so greatly debasedthat it is abandoned and replaced by a new domestic currency. Among
postconﬂict societies, Congo and Sierra Leone have had several currencies. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq replaced the national
currency with a new one.
Whatever the choice of currency or exchange rate standard, a central bank or monetary authority must be created, reopened, or, if still
operating, restructured. Where no monetary authority existed prior tothe conﬂict, as in Kosovo and East Timor, one has to be set up fromscratch. Central banks may have served as “piggy banks” for the previous regime or may have been looted during the conﬂict. These banks
have to be reconstituted. New or restructured central banks have toissue currency, operate the foreign exchange regime, and oversee theﬁnancial system. To accomplish these tasks, bank managers need to
be selected, oﬃces found, the mint brought under central bank control, foreign currency reserves replenished, foreign exchange operations
restarted, accounting systems set up and tested, and statistical collection systems reinstated and improved.
Training central bank staﬀ and the provision of advice on theoperations of central banks are core IMF functions. The spate ofnation-building operations that followed the end of the Cold War has
pulled in the IMF to assist with setting up or restructuring central
banks in postconﬂict situations. Because of these experiences, the IMF
is acknowledged as far and away the best lead agency for stabilizing thecurrencies and quelling inﬂation in postconﬂict situations.
In addition to providing technical assistance, the IMF frequently
provides some funding under its emergency postconﬂict assistance pro-

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165

grams. Although these funds tend to be dwarfed by bilateral assistancefrom donors, they are key to replenishing the reserves of the central
bank and providing the resources needed to restart foreign exchange
sales and trading by providing backing for the domestic currency. The
IMF is the primary funder of the central bank; other donors tend toprovide the central bank with funds for technical assistance, but only
rarely for balance-of-payment support.
The IMF does not always have suﬃcient staﬀ to help reconstitutecentral banks in postconﬂict situations. In most cases, the intervening
authorities draw on staﬀ from donor-country central banks, ﬁnanceministries, or treasuries, or they employ independent technical experts
and consultants to assist in training, mentoring, and, in some cases,
operating the new ﬁnancial institutions.
Although the IMF often is and should be the lead agency for
macroeconomic stabilization, it will need to coordinate with the intervening authorities, ensuring that its recommendations are consistent
with other policies being pursued. For example, if smuggling operations ﬁnance the activities of local thugs, as they have in Bosnia andKosovo, it does not make sense for the IMF to encourage the government to levy substantial import tariﬀs to raise revenues: Higher tariﬀs
merely make the activities of local gangs that much more lucrative. As
in most policy areas, coordination is needed not only in country but
also with capitals and headquarters. In UN-led operations, the IMF
should participate in coordination meetings at UN headquarters.
As the central bank is being reconstituted, the intervening authorities need to assist it in organizing and, in some instances, managing
its operations. The primary tasks facing the central bank or monetary
authorities in postconﬂict situations are• controlling the emission of domestic currency• ensuring that the domestic currency is not being counterfeited• restoring the payment system• facilitating or serving as a market for foreign exchange• ensuring that the commercial banks become and remain solvent• negotiating rescheduling or forgiveness of foreign debts.

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Of these tasks, restoring the payment system and issuing a new
currency to forestall counterfeiting are diﬃcult and expensive. Standing up proper payment systems entails the creation of nationwide electronic networks (the most cost-eﬀective, secure payment system). Currency conversion involves large, complicated nationwide operations.
Donors can assist both in ﬁnancing the capital and operating costs ofthe systems and in providing technical expertise in organizing and setting up operations. The IMF has the expertise to help set up foreignexchange markets. Because informal foreign exchange markets alreadyexist, setting up an interbank market or auction run by the central
bank is less challenging than some other tasks. The IMF also assists thecentral bank in tracking and controlling monetary emissions.
One of the most diﬃcult tasks facing the central bank is to ensurethat the commercial banks become and remain solvent. Ensuring thatbanks are run properly is diﬃcult in any economy, but even more soin the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict. In many postconﬂict situations, one or more large banks, usually state-owned, have been bankrupted by the conﬂict. Resurrecting or closing down these banks is not
an immediate priority, but the ﬁnancial system will not function well
until they are either liquidated or recapitalized. As bankrupt banks
tend to be its responsibility, foreign advisors to the central bank areusually called upon to assist.
The central bank also has to begin guarding against future commercial banking problems. In transitional economies, banking problems ignored early on have led to banking crises and economic recessions four or ﬁve years after the initial recovery. Banking assets tend tobe small in the immediate aftermath of the conﬂict, but setting up andemploying an eﬀective monitoring system at this juncture is important, as it will forestall crises further down the road.
In many postconﬂict situations, the central bank, in conjunction with the ﬁnance ministry, is called upon to begin negotiations
on the repayment of sovereign debt. Even interim agreements, such asa moratorium on payments of principal and interest until such timeas the country’s economy is better able to service the debt, are usefulat this stage. Such agreements eliminate the threat of seizure of government assets abroad because of nonpayment. The central bank also

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167

begins the process of reopening access to international capital markets.
Despite these beneﬁts, renegotiating foreign debt agreements should begiven a lower priority than other tasks. Typically, the country has notbeen servicing its debt for some time. Continued nonpayment poses
little additional cost to the country. Debt negotiations entail substantial amounts of time on the part of economic policymakers, time that
could be better spent on improving central bank operations or overseeing the implementation of the budget.
Paying for It All
Local Revenues. Usually, the government in a postconﬂict situ-

ation is bankrupt. Government funds have been looted or stolen, tax
collection has collapsed, and systems for dispensing funds no longer
work. Raising funds, transferring funds, and ensuring proper paymentof salaries and invoices are necessary for ensuring the provision of government services. In this environment, the intervening authorities andother donors often need to provide stopgap funding and resuscitate
payment systems so as to make government operations possible.
Raising revenues is an ongoing challenge. Where tax systems
already exist, they should be preserved so as to avoid having to rebuild
them at a later date. However, where current taxes are expensive to collect or diﬃcult to enforce, they should be abolished; new tax systems
may need to be developed in their place. Care must be taken at thisstage not to create or keep tax systems that are ineﬀective or have deleterious economic results. For example, business registration taxes areoften designed to force business owners to pay bribes. The amount oftax collected is often negligible. High customs duties encourage smuggling and the growth of organized crime.
Natural resources often provide an easily tapped source of tax
revenues. They have also been a source of conﬂict. The intervening
authorities need to make securing natural resource deposits and thetransportation links needed to export these commodities a high priority. Once secured, donors should work with host governments to set up
ﬁnancial controls to ensure that proceeds go to the government, notprivate pockets, and that they are spent appropriately. Donors have hadsome success in setting up national funds into which natural resource

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revenues are deposited. Chad and Sudan have set up oil revenue–
sharing agreements with various communities as part of their eﬀorts
to resolve domestic conﬂicts. The international community has also set
up certiﬁcation schemes for commodities such as diamonds (in Sierra
Leone and Liberia) and timber to reduce smuggling. Working withbuyers to post contracts and contracted prices helps to reduce graft.
These systems are often easier to set up immediately following a conﬂict when donors have more leverage and host-country leaders have not
yet had time to ﬁrmly entrench themselves in these activities.
Sometimes the international community has pushed countries
in postconﬂict situations to rapidly increase budget revenues so as tonarrow budget deﬁcits. Although it is important that government services be paid for with local tax revenues at some point, focusing on revenue generation in the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict should not bea priority. IMF pressure to increase budget revenues in Kosovo, Bosnia,
and Macedonia following their conﬂicts may have been counterproductive. In most cases, economic activity is so depressed and the new
government so weak that attempting to generate substantial sums fromthe local economy is a fool’s game. The focus needs to be on restarting
economic activity. Reducing rather than increasing barriers to setting
up new ﬁrms or expanding existing operations should be the primaryeconomic policy goal. Only after the economy begins to grow will thegovernment have a clear picture of how and from which sectors to raise
tax revenues.
Donor Support. Government expenditures do have to be ﬁnanced.
At this juncture, donors should play a key role in providing budgetary
support. In many instances, only donors have the resources needed to
pay the wages of government employees and to pay for government
services.
The intervening authorities need to assess currently available government funds, abroad or in the treasury, and evaluate likely revenues
that will be generated by the existing tax code under current economic
circumstances to estimate the gap between local resources and the costof providing anticipated levels of services. Donors then need to arrange
for the immediate ﬁnancing of this gap to ensure that the government

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169

is able to operate. Direct grants to the ministry of ﬁnance are among
the best ways of achieving this goal.
These grants and other donated funds need to be tracked andaudited. Donors should adopt common, simple tracking and reporting procedures and should request the same types of information.
Demanding that host countries adhere to diﬀerent, detailed reporting
requirements for each donor defeats the purpose of the grants. Financeministers from Albania, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Kosovo have complained about the time wasted in ﬁlling out the many diﬀerent forms
that donors demand.
Subsequently, the intervening authorities need to arrange for an
initial needs assessment. The UNDP and the World Bank have developed an established approach. Useful, accurate, and consistent assessments require the cooperation of local authorities and may enlist thehelp of NGOs.
Donor conferences have become useful vehicles for mobilizing
funding. Large sums were pledged to Afghanistan, Cambodia, andEast Timor following donor conferences. The conferences identify
those countries that are interested in assisting a particular eﬀort; theyelicit promises of levels of assistance, and they may delegate responsibilities for particular sectors and projects. It is usually best to have morethan one conference. At the ﬁrst conference organized for a particulareﬀort, attendees should focus on generating suﬃcient funds for immediate assistance. Follow-on conferences help raise additional funds andchannel assistance to areas of greatest need. The ﬁrst conference should
establish coordinating and monitoring committees. Donor coordinating committees reduce duplication of eﬀort and funds and identify
areas that are being neglected. They can also be used to pressure donors
to fulﬁll their pledges; failure to follow through on pledges is a frequent problem. Committees should be chaired by the individual in
charge of the intervening authorities or by a designated alternate. Representatives of the host government should also sit on the committees.
To the extent possible, representatives from all major factions engaged
in the conﬂict should be invited to participate.
The initial conference should not attempt to arrange for multiyear
future assistance levels for economic reconstruction and development.

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The economic and political environment is too ﬂuid at this time to map
out the levels and types of assistance that are likely to be needed threeor more years out. The conference should set a future date for a followon conference, at which time additional assistance will be discussed
and requested after a more detailed, better informed needs assessment
is available. The participants should also assign an institution to conduct the future needs assessment and set deadlines for initiation andcompletion of that report.
The international community has often found it useful to pool
donor assistance into trust funds, usually run by the World Bank or
the UNDP. In the case of Iraq, two trust funds have been set up, one
run by each institution. The two funds focus on sectors in which thelead institution has a comparative advantage: the UNDP on social
welfare and the World Bank on economic development. Trust funds
are potentially a more eﬃcient funding source than a plethora of programs from individual donors. A single incorporated entity might beable to borrow against future donations to ease cash-ﬂow problems.
A fund should ease the audit and monitoring costs for the host government, as ministers would (hopefully) be badgered for information
by only one entity. If host-country ministries need to respond to only
one entity, it should be possible to set up regular reporting procedures
more quickly and eﬀectively. As audits of expenditures in postconﬂict
countries have repeatedly exposed malfeasance, the more quickly such
simple, transparent reporting procedures can be set up, the less likely
it is that future scandals will occur. A representative appointed by thehead of the intervening authorities should sit on the board of the trust
fund so as to better coordinate decisions.
Donors and the emerging government need to be conscious ofaﬀordability issues from the moment the international community
decides to intervene. When ministries have not yet been established,
the intervening authorities should provide estimates of the number of
local ministry staﬀ that will be needed based on best practices in countries at similar levels of development. This approach was used in East
Timor to good eﬀect. Donors and the host government need to workout a government salary schedule that is suﬃciently competitive toattract high-quality staﬀ, but simultaneously will not break the budget.

Economic Stabilization

171

Once staﬃng and a salary schedule have been decided, the intervening
authorities and the host-country government will need to put together
ministry budgets. If projected expenditures based on the initial staﬃng
and salary proposals exceed likely future revenues, staﬃng or wage cuts
will need to be made at this stage or long-term commitments will need
to be sought from donors to cover the gap. It is much easier to restrain
the size and salaries of the ministries at the start of an operation thanto cut staﬀ and expenditures at a later date.
The intervening authorities and the donor community aﬀect
the cost of local government operations through their own hires
from the local labor market. In most postconﬂict situations, welleducated individuals who are ﬂuent in languages spoken by the international bureaucracy (usually English) are in high demand. Competition between the host government and the intervening authorities forthese individuals frequently either elevates host-government wages tounsustainable levels or results in well-qualiﬁed individuals working forinternational assistance organizations at relatively high salaries but inpositions such as translation or driving, which fail to fully utilize theirskills. This has been the case in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and East Timor.
The intervening authorities, donors, embassies, and NGOs shouldcome to an agreement concerning appropriate wage rates for local staﬀ
that will not distort local labor markets. Together, they should set
wage bands for occupations from which they commonly hire, taking
into account competing local government pay scales. Another eﬀectivemeans of reducing disparities in wages between individuals working forthe international community and those working for the local government are progressive income taxes. Although rates should not be punitive, instituting a two-tier income tax schedule with a fairly large initial
exemption would reduce the relative attractiveness of working for theinternational community. Under no circumstances should either government employees or local staﬀ who work for international organizations be exempt from local taxes, especially payroll taxes. Some analysts argue that international staﬀ should also be liable for host-country
taxes, but the complexities of making mobile international staﬀ pay
host-country taxes and the attraction to host-country governments of

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imposing high tax rates on this potential source of income make sucha measure unworkable.
Building Capacity, Establishing Accountability, and Combating
Corruption
Building an Effective Civil Service. Creating incentives and sys-

tems that induce government employees to provide quality services isdiﬃcult in any country; in postconﬂict societies, this task is daunting.
Parties to the conﬂict see government jobs as spoils to be divided as partof the peace agreement, not as positions carrying responsibilities. Government employees perceive their jobs as sinecures that permit them todemand and receive bribes. Decisionmaking is highly centralized; routine decisions are made at the ministerial level. But communications,especially outside major cities, are poor, making implementation difﬁcult. Where authority has been delegated, civil servants are reluctant
to make decisions for fear of antagonizing those in power.
In light of these problems, personnel policies to make the civil
service eﬀective and independent need to be adopted early on. Policies
need to be designed to assign responsibility, enforce accountability, andcontrol ﬁnancial ﬂows.
One key measure is to devolve decisionmaking authority. Ministries should treat the service provider (school, clinic, precinct police station) as the operating unit. Principals, clinic directors, and police captains should be made responsible for all the operations at their facilities,
from maintenance to staﬃng to operations. They should have theauthority to hire, ﬁre, and make decisions about expenditures. Simultaneously, the host government should be encouraged to make ministries as lean and ﬂat as possible. If decisions have been devolved to theoperating unit, there is little call for large ministerial staﬀs. The donor
community’s most eﬀective mechanism in this regard is to limit funds
and prioritize expenditures for the salaries of the frontline providers.
There should be clear chains of command, with principals, clinic directors, and police captains reporting only to district or regional superintendents; other ministerial employees should provide support, notmanage.

Economic Stabilization

173

Responsibility entails accountability. Although managers shouldchoose their own staﬀs, there is always a danger that some managers
will choose applicants on the basis of family ties or the willingness ofan employee to part with a share of his or her salary in exchange for ajob, although the same holds true when higher-level oﬃcials make thesedecisions. These practices can be curtailed by insisting that hiring decisions be made by committees that include the manager’s superior, othersenior staﬀ members, and members of the local government or community. When hiring, managers should have to choose among applicants who have met stipulated criteria for the job. This may involve
passing a competency test or completing a training course with a passing grade. If parties to the conﬂict have been severely underrepresented
in the civil service, aﬃrmative action programs based on ethnicity or
language may be used in hiring decisions. These need to be employedwith care: They may reduce the sense of grievance in one community
at the expense of exacerbating it in another.
Establishing workable ﬁnancial controls without a banking
system and in the absence of communications is a tall order. However,
simple but robust ﬁnancial controls can limit corruption. First, every
school, clinic, police station, or other operating unit needs a budget.
Initially, these can be drawn up crudely but eﬀectively by creating personnel budgets and nonpersonnel operating budgets. Personnel budgets should be drawn up by setting head counts on the basis of estimates of the number of people to be served or protected. Uniform
salaries for speciﬁc jobs should be set by the national government. Thisapproach may have beneﬁcial consequences for the more equitable provision of government services. If teacher salaries are set nationally, thelower cost of living in outlying regions make these areas more ﬁnancially attractive, encouraging teachers to consider jobs outside major
cities. Nonpersonnel operating budgets can be based on numbers of
staﬀ or people served.
To limit fraud, salary and other payments should be made byemployees of the ﬁnance ministry rather than by the line ministry, and payroll and accounting clerks, employed by the ﬁnanceministry, should make all payments, not the director of the operating
unit. If at all possible, electronic deposit systems should be used for

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payroll. These arrangements are remarkably versatile and can be usedin very primitive ﬁnancial systems. Simple but strict contracting procedures coupled with the dual authorization of expenditures, one fromthe manager and the second from the accounting clerk, followed byperiodic audits, help control graft.
Early on, the intervening authorities should assist the governmentin establishing a civil service commission. The civil service commission
should write or provide amendments to civil service laws, determine
competencies for civil service positions, assess the competency levelsof personnel, determine or revise the grading system for personnel,
develop training and leadership programs, and create performancereview procedures.
The challenge for those who create or restore the civil service
administration is to ensure that standards of professionalism, transparency, political independence, and public service are enshrined inlaw and practice. These goals have to be balanced against the need to
rapidly recruit civil servants to operate the government. Pressure alsocomes from donors and political forces to bring ex-combatants into thegovernment workforce. As opposed to programs speciﬁcally designed
to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate ex-combatants into society, programs that are often key to preventing a resumption of violence, creating permanent “jobs for the boys” triggers a host of problems for the
future. By deﬁnition, DDR programs are short term: They are focusedon drawing combatants away from their former units and reintegrating them into society. In contrast, creating permanent jobs for politicalsupporters rots the integrity of the civil service. Resisting this pressure is often diﬃcult, as these individuals may create more diﬃculties
outside the tent than in. But a small, eﬃcient civil service that will beaﬀordable is preferable to creating a bloated bureaucracy.
In addition to ensuring that payroll obligations are met, the government, or, in the absence of a government, the intervening authorities need to establish a means of ensuring that civil servants performtheir jobs. This step can be achieved by stipulating that wages will be
paid only to people on the payroll who show up for work. Simple systems can be set up for monitoring who is coming to work. Dismissing
incompetent or absent employees is more diﬃcult but can be encour-Economic Stabilization

175

aged by giving parents of schoolchildren, medical patients, and crime
victims venues in which to complain and to demand that service providers account for their actions by dismissing such staﬀ. Spot-checks
and performance audits conducted by nascent inspector general’soﬃces can be used to verify that people are on the job. This system canbe used simultaneously to ascertain whether clinics, police stations,or schools are open for business and to conduct a needs assessment ofwhat supplies and improvements in physical infrastructure are lacking.
This process serves as a means of holding individuals responsible forﬁxing problems once identiﬁed.
“Ghost” or absentee government employees, a problem in mostdeveloping countries, are even more prevalent in postconﬂict countries, where records have disappeared and audits are weak. Liberia andSierra Leone have struggled to purge names from government payrolls
following their conﬂicts. Employee censuses are a crucial ﬁrst step increating a more accurate payroll. Resuscitating accounting and payroll
systems used in the past or, if unavailable, creating new ones is a crucial step. Establishing governmentwide pay scales and ﬁxed numbersof positions so that salaries are controlled and employee costs can bebudgeted are the next steps in this process.
The early introduction of simple ﬁnancial management information systems, often operated by expatriates on laptop computers, isanother early step toward establishing budgetary controls. These systems need to be kept simple but should be ﬂexible enough for budgeting and accounting. It is better to have a set of robust, easily understoodaccounting and payment systems than a more sophisticated, single,
integrated system that demands higher levels of technical expertise andmore complex computer systems than are likely to be available. Civil
servants need to be trained on these systems as soon as possible.
Contracting and Procurement. Governments not only generate
services, they also purchase goods and services from outside vendors.
Contracting and procurement of these services account for an appreciable amount of government spending. Best-practice policies for procurement contracts provide the host country with value for money;
result in swift, simple, practical procedures; yield impartial, consistentdecisions; provide accessible, unambiguous rules and procedures; and176

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

hold both the contracting agency and contractors accountable for theiractions.
These practices not only yield best value, but they are among thebest means of curbing corruption. Contracting and procurement decisions are easily inﬂuenced by bribes. Along with kickbacks related tonepotistic practices in government employment and bribery associatedwith obtaining government approvals, contracting and procurement
are the largest sources of corruption in most societies. The World Bank
has developed detailed policy guidelines and procurement manuals
designed to elicit lowest-cost bids, ensure that the products and services delivered are of requisite quality, and avoid corrupt practices. Key
lessons, applicable to postconﬂict situations, include the following:
1. The government must establish clear contracting procedures that
apply to all government contracts. Contracts should be open
for competitive bidding but should be diﬀerentiated by value.
Smaller contracts should be handled in an expedited manner,
though with proper ﬁnancial controls.
2. The government should assign responsibility for planning large
projects to cross-ministerial committees so that the most important stakeholders have a voice in the planning process: consumers and end users, suppliers, the ﬁnance ministry, and the line
ministry. Plans need to be integrated carefully into current andlong-term budget planning.
3. Prospective procurement of goods and services needs to be
included in the annual budget. Once budgeted, the procurement authority should devolve to the operating ministry. The
ministry of ﬁnance should not have leeway to arbitrarily sequester or retake appropriated funds.
4. Requests for proposals need to be publicly announced and posted
so that all potential bidders have access to the same information.
Evaluation criteria should be clearly posted.
5. Decisions should be made by committees of publicly designatedindividuals who do not have conﬂicts of interest with bidders.
Once opened, the bids and the committee’s evaluation of thebids should be publicly posted. The intervening authorities

Economic Stabilization177

can play a key role by appointing representatives to sit on thesecommittees.
6. Responsible committees or individuals need to be designated towork with and monitor the contractor. Regular progress reports
should be presented to the appropriate authority. The intervening authorities should integrate their reporting and audit requirements and those of other donors into this process. Governments
in postconﬂict states complain bitterly of duplicative reporting
requirements from donors, much of which involve requests forthe same information but in diﬀering formats.
7. Outside performance audits should be conducted before theproject is accepted. Outside ﬁnancial audits need to be conducted regularly, covering all expenditures. The intervening
authorities can help cement these procedures into practice byassisting in enforcement and by insisting that the host-country
government adopt and adhere to them.
Not only the host government has to adopt eﬃcient contracting
procedures: Virtually every intervention has suﬀered from contracting and accounting irregularities on the part of donors and the intervening authorities. Most of these occur after the immediate stabilization phase and do not involve the provision of humanitarian assistance.
Despite complaints about the delays and red tape involved in following
standardized procedures, there is no substitute for establishing transparent, open, competitive contracting procedures for the intervening
authorities from day one. The savings in terms of investigative time,squandered resources, poor project delivery, and the ﬁnancial credibility of the operation far exceed any supposed savings in time. Attempts
to circumvent established contracting procedures frequently result in
longer delivery times and more failures to deliver than if standard procedures had been used in the ﬁrst place. (Witness the contracting problems in Iraq.) The World Bank can provide the intervening authorities,
as well as the host government, with guidelines and procedures, draft
contracts, and, potentially, links to the World Bank’s own Web site forpostings.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Combating Corruption. Corruption is the misuse of entrusted
power for private gain. It can involve high-level oﬃcials with discretionary authority over government policies or lower-level oﬃcials whomake decisions about enforcing (or not enforcing) regulations. Corruption impedes the development of democracy and the rule of law.
In a democratic system, oﬃces and institutions lose their legitimacy
when they are misused for private advantage. While this is harmfulin established democracies, it is even more so in postconﬂict situations. Accountable political leadership cannot develop in a corrupt
climate. Corruption slows economic growth. It is often responsible
for funneling scarce public resources to costly, high-proﬁle projects
at the expense of less spectacular but more necessary projects. It hinders the development of markets and distorts competition, thereby
deterring investment. The eﬀect of corruption on the fabric of societyis the most damaging of all. It undermines the population’s trust in thepolitical system, political institutions, and political leadership.
The intervening authorities need to help curb corruption at alllevels. They may provide legal advisors and consultants to help develop
anticorruption legislation, design anticorruption public education
campaigns, and empower domestic watchdog mechanisms and groups
to monitor the government. In some cases, the intervening authorities
may bring in international auditors to conduct audits and corporate
management teams to run ministries and public enterprises. The intervening authorities should address and overcome the impunity enjoyedby criminalized political elites. International personnel may have toplay a direct role in the criminal justice system for this purpose. Mission staﬀ must be held accountable as well.

Outcomes
Data are both scarce and suspect during and following a conﬂict. Measuring improvements and connecting improvements to policies can be
fraught with even more problems than usual in poor developing countries. For these reasons, our recommendations for best-practice policies

Economic Stabilization179

in stabilizing the economy after a conﬂict are based as much on practitioner assessments as on analysis of economic and other data.
This said, some metrics reﬂect the eﬀects of appropriate policies for stabilizing the economy. Stabilizing the national currency andreducing or halting emissions of the national currency in the aftermathof conﬂict have contributed to reducing and controlling inﬂation ina large number of postconﬂict situations, including Cambodia, East
Timor, Haiti, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone (see Figure 7.1). The performance of these countries’ governments is even more impressive considering that, during their respective conﬂicts, inﬂation had been very
high and their central banks had ceased to function eﬀectively.
Figure 7.2 indicates how important creating a secure environmentand some macroeconomic stability is to economic growth. The averagerate of growth in the ﬁrst or second year after the end of a conﬂict runs
18.3 percent in our sample, which includes most interventions sinceWorld War II.1 Even in Iraq, where security has been poor, growth was
rapid in 2004, reaching 46.5 percent as better economic policies andan inﬂux of foreign assistance and increased government expenditures
resulted in a surge in consumption.
The extent of the initial rebound is dictated in part by the depthof the decline in output during the conﬂict. Regressing the depth ofthe cumulative decline in output on the rebound in the ﬁrst year ofrecovery, we found that the decline accounted for roughly half (53 percent) of the rebound.2 However, the importance of providing security
and macroeconomic stability to restart growth cannot be overemphasized: Many of these countries experienced long periods of economic
decline before the intervention, among them Bosnia, Cambodia, El
Salvador, and Sierra Leone. Only after a modicum of security and1Previous RAND work, Dobbins, McGinn, et al. (2003), and Dobbins, Jones, et al.
(2005) evaluated interventions in 15 countries. The average rate of growth cited above uses
data from each of these case studies, with the exception of Eastern Slavonia and Somalia, forwhich no statistical data were available.

2 The estimated equation was Rebound in Year One  0.53 r Cumulative Decline. Theintercept was constrained to equal zero. The parameter estimate had a p-value of 0.00025
and the p-value for the equation using an F-test was 0.028. However, only 10 observations
were available.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 7.1
Inﬂation Following Conﬂict

Afghanistan*
Bosnia and Herzegovina
CambodiaCongo**
East Timor
Eastern Slavonia
El Salvador
Germany
Haiti
Iraq*
Japan
Kosovo*Year 0Years 1–5
Years 6–10

Mozambique
Namibia
Sierra Leone
0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Percent
SOURCE: Data compiled from International Monetary Fund, International Financial
Statistics Browser; International Monetary Fund, “Democratic Republic ofTimor-Leste: 2005 Article IV Consultation—Staff Report; Public Information Notice on
the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the Executive Director for the
Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste,” IMF Country Report No. 05/245, Washington,
D.C., July 2005b, p. 31; Rakia Moalla-Fetini, Heikki Hatanpää, Shehadah Hussein, andNatalia Koliadina, Kosovo: Gearing Policies Toward Growth and Development,
Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2005, p. 81; International Monetary
Fund, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: Statistical Appendix,” IMF Country Report No. 02/60,
Washington, D.C., March 2002, p. 13; International Monetary Fund, “Bosnia andHerzegovina: 2005 Article IV Consultation—Staff Report; Staff Supplement; PublicInformation Notice on the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the
Executive Director for Bosnia and Herzegovina,” IMF Country Report No. 05/199,
Washington, D.C., June 2005a, p. 34.
NOTE: An asterisk (*) denotes that only data for year 1 following the conﬂict havebeen employed in the year 1–5 statistics because data for these subsequent years
were not yet available; two asterisks (**) denote that the data from year 1 following
the conﬂict have been employed in the year 0 statistics because year 0 data were
unavailable.
RAND MG557-7.1

Economic Stabilization

181

Figure 7.2
Prior Declines in Economic Output and Economic Growth in the First Year
Following an Intervention

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Congo

El Salvador

Haiti

Japan

Mozambique

Sierra Leone*
–100

–50

0

50

100

Percent change in GDP
SOURCE: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics; B. R. Mitchell,International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750–1988, 3rd ed., New York: Stockton
Press, 1992; B. R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia, and Oceania
1750–1993, 3rd ed., New York: Stockton Press, 1998; International Monetary Fund(2005b, p. 31); Dimitri G. Demekas, Johannes Herderschee, and Davina F. Jacobs,
Kosovo: Institutions and Policies for Reconstruction and Growth, Washington, D.C.:
International Monetary Fund, 2002, p. 6; International Monetary Fund, “Bosnia andHerzegovina: Selected Issues and Statistical Appendix,” IMF Staff Country Report No.
00/77, Washington, D.C., June 2000, p. 118; International Monetary Fund, “Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan: Fifth Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program andRequest for an Extension,” IMF Country Report No. 05/371, Washington, D.C., October
2005d, p. 19; International Monetary Fund, “Iraq: Statistical Appendix,” IMF Country
Report 05/295, Washington, D.C., August 2005c, p. 3.
NOTE: An asterisk (*) denotes that data are for the second year after the intervention(Germany, 1947; Kosovo, 2001; and Sierra Leone, 2001) because of lack of data or
because the immediate aftereffects of the conﬂict resulted in continued declines in
output during the ﬁrst year.
RAND MG557-7.2

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

macroeconomic stability were restored did growth resume. Since theend of their respective conﬂicts, these countries have enjoyed a periodof strong, sustained growth despite the many other problems withwhich they are plagued.

Key Actors
The IMF is far and away the best institution to help the host country stabilize its currency and control inﬂation. Donor-country ﬁnanceministries and central banks can assist by providing technical assistance, especially staﬀ, to mentor and train host-country civil servants.
Technical assistance is also needed to set up payment, statistical, andother systems.
The intervening authorities need to take the lead in restarting
government operations. Although donors provide staﬀ, funds, and programs, the intervening authorities need to provide direction as wellas coordination. Restarting government operations requires the largest
numbers of international staﬀ. Key staﬃng needs include budgetary,
accounting, and tax experts for the ﬁnance ministry, and public healthand education experts for those two ministries. These can be recruitedfrom the large pool of international consultants engaged in development work.
Donor conferences are usually organized by the country or countries that have taken a lead role in the intervention. The World Bankand the UNDP are best suited to provide a needs assessment in preparation for such a conference. The lead nation usually takes responsibility for pushing donors to honor their commitments as well. Trust
funds have been useful in Cambodia, East Timor, and elsewhere tocoordinate assistance. The World Bank has the most experience in running these funds and, in our view, is the most appropriate body toorganize and staﬀ them.

Economic Stabilization

183

Costs
Resuscitating the Central Bank. Since 1962, the IMF has provided emergency assistance to help member countries with urgent balance-of-payments ﬁnancing needs in the wake of natural disasters.3
In 1995, this program was extended to states emerging from conﬂict.
Countries are eligible to receive such funds if institutional and administrative capacity has been severely disrupted and they have an urgent
need for funds because of balance-of-payments pressures. However,the country must still have suﬃcient capacity for planning and policy
implementation. It must also agree to follow up with a more detailed
policy program under one of the IMF’s regular lending facilities.
These programs help ﬁnance government budget deﬁcits and provide foreign exchange for importers to purchase goods and services
from abroad. Recipients also receive technical assistance from the IMF
to rebuild the capacity to implement macroeconomic policies, including statistical capacity, establishing and reorganizing ﬁscal, monetary,and exchange institutions to help restore the ability of the government
to tax and make expenditures, and for payment, credit, and foreignexchange operations. The program not only provides funds directly,
but the imprimatur of the IMF often opens up credits from othersources that can be used to reinvigorate foreign exchange markets andthereby stabilize the currency. Assistance has been typically limited
to 25 percent of the member’s quota in the IMF, although amounts
up to 50 percent of quota can be and have been provided in certain
circumstances.
The program has become a key source of funds for immediately
stabilizing economies in postconﬂict situations. Table 7.1 shows theamounts of all the programs to date in terms of total dollars, as a shareof GDP, and per capita value. As shown in the table, the loan amounts
tend to be relatively small, primarily because the economies and the3International Monetary Fund, “IMF Emergency Assistance: Supporting Recovery fromNatural Disasters and Armed Conﬂicts,” fact sheet, Washington, D.C., December 2005e.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Table 7.1
IMF Loans for Postconﬂict Emergency AssistanceCountryYear

Amount(millionsof US$)

Bosnia andHerzegovina

1995

45.0

2,785.8

1.62

3,420.1

13.16

Rwanda1997

12.2

1,868.5

0.65

6,180.0

1.97

Albania

1997

12.0

2,294.5

0.52

3,082.7

3.89

Rwanda1997

8.1

1,868.5

0.43

6,844.7

1.18

Tajikistan

1997

10.1

1,123.9

0.90

5,931.7

1.70

Tajikistan

1998

10.0

1,320.1

0.76

6,010.7

1.66

Republic of
Congo

1998

9.6

1,949.5

0.49

3,221.9

2.98

Sierra Leone

1998

16.0

672.4

2.38

4,278.6

3.74

Guinea-Bissau

1999

2.9

224.5

1.29

1,327.7

2.18

Sierra Leone

1999

21.4

669.4

3.20

4,376.2

4.89

Guinea-Bissau

2000

1.9

215.5

0.88

1,365.7

1.39

Sierra Leone

2000

13.3

635.9

2.09

4,509.0

2.95

Republic of
Congo

2000

13.6

3,219.9

0.42

3,437.8

3.96

Fr. Republicof Yugoslavia

2000

151.0

8603.01.76

10,646.1

14.18

Burundi

2002

12.7

628.1

2.02

6,818.1

1.86

Burundi

2003

13.4

595.5

2.25

7,036.7

1.90

CentralAfricanRepublic

2004

8.2

1,288.5

0.64

3,986.0

2.06

Iraq

2004

435.1

25,539.0

1.70

27,139.6

16.03

Haiti

2005

15.5

3,650.2

0.42

8,326.3

1.86

AverageGDP(millionsof US$)

Loan asShare ofGDP (%)

42.74

SOURCE: International Monetary Fund (2005e).
NOTE: Amounts may not sum due to rounding.

1.29

Per Capita
Population Value of(thousands) Loan (US$)

4.40

Economic Stabilization

185

members’ quotas in the IMF are small. On a per capita basis, they haveaveraged $4.40 per person in the recipient countries.
IMF loans for postconﬂict emergency assistance provide a usefulmeasure of how much is needed for monetary stabilization eﬀorts.
Although in granting these loans, the IMF has restricted them to 25
to 50 percent of a country’s IMF quota, quotas are determined by thesize of a country’s GDP, international trade and investment ﬂows, anda country’s foreign currency reserves. Thus, loans granted under the
postconﬂict emergency assistance program are sized roughly in accordance with the country’s economy and ability to absorb the assistance.
Loans have run from 3.2 percent of GDP for the small economy of
Sierra Leone in 1999 to 0.42 percent of GDP for the larger economyof the Republic of Congo in 2000. Loans have averaged 1.29 percent
of GDP.
We have used this average of 1.29 percent as a guide to the levelof assistance needed to initially stabilize the currency and resuscitate
the central bank following a conﬂict. Although the IMF will need to
tailor the size of each loan to the speciﬁcs of the country involved, we
believe 1.29 percent of GDP provides a good rule to gauge the level ofassistance needed.
Shifting from Donations to Taxation. As the host-country government develops its own capacity to levy and collect taxes, the donor
community should shift from being the primary source of funding
for the government’s operating budget to plugging funding gaps thatthe host government is still unable to ﬁll. Transferring ﬁnancing fromdonor contributions to host-country tax revenues is no easy task.
The donor community needs to work with the host government toensure that government expenditures, especially the government payroll, can eventually be covered through a reasonable level of taxation. If
the government is unlikely to be able to generate suﬃcient revenues toprovide adequate levels of public service for the foreseeable future, thehost government and the donor community should carefully assess current and projected expenditures. If expenditures seem to be in line with
the need for teachers, health care workers, police oﬃcers, and other

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government employees, the donor community should commit itself tomaking up the shortfall between likely revenues and projected spending for an extended period of time, giving the ﬁnance ministry and theeconomy the breathing room needed for the country to become selfsuﬃcient. If expenditures appear to be inﬂated, the donor community
should work with the host government to trim staﬀ or wage scales.
Grant aid to support the operating budget is the best means ofbridging funding gaps at this time. It keeps the donor community
engaged in monitoring the provision of public services and controlling
expenditures, especially expenditures on government employment.
It also serves to prevent the creation of punitive tax regimes, which
encourage bribery and smuggling while retarding economic growth.
Bosnia, despite its many problems, provides a guide to the speedwith which expenditures can be shifted from donations to taxation. In
many countries, lack of donor interest has been a binding constraint on
assistance: The level of assistance is determined by willingness to contribute rather than by assessment of need. Because of the importanceof Bosnia to the wealthiest donors (the United States and the European Union), the country was singularly well funded. Figure 7.3 plots
two estimates of foreign assistance to Bosnia as a share of government
expenditures. As detailed in the ﬁgure, foreign assistance accounted fora very large share of government expenditures early on, then trailed oﬀ
fairly quickly as the economy recovered. By 2005, it covered just 6.4
percent of total expenditures.
Using the expenditure path illustrated in Figure 7.3 as a guide,assistance would initially account for most government expendituresin a postconﬂict situation, falling to about a quarter of the total in the
fourth year, and tapering oﬀ thereafter. However, in many postconﬂict
countries, Afghanistan, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, to mention three,
the recovery in tax revenue has been far slower than in Bosnia. Consequently, the international donor community should be willing to covera greater share of government operating costs for a longer period oftime than in countries in which the government has more resources toﬁnance these expenditures itself.

Economic Stabilization

187

Figure 7.3
Foreign Assistance as a Share of Government Expenditures in Bosnia

Percent of government expenditures

120
Total assistance
Budgetary support

100

80

60

40

20

0
1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

SOURCE: International Monetary Fund (2005a, pp. 29, 34).
RAND MG557-7.3

In Table 7.2, we project hypothetical appropriate levels of assistance for Namibia and Sierra Leone. Using the same factors as in
Chapter Six, we project the cost of fully funding health, education,and public administration at reasonable levels for these two countries
during the ﬁrst ﬁve years following the end of their conﬂicts, 1989 and
1999, respectively. We then calculate what would have been reasonablelevels of foreign assistance to cover these expenditures, employing thehigher spending patterns exhibited in Bosnia.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Table 7.2
Estimated Costs of Supporting Government Services in Namibia andSierra Leone
Country

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5GDP ($ millions)

3,117.1

3,177.6

3,530.8

3,215.1

3,434.9

Appropriate expenditures
on education, health, andadministration ($ millions)

322.9

329.2

365.8

333.1

355.9

Share of international
community (%)

97.2

61.8

61.8

33.7

26.2

International community
contribution ($ millions)

313.8

203.3

225.9

112.2

93.2

GDP ($ millions)

661.9

819.0

936.0

971.9

1,030.8

Appropriate expenditures
on education, health, andadministration ($ millions)

68.6

84.8

97.0

100.7

106.8

Share of international
community (%)

97.2

61.8

61.8

47.7

33.7

International community
contribution ($ millions)

66.6

52.4

59.9

48.0

36.0

Namibia

Sierra Leone

SOURCE: RAND calculations.
NOTE: All dollar amounts are in constant 2002 U.S. dollars. Amounts may not sum
due to rounding.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Democratization

The prime objective of most nation-building missions is to make violent societies peaceful, not to make poor societies prosperous or authoritarian societies democratic. Nevertheless, the three are interconnected,
and most successful missions accomplish all three, albeit to diﬀerent
degrees. Successful transformations of violent societies into peacefulones are thus almost always accompanied by some degree of economic
development and political reform. These missions invariably begin in
circumstances in which existing systems of governance have largely or
totally collapsed. In some cases, this is the result of civil war. In others,
it is the result of the intervention itself. Whatever the cause of collapse,
a new or renewed system has to be constructed. In rare cases, traditional
nondemocratic institutions may retain enough local and international
legitimacy to provide a viable basis for renewed governance, the 1991
restoration of Kuwait’s monarchy being the prime example. In most
instances, however, traditional alternatives to representative democracy
will have disintegrated or been discredited beyond redemption. Thusin most cases, the creation or re-creation of institutions deriving theirauthority from popular suﬀrage oﬀer the intervening authorities the
only practical means of transferring power back to an indigenous government and leaving behind a peaceful society.
Liberal democracies are arguably more paciﬁc than are othertypes of political systems. At least they seldom go to war with eachother. Liberal democracies are also less likely to become embroiled in

189

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civil war or perpetuate genocide.1 Newly emerging democracies, on theother hand, are often prone to external aggression and internal conﬂict.2 The quality and duration of the transition is thus quite important. So is the character of the newly introduced institutions. In societies sharply divided along ethnic, religious, or even economic lines,
majority rule is likely to be hotly contested. Thus the design of any new
institutional structure needs to be adapted to the unique characteristics of the society in question. Safeguards for minorities and checks
on majorities need to be designed to ameliorate rather than exacerbate
existing ﬁssures.

Key Challenges
Understanding the Obstacles and Opportunities. Failed states

would appear to be poor candidates for democratization, possessing
few of the factors tending to favor the growth of representative government. They are likely to be poor, ethnically divided, socially stratiﬁed,
and surrounded by other states in a similar condition. Nevertheless,unpromising candidates have made the transition, perhaps not all theway to liberal democracy, but to representative systems that hold reasonably fair elections on a regular basis and that alternate power amongcontesting parties. An understanding of the diﬃculties and a realistic
assessment of the possibilities serve as the proper starting point for any
eﬀort to promote such a process.
Structuring Representative Institutions. In countries where democratic institutions are weak and few, building a representative systemof government is a long, diﬃcult process. In most postconﬂict societ1

See, for example, Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, andSocialism, New York: W. W. Norton, 1997; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace:
Principles for a Post–Cold War World, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993; andSpencer R. Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another, New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.

2

Edward D. Mansﬁeld and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to
War, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005; Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conﬂict, New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Democratization

191

ies, years of repression and violence have fostered a culture of “gunsand greed,” which must be supplanted by a political culture that fosters
public discourse rather than violence as the channel of competition
for wealth and power. Political institutions and legal codes often need
to be created from scratch. The ﬂow of public information has often
been usurped by warring factions and used to enforce divisions andstrengthen political power. The maturation of political processes, civilsociety, and a media that ensures transparency and accountability is aprerequisite for durable political institutions and a viable peace.
Constitutional Design. Writing or revising a constitution is a signiﬁcant challenge in postconﬂict countries. Since postconﬂict countries are in serious disarray not just physically but socially and ideologically, getting all factions to agree on the text of a new constitution often
requires heavy external engagement. The process is marked not only by
the debate and grave consideration inherent in such a solemn task, butalso, and less inspiringly, by arm-twisting, threats, and behind-thescenes horse-trading.
Developing Civil Society. Postconﬂict countries usually lackstrong civil societies that can promote government accountability.
During periods of conﬂict, civil society groups, to the extent that there
are any, often go underground or into exile or they become targets ofviolence. Resuscitating, fostering, and protecting these groups whiledampening ethnic or religious tensions is one of the most diﬃcult tasks
facing the intervening authorities.
Creating a Free Press. Free, independent, and professionally competent media are usually in short supply following a conﬂict. When
Cambodian factions agreed to a peace settlement in 1991, for example, all journalists had been employed by the communist government,
which imposed strict controls. Other journalists, part of the oppositionpress, worked out of refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border
or from locations abroad. The press has to become emboldened to coversensitive political issues while learning the importance of objectivity
and accuracy.
Organizing Elections. Nothing short of elections is likely toprovide a government with the broadly based support and generally
accepted legitimacy needed to rule once the intervening authorities

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

have departed. On the other hand, premature elections can often reinforce ethnic and sectarian cleavages, promote divisive political positions, and even spur a return to violence. Elections do not necessarily
produce governments committed to resolving disputes through negotiation and compromise—or, for that matter, governments committed
to preserving democracy. If the parties that win these elections remain
dedicated to the destruction of their rivals or if they seek to undermine
the democratic institutions that brought them to power, elections may
work against the goal of establishing a stable and peaceful society. If
the parties that contest elections attempt to build popular support byappealing to intercommunal fears and hatreds, the election campaign
can rekindle the very conﬂict that the intervening authorities sought
to mitigate.

Best Practices
Understanding Obstacles and Opportunities

There are a number of general factors that tend to make democratization more or less diﬃcult. The ﬁrst is the regime type in surrounding
countries. Authoritarian regimes surrounded by democracies are more
likely to democratize than are authoritarian regimes surrounded byother authoritarian regimes.3 The causal mechanisms underlying thistendency remain unclear. It may be caused by peer pressure or peer
envy. Or it may be caused by democratic norms, which can take holdmore rapidly if a culturally similar neighbor sets an example. The point,
however, is that nation-building in countries surrounded by authoritarian regimes is likely to be more challenging than it would if neighboring countries were functioning democracies.
International pressure can play a signiﬁcant role in creating a successful move to democracy.4 Pressure has been most eﬀective when it
3

Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, All International Politics Is Local: The Diﬀusion of Conﬂict,
Integration, and Democratization, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

4

Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971, p. 197; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in theDemocratization193

has come from more powerful countries and international organizations such as the United Nations. Some authoritarian regimes havebeen supported by external assistance, especially from larger countries
and through diaspora communities. Geopolitical shifts may alter these
relationships by drying up sources of revenue or fostering new pressures
toward political liberalization, leading to democracy.5 At the end of theCold War, several states experienced pressures to democratize becauseof cuts in military aid from the United States or the former Soviet
Union, accompanied by bilateral and multilateral pressures toward liberalization. The salience of this factor is likely to vary according to thedegree of dependence on foreign support and the availability of compensatory sources of government revenues, such as those from natural
resources or from other alternatives.
Democratization tends to occur in waves, with a series of clusteredopenings followed by a period of retrenchment.6 The causal mechanisms driving democratization waves are somewhat unclear. However, contagion eﬀects may endow waves with a force of their own—
opposition movements often draw inspiration or adopt strategies fromrecent international developments. The intervening authorities cansometimes ride the wave, propagating techniques and political measures that facilitated successful democratization in a diﬀerent postconﬂict setting. The intervening authorities may also wish to bring oﬃcials
and individuals who participated in a successful democratization eﬀort
in a neighboring state into the host country as advisors to institutions
and politicians. In these ways, the presence of a broader democratic
wave can increase the likelihood of democratization.
Theories of modernization posit that economic development promotes democracy by facilitating the emergence of a middle class with
suﬃcient time and resources to push for more representative institutions. This suggests that intervening authorities involved in nationbuilding should view economic development as an opportunity for
Late Twentieth Century, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, pp. 85–100.
5

Laurence Whitehead, ed., The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe andthe Americas, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

6

Huntington (1991, pp. 3–30).

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

strengthening the democratization process. Seymour Lipset ﬁrst noted
in 1959 that, in both Europe and Latin America, democratic states
tended to be more economically developed across a range of indicators,
including per capita GDP, literacy, penetration of modern goods, andurbanization.7 Subsequent studies have indicated that this trend holds
more globally and that economic growth tends to contribute to the creation of democracy, not vice versa.8 Other factors that have been citedas contributors to democratization include the strength of civil society,egalitarian income distribution, and a market-oriented economy.9
The perceived legitimacy of the regime is an important determinant of whether democratization will be successful. The imposition of agovernment by an intervening authority may result in its eventual overthrow if it is not viewed as legitimate over the long run. A government
viewed as illegitimate by the population is a major obstacle to democratization no matter how fairly elected. While legitimacy itself is diﬃcult
to measure, the symptoms of failed legitimacy are well known: sagging
support in public opinion surveys, rampant corruption, economic stagnation, unsuccessful foreign policy initiatives, and loss of support fromdomestic constituencies such as religious authorities.
A country cannot remain democratic without a credible opposition
movement. The movement should have at least some semblance oforganization and cohesion. The bargaining process that usually ensues
between the government and a strong opposition movement is an
important pathway to democratization.10
7

Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development
and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. 1, March 1959,
pp. 69–105.

8

See, for example, Robert J. Barro, “Democracy and Growth,” Journal of Economic Growth,Vol. 1, No. 1, March 1996, pp. 1–27; Ross E. Burkhart and Michael Lewis-Beck, “Comparative Democracy: The Economic Development Thesis,” American Political Science Review,Vol. 88, No. 4, December 1994, pp. 903–910.

9 Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World
Politics, Vol. 49, No. 2, January 1997, pp. 155–183 [pp. 159–160]; see also, among others,
Huntington (1991).
10 Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern

Europe and Latin America, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Democratization

195

The eﬀectiveness and role of the security apparatus aﬀects theprobability that a postconﬂict society will become a successful democracy. Low morale, high desertion rates, a history of military takeovers of government, or legal provisions providing the military withhigh levels of political autonomy are danger signs. An incompetentor excessively politicized security apparatus can be a major obstacle todemocratization.
The intervening authorities can aﬀect only some of these conditions. The authorities can bring international pressure to bear—andindeed this is often the manifestation of that pressure. They can provide security, thereby allowing goods, services, people, and ideas tocirculate freely. They can provide assistance that can further accelerate
economic growth. They can facilitate the emergence of an organizedpolitical opposition. They can reform the state’s security apparatus. But
they may not be able to transform the nature of neighboring regimes.
They will not have the time or money needed to signiﬁcantly enlarge
the middle class. Nor, in a period of a few years, is the overall level ofsocial development likely to be lifted very much. Aspirations for thesociety’s political transformation need to be guided accordingly, recognizing the conditions of poverty, corruption, ignorance, and sectarian discord from which the new institutions will need to emerge andwhich they cannot entirely transcend.
Structuring Representative Institutions

In some cases, the intervening authorities will begin with sovereign
powers, as was the case in Kosovo, East Timor, and Iraq. Alternatively,
the intervening authorities may share oversight duties with an existentindigenous regime, one that will have agreed, perhaps as a condition
for the intervention, to give way in due course to a more permanent
government. Sometimes that transition can take place via elections
held under existing constitutional arrangements. Frequently, however,that legal framework will have broken down or been discredited, necessitating the fashioning of new institutions.
In considering constitutional revision, the ﬁrst step is to analyze
the sources of violent competition in the society. Who is competing,and for what? How can that competition be diverted from violent

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

into peaceful channels? How can the contenders be brought into the
new system? What institutional arrangements are most likely to enjoy
broad public support while adequately accommodating the needs ofthe various power centers in the society, thereby reducing the prospectof violent resistance?
By its very presence, an intervening force will shift power relationships within the host society, strengthening some claimants andweakening others. If heavily committed and generously resourced,
intervening authorities may occasionally be able to entirely dispossess
one ruling elite and empower another in an enduring fashion. After
World War II, the Nazi party was banned in Germany and thousandsof its members were barred from political participation. An attempt
to replicate this experience in postinvasion Iraq, where the U.S. troop
presence was more than 20 times smaller in proportion to the population than it had been in Germany, proved less successful. Even afterWorld War II in Japan, which was occupied much more lightly than
Germany, the U.S.-led purge of oﬃcials associated with the wartime
regime was much more modest and almost entirely reversed by theJapanese authorities as soon as the occupation ended.
In most circumstances, the intervening authorities will be better
advised to try to bring all the claimants to power in the society into
the political process. The threat of coercion may be employed for leverage, but the main objective in most cases should be to allow the maincontenders to continue their competition under new rules that favor
peaceful over violent means, giving all a chance for and, indeed, a shareof, power.
There are many options for doing this. Democracy comes in avariety of shapes. There are federal and unitary states, parliamentaryand presidential systems. Given free rein, intervening authorities will
be tempted to replicate their own system of government rather thansearch for one most suitable to the recipient society. By the same token,
local populations will often be inclined to opt for the system withwhich they are familiar, even if it has served them poorly in the past. In
most cases, it will be better to adapt the familiar to new circumstances
than to attempt to impose a wholly new construct. The Afghan constitutional process set out in the December 2001 Bonn Agreement, forDemocratization

197

example, drew heavily on traditional Afghan modalities for national
decisionmaking. This clearly enhanced the legitimacy of the process inthe eyes of the population as it went forward. By contrast, the roadmap
set out in 2004 for Iraq’s transition to democracy new and unfamiliar
concepts, most notably federalism. While a decentralized authority ofthat sort undoubtedly had a logic, and it was strongly demanded by
the Kurdish minority, it has been violently resisted by the Sunnis andregarded with some suspicion by the Shiite majority.
In ideal circumstances, the march toward renewed sovereignty
occurs in graduated stages. First, the contending forces are disarmed,
demobilized, and reintegrated. Then civil society and independent
media are given resources and time to grow. Political parties are organized under new rules. Ministries are organized and staﬀed with professionals. Security forces are reorganized and trained. Local elections
are held, and grassroots democracy takes hold. And then, as the capstone, national elections are held, and full sovereignty is returned to afreely elected government.
This ideal sequence is likely to be fully realizable only in circumstances in which the population is acquiescent and the intervening
authorities are well resourced. More often, the intervening authorities
will not be equipped to provide the full panoply of interim governance,
while the interim indigenous regime, if there is one, will be weak,
inept, and corrupt, else the intervention would not have been necessary in the ﬁrst place. In some cases, the contending parties will not be
ready to disarm and cannot be forced to do so. In such circumstances,elections may, in fact, be a requirement for forming a new government
with adequate coherence and authority to deal with the society’s mosturgent problems.
Most postconﬂict societies beneﬁt from the development of newpolitical leaders. Former leaders may have often based their power onarmed gangs or may have come to power by manipulating ethnic or
religious tensions. To create a durable political system under the new
regime, new actors are needed. The intervening authorities can encourage the development of new local leaders by devolving responsibility forthe provision of government services to local authorities and by encouraging local input into decisions. The intervening authorities must also

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

ensure that leadership develops among all factions. NGOs can be especially useful in developing leadership in local communities and among
women and minority groups. Members of the diaspora can also be
useful in developing or supplementing local talent.
Constitutional Design

It is important for long-term stability and societal reconciliation tohave broad popular participation in—and legitimation of—the constitutional process. International intervention cannot succeed and theinstitutions it establishes cannot be viable unless there is participationand ownership on the part of the people. This is why the process ofconstitution-making should be democratic and broadly participatory.
It should include not just the election of a constituent assembly or thepenning of a constitutional referendum, but also the involvement of
the widest possible range of stakeholders in the relevant discussions
and in procedural planning. It should also include the organization ofan extensive national dialogue on constitutional issues and principles.11
As Jamal Benomar observes, “Constitutions produced without transparency and adequate public participation will lack legitimacy.”12 And
illegitimate constitutions bode poorly for future stability.
While there should be as much continuity as possible with preexisting constitutional traditions, many conﬂicts are partly caused by
the weakness or failure of the preceding institutional arrangements.
Sometimes, signiﬁcant innovation in institutional design is needed. In
some cases, this means the devolution of power, if not federalism, toassure each group a stake in the system. It might also mean a new typeof electoral system to ensure fair and balanced representation without
too much fragmentation. The choice of executive structure (e.g., parliamentary or presidential), electoral system (e.g., proportional repre11 Larry Diamond, “Promoting Democracy in Post-Conﬂict and Failed States: Lessons

and Challenges,” paper presented at the National Policy Forum on Terrorism, Security, andAmerica’s Purpose, Washington, D.C., September 6–7, 2005.
12 Jamal Benomar, “Constitution-Making After Conﬂict: Lessons for Iraq,” Journal of

Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2, April 2004, pp. 81–95 [p. 89]. An interesting exception to thisrule is the Japanese constitution, which was written entirely by Americans and remains
unamended to this day.

Democratization

199

sentation, majoritarian, or a combination of both), and the degree of
devolution of power have signiﬁcant implications for future stability.
Also important is the degree to which the constitution eﬀectively constrains abuse of power and empowers an independent judiciary andother countervailing institutions.
There are at least two broad options for power-sharing that intervening authorities should consider during the constitutional process.
One is the consociational approach.13 This has been employed by statesthat have internal divisions along ethnic, religious, linguistic, or otherlines, yet nonetheless manage to remain stable due to consultation
among the elites of each of its major social groups. Thus, consociational
democracies are characterized by grand coalitions and proportionality
in the electoral system, as well as in the distribution of public oﬃces
and scarce resources. Examples include Switzerland, India, the Netherlands, Lebanon, and Malaysia. The consociational approach assumes
that, since ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other social divisions canbe destabilizing, cooperation across these divisions can bring about
long-term political stability. The other approach is to design a politicalsystem in which a majority of the population can be assured a certain
degree of primacy in society, but to build in crosscutting limitations
and incentives to ensure moderation.14 Both approaches have somemerit. Intervening authorities in postconﬂict situations should push
for political institutions that give each major contending group a stakein the future system (through some mechanism of sharing or devolving power) and that diminish the potential for one group (majority orplurality) to dominate the system indeﬁnitely and abuse and aggrandize power.

13 See, for example, Arend Lijphart, “Constitutional Democracy,” World Politics, Vol. 21,

No. 2, January 1969, pp. 207–225; and Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government
Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1999.
14 See, for example, Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conﬂict, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985; and Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1991.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Developing a Civil Society

Civil society occupies the political space between the individual andthe government. It includes NGOs, associations, and social groups that
contribute to a democratic society and nonviolent political transition
from war to peace. These organizations have several functions:• They enable citizens to have an impact on government decisions
without necessarily competing for political power or resorting toviolence.
• They give a voice to minority and other marginalized groups.
• They help increase government transparency, accountability, andresponsiveness.
In light of the signiﬁcant role that civil society plays in supporting and monitoring both local and national governance, international
and local authorities should establish legal regulations to protect anddevelop such organizations. Civil society development should be supported with funding, training, and advocacy. Civic education organizations should be equipped and trained to carry out voter educationand get-out-the-vote campaigns. A strong, diverse civil society can provide the foundation for a viable postwar democratic transition that isjust and sustainable. Its absence can result in the resurgence of conﬂict
and repressive governance. Nation-building operations create a windowof opportunity for international and domestic civil society organizations. They provide an opportunity to ﬁrmly establish civil society. But
they can also create false expectations and undermine long-term reconstruction if the international community and international civil society organizations quickly withdraw support following the end of the
conﬂict. A legal framework and a civil society that can exist without
external support over time are required. In many postconﬂict societies,
civil society organizations are at work prior to the war. When present,
the international community should utilize already existing capacityand build on that foundation.
Assistance to civil society often gains momentum late in thenation-building mission, since more immediate humanitarian needs
may take precedence in the early stages. In Afghanistan, Counterpart

Democratization

201

International conducted an assessment of civil society in 2005, four
years into the mission, as part of the USAID-supported Initiative toPromote Afghan Civil Society. Key recommendations included thefollowing:Eﬀorts to support civil society must take into account thediverse nature of Afghan [civil society organizations] and theirvaried needs, resulting in a ﬂexible oﬀering of capacity-building
approaches;
Despite their limitations as non-representative, mostly malebodies, shuras and ulemas should be fostered because of their
credibility with communities and the resulting potential formaking important contributions to anchoring civil society as aforce in Afghanistan.15
The capacity-building strategy should introduce graduatedgrants—starting with small “learning grants” for new organizations and building up to larger grants.16
Support for the adoption and implementation of an NGO Law
should remain a high priority as it is a critical element of a functioning civil society in any country.17

These recommendations reﬂect familiar themes found in othernation-building operations. Legal foundations, capacity-building services, funding, and recognition of traditional structures are now key
pillars of civil society development programs.
While law is important, civil society often functions well without
regulation. In some cases, civil society may actually function in spite ofregulations. In Cambodia, organizations mushroomed during the war
15 Counterpart International, Afghanistan Civil Society Assessment, Washington, D.C., June

3, 2005, p. 8.
16 Counterpart International (2005, p. 8).
17 Counterpart International (2005, p. 8).

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

and the postconﬂict UN operation. Many had been established in the
refugee camps lining the Thai border. But they were not recognized by
the government or by political parties, and they had no basis in law.
Many international NGOs entering postwar countries fail tocreate strong local capacity because they largely employ foreign personnel. The goal should be to foster and leave behind strong local organizations once they depart. Local civil society organizations should betrained, equipped, and supported. The international community should
help create capacity within civil society organizations that allows themto function according to the rules and procedures set by their boards.
Only well-structured organizations can survive “abandonment” once
international organizations leave. Many civil society organizations
face ﬁnancial diﬃculties as a result of the departure of international
partners. A package of incentives and programs may be required toensure the ﬁnancial health of such organizations. Speed of funding in
the initial postconﬂict period is important. In the rapidly changing
environment of postwar societies—which may include riots, elections,and humanitarian disasters—international donors should develop thecapability to deliver rapid support to local civil society organizations.
International and local authorities should also encourage citizens andlocal businesses to contribute to worthy organizations in cash or inkind.
While civil society can make an important contribution to theemergence of eﬀective representative government, it cannot oﬀer analternative. Donors should be wary of using NGOs to deliver services
that should be provided by the state. Working through such organizations may improve both the quality of the services delivered andaccountability for the use of donor funds, but it will do nothing toenhance the capacity of the local government.
Creating a Free Press

Independent media play a key role in providing information and analysis of elections, candidates, parties, and platforms, as well as reports
on problems during elections, oﬀering a forum for alternative views,
interpreting political or technical information for public consumption,
helping the public make informed choices, holding public oﬃcials

Democratization203

accountable through responsible reporting, and serving as a forum forpeaceful debate among those who might have resorted to violence. Theintervening authorities may establish media outlets to meet the need toconvey information to the public immediately, to dispel rumors, andto counteract the eﬀects of hate speech and inﬂammatory propaganda.
Outlets may take the form of radio stations, television stations, newspapers, or magazines. The establishment of an international media outlet
does not replace the need to nurture indigenous media, but it acknowledges that the latter task may take a substantial amount of time.
The intervening authorities should gather information about thestate of the media prior to and after the conﬂict, including media facilities. Television and radio studios, presses, and communication systems are often targeted and damaged during conﬂict. Donors require
knowledge about who controls or supports the media, including outside
countries, political parties or factions, warlords, and criminal organizations. These assessments need to take into consideration what is being
broadcast from outside the state and from where. Examples include
Iranian media campaigns in Iraq, Serbian and Croatian campaigns in
Bosnia, and Albanian campaigns in Kosovo.
Once an adequate assessment has been made, international andlocal authorities can make decisions about how to develop the media,
including whether to focus on private or public media outlets. A key
issue is funding, as even private media outlets may not be able to support themselves. Key tasks include the creation of a legal framework
for media operations, such as a licensing structure, professional standards, and associations for publishers, editors, and journalists; construction and rehabilitation of publishing houses, presses, transmitters,
and other media equipment; and training and education programs for
publishers, broadcasters, and journalists.
The intervening authorities may establish or fund media outlets
to counter hate propaganda and inﬂammatory statements, and disseminate critical information about transitional activities that aﬀect the
population. These eﬀorts are often designed to preempt or competewith media outlets controlled by warlords, ethnic factions, or otheropponents of peace. The intervening authorities may need to ﬁll thevacuum in the provision of critical information to the population about

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nation-building activities, especially when free and independent media
are lacking. Examples include information on the movement of peacekeeping forces, land mine awareness, refugee returns, food and shelter
programs, and voter registration and other election information. These
media programs help counteract rumors that lead to violence and help
expose the activities of those spoilers opposed to the peace process.
They are now considered a permanent feature of the initial phase ofnation-building operations. Additionally, the intervening authorities
should strengthen local indigenous media outlets as part of a broader
eﬀort to build a vibrant civil society.
Media supported or controlled by the intervening authorities may
be viewed as biased. In addition, media outlets run by the intervening
authorities may attract local talent away from the local media, weakening these outlets and leaving a vacuum when the international intervention is over. At the same time, indigenous media outlets are likely
to be associated with contending political factions. The challenge is tonavigate between the short-term requirement for providing immediate,
critical information to the public and the longer-term imperative ofcreating healthy, free, independent media.
The intervening authorities need to examine the current capacity of the media to print, distribute, and transmit news, as well as thecapacity for media education and training. Before designing a media
strategy, several questions must be answered. Who are the main actors
in the crisis? Who are the opinion-makers? How does the population
get information? Do the citizens have radios, televisions, and access toprint media? What is the literacy rate among the population?
The control of transmitters after the conﬂict is a particularly sensitive issue. In Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia established separate units to
help Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs begin broadcasting radio andtelevision programs. The decision to help each community separately
served to fuel further fragmentation of society in Bosnia following theconﬂict. The parties continued to spread their doctrines of intolerance
and hate. In countries that had strong public broadcasting systems prior
to the conﬂict, the intervening authorities should analyze the past roleof these systems and make decisions about the continuation of funding and support. In some areas of conﬂict, public broadcasting agen-Democratization

205

cies were used as propaganda tools. In post-Taliban Afghanistan, partsof the population perceived the state media as biased in favor of theNorthern Alliance. In postwar environments such as in Kosovo andBosnia, the international community advocated the establishment of apublic broadcasting corporation modeled after the BBC. A media strategy should address whether both private and public media are going
to be promoted, developed, and funded. For the longer term, a media
strategy must encompass how advertising and other revenue streams
will create self-sustaining media. Revenues will reduce the dependenceof the media on international donors or local political parties.
One of the main challenges in building free, independent media
is establishing an impartial, transparent legal regime that upholds freedom of speech, establishes fair licensing practices, permits independent
media to operate without harassment, and minimizes the advantages
that public media may have over private providers. Laws and regulatory
regimes often take longer to realize than other goals of donor activities
aﬀecting the media. In some cases, postwar governments fail to enact
legal measures to support and guide media. In Bosnia, the OSCE wasgiven responsibility for organizing the ﬁrst postwar elections. Upon
arrival, the OSCE discovered that the same leaders who had prosecuted
the war remained in control of the media. To ensure fair elections, theOSCE established the Media Experts Commission as a subcommission to the Provisional Election Commission. It issued a set of rules
and regulations that directed the media to publish accurate information and to refrain from broadcasting incendiary programming. The
Media Experts Commission also ordered the three television systems,
which were controlled by the ruling parties of Bosnia’s three entities, toprovide opposition political parties with the same amount of advertising time as they did the ruling parties and to run election notices andadvertisements issued by the international community.
In many war-torn environments, journalists have worked only
under authoritarian regimes and state-controlled media outlets. The
business aspect of running sustainable media organizations may need
to be taught through training courses. The establishment of a center
that provides a variety of services and allows providers to coordinate
their activities with the work of local journalists has been a successful

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model for media development in postwar societies. In Afghanistan,
the United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) helped establish a single independent media training
and resource facility, the AINA Media and Culture Centre in Kabul,
which improved coordination among donors and NGOs. Several organizations, such as the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, opened
oﬃces in this facility, as did local newspapers, magazines, and NGOs.
UNESCO later funded an Internet connection and supplied computers. The BBC conducted a training program through its media training
facility at Radio-TV Afghanistan. In Bosnia, the Open Society Institute and the BBC established a broadcast training school, where young
journalists came from all over Bosnia to receive training from BBC
producers and journalists.
Intervening authorities can revive or create university programs
that provide professional education for students in journalism and communications. In Cambodia, the Asia Foundation initiated a one-year
certiﬁcate program in journalism at the University of Phnom Penh.
Two of Cambodia’s most respected journalists taught a new generation of aspiring journalists. The Institute for War and Peace assisted
Kabul University in developing a journalism program. In Rwanda, theNational University of Rwanda’s School of Journalism contributed tothe development of professional journalism following the conﬂict. In
Kosovo, Press Now and Internews provided training on how to coverelections to local radio journalists. In East Timor, Internews conducted
hands-on media training, mentoring, management programs, andtechnical assistance inside media outlets across the country.
Building and supporting associations for media professionals is
another critical tool to encourage media development, promote professional standards, and encourage continuing education in a postconﬂict
setting. In Cambodia, the Asia Foundation worked with the Khmer
Journalists Association to promote professionalism and ethical standards. In Sierra Leone, the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists andthe Guild of Newspaper Editors received training and help in building
their associations.
Finally, intervening authorities may have to discourage or prevent
indigenous media outlets from broadcasting propaganda that increases

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207

ethnic tensions and raises the likelihood of conﬂict. After early eﬀorts
failed to prevent ethnically slanted and inﬂammatory media broadcasts in Bosnia, NATO troops seized television broadcast towers in
Serb-controlled areas of the country. In this case, the show of force succeeded in moderating the future behavior of Serb broadcasters.
Organizing Elections

One highly desirable prerequisite for elections is the completion of
the DDR of former combatants, which is explored in more detail in
Chapter Two. Whenever possible, design and implementation of a
DDR program should be among the earliest priorities of any nationbuilding mission. Cases may arise, nevertheless, in which the intervening authorities lack the power and the contending parties the will todisarm, as was the case in Cambodia in 1991 and in Iraq beginning in
2003. In such circumstances, the only option may be to hold the elections and hope for the best.
Under ideal circumstances, it is preferable to postpone national
elections until security has been established, the contending parties
have been disarmed, political parties have been organized, civil society
developed, and local elections held. By holding local elections ﬁrst,
national political parties and their leadership have time to mature. The
population has time to develop trust in and experience with the political system. New leadership has an opportunity to emerge and gain
experience. On the other hand, empowering local oﬃcials before doing
the same at the national level can be problematic when the proper relationship between the central and local governments is in dispute orwhere strong sectarian diﬀerences have contributed to civil strife.
Several questions are worth asking in seeking to determine theideal time for elections. First, can the society be governed adequately
without early elections? In situations in which the indigenous elementspressing for early elections are strong and the intervening authorities’
capacity to govern is weak, as was the case in Iraq in 2004, there may belittle choice but to accede to those demands. Second, will the government likely to emerge from the elections be more or less eﬀective thanwhatever government currently exists? Third, is the result of the election likely to be stabilizing or destabilizing? In societies badly divided

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along ethnic, religious, or class lines, elections are likely to increase
polarization. In such cases, provisions for protection of minorities andlimitations on the power of the majority may need to be put in place
before the balloting commences.
Intervening authorities will need to provide a budget for elections
and help raise the necessary funds. Both local and international observers should be recruited and trained to monitor elections to diminish
the incidence of fraud and mismanagement. Information about thevoting process and on the results of the election should be disseminatedacross the country in a fashion that is accessible to all people. Twogoals drive this process: the encouragement of peaceful participationand the engagement of previously disenfranchised or marginalized sectors of society. By making the election process and results transparent
and public, accusations and misconceptions of fraud or other problems
can be minimized. The intervening authorities should also help establish electoral commissions to adjudicate disputes that may arise overelections.
Robust security is important to the successful conduct of elections. Elections provide targets of opportunity for opponents of thepeace process. Voter and candidate intimidation, threats and violenceagainst election workers, and other forms of violent protest routinely
occur in postconﬂict states. International and local authorities should
deploy enough military and police personnel to ensure a secure environment for elections and election campaigns.
Afghanistan’s Electoral Work Plan, prepared by the United
Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, oﬀers one template for setting conditions for what turned out to be rather successful elections.
It linked the achievement of elections to the larger state-building mission in Afghanistan. The plan delineated a series of tasks that had to beundertaken and completed in advance of elections, such as• ensuring a credible political environment, including legislation onelections, political parties, access to media, and monitoring andreporting on human rights

Democratization

209• establishing a reasonable degree of security, including the training of 30,000 Afghan police oﬃcers and coordination between
national and international military forces• specifying targets for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants before the elections, including
demobilization of at least 40 percent of the estimated 100,000
ex-combatants and cantonment of all heavy weapons• completing key technical preparations for each phase of the electoral process.
Elections are commonly administered and overseen by election
commissions. Transparent, impartial operation of these bodies is a critical factor in the success of elections, especially in states where there
has been little experience with elections and where there is signiﬁcantethnic, religious, or tribal friction. The intervening authorities should
strive to include representatives of disenfranchised groups on the electoral commission, including women. In some cases, the commission
may also include international members in an eﬀort to enhance its
impartiality and expertise. The intervening authorities should act toprotect the independence of the electoral committee from outside control or manipulation; take measures to facilitate voter and candidate
registration, including among displaced persons; and provide information on voting procedures and other information about the election in
all major languages and using radio broadcasts and placards where illiteracy rates are high. The intervening authorities should also help design
rules regarding permissible sources of ﬁnancing for elections.

Key Actors
The United Nations is the best source of expertise on the developmentof transitional and permanent political systems. The OSCE has developed considerable expertise in the promotion of civil society, the establishment of independent media, and the development of political parties, though its activities have so far been limited to Eurasia. Several
nations, including the United States and Germany, maintain organiza-

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

tions aﬃliated with their own political parties that specialize in helping
to set up political parties in emerging democracies. The IFES (formerly
the International Federation for Election Systems) has organized elections in dozens of countries around the world under the most challenging of conditions.

Costs
Intervening powers are likely to be called on to fund some or most of
the expenses for elections, including the costs of helping build politicalparties, providing voter information, and organizing caucuses or primaries for the ﬁrst several years following an intervention. The indigenous
government, if there is one, is likely to lack suﬃcient funds to cover
the costs of designing, securing, and holding elections. Of these costs,
providing protection for voters and candidates typically accounts forapproximately half of the total. Raising the funds necessary to mountelections should begin well in advance of the date on which voters go
to the polls. A United Nations trust fund has often been the most eﬀective way to provide funding.
The cost of organizing elections has historically varied from ahigh of $20 per registered voter for the 2004 presidential elections in
Afghanistan and the 2001 local municipal elections in Kosovo to a lowof $2.20 per registered voter for the 2002 local commune elections in
Cambodia. Figure 8.1 illustrates the costs of running elections in six
postconﬂict societies: Afghanistan, Kosovo, Haiti, Cambodia, Mozambique, and Bosnia.18 The average cost is $12 per registered voter.
For planning purposes, we recommend that the intervening
authority plan to spend the average of these past costs: $12 per voter.
Actual costs would be subject to several variables, such as the levelof violence. To illustrate, we evaluated the hypothetical costs of holding an election in Macedonia following an intervention. In 2006,
18 The elections were the 2004 presidential elections in Afghanistan, the 2001 local munici-

pal elections in Kosovo, the 2005 local municipal elections in Haiti, the 2002 local “commune” elections in Cambodia, the 2004 presidential elections in Mozambique, and the 1996
national elections in Bosnia.

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211

Cost per registered voter in U.S. dollars

Figure 8.1
Cost of Organizing Elections
25

20

15

10

5

0
BosniaKosovo(1996)(2001)

Cambodia Afghanistan Mozambique(2002)(2004)(2004)

Haiti(2005)SOURCE: IFES and United Nations Development Programme, Getting to the Core: A
Global Survey on the Cost of Registration and Elections, Madrid and Washington,
D.C., 2006.
RAND MG557-8.1

Macedonia had a population of 2 million and approximately 1,741,449
registered voters.19 Using an average of $12 per registered voter, we estimate that it would cost approximately $21 million to design, secure,and implement countrywide elections in Macedonia.

19 IFES, Election Guide: Macedonia, guide for 2006 Macedonia parliamentary elections,

Washington, D.C., 2006.

CHAPTER NINE

Development

In most postconﬂict economies, the ﬁrst and second years after anintervention are ones in which the economy grows rapidly, a consequence of the end of conﬂict, improved economic policies, and inﬂows
of aid. Following this initial spurt in economic activity, when refugees
and displaced people return and rebuild their homes and businesses,
more traditional problems of development arise. Host governments areconfronted with the tasks of creating conditions conducive to businessand economic growth; improving human capital; providing government services cost-eﬀectively; and creating conditions for the eﬃcient
provision of electric power, telecommunications, water, and other utilities. These tasks have to be achieved in the context of a country inwhich the central bank and economic ministries have only just begun
to function, individuals and businesses still fear renewed strife, regionsof the country remain cut oﬀ because of the dilapidation of roads andthe absence of telecommunications, and utility service levels are rudimentary and intermittent.

Key Challenges
Controlling Inﬂation and Establishing Budgetary Balance. Societies in conﬂict experience high rates of inﬂation. Inﬂation rates ran
in the thousands of percent in Bosnia. In Sierra Leone and Cambodia, rates exceeded 100 percent. In countries with high rates of inﬂation, growth is more erratic and slower than in comparable countries

213

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

with lower rates.1 High rates of inﬂation introduce greater uncertainty,
discouraging investment; they impede the functioning of long-term
capital markets because of rapid declines in the real value of loan principal; and they increase the costs of doing business as leads and lags inpayments result in substantial windfall gains or losses. In light of thesecosts, reducing inﬂation should be a priority following conﬂict, especially because reducing inﬂation is universally popular and a sign thattimes have changed for the better. But the root cause of inﬂation is usually imbalances in the budget. Faced with pressures to increase spending and a lack of revenues, governments of states in conﬂict force thecentral bank to cover their bills by printing money. Although money
creation can be stopped, if deﬁcits persist, they have to be ﬁnanced. If
unchecked, ﬁscal imbalances will eventually derail initial progress on
reducing inﬂation. The creation of incentives and systems to preventﬁscal imbalances is a crucial component of policies to curb inﬂation.2
Creating an Environment Conducive to Economic Growth.

During conﬂict, regulatory and tax systems frequently collapse. As the
economy stabilizes and the government reconstitutes itself, the state
resumes collecting taxes and attempts to enforce health, safety, environmental, and other regulations so as to improve public welfare. For
political reasons, the state may also attempt to reimpose price, exchange
rate, import and export controls, or resuscitate centralized marketingorganizations for commodities such as cacao, coﬀee, or diamonds.
If rapid economic growth is to be sustained, the intervening
authorities must assist postconﬂict governments in creating simple,
transparent, easily enforceable tax and regulatory systems. Businesses
in postconﬂict societies face a myriad of diﬃculties, ranging from lackof security to making payments on receipt and shipment of goods.
When postconﬂict governments compound these diﬃculties by resuscitating pernicious tax and regulatory systems that are exploited to
extort bribes, economic growth is retarded and distorted. The govern1

Stanley Fischer, Ratna Sahay, and Carlos Végh, “Modern Hyper- and High Inﬂations,”
IMF Working Paper 02/197, Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, January 31,
2003, p. 41.

2

Fischer, Sahay, and Végh (2003, p. 31).

Development

215

ment also needs to lay the groundwork for collecting adequate taxes
to protect consumers while inhibiting the ability of civil servants todemand bribes.
Operating, Reconstructing, and Investing in Utilities, StateOwned Enterprises, and Infrastructure. Immediately following theconﬂict, the intervening authorities and host-country government
often need to jump-start the provision of utilities such as electric power,
water, garbage pickup, sewage, and telecommunications by supplying
funds, fuels, and spare parts. State-owned enterprises, which may bemajor employers or produce key exports, also may need to be put backon their feet at this time. Once rudimentary operations resume, theintervening authorities need to turn their attention to working withthe host government to create conditions for the eﬃcient operationof utilities and state-owned enterprises. The solvency of these enterprises is a key problem in many developing countries—even more soin postconﬂict societies, where payment collection has often collapsed.
If utilities and state-owned enterprises generate suﬃcient revenues tocover costs, ensuring their ﬁnancial health, they become a source ofeconomic growth as service is improved and expanded and investments
are made in new capacity. If utilities and state-owned enterprises areoperating ineﬃciently and unproﬁtably, they can easily retard growth
as consumers and businesses are unable to access electric power, water,or sewage treatment services and the budget is burdened by losses.
Poorly functioning utilities also contribute to the spread of disease andhigh infant-mortality rates.
Estimating and Phasing Donor Assistance. Following the initial postconﬂict period, the role of international donors shifts fromhumanitarian assistance and emergency stopgap funding of government operations to more traditional development assistance. Even invery poor countries, donors expect that funding needs will begin to
decline at some point in time. Donors need to work with the hostgovernment to identify ﬁnancial needs, encourage potential donors tocommit to ﬁnancing these needs, evaluate the eﬃcacy of past expenditures, ensure that funds have been spent appropriately, and coordinate
with the government to phase out assistance in areas where the local

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government has developed the capacity to fund and deliver services on
its own.

Best Practices
Controlling Inﬂation and Establishing Budgetary BalanceControlling Inﬂation. As discussed in Chapter Seven, host-country

governments that have been successful in reducing inﬂation have followed a standard recipe. In conjunction with the intervening authorities, they have created independent, professional central banks or monetary authorities, which have constrained emissions of money.
Coupled with the creation of a solid institutional framework,countries have utilized various exchange rate regimes to control inﬂation. In some postconﬂict nations, inﬂationary expectations have beenbroken by targeting or pegging the exchange rate to a foreign reserve
currency. Pegs tend to be popular, as they introduce some ﬁnancial stability into what has been an unstable economy. Countries that adopt
pegs tend to be small, their economies are closely tied to one of the
major reserve currency areas, a major foreign currency tends to be usedpervasively in day-to-day transactions, and the country has suﬃcient
reserves available to support a pegged exchange rate regime (usuallyprovided by the donor community or from remittances). In other postconﬂict societies, ﬂoating rates in conjunction with tight constraints
on monetary emissions have been successful. These countries tend to
be less integrated into the global economy, more reliant on exports ofjust a few commodities (sometimes only one), may have larger economies, or may lack the reserves to support a pegged system.
Despite their short-run utility, pegged exchange rates may outlive their usefulness after the immediate postconﬂict period. As the
economy recovers, the supply and demand for foreign currency will
likely undergo substantial changes because of resumption in exports,
declines in donor assistance, or change in the demand for imports.
These changes may make it diﬃcult for the monetary authority to sustain a peg.

Development

217

At this point, the central bank, in conjunction with the IMF, may
well wish to move from a hard peg to a managed ﬂoat. A managed ﬂoat
introduces elements of exchange rate risk into the calculus of lenders
and borrowers, forcing them to better match assets and liabilities toreduce this risk. When banks and businesses believe that the exchange
rate will not change, they tend to borrow in whichever currency oﬀers
the lowest interest rates, usually foreign currency, and lend in whichever oﬀers the highest, usually the local currency. If the exchange rate
depreciates, borrowers often go bankrupt, as they can no longer coverloan payments in foreign currencies from earnings in the depreciateddomestic currency.
More ﬂexible exchange rates also permit the economy to adjust
more easily to changes in prices of imports and exports. As assistancetapers oﬀ, postconﬂict countries may choose to let their currencies
depreciate so as to encourage exports and discourage imports. Mozambique, Namibia, and Sierra Leone have successfully used exchange rate
ﬂexibility to manage their external balances.
Successful means of shifting from a pegged to a ﬂoating system
include the creation of an intrabank market, followed by the gradualwithdrawal of the central bank from market-making activities. Initially, the central bank may limit exchange rate ﬂuctuations to a range
around a peg. It may then expand and eventually eliminate the range,
letting the rate ﬂoat. Alternatively, the central bank may set implicit
or explicit bands within which the currency may ﬂuctuate. Except forvery small economies or economies closely integrated with the economies of one of the major reserve currencies, more ﬂexible exchange
rate systems provide more resilience for countries emerging from anextended conﬂict.
Establishing Budgetary Balance. Controlling the budget,
although superﬁcially straightforward, is one of the most diﬃcult
tasks for any government. Interest groups and ministries continuallypress for higher budgets while taxpayers lobby for lower taxes. Permitting the budget to operate in deﬁcit is often the easiest course of action.
But preserving ﬁscal balance is key to preventing a recurrence of inﬂa-

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

tion,3 funding government services, and creating a business climate
conducive to economic growth.
The challenge of preserving ﬁscal balance is much greater fornations in the aftermath of a conﬂict than it is during the normal courseof events. Sources of revenue other than donor ﬁnance are extremely
limited. Procedures for budgeting, procuring, and dispensing funds
have fallen apart. Government employees and service providers havedisappeared. Donor funding is often slow in coming and ﬂuctuatesfrequently as assistance agencies add or subtract funds. Managing thebudget is one of the most diﬃcult tasks facing the host country andintervening authorities, but it is also among the most important.
Expenditures. As schools reopen, clinics expand their activities, and government oﬃces again begin to function, the intervening
authorities and host government must quickly turn to budgeting forthese operations. This entails sizing government operations (and donor
budget support) correctly. If salaries and payrolls are not constrained
during the ﬁrst years of recovery, the host government may ﬁnd itself
unable to pay government workers, forcing layoﬀs and cutbacks a few
years further on when donor ﬁnance and presence tapers oﬀ. Somegovernments such as Congo’s, reluctant to make these adjustments,
become insolvent. Reductions in staﬃng have resulted in demonstrations or riots. The violence in East Timor in 2006 was triggered when
the government laid oﬀ soldiers. By restraining salaries and payrolls
when government services are restored, this problem can be avoided orat least made less likely.
The most eﬀective means of controlling government expenditureson the civil service is to limit government to core activities. In the ﬁrst
years following a conﬂict, it may make sense to limit the number ofministries (and ministers) that provide services to education, publichealth, transportation, energy, and security (usually justice, interior,and defense). The government will also need to pay for the operationsof the ministries of foreign aﬀairs and ﬁnance, the cabinet oﬃce, and,in countries where the planning ministry is responsible for large infrastructure projects, the planning ministry. Households and businesses
3Fischer, Sahay, and Végh (2003, p. 25).

Development

219

then have to fend for themselves to obtain other services. Such an
approach helps control ministerial bloat.
In the ministries responsible for these services, the host government needs to set head counts based on the level of services to beprovided. The government should calculate administrative and support staﬀ numbers needed per 100 ﬁrst-line providers. Initially, thisapproach yielded success in East Timor, where a decision by the WorldBank to set staﬃng levels commensurate with the level of work leftthe East Timorese with a lean, eﬀective bureaucracy by developingcountry standards. Each individual had a clearly deﬁned position,
tasks, and authority, making policy decisions easier to implement andmonitor. Such an approach also helps curb charges of favoritism, as theformerly disenfranchised should receive the same levels of service, atleast in terms of staﬃng, as should better-positioned groups.
Once head counts are established, wage scales need to be adopted
and tied to positions within the civil service. Scales need to be set
tightly to prevent bracket creep, but high enough to attract wellqualiﬁed staﬀ. Once a head count and wage bill are set, the ﬁnanceministry should enforce budget constraints by limiting the size ofthe ministry payroll to that set in the budget. If the ministry succeeds
in circumventing the head count or salary controls, the ﬁnance ministry provides a third line of defense by controlling the funds transferred.
In the best systems, the ﬁnance ministry handles the payroll as well
as overall funds, limiting the ability of the ministry to create “ghost”
employees or to ﬁnance higher wages for individuals with government connections by not paying teachers, nurses, or ﬁre personnel. The
appointment of chief ﬁnancial oﬃcers for each ministry who are personally responsible for ministry expenditures and conducting annual
external audits also helps constrain expenditures. The use of inspectors
general to evaluate operations and controls is also helpful.
Assigning international civil servants as mentors to senior and,in some cases, mid-level civil servants is the most eﬀective way ofensuring that government services are delivered while local control isrestored. Mentoring is diﬃcult: Mentors and local civil servants haveto learn how to work with each other. Providing well-deﬁned guidelines concerning authority and decision approval procedures and for

220

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building“graduation,” the shift of authority from the international civil servant
to local control, makes this relationship clearer and easier to manage.
Although these relationships are replete with tensions, in countries
where the government has ceased to exist, mentoring relationships
provide an opportunity to train local civil servants, monitor performance, and preserve local input while jump-starting the operations ofgovernment. By establishing clear deadlines for the transfer of authority, the relationship also forces the international civil servant to focus
on the transition and working with his or her local counterpart rather
than on the execution of daily tasks.
Taxation. During the course of the conﬂict, tax collection has
usually collapsed. Although providing government services and utilities is more important, as the economy recovers, the state must begin
to generate tax revenue to augment and then replace donor funding. At
this juncture, creating an equitable, eﬃcient system for collecting taxes
becomes a priority.
Donor ﬁnancing should provide a cushion for the government,
making it possible to impose taxes slowly and methodically. The ﬁrst
order of business is to evaluate the former tax system in terms of perceived equity, revenue collected, ease and cost of collection, propensity to encourage bribery, and distorting economic eﬀects. In someinstances, taxes have contributed to conﬂict. Taxes on crops, gems,
minerals, or imported fuels or foodstuﬀs may have engendered support
for insurgencies, especially if they are perceived as being directed at a
speciﬁc ethnic or regional group or if the local community feels that it
does not receive an equitable share of revenues.
Despite recent criticisms, resource taxes have been eﬀective interms of equity, value, and ease and cost of collection. Jump-startingthese operations and the accompanying tax ﬂows should be a major
priority for the host country and intervening authorities. Where commodities are mined or pumped from large, single locations, collection
can take place at the point of export. The producer, usually a large
company, transfers royalties, export taxes, and other payments directly
to the treasury. Graft can be controlled in part by independent external
audits that compare anticipated tax revenues based on sales to actual
revenues. These audits and calculations should be disseminated to theDevelopment

221

public. Responsible oﬃcials need to be held accountable for any discrepancies by inspectors general and the legislature. Agreements withkey purchasers of these products, for example, international oil companies or diamond importers, to publicly report payments provide an
additional check on revenues.
A more diﬃcult task is to collect tax revenues from exports ofgoods produced by small operations. The developing world is rife withthe failure of central purchasing organizations to procure, process, andexport products grown, raised, or mined by individuals. The production of higher-value products such as coﬀee and cacao has been stunted
by ineﬃciencies and high taxes, implicit or explicit, imposed by theseorganizations. These taxes encourage farmers to evade the system byselling to private traders who then smuggle the product out of thecountry. Smugglers can become the nucleus of armed opposition to
the current regime. Even less successful has been the taxation of salesof alluvial diamonds. Because of their high value and small size, diamonds are easily smuggled. In Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere, insurgents have ﬁnanced their operations through control of the
alluvial diamond trade.4
Taxes on commodity exports need to be levied in a manner that is
simple and does not discourage production nor encourage smuggling. If
imposed intelligently, these taxes can become important sources of revenue while depriving spoilers of income. First and foremost, the intervening authorities and the host government need to reassert control
and establish security in producing regions. These are not one and thesame. Reasserting control involves expelling rebel forces. Establishingsecurity means ensuring that local growers and miners are protectedfrom theft and assault. Establishing security for producers begins bysetting up secure markets. By ensuring a safe place in which to sell, thegovernment will attract sellers and buyers. The government also needs
to ensure secure transport for wholesalers to major hubs from which
the product can be exported. If roads are secure and port facilities fairly
eﬃcient, the government can win back business from smugglers. If
4Louis Goreux, “Conﬂict Diamonds,” Africa Regional Working Paper, No. 13, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, March 2001.

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the government can provide wholesalers with secure, eﬃcient transport
links, it can levy taxes at the wholesale level, the most eﬃcient place tocollect revenue. Trying to collect taxes directly from small-scale producers entails great eﬀort, usually antagonizes large numbers of miners
and farmers (thereby increasing support for insurgents), and generates
less revenue. Taxes based on weight or quantity of goods are simpler
and less open to corruption by tax collectors than are those imposedon revenues.
The problem is trickier for higher-value items such as gems andprecious metals. Here, the government would generally like to levy a
tax on the value of the product. In this case, the government not only
has to provide secure transport links, but it also has to work with purchasing nations to obtain data on actual sales revenues. If reputablepurchasing agents from countries with stringent anticorruption standards can be induced to set up shop within the country, the government can levy taxes at the point of purchase, turning to the purchasers rather than miners for revenues. Governments, especially those incountries emerging from conﬂict, have yet to ﬁnd eﬀective means oftaxing these items, though keeping export tariﬀs low is important fordiscouraging smuggling through other countries.
In nations where control of the borders has been reestablishedafter a conﬂict, a ﬁxed, low import duty can be a useful means of collecting revenues. Revenues can be sizable, costs of collection moderate, and economic distortions limited if rates remain in single digits.
Import tariﬀs do not work well if control over the country’s borders
has not been reestablished; tariﬀs rates vary considerably; exemptions,
including on donations, are common; or the country sets up special
free-trade zones. In these instances, customs agents often seek bribes tomove goods from one category to another. When tariﬀs are relatively
high or borders diﬃcult to patrol, as in Bosnia, criminal gangs smuggle, creating security as well as revenue problems for the government.
Income taxes on the total compensation of individuals, in paidsalaries or wages, are useful as a means of both collecting revenue andlimiting the attractiveness of government jobs. Wage-bracket creep ingovernment is diﬃcult to combat. By levying a progressive income tax
on an individual’s entire compensation package, a host-country gov-

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ernment can recapture some of the above-market wages that are sometimes earned in the public sector in these countries.
Excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol, automobiles, and gasoline andother fuels are useful means of raising revenue. These products areoften consumed in greater quantities by upper-income individuals.
Taxes have the added beneﬁt of discouraging the consumption of substances detrimental to one’s health.
Value-added tax (VAT) is not the tax of choice in the immediate
aftermath of a conﬂict. It has become popular in developed countries
because of its self-enforcing features: VAT paid on production inputs
is refundable when the ﬁnal product is sold. However, VAT is complicated, diﬃcult to levy on small businesses, and refunds are open
to abuse. Sales taxes are often easier to collect, especially if levied on
permanent establishments only or at the wholesale level. Trying to collect sales taxes from street merchants is costly and ineﬀective in any
society; collection eﬀorts also antagonize an important political constituency. When street vendors are the major purveyors of retail trade,
as is usual following a conﬂict, levying sales taxes at the retail level isa nonstarter.
Once a set of taxes has been selected, the tax collection systemneeds to be revived. The revenue collection agency should be housedin the ministry of ﬁnance and the minister should oversee the agency.
Tax collectors should not have prosecutorial authority, but should refercases of noncompliance to special prosecutors. Tax disputes should be
tried as civil matters. The creation of tax courts is sometimes a usefulmeans for expediting cases and limiting corruption, but, in most postconﬂict situations, this detracts from developing the court system, an
area that generally does not get enough support from donors. To theextent possible, collection should take place at the point of payment
and at wholesale rather than retail levels. For example, gasoline taxes
should be levied at the port of entry, if imported, or at the reﬁnery gate.
Wage taxes should be deducted prior to payment of wages. The more
automatic the payment and the fewer hands through which payments
pass, the better.
Deﬁcit Finance. One of any intervening authority’s major responsibilities is to ensure a balance between tax revenue and donor budget

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support, on the one hand, and budget obligations on the other. In casesof anticipated imbalance, the intervening authorities need to intervene
to provide more support or to limit government spending.
In the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict, taxes are unlikely togenerate suﬃcient revenues to ﬁnance government services at a levelcommensurate with the size of the population and likely future levels
of income. Pushing hard to increase tax revenues at this stage is counterproductive, as economic activity is too low to cover the costs of government operations. But after a few years of economic growth, thegovernment should be able to generate enough tax revenues to cover
the costs of providing basic services. Until that point, the donor community should cover the deﬁcit.
Donor funding of government deﬁcits through loans or grants
can be beneﬁcial for ﬁscal discipline. Through the power of the purse,
the donor community, especially the international ﬁnancial institutions, can play a key role in keeping expenditures under control. IMF
programs contain mutually agreed-upon performance targets, whichusually include budgetary expenditures and deﬁcits. When host governments face a credible threat of losing funding because they havefallen out of compliance, unpalatable decisions are made. For example,
the interim Liberian government ﬁnally agreed to the formation of aﬁnancial control board with foreign representation, the Governanceand Economic Assistance Program, only after facing a credible threatof a cutoﬀ in funding.
Developing the Financial Sector. By the end of a conﬂict, banking systems have generally ceased to function. In the cases of Cambodia, East Timor, Haiti, Liberia, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone, theﬁnancial systems had all but disappeared by the time the countries
emerged from conﬂict. Payment systems had disintegrated and thosebanks that were not closed were usually insolvent. Their deposits had
been looted by insurgents or by the government. Their assets had disappeared as borrowers had gone bankrupt and collateral for loans had
been stolen or destroyed.
Once the economy stabilizes, ﬁnancial activities resume. Initially, the most important activity of banks is to make payments andprovide a safe haven for depositing cash. The intervening authorities

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often play a major role in spurring the development of these activities, as they need to be able to transfer funds from abroad and makepayments and grants inside the country. Deposit-taking, payments,
transfers, and foreign exchange conversion are the principle activities
of banks at this time. Eventually, banks begin to lend again, primarily
for inventory and trade ﬁnance. This lending tends to be collateralized.
Subsequently, banks move into consumer lending, often for household
durables and motor vehicles. Corporate lending follows. Because of difﬁculties in assessing creditworthiness, banks are careful about extending loans to small businesses, though donors often provide funds for
special programs targeting smaller businesses or supporting microﬁnance programs. Once ﬁnancial markets have stabilized and inﬂation
is ﬁrmly under control, mortgage ﬁnance and uncollateralized lending
may become possible.
The ﬁnancial sector should not receive substantial funding fromthe donor community to support lending following a conﬂict. Muchof the development of the ﬁnancial sector in a postconﬂict society isdriven by market forces. Although stages overlap, the progression outlined in the previous paragraph should not be circumvented. With
the exception of microlending, which has had some successes, experiments in accelerating the expansion of credit through the provisionof subsidized loans or by encouraging banks to lend to less-thancreditworthy borrowers tend to end badly. Because the economy is insuch ﬂux and credit histories are so short, lending is especially hazardous in the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict. Financial institutions lackthe information and safeguards necessary to lend sensibly and safely. At
this juncture, household savings and retained earnings suﬃce to fundthe development of the small-scale activities that characterize the initial recovery. The early rapid rates of economic growth tend to generate
suﬃcient proﬁts for entrepreneurs to ﬁnance initial investments.
The international community does have a role to play in creating an environment in which a domestic ﬁnancial sector can grow andthrive. As the ﬁnancial sector develops and lending resumes, the monetary authorities need to ensure that lending decisions do not hold problems for the future. The bankruptcy of major banks, threatening a collapse of the ﬁnancial system, is a major cause of recession throughout

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the world. In transitional economies, banking problems ignored earlyon have led to banking crises and economic recessions four or ﬁve years
after the initial recovery. Fortunately, banking assets tend to be small
in the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict; setting up and implementing an eﬀective system for supervising all ﬁnancial institutions early on
will forestall crises further down the road.
If the government and monetary authorities are to create conditions for the development of an eﬃcient ﬁnancial sector while avoiding
major banking insolvencies, they need to create a transparent, easily
understood set of laws and regulations governing ﬁnancial transactions. They also need to create conditions for the rapid, fair settlementof disputes concerning transactions. International assistance agencies
and the IMF have created templates for laws and regulations needed
for the ﬁnancial sector. These are relatively easy to adapt and adopt inpostconﬂict nations.
As the legal and regulatory framework is being created, the monetary authorities need to hire and train inspectors and develop a rigorous program of bank inspections. Care needs to be taken to makebanking regulations easy to understand and enforce. Because theeconomy is in such ﬂux and well-trained bank examiners are in short
supply, the monetary authorities cannot rely on supervision alone todetect credit problems in banks. Setting relatively high capital requirements for existing and new banks provides insurance against a lapse insupervision. Because they also face the prospect of losing substantial
amounts of their own money, owners of heavily capitalized banks tend
to be less willing to take unwarranted risks with depositors’ money
than are more lightly capitalized banks. Care needs to be taken to
ensure that committed capital is actually injected into the banks byinsisting that capital be on deposit at the central bank or at trusted
international banks.
Although these measures are useful, the most successful policy
for preventing future banking crises is to give well-capitalized foreign banks the opportunity to compete for the domestic market on
the same basis as domestic banks. Well-capitalized foreign banks bringgreat advantages to the host country: They have already developed thecredit evaluation, accounting, settlement, and payment systems neededDevelopment227

to operate a modern bank eﬃciently and securely. Several, like Standard Chartered Bank, have past experience in postconﬂict societies,
which they can bring to bear in other postconﬂict situations. The large
capital bases of international banks greatly reduce the threat of insolvency. The country in which the foreign bank is headquartered alsosupervises and examines the operations of the bank, providing a levelof oversight impossible for the nascent monetary authorities in postconﬂict countries.
The monetary authorities also need to create an eﬃcient payment
system. Security, speed, and accuracy are the most important characteristics of these systems. Electronic payment systems are the fastest,
most secure systems for ensuring transfers. Donor funds are usuallynecessary for that part of the system utilized by the central bank andits branches. Commercial banks should ﬁnance their own connections.
Rudimentary systems can be developed even in countries with poorly
functioning electric power and telecommunication systems by using
cell phones, laptops, and backup generators.
The monetary authorities also face the challenge of resuscitating or closing down insolvent banks inherited from the conﬂict. Until
these banks are liquidated or recapitalized, the ﬁnancial system will
be weighed down by the bad loans on their balance sheets. The mosteﬀective policy for dealing with insolvent banks is to bring in outside
audit teams that go through the bank, loan by loan, classifying themaccording to the likelihood of repayment. If a substantial number ofloans is likely to be repaid, two new banks can be created out of theassets of the old: a solvent bank that is given the good assets and a corresponding deposit base and a “bad” bank into which the bad loans are
dumped. Both banks are then recapitalized. The “good” bank operates
as a normal commercial bank. The goal of the “bad” bank is to recoverwhat it can and sell oﬀ its assets for whatever they are worth. Once it
disposes of its assets, the bank is liquidated and the government receives
whatever value remains. Because state-owned banks often play majorroles in postconﬂict nations, funding and initiating the process ofrecapitalizing the banking sector is an important, if secondary, priority
for donors and the host government. Because this process is long andcomplex, it is a task that does not need to be tackled immediately.

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The government must also make decisions on the extent towhich depositors are to be compensated. This is an especially sensitive issue in postconﬂict societies, as state-owned banks may be associated with one or another of the parties to the conﬂict. Deposits may
include funds stolen during the conﬂict. Because the origin of large
deposits is opaque, it is usually best to discriminate by the size of thedeposit: The government (through assistance from the international
community) pays small depositors in full while larger depositors receive
only partial compensation. Because of the potential for fraud throughthe creation of “ghost” accounts, depositor compensation programs
need to be monitored carefully, and, in some instances, they should be
run by a trusted outside agency. Transactions also need to be audited.
Although these methods for dealing with insolvent banks havegenerally worked well, cleaning up in the aftermath of the collapse of
a banking system is expensive, often running in the range of several
percentage points of GDP. The host government should be intent on
ensuring that the experience is not repeated by closely monitoring the
emerging ﬁnancial system and quickly taking action when a problem
begins to emerge.
Creating an Environment Conducive to Economic Growth
Eliminating Price Controls. The removal of government controls

on prices is key to creating an environment conducive to economic
growth. Prices are the signals by which economic actors make decisions. When controls distort prices, this sends the wrong message toconsumers and producers, resulting in wasted resources, slower growth,and pressure on the budget as the government foregoes potential tax
revenues or provides subsidies. Below-market prices encourage overconsumption and smuggling, resulting in shortages. Price controls areoften defended as a means of subsidizing purchases by poor households. They are an ineﬀective and expensive form of subsidization. They
discriminate against the poor in favor of the rich: In most countries,
upper-income households consume more subsidized products than dolower-income households.
During conﬂicts, most governments are unable to maintain pricecontrols. They lack the funds to subsidize controlled-price goods andDevelopment229

the ability to control borders to stop the smuggling of these products
out of the country. After the conﬂict, the intervening authorities canhelp forestall the reimposition of controls by selling products otherthan humanitarian relief supplies at market prices and encouraging
competing sources of supply. The intervening authorities can also workwith the World Bank and other international donors to devise povertyreduction strategies that address concerns about the aﬀordability offood and fuels without resorting to price controls. For example, centers
can be set up where poor families can request food assistance.
Government Regulation. In many parts of the world, regulations are frequently designed and used to seek bribes. The intervening
authorities can help postconﬂict governments to revamp their regulatory systems so as to reduce opportunities for requesting bribes and to
improve the eﬃcacy of the system by adopting best-practice principles
for writing and issuing regulations:
1. Focus ﬁrst on introducing the procedures and regulations necessary to get the government up and running and to protect the
lives of citizens. These include registration procedures for key
potential taxpayers (larger companies and organizations andwage-earning citizens) and regulations on sanitation to preventthe spread of disease.
2. Create clear, transparent procedures for making rules. Insist on
well-advertised public hearings during the process, even during
the initial days after conﬂict. Stipulate that only rules listed ina national registry are valid and that only rules made according
to stipulated procedures can be listed in the registry.
3. Designate an ombudsman to review regulations before they
are issued to ensure that they are easy to understand andimplement.
4. Separate inspections from enforcement. This forestalls the emergence of groups within the bureaucracy that prey on citizens anddeveloping businesses. Make sure that inspectors are supervised
closely and that their activities are subject to periodic review. As
the government becomes more capable, establish administrative
courts to review charges of violations of rules.

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5. Keep penalties commensurate with the size of the oﬀense. Major
violations should be penalized with more than a small ﬁne;small infractions should not be penalized heavily. For example,
importers who deliberately sell large volumes of contaminatedfood should be shut down, heavily ﬁned, or, if the action wasdeliberate, face criminal charges. Small vendors that have failed
to register should not pay substantial ﬁnes.
6. Where possible, adopt existing regulations and standards issued
by the United States or the European Union. Although neither
set is perfect, regulations in these countries undergo a great
deal of scrutiny and generally have an underpinning based on
research, an activity that postconﬂict societies cannot aﬀord.
Products that have passed muster by either entity should nothave to undergo additional testing or evaluation before being
sold in the country.
Private-Sector Development. Over the last several decades, assis-

tance agencies have funded a wide spectrum of programs designed tofoster economic growth. In recent years, these programs have emphasized the private sector. Programs focus on transferring technologies
in agriculture, manufacturing, communications, and other sectors,
improving the operation of local markets, and fostering the development of ﬁnancial institutions.
Because of the depressed state of the economy following a conﬂict, assistance agencies can contribute to jump-starting private-sector
economic activity through the judicious selection of programs. However, the record of these programs has been mixed: Some have been
eﬀective in spurring economic growth in communities that havebeen devastated by conﬂict; others have not. In most postconﬂict
situations, quality seeds and simple agricultural equipment may be inshort supply. Programs to provide these inputs for free or at subsidized
prices can help stimulate a recovery in agriculture. Well-run microcredit programs in postconﬂict environments can target groups thathave been most severely aﬀected, such as people living in conﬂict zones,
demobilized combatants, or the physically or psychologically impaired.
On the other hand, the donor community and the host government

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have to weigh programs carefully on the basis of complexity, timing,
cost, and likely eﬀectiveness. In 2004, the U.S. government provided
assistance to restart the Baghdad stock market. Although trading now
takes place, the stock market plays little role in fostering domestic economic activity and investment. In light of all the other challenges in
Iraq, this money was ill spent.
A key principle in choosing among programs to fund is not to
try to do too much. The capacity of the intervening authorities, thedonor community, and the host country to manage projects is evenmore limited in the chaos following a conﬂict than under normal circumstances. Everything demands attention. Private-sector development programs that entail substantial involvement by oﬃcials need to
be assessed carefully in terms of value added. Projects that need to bescaled up to have widespread impact, that involve substantial engagement by foreign staﬀ, or that do not generate an immediate economic
payoﬀ are to be avoided. Even if such programs promise long-term
beneﬁts, they should be delayed until other problems are less pressing
and the capacity of the host-country bureaucracy to implement themhas improved. This said, donors do need to be attentive to perceptionsof equity. All groups that were party to the conﬂict should receive somebeneﬁts, though in terms of eﬀectiveness and equity, programs should
be targeted at those groups that are worse oﬀ.
Operating, Reconstructing, and Investing in Utilities, State-Owned
Enterprises, and Infrastructure
Utilities. Once the lights have been turned on and water has

begun to ﬂow in those areas where service had been available prior tothe conﬂict, the host government and international community mustturn to creating an institutional and commercial environment for theeﬃcient provision of utilities. The equitable, eﬃcient provision of utilities can be an important stimulus for growth and quality of life.5 However, where governments attempt to provide utilities at tariﬀs that fail
to cover costs, using the argument that buyers cannot aﬀord to pay
5

World Bank, World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development, Washington,
D.C. and New York: World Bank and Oxford University Press, September 2005, p. 168.

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higher tariﬀs, systems tend to be stunted, they cover a small area ofthe country, and they are prone to frequent breakdowns in delivering
services. If revenues fail to cover costs, the budget must pick up thediﬀerence, reducing resources available for other government services
such as health care and education.
Utilities need to be able to generate enough revenue to cover costs,
and utility managers need incentives to improve eﬃciency and operations. Utilities that operate ineﬃciently impose high economic costs.
Businesses, households, and hospitals invest in expensive alternative
sources of power and water or suﬀer the consequences of sudden outages that may result in the destruction of expensive machinery, thespoilage of products that need refrigeration, or, in the case of hospitals, the loss of life. When sewage systems back up due to the failureof pumps, drinking water is polluted, contributing to the spread of
disease. Because loss-making utilities lack funds for expansion, service is conﬁned to existing customers, many, if not most, of whom arericher than the average citizen. Poorer households are forced to turnto expensive, less eﬃcient alternatives, such as purchasing clean waterfrom trucks or power from privately operated diesel generators, often
at a cost several times what households and businesses with access towell-run systems pay.6
To operate utilities in a manner that fosters growth and improves
human welfare, the host government, with the assistance of the intervening authorities, should create managerial and corporate incentives
to expand output and minimize costs, to introduce competition wherever possible, and to create an environment in which utilities are selfﬁnancing. These are all diﬃcult tasks, but they are well worth pursuing. They are also politically demanding, as government oﬃcials see
state-run utilities as sources of jobs for supporters or as a means ofsubsidizing voters.

6

Mukami Kariuki and Jordan Schwartz, “Small-Scale Private Service Providers of Water
Supply and Electricity: A Review of Incidence, Structure, Pricing and Operating Characteristics,” World Bank Policy Working Paper 3727, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, October
2005.

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The ﬁrst task following the initial restoration of service is thereconstitution or creation of personnel systems and the restoration or
introduction of physical and ﬁnancial control systems. Once these systems are up and operating, managers are able to hire and pay employees and regulate the ﬂow of electric power, water, telephone traﬃc,and other such services. They can also track the number and dutiesof employees, payroll numbers, and other costs. The utility also needs
to review job descriptions, creating a list of tasks and jobs by department. The list should not be drawn up by the departments, but should
be assembled by a task force answerable to the director of the utility
and supervised by the donor community. This list will become thebasis for controlling employment, a crucial management step in many
countries.
Subsequently, the host government, in conjunction with the utility’s management and the assistance of the donor community and outside consultants, should carefully reorganize the utility to create costand proﬁt centers focused on operations. For example, in the electric
power sector, generating plants, the transmission system and the distribution networks should become separate cost or proﬁt centers. As
part of this process, costs will have to be calculated and allocated so as
to create an eﬀective system of internal pricing so that each unit faces
meaningful price signals. In the process of reorganization, the utility
should be incorporated, if it is not already, and a transparent system
for appointing a board of directors set up. It is advisable to appoint
outside directors recommended by international ﬁnancial institutions,
including foreign nationals, so as to beneﬁt from their expertise andprovide an additional means of monitoring the utility’s management.
Reorganization should be accompanied by the creation of bonus andpromotion schemes for managers, tied to increasing proﬁts or reducing
costs in their centers. Where possible, the utility should contract out
ancillary and support functions, contributing to the development ofprivate sector suppliers of these services.
As soon as service begins to be restored, management needs toturn to billing and collecting for services. Utility services are consumed
just like vegetables or shoes. If consumers do not pay for the service,
the utility cannot provide it. The costs of failing to put utilities in a

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commercial status are high, as demonstrated by the case of Kosovo.
The Kosovar electric power company is perennially short of funds topurchase fuel, maintain facilities, and invest in new plants because it isoverstaﬀed and poorly managed, and it does not collect payments. Not
surprisingly, electricity service is subject to frequent blackouts and theKosovar economy suﬀers as a consequence. In contrast, early attention
to payment systems and procurement practices have helped spur thedevelopment of electric power in East Timor.7
Best-practice policies for collecting payments include devolving
the responsibility to local distribution companies. These can be runby the utility itself, private companies, municipalities, or cooperatives.
In all instances, the utility needs to have the ability, legal and physical, to cut oﬀ service to the distribution company and its customers if
payments are not made so as to enforce payment discipline. Devolving
collection to local companies makes it easier to use social pressure andsuasion as well as commercial measures to enforce payment discipline.
When a neighborhood is cut oﬀ because one neighbor steals power,social pressures help force compliance.
How can utilities be made aﬀordable for the poorest in postconﬂict societies? In the immediate aftermath of a conﬂict, collection canbe introduced gradually, community by community, beginning withwealthier neighborhoods. If donors believe that it is a useful expenditure of funds, donors can cover part of the bills for lower-income
people. For many utilities (for example, electric power, water, sewage)
up-front costs of connection can be high, preventing poorer consumers from connecting to the system. Amortizing connection costs overa few years or spreading connection costs across the existing subscriberbase can help defray these costs. In some cases, the donor community
or host government may wish to cover part of the costs of connection for poorer families. Lifeline rate structures also help by keeping
prices low for the ﬁrst kilowatt-hours or units of water consumed andthen increasing tariﬀ rates as consumption rises. Rewarding managers
7

Klaus Rohland and Sarah Cliﬀe, “The East Timor Reconstruction Program: Successes,
Problems, and Tradeoﬀs,” CPR Working Paper No. 2, Washington, D.C.: World Bank,
November 2002.

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for economizing can be an eﬃcient means of preventing costs fromescalating.
Following a conﬂict, regulatory issues such as connection charges
and rate setting are often handled on an ad hoc basis: Interim decisions
are made by the government or the intervening authorities. As utility
operations stabilize, the host country should set up a regulatory agency
responsible for network industries, such as telecommunications, andfor natural monopolies. In countries with few people with experience
in regulation, it is often more sensible to set up one agency with a few
well-paid, skilled administrators than separate agencies for each sector,
capitalizing on available talent and experience. This approach also
serves to keep regulatory approaches similar across industries, making
implementation and enforcement of regulations easier.
A useful measure to encourage full recognition of capital costs insetting rates is to transfer some government debt, commensurate withthe value of the utility’s assets, to the utility’s balance sheet. The transfer reﬂects the cost of past investments, often ﬁnanced by government
borrowing. By imposing loan obligations on the utility, this measureforces the government, regulators, and the utility to recognize capitalcosts in the rate structure. The shift also reduces the debt burden of thegovernment and attaches a potential stream of revenue from the sale ofelectricity or water to be used to ﬁnance this debt.
As service expands, the host government, the utilities, and thedonor community should employ World Bank and UNDP methodologies to conduct more detailed needs assessments for the provisionof their services than was possible immediately following the conﬂict.8
These needs assessments provide a basis for planning for investments
in capacity improvements and additions and for making trade-oﬀs
between the sector and other investments in the economy. Once theneeds assessment has been completed, the utility, in conjunction withthe planning ministry, the donor community, and leaders of the mostimportant political factions, should begin to design an investment
plan. The staﬀ of the utility should be in charge of the plan, but it isimportant to include representatives of major political groups as well so
8

Kievelitz et al. (2004).

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Buildingthat all parties are reassured that they will receive access to service ina reasonable amount of time. Planning committees that include donor
representation should improve the capacity of the utility and the government to plan investments more eﬀectively. Over time, the government should withdraw from directly participating in investment planning; this responsibility should devolve to the utility managers. If theutility remains in state hands, state control should be exercised througha board of directors despite the likely opposition of government leaders.
Making donor funds contingent on establishing independent utilities
is a useful means of separating utilities from political pressures.
Once investments have been selected, they should be fundedthrough project ﬁnance. Project ﬁnance imposes discipline absent
from projects funded with grant aid. It forces all parties to address
issues related to the appropriate size of the facility, operating and capital costs, and repayment, which in turn lead to concrete projections ofsolvent demand and the resolution of issues concerning rate setting,collections, and taxation of utility services. By conducting careful ﬁnancial analysis and insisting on loan or equity ﬁnance, project ﬁnancepushes utility managers to evaluate trade-oﬀs between investing in
additional production capacity, distribution systems, or solutions otherthan capacity additions such as reducing losses or turning to alternative
sources of supply. For example, brownouts and blackouts are generally
perceived as reﬂecting too little generating capacity. Although investment in additional physical capacity is often important, improvements
in operating procedures, such as reducing line losses, forestalling theftof power, introducing time-of-day pricing for major industrial consumers, or increasing tariﬀs, may do more to reduce power disruptions
than would installing new generating capacity. Project lending also
helps reduce corruption, as lenders can insist on international ﬁnancial
contracting procedures and payments from revenues.
In contrast, grant aid is a pernicious use of funds for investing inutilities. It fails to impose discipline for evaluating trade-oﬀs in termsof size, timing, repayment, or other alternatives. Because the utility
does not pay for the cost of the capital it is using, the value of capital is often not fully incorporated into the tariﬀ structure, distorting
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237

example, the grantor, in this case the United States, has not used bestpractice contracting procedures for distributing funds, contributing tocorruption.9
State-Owned Enterprises. Some postconﬂict societies inherit
state-owned enterprises and other assets—for example, a ﬂour milland the port authority in Haiti and a reﬁned oil product distribution
company in Liberia. Because state-owned enterprises are often in key
sectors, they can severely hamper economic growth if poorly managed. The high cost of transit for goods through Haiti’s ports has madeassembly operations economically infeasible, stunting manufacturing.
In most instances, the society would be better oﬀ if such state-owned
enterprises were sold to the private sector. But privatization of large
companies is a complicated, lengthy process, diﬃcult in any country, and it is nigh impossible in the aftermath of conﬂict. As long as
these enterprises remain in state hands, the host government needs tomanage them well. To do so, the intervening authorities and the hostgovernment need to adopt the following practices:
1. Restart operations of those enterprises that produce marketable
goods and services as soon as possible. Typically, this entails
ﬁnding and rehiring staﬀ, repairing equipment, and providing ﬁnancial resources so that wages can be paid and supplies and parts purchased. Billing and collection must begin assoon as possible so that the enterprise starts generating its own
revenues.
2. Remove barriers to entry for ﬁrms that compete with stateowned enterprises. If the private sector can produce a good orservice more eﬃciently and cheaply, it should be at liberty to doso. Subsidizing the operation of state-owned enterprises penalizes private-sector entrepreneurs and wastes scarce resources.
3. Devolve management responsibility and authority to the director of the state-owned enterprise. If the enterprise is expected tocompete against the private sector, its managers must have simi9

Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Iraq Reconstruction: Lessons Learned in Contracting and Procurement, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Oﬃce, July 2006.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

lar authority and responsibility while facing the same market
discipline. Managers of state-owned enterprises cannot workeﬀectively if they are second-guessed and overruled by ministers
or other government oﬃcials. Managers should be rewarded on
the basis of proﬁtability.
4. Managers should be subject to strict ﬁnancial controls. The intervening authorities should insist on creating accurate accounting
systems for state-owned enterprises.
5. Contract with outside auditors and ﬁnancial analysts to assess
the viability of the state-owned enterprises. Those enterprises
deemed unviable should be placed on a list for eventual liquidation or sale.
6. Privatization is politically sensitive, especially the sale of larger
enterprises. The host-country government should take the leadon privatization. If the host-country government possesses large
holdings of farmland or owns small businesses, the intervening
authorities should work with the host country to devise a systemof land grants or auctions to give or sell these assets to private
individuals on an equitable basis. If political opposition to
privatizing larger enterprises is strong, the intervening authorities should focus their eﬀorts on improving the operations of thestate-owned enterprises, not on privatizing them.
Infrastructure. Infrastructure includes transportation systems,
public buildings, and facilities for the provision of public services. The
term is also frequently used to describe investments in utilities. Because
utilities generate services that are more easily marketable than roads,
for example, we have chosen to conﬁne our discussion of infrastructure
here to roads, public buildings, and other investments needed to provide public services.
In the aftermath of a conﬂict, infrastructure has usually been
severely damaged or destroyed. Not all of these structures need to berebuilt immediately, and some not at all. Rather, after a ﬁrst round ofreconstructing schools, restoring the operation of key ports, and ﬁxing
major roads, the intervening authorities and the host government should
conduct a more thorough needs assessment of roads and public services,Development

239

then put together a capital budget, rank-ordering the most important
projects by region and sector. Political considerations should play a rolein developing this list. A road project in a region that has suﬀered fromconﬂict may look less economically attractive than a project in a more
prosperous region that avoided the conﬂict. However, constructing theroad is likely to play a key role in accelerating economic growth in
the region of conﬂict and restoring commercial and personal connections to the rest of the country, thereby cementing the peace.
Infrastructure is expensive to construct; once constructed, it is
too often poorly maintained. International donors should work withthe government to assign responsibilities to ministries or agencies, suchas a road administration, for the construction and maintenance ofinfrastructure. These entities should not employ their own workforces,
but should contract out design, repair, and construction work to private contractors. In many cases, the entities may choose to make local
communities responsible for maintaining their own roads, schools, andclinics. In these instances, the government should help local communities raise funds or transfer funds from the national budget to coverthese costs. Road and other administrations also need to develop thecapability to conduct physical audits (which can also be contracted tothird parties) to ensure that payments are made only for work that has
been satisfactorily completed.
Constructing and repairing roads, schools, and clinics are highly
useful donor-funded activities in postconﬂict societies. Roads connect isolated regions to the rest of the country, linking communities tonational markets. They improve security by making remote communities more accessible to security forces, thus depriving spoilers of safe
havens. Schools and clinics are preconditions for providing important
public services. When construction projects are contracted and built
locally, they pump money into local economies, generating incomesoutside the major cities. Local involvement teaches contracting, project
management, and construction skills. Local projects increase demand
for local construction materials such as gravel, bricks, and timber.
Transparent, honest contracting procedures signal that the new government has changed for the better, limiting corrupt practices.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Although investment in additional physical capacity is often
important, improvements in operating procedures can be just as oreven more beneﬁcial. For example, ports and border crossings often
create bottlenecks. By streamlining procedures or moving to a 24hour-a-day operating schedule, the government may do more to speedtransit times than it would through the construction of facilities orroutes.
Despite the importance of providing utilities and the symbolismof constructing major projects or public works, rarely does it makesense to invest in major infrastructure or utility projects in regions
where conﬂict continues. As shown by the experience in Iraq, construction costs during periods of conﬂict may run several times thosein peacetime because of the additional security costs and delays and thedestruction of newly built installations. High-proﬁle projects become
magnets for spoilers: The destruction of a newly built bridge can havea deeper psychological impact than its completion. In such situations,funds are better spent on restoring security and planning projects thaninitiating project work. Exceptions to this admonition include infrastructure needed to transport key commodities to major markets, suchas railroads or ports, or installations that can be easily repaired after
sabotage, such as crude-oil pipelines.
Immediately following the conﬂict, donors can usefully jumpstart housing reconstruction by ensuring the provision of building
materials, sometimes gratis or below cost. However, in the second stageof the conﬂict, donors should refrain from directly funding housing
construction. Housing is a signiﬁcant capital investment everywherein the world—usually the largest single investment made by individuals. Because of its cost, donors lack the resources to make a substantial
contribution to this sector. What monies are granted are likely to be
skewed toward a small group of individuals, eliciting envy from others.
Moreover, local communities have the capacity to provide for much of
their own housing, making donor funds more valuable elsewhere.
Improved housing is a longer-term development goal that is oflower priority than providing utilities or infrastructure. Assistance inthis area should be targeted at reducing transaction costs and creating
institutions that establish a long-term basis for ﬁnancing and purchas-Development241

ing housing. Granting titles to plots of land and buildings throughthe establishment of a single property register; simple, fair, and cheap
procedures for claiming title; and simple adjudication procedures havelong been emphasized as important steps to creating property and capital markets in developing countries. The same applies to postconﬂict
societies. Separate administrative courts with elected judges can beutilized to adjudicate property disputes, including those that emerge
because of the conﬂict, and to create the basis for accountable judges
and greater trust in the law.
Donors should not provide subsidized lending for housing or
jump-start housing ﬁnance. Because housing ﬁnance by necessity
needs to be long-term, until inﬂation rates and nominal interest rates
decline and the economy becomes more stable, mortgage ﬁnanceremains a nonstarter. Attempting to circumvent ﬁnancial development
through subsidies or specialized mortgage programs is a waste of timeand money.

Outcomes
As shown in Figure 9.1, most postconﬂict societies have succeeded inmoving from an initial period of rapid recovery to extended periods ofsustained and, in some cases, accelerated economic growth. Bosnia,
Germany, and Sierra Leone averaged double-digit growth rates inthe ﬁrst ﬁve years after the end of their respective conﬂicts. Growthin Cambodia and Mozambique has also been rapid and accelerated intheir respective second ﬁve-year postconﬂict periods.
Other postconﬂict societies have not done as well. Growth inCongo and Haiti was disappointing, but it can be explained in greatpart by the failure of both countries to establish security or follow sensible economic policies. The rates for East Timor and Kosovo havebeen restrained by a rapid decline in levels of assistance. The two entities received the highest levels of assistance as a share of GDP among
our group of postconﬂict interventions. In Kosovo, assistance ran
70 percent of GDP in the second year following the conﬂict; it fell to
26 percent four years later. In East Timor, assistance fell from 86 percent

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Figure 9.1
Economic Growth Following Conﬂict

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Cambodia
Congo
East TimorEl Salvador
Germany*
Haiti
Japan
Kosovo*MozambiqueYears 1–5
Years 6–10

Namibia
Sierra Leone*
–5

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Average annual percent change in GDP
SOURCE: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics Browser;
Mitchell (1992, 1998); International Monetary Fund (2005b, p. 31); Demekas,
Herderschee, and Jacobs (2002, p. 6); Moalla-Fetini et al. (2005, p. 81); International
Monetary Fund (2000, p. 118); International Monetary Fund, “Bosnia andHerzegovina: First Review Under the Stand-By Agreement and Request for Waiver of
Performance Criteria,” IMF Country Report No. 03/4, Washington, D.C., January 2003,
p. 29; International Monetary Fund (2005a, p. 34).
NOTE: An asterisk (*) denotes that data are for the second year after theintervention (Germany, 1947; Kosovo, 2001; and Sierra Leone, 2001) because of lackof data or because the immediate aftereffects of the conﬂict resulted in continued
declines in output during the ﬁrst year.
RAND MG557-9.1

of GDP in the ﬁrst year following the conﬂict to 57 percent two years
later. While non–assistance-related economic activity enjoyed healthy
growth in both countries, the drawdown in assistance spending andassociated economic activity kept aggregate growth rates lower than inother postconﬂict countries.
As noted in Chapter Seven, the rate of growth in the ﬁrst year
following a conﬂict is highly correlated with the cumulative decline

Development243

in output during the conﬂict.10 To some extent, this carries throughduring the ﬁrst years following the conﬂict, but this initial condition
becomes less important over time. In the longer run, diﬀerences inrates of economic growth in postconﬂict societies are driven by better
policies and institutions, not by initial conditions.11

Key Actors
As in the initial period of stabilization, the IMF should take the leadin working with the monetary authorities of the host country to create
a well-functioning monetary policy framework and a healthy ﬁnancial
system. The World Bank, in conjunction with the IMF, should takethe lead in establishing budgeting, ﬁnancial information, and auditing
systems.
Donor committees with host-country participation should continue to coordinate assistance during this stage. Such committees should
be chaired by the individual in charge of the intervening authorities orby a designated alternate until the mission ends, at which time a representative of the World Bank or one of the regional development banks
should become the chair.
The World Bank or a regional development bank should take thelead in assisting the host government in setting up personnel, contracting, and procurement systems. For assistance with individual ministries such as health, education, or justice, the World Bank may wish to
devolve responsibility to one of the national assistance programs. How10 The correlation is –0.69.
11 See, for example, World Bank, World Development Report 2002: Building Institutions forMarkets, Washington, D.C., and New York: World Bank and Oxford University Press, September 2001b; World Bank, World Development Report 2005: A Better Investment Climate
for Everyone, Washington, D.C., and New York: World Bank and Oxford University Press,
September 2004; Craig Burnside and David Dollar, “Aid, Policies, and Growth,” American Economic Review, Vol. 90, No. 4, September 2000, pp. 847–868 [p. 964]; Paul Collier
and David Dollar, “Aid Allocation and Poverty,” Policy Research Working Paper No. 2041,
Washington, D.C.: World Bank, draft of October 20, 1998; and Paul Collier and Anke
Hoeﬄer, “Aid, Policy, and Growth in Post-Conﬂict Societies,” Policy Research Working
Paper No. 2902, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, October 2002.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

ever, ﬁnancial and personnel systems need to be standardized acrossministries. The World Bank has experience in assisting in contractingwith countries of widely varying capabilities and is adept at tailoringprocedures to those of host governments, even in postconﬂict situations. The host country should adopt the procurement manuals, regulations and rules, and draft contracts from the World Bank.12 It should
also request technical assistance from the World Bank in setting up
and implementing these contracting procedures and in granting major
contracts.
Host governments should be encouraged to permit a variety ofsuppliers for services, especially utilities. Where possible, private-sector
provision and competition should be encouraged for utilities. Local
governments, NGOs, businesses, and cooperatives can all play roles inproviding education, training, and health care.
The World Bank should take the lead in working with the ministries involved in planning for the construction of infrastructure. The
host government with the assistance of the World Bank should be
responsible for reporting on plans at donor committee meetings.

Costs
In this section, we establish rough guidelines for determining appropriate levels of eﬀective assistance for economic development, budget support, and investment in utilities and infrastructure in countries during
the ﬁrst several years following a conﬂict. We ﬁrst address the questionof what overall levels of assistance postconﬂict societies can usefully
absorb and when. We then turn to a more detailed assessment of reasonable levels of assistance for budgetary support, infrastructure, andutilities and the forms in which it is most eﬃcacious to provide thisassistance.
Overall Levels of Assistance. Figure 9.2 shows the average share offoreign assistance in terms of GDP during the ﬁrst nine years following
12 World

2001a.

Bank, Bank-Financed Procurement Model, Washington, D.C., draft of July

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245

Figure 9.2
Shares of Foreign Assistance as a Percent of GDP in Postconﬂict Societies
100
90

East Timor
Average
Namibia

80

Percent of GDP

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Year 1 Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

Year 7

Year 8Year 9

NOTE: Economies included in the averages for the ﬁrst two years include
Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Congo, East Timor, El Salvador,
Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Mozambique, Namibia, and Sierra Leone. Because several ofthese conﬂicts were of recent vintage, the number of countries in the sample
declines in the out years.
RAND MG557-9.2

a conﬂict for 12 postconﬂict societies. The average level of foreignassistance for the group in the ﬁrst three years following the conﬂict
was about 30 percent of GDP, after which it gradually declined to
13 percent in the seventh year. The ﬁgure also shows the country thatreceived the highest share of assistance (East Timor) and the country
with the lowest (Namibia). At least initially, levels of assistance vary
dramatically: Assistance to East Timor in the ﬁrst year following theconﬂict ran 86 percent of its much-reduced GDP; for Kosovo, thisﬁgure was 70 percent. In contrast, assistance to Namibia and El Salvador ﬂuctuated between 2 percent and 7 percent of GDP throughout
the postconﬂict period.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

These ﬁgures show what the international community has chosen
to provide, not what these postconﬂict societies could have usefully
absorbed. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeﬄer (2002) tackle this latterquestion. They conclude that, following a conﬂict, the international
community can provide eﬀective assistance equivalent to upwards of
40 percent of GDP, measured at market exchange rates to countries,
or roughly double the share of assistance in GDP that other developing countries can absorb without experiencing sharp declines in theeﬀectiveness of additional assistance.13 Collier and Hoeﬄer also ﬁndthat the eﬃcacy of assistance varies over time. They argue that assistance has its greatest impact on growth between the fourth and seventh years following the conﬂict, after which it declines. During that
period, the country has developed to a point at which it can eﬀectively
absorb larger quantities of assistance. After seven years, private investment takes over as the driver of growth and aid has a relatively smaller
impact.
Reviewing past patterns of assistance and drawing on Collier and
Hoeﬄer’s work, we have developed the following guidelines for determining an eﬀective level of assistance after a conﬂict. As a general rule,
we advocate providing assistance in the amount of one-third to twoﬁfths of GDP in the ﬁrst three years following a conﬂict, levels thathave been fairly common in better-funded interventions but that reﬂect
higher-than-average assistance levels. For very low-income countries or
those badly devastated by conﬂict, we advocate increasing this shareto 70 percent for the ﬁrst year after a conﬂict. We then advocate a
gradual reduction in the share of assistance to 20 percent of GDP by
the seventh year following the conﬂict. The decline in assistance levels
as a share of GDP does not necessarily imply an immediate decline inabsolute levels of aid. The primary reason for the declines in assistanceas a share of GDP shown in Figure 9.2 is growth in the denominator,
GDP. In many postconﬂict societies, GDP grows very quickly in theﬁrst years following a conﬂict. Consequently, even if donors sustain or
increase the dollar amount of assistance, assistance as a share of GDP
falls.
13 Collier and Hoeﬄer (2002, p. 7).

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247

In Table 9.1, we compare actual assistance levels to what this pattern of assistance would have looked like if applied to Namibia andMozambique. We use two sets of parameters. For Namibia, a lowermiddle–income developing country, we posit assistance equal to 33
percent of GDP for the ﬁrst three years after the conﬂict and thengradually reduce it to 20 percent. For Mozambique, one of the world’s
poorest countries, we use a rate equal to 70 percent of GDP in the ﬁrst
year following the conﬂict. We then gradually reduce the share of assistance as a share of GDP to 20 percent by the seventh year following theTable 9.1
Comparison of Actual and Suggested Levels of Assistance in Namibia andMozambiqueCountry

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 5

Year 7

Actual assistance($ millions)

154.6

224.3

172.7

159.2

208.5

Posited assistance($ millions)

1,028.6

1,048.6

1,165.2

910.2

774.5

Actual assistance as ashare of GDP (%)

5.0

7.1

4.9

4.6

5.4

Posited assistance as ashare of GDP (%)

33.0

33.0

33.0

26.5

20.0

Actual assistance($ millions)

1,388.6

1,384.0

1,202.6

1,034.4

856.1

Posited assistance($ millions)

2,181.9

1,636.5

1,165.2

1,133.5

1,277.9

Actual assistance as ashare of GDP (%)

32.7

36.9

30.3

40.7

27.2

Posited assistance as ashare of GDP (%)

70.0

51.5

33.0

33.0

33.0

Namibia

Mozambique

SOURCE: Foreign aid data, World Bank, World Development Indicators Database;GDP data, International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics Browser;
other indicators, RAND calculations.
NOTE: All dollar amounts are in constant 2002 U.S. dollars. Amounts may not sum
due to rounding.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

conﬂict. As can be seen, assistance ﬂows would have been substantiallygreater for both Namibia and Mozambique under these assumptions.
What would the additional assistance have achieved? In a recent
paper, Clemens, Radelet, and Bhavnani evaluate the eﬀectiveness ofbudget and balance-of-payments support, investments in utilities andinfrastructure, and aid to productive sectors such as agriculture orindustry in spurring growth.14 They ﬁnd that, on average in developing countries, an additional percentage point of assistance as a share of
GDP results in an additional 0.31 percentage points of annual growth
in GDP.15 Applying this parameter to the assistance levels positedin the table, by the seventh year after the conﬂict, GDP would havebeen 40 percent higher in Namibia and 17 percent higher in Mozambique if higher levels of assistance had been provided. Like Collier and
Hoeﬄer, Clemens, Radelet, and Bhavnani ﬁnd that, at a certain point,
the eﬀectiveness of additional assistance declines, eventually capping
the amount of assistance that can be utilized eﬀectively.
Utilities and Infrastructure. Building utilities and infrastructureis expensive. In the case of utilities, the user must be connected to
the network to obtain service. Consequently, the network has to beconstructed up front; returns come as services are provided over timeand more users are connected. Constructing and improving ports, railroads, and public buildings also entail signiﬁcant investment.
In developing countries, the cost of making these investments ininfrastructure and utilities may add up to several percentage points ofGDP. For example, in 2004, China with its booming economy andunderdeveloped infrastructure invested 4.2 percent of its GDP in utilities and an additional 5.6 percent in transportation, primarily infrastructure, for a total of 9.8 percent of GDP.16 In developed countries,
where utilities and infrastructure have already been constructed, public
investment is correspondingly lower. The United States invested only
14 Michael A. Clemens, Steven Radelet, and Rikhil Bhavnani, “Counting Chickens When

They Hatch: The Short-Term Eﬀect of Aid on Growth,” Working Paper No. 44, Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Growth, December 2, 2004.
15 Clemens, Radelet, and Bhavnani (2004, p. 40).
16 China Statistical Yearbook 2005, China Statistics Press, 2005, pp. 52, 187.

Development

249

0.6 percent of its GDP in electric power and telecommunications in
1997; investment in public infrastructure ran 2.5 percent of GDP, fora total of 3.1 percent.17
More than with other types of assistance, investments in utilities
and infrastructure take time to ramp up. Projects need to be designed
and sized carefully so that they provide suﬃcient capacity to meet
future needs but do not waste investment funds because they are toolarge. Sites have to be selected and prepared, buildings constructed,
and equipment ordered and installed. Once constructed, the project
has to be linked with existing systems. All this takes time. In an evaluation of 19 major investment projects, the World Bank found that, on
average, 14 percent of total project costs were expended in the ﬁrst yearof disbursement, rising to 22 percent in the second year and 23 percent
in the third (see Figure 9.3). The bank’s analysis underlines the diﬃculties of spending massive amounts of money on infrastructure projects
quickly and eﬀectively. The sorry record of U.S. reconstruction expenditures in Iraq corroborates the bank’s lessons.18
What do these lessons imply for appropriate levels of investment
in utilities and infrastructure following a conﬂict? In the ﬁrst year following a conﬂict, the host country and the international community
should focus on restarting and repairing existing systems and setting
up proper maintenance and management procedures for their current
and future operation. At this juncture, programs focusing on the repairof roads, both national and local, are a good expenditure of funds.
Importing and stockpiling critical components and establishing eﬃcient maintenance procedures for electric power and water systems arealso key tasks. Although these activities cost money, they are not as
expensive as new infrastructure projects.
The host country and the donor community also need to begin
planning and designing the renovation or construction of facilities

17 Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Economic Accounts, National Income and Prod-

uct Account Tables: Section 5, Saving and Investment, Tables 5.3.5.A and 5.8.5.A. (Detailed
data were for 1996 and 1997 only.)
18 Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (2006).

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Figure 9.3
Disbursement Patterns of World Bank Loans
25

Percent of total loan

20

15

10

5

0
Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

SOURCE: United Nations Development Group and World Bank, United Nations/WorldBank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment, Washington, D.C., October 2003, pp. 56–57.
RAND MG557-9.3

and other infrastructure. These activities are less expensive, but they
are as important as construction. Poorly designed projects can hinderdevelopment: They may saddle a country with electric power and water
systems subject to frequent breakdowns, result in perennially congested
road networks, or impose debts that cannot easily be repaid.
As project designs and assessments are completed, construction
can be gradually ramped up in the third and fourth years following
the conﬂict. Initially, most postconﬂict states encounter bottlenecks interms of moving material and equipment and organizing construction.
For example, Afghanistan has had diﬃculty in absorbing reconstruction assistance. In 2004–2005, the donor community oﬀered assistance equal to 13 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP; total disbursements
were only 2.9 percent of GDP.19 To prevent construction delays andkeep costs under control, the host government, especially the ministry in charge of planning and development, and international donor
community need to carefully coordinate projects so as not to generate
19 International Monetary Fund (2005d, p. 22).

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251

backlogs at ports and key transportation nodes. As the country’s capacity to absorb investment rises, it will be able to absorb larger inﬂows offoreign assistance for infrastructure development.
This assistance should come in the form of loans or equity investment, not grant aid. If projects are well designed, the social and economic rates of return on these investments are likely to be high, especially in postconﬂict societies in which much of the capital stock has
been destroyed or neglected. For example, the payback period on investments in mobile telephone service in Somalia has been as rapid as three
years.20 Grant aid is better spent in covering operating expenditures of
the government than in ﬁnancing the provision of utilities.
Despite our emphasis on project ﬁnance for utilities and infrastructure projects, the donor community still has a key role in facilitating loans or equity investment. Postconﬂict economies are risky:
The probability of political turmoil or a return to conﬂict is high; thegovernment has little ability to raise revenues; and the nascent private
sector lacks the experience, management capacity, and capital to plan,build, and ﬁnance signiﬁcant projects. The donor community can playa useful role in ﬁnancing the construction and operation of utilities
and infrastructure by providing guarantees or loans from oﬃcial loan
programs or from international ﬁnancial institutions.
Although loans from the international community are useful,a focus on providing subsidized loans ignores the larger and, in ourview, more important task of reducing the level of risk for all investors, private and government, in the postconﬂict society. First and foremost, this entails ensuring the security of people and property in boththe immediate postconﬂict period and, through the development ofan eﬀective system of justice, the ensuing years. Second, the donor
community needs to work with the host-country government to create
institutions and laws that reduce regulatory risk and the threat of corruption. This is a hard task; no society has mastered it in full. However,some best practices have been identiﬁed. Focusing assistance and, just
20 John Bray, “International Companies and Post-Conﬂict Reconstruction,” Conﬂict Pre-vention and Reconstruction, Social Development Paper No. 22, Washington, D.C.: World
Bank, February 2005, p. 12.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

as importantly, donor attention on the development of these institutions and practices is far more important than donating funds for theconstruction of a new hospital or university.
Because it is one of the best-funded and better-documented cases,
we have used Bosnia as a model again for suggested levels of assistancefor infrastructure. Figure 9.4 shows total investment and reconstruction aid as a share of GDP in Bosnia between 1995, the last year of the
conﬂict, and 2005. As shown in the ﬁgure, reconstruction aid played avery important role early on in boosting investment from 20 percent toover 40 percent of GDP. It accounted for three-fourths of total investment in 1996, the ﬁrst postconﬂict year. Reconstruction aid became
progressively less important both in dollar terms and as a share of Bosnian GDP during the subsequent decade. We note that Bosnia’s ﬁgures
for gross investment as a share of GDP in the fourth and later years
following the conﬂict are somewhat low compared to other developing
Figure 9.4
Gross Investment and Reconstruction Aid as a Share of Bosnia’s GDP
45
40

Gross investment
Reconstruction aid

Percent of GDP

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

SOURCE: International Monetary Fund (2000, p. 139; 2005a, p. 39).
RAND MG557-9.4

2004

2005

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253

countries.21 Many rapidly growing developing countries invest close to
30 percent of GDP. However, the ﬁgures are similar to or higher thanthose in other postconﬂict societies such as Cambodia, Mozambique,
Namibia, and Sierra Leone.
In Table 9.2, we again apply these patterns of investment andreconstruction assistance to Namibia and Sierra Leone to illustrate
appropriate levels of reconstruction aid to these two countries. Using
the investment and assistance path illustrated in Figure 9.4 as a guide,reconstruction aid would cover most investment in the ﬁrst year following the conﬂict, then ﬂuctuate between 40 percent and 50 percent
for the next ﬁve years, falling to about a quarter of the total in theseventh year. As the economy grows and commercial sources of capital
become more available, ﬁnancing shifts from assistance to domestic
and commercial sources of ﬁnance.

21 However, the IMF suspects that the Bosnian numbers are underestimated (International

Monetary Fund, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: Selected Economic Issues,” IMF Country Report
No. 04/54, Washington, D.C., March 2004, p. 12).

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Table 9.2
Estimated Gross Fixed Capital Investment and Reconstruction Assistance in
Namibia and Sierra Leone
Country

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

3,117.1

3,177.6

3,530.8

3,215.1

3,434.9

Gross ﬁxed capital
investment as a shareof GDP (%)

40.3

39.2

36.0

20.0

20.6

Gross ﬁxed capital
investment ($ millions)

1,257.7

1,244.5

1,270.2

643.0

707.6

Reconstruction aid as ashare of GDP (%)

30.2

15.6

17.7

10.9

8.4

Recommended
reconstruction aid($ millions)

941.6

496.6

623.4

351.6

287.3

GDP ($ millions)

661.9

819.0

936.0

971.9

1,030.8

Gross ﬁxed capital
investment as a shareof GDP (%)

40.3

39.2

36.0

20.0

20.6

Gross ﬁxed capital
investment ($ millions)

267.1

320.8

336.7

194.4

212.3

Reconstruction aid as ashare of GDP (%)

30.2

15.6

17.7

10.9

8.4

Recommended
reconstruction aid($ millions)

199.9

128.0

165.2

106.3

86.2

Namibia
GDP ($ millions)

Sierra Leone

SOURCE: RAND calculations.
NOTE: All dollar amounts are in constant 2002 U.S. dollars. Amounts may not sum
due to rounding.

CHAPTER TEN

Conclusion: The Cost of Nation-BuildingThis volume is intended to help those mounting nation-building operations in designing, assembling, and employing the necessary components. It should also assist journalists, legislators, and other interested
observers in evaluating the planning and implementation of any such
mission. Each preceding chapter contains simple formulas for estimating the required size and likely cost of the various mission elements.
This chapter addresses the overall costs.
Two types of variables have been used throughout this volume topredict costing requirements. The ﬁrst are the more or less immutablefacts on the ground, such as the size of the population, its degree ofurbanization, and its level of income, factors that cannot be immediately aﬀected by the intervention. The second are societal conditions
that may, over time, be inﬂuenced and the goals for doing so. In thislatter category are the levels and types of conﬂict within the society
and the scope of reforms being attempted.
Most historical nation-building operations have fallen into one
of two categories. The ﬁrst are peacekeeping missions mounted on thebasis of prior agreement among the warring parties. The second arepeace enforcement operations launched over the opposition of one ormore of the indigenous factions. Interventions of the ﬁrst type havetypically been led by the United Nations, those of the second by amajor global or regional power or by an alliance of such powers. Peace
enforcement actions of this latter type have proved much more expensive than peacekeeping operations, and particularly so for the leading
participants.

255

256

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Table 10.1 shows the requirements for the two types of operations in the same hypothetical country. The nation in question is rather
small and very poor, with a population of 5 million and a per capita
income of $500, thus similar in size and level of development to Haiti,
Sierra Leone, or Liberia. The light peacekeeping operation assumes apermissive entry, acquiescent population, and some level of remaining
local capacity for governance and security. The heavy peace enforcement mission assumes a forced entry, a more hostile or divided population, and little or no immediately available indigenous capacity forgovernance and security.
Table 10.1
The Costs of Nation-Building
Light Peacekeeping
Number of
Personnel
Sector

Local

Military

15,000

Int’l

8,000
Police11,000

Heavy Peace Enforcement

Local

50

15,000

360
18

1,000

Number of
Personnel

Cost(millionsof US$)

Int’l

50
65,00011,000170

Cost(millionsof US$)

13,000
18

8,000

1,250

Rule of law

18

18

Humanitarian

170

170

Governance

260

260

Economic
stabilization

30

30

Democratization

50

50Development andinfrastructure

390

750

Total

26,000

9,000

1,520

26,00073,00015,600

NOTE: Data are based on operations in a hypothetical country of 5 million people
with a per capita GDP of $500. Costs may not sum due to rounding.

Conclusion: The Cost of Nation-Building

257

In both cases, the society is assumed to be generating no signiﬁcant government revenue, thus requiring that nearly all public services
be funded initially by the intervening authorities. More prosperous
postconﬂict societies are usually able to fund some appreciable share of
their own government operations, but their reconstruction may nevertheless pose a larger burden on external donors because public services
in such societies are more expensive to provide due to higher wage
rates. Thus, somewhat counterintuitively, nation-building can be more
expensive in relatively developed societies, such as Bosnia or Iraq, thanin highly underdeveloped ones, such as Afghanistan or Sierra Leone.
A light peacekeeping operation in this hypothetical society is
estimated to require 9,000 international soldiers and police at a total
cost of $1.5 billion per year. A heavy peace enforcement mission could
require 80,000 personnel and cost $15 billion per year.1
1

In three instances, the projections diﬀer substantially. The size, capability, and cost of
the international military force that intervenes under the heavy peace enforcement operation are substantially greater than in the light peacekeeping scenario, consistent with theinternational community’s experience with these two types of operations. For the heavy
peace enforcement scenario, we calculated the number of soldiers using the average numberof international military personnel deployed in the ﬁrst year of eight peace enforcement
operations (in East Timor, Eastern Slavonia, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, andIraq; we excluded the two outliers—Germany on the high end and Afghanistan on the low
end—from the average). For the light peacekeeping scenario, we used the average number ofsoldiers in the ﬁrst year of six peacekeeping operations (in Congo [in the 1960s], Namibia,
Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and El Salvador).
Numbers of international police oﬃcers also diﬀer. For the heavy peace enforcement scenario, we computed the number of police oﬃcers using the average number of international police oﬃcers deployed in the ﬁrst year in three operations: Bosnia, East Timor, andKosovo. (The average was 161 per 100,000 inhabitants; Afghanistan, Germany, and Japan
were excluded from the average because no civilian international police force was deployed
to these three countries). For the light peacekeeping scenario, we used the average numberof police in the ﬁrst year of eight less ambitious operations with international police components (in Congo [in the 1960s], Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique,Haiti, and Sierra Leone).
Finally, we assumed that the willingness of foreign donors to fund infrastructure development was less in the peacekeeping than in the peace enforcement scenarios. For the peacekeeping scenario, we assumed that the international community would fund reconstructionin the range of 16 percent of GDP, the level provided in Bosnia during the second year after
the end of the conﬂict. For the peace enforcement scenario, we assumed that the interna-

258

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

These ﬁgures are consistent with the actual costs and staﬃng
levels of UN-led peacekeeping and U.S.-led peace enforcement operations over the past several decades. Over this period, heavy nationallyor alliance-led peace enforcement missions have proved, on average, torequire approximately 10 times more personnel and money, on a percapita basis, than lighter UN-led peacekeeping missions.
The expense of any nation-building mission is shared among
troop contributors, aid donors, and the international community as awhole according to various burden-sharing formulas. The costs of UNled operations are spread most widely. Those of nationally led peace
enforcement missions fall more heavily on the lead nation and its principal allies.
As a practical matter, therefore, full-scale peace enforcement
actions are feasible only when the intervening authorities care a great
deal about the outcome and, even then, only in relatively small societies. Thus, the eﬀort needed to stabilize Bosnia and Kosovo has proved
diﬃcult to replicate in Afghanistan or Iraq, nations that are eight to 12
times more populous. It would be even more diﬃcult to mount a peace
enforcement mission in Iran, which is three times more populous thanIraq, and nearly impossible to do so in Pakistan, which is three times
again more populous than Iran. Considerations of scale, therefore, suggest that the transformational objectives of interventions in larger societies should be sharply restrained to account for the relatively much
more modest resources likely to be available for their achievement.
Even the lighter, more consensual, less ambitious approach tonation-building epitomized by UN peacekeeping operations represents
an expensive enterprise, though it is not more expensive than allowing
a conﬂict, once halted, to be renewed. Put diﬀerently, conﬂicts generally impose greater costs on the international community than the
expense necessary to ensure that the cycle of violence, once halted forwhatever reason, is not renewed. While it may be prohibitively expensive to forcefully halt a civil war in full swing, experience has showntional community would fund reconstruction at a high level: 30 percent of GDP, the levelprovided in Bosnia during the ﬁrst year after the end of the conﬂict.

Conclusion: The Cost of Nation-Building

259

that interventions intended to consolidate and perpetuate a tentative
peace are cost-eﬀective.2
It has been said that no war plan can survive ﬁrst contact withthe enemy. Similarly, no plan for nation-building is likely to surviveﬁrst contact with the nation to be rebuilt. The true test of any suchplan, therefore, is not its ability to predict every twist and turn of theresultant operation, but rather its success in matching ends to means.
If the planners have given the operators what they need to succeed,
they have done their jobs. If operations are mired in shortcomings andattention cannot be focused exclusively on the mission at hand, theplanners have not met their obligations. This guide should help meetthat crucial test.

2

Collier and Hoeﬄer (2004, p. 3); Dobbins, Jones, et al. (2005, p. 247).

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Index

Abandonment, 202
Absentee government employees, 175
Accountability, 62, 162, 172
Aerial intelligence sensors, 32
Aﬃrmative action programs, 173
Afghanistan, 2001, U.S. invasion of, 1
African Union (AU), 7
Al Qaeda, 5Amnesty, 97
Applicable law, establishing, 74, 78–82
Asian Development Bank, 155
Assistance program, 129
Audit teams, 227
Authoritarian regimes, 192
Baath Party members, 34
Benomar, J., 198
Blackouts, 145
Bonn Agreement of December 2001,
80
Bosnia, 1
British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC), 205
Budgetary balance, establishing, 213,
217–219
Burden-sharing, 6Bush administration, 2
Callwell, C. E., 20
Capacity, 162, 172
Capital markets, 167, 214
Carpetbagging, 143

Central bank system, 164, 183
Civic action, 21, 33
Civic education, 63, 200
Civilian capacity, 6
Civilian operations, implementationof, 9Civil-military coordination, 120–122
Civil police, 47
Civil service, eﬀective, 172
Civil service commission, 174
Civil society, developing, 191, 200–202
Clinics, 149
Coalition Provisional Authority, 151
Cold War, 36
Collective action problem, 120
Collier, P., 246
Combatants, former, 31
Command, unity of, 6, 22
Command-and-control arrangements,
7, 22
Commercial code, 84
Commitments, long-term, 6Common law systems, 78
Communication systems, 32, 51
Congo, 1961 UN intervention of, 1Consequence management, 118
Consociational approach, 199
Constitutional design, 191, 198–200
Consumption, 179
Contracts, 73
Coordination arrangements,
establishing, 110–111, 120–124

277

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Corrections personnel to prisoners,
ratio of, 103
Correction systems, improving, 76, 87
Corruption, 63, 88, 162, 172, 178
Cost of living, 173
Counterterrorism measures, 27, 49, 64
Courts, 73, 78
Crash programs, educational, 146
Credible opposition movement, 194
Crises, responding to, 110, 116, 119
Currency, stabilization of, 161, 163–165
Customary law, 74
Debt negotiations, 167
Deﬁcit ﬁnance, 223–224
Democracy, promotion of, 5, 6, 135
Democratic Republic of Congo, 23
Democratization, 15
best practices of, 192–209
costs of, 210–211
key actors of, 209–210
key challenges of, 190–192
Denaziﬁcation, 94
Detainees, 84
Detention facilities, 76
Development, 15, 62–63
best practices of, 216–241
costs of, 244–253
key actors for, 243–244
key challenges of, 213–216
outcomes for, 241–243
Disarmament, demobilization, andreintegration (DDR), 16, 20, 28, 207
Disaster assistance response teams, 125,
137
Disease, communicable, 110, 116
Doctors Without Borders, 119
Donor assistance, estimating, 215–216
Donor states, 132
Donor support, 168
Drug traﬃcking, 55
Economic activity, 162, 168
Economic assistance, 12
Economic development, 193

Economic growth, 13, 19, 89, 161
creating an environment for, 214,
228–230
Economic stabilization, 15
best practices of, 163–178
costs of, 183–188
key actors of, 182
key challenges of, 161–163
outcomes for, 178–182
Education, 141, 146
Elections, democratic, 3, 136
Elections, organizing, 26, 191–192,
207–209
Electoral system, 198
Electoral Work Plan, 208
Emergency health kits, 115
Employment creation schemes, 31
End-state goals, 22Engagement, rules of, 7
Environments, postconﬂict, 51, 83
Equipment, 51, 59–60, 75
Equity investment, 251
Ethnic conﬂict, 128
European Union (EU), 7, 63, 155
Exchange rates, 163, 216
Excise tax, 223
Executive missions, 52
Executive structure, 198
Expeditionary forces, 8
Expenditures, 218
Factions, ethnic and religious, 56
Farabundo Marti National Liberation
Front, 20
Federal Bereau of Prisons, 101
Field training, 58–59, 62
Financial assistance, 10
Financial sector, developing, 224
Foreign exchange markets, 166
Forensic testing, 58
Formal legislation, key areas of, 81
Fraud, 173, 228
Free press, creating, 191, 202–207
Free-trade zones, 222

IndexGendarmerie police, 47, 52
Geneva Convention, 32
Ghost accounts, 228
Global positioning system (GPS), 33,
57“Golden hour,” 15, 50
Governance, 14, 129
best practices of, 137–155
key actors in, 155–156
key challenges of, 135–137
sizing and costs, 156–159
Government expenditures, 179
Government regulation, 229
Government services, resurrecting,
156–157
Grant aid, 251
Gross domestic product (GDP), 43,
58, 71
Haiti, 1
Health care systems, 115, 136, 141, 149
Hoeﬄer, A., 246
Human Development Report 2004,
157
Human intelligence (HUMINT), 31,
34, 50
Humanitarian relief
best practices of, 112–132
costs of, 133–134
key actors of, 132–133
key challenges of, 109–112
Humanitarian relief agencies, 12, 14
Human rights, 65
Human rights violation, 34, 76, 83, 95
Hussein, S., 2, 6
Hybrid courts, 94
Immunization, 149
Incentives, creation of, 214
Income tax, 222
Infantry training, 35
Inﬂation, 162, 163, 179, 213, 216
Infrastructure improvement, 14, 51,
59–60, 75, 238

279

Initiative to Promote Afghan Civil
Society, 201
Institutional reform, 51, 60–62
Intelligence, Surveillance, andReconnaissance, 20, 32, 50, 56–57
Interest rates, 217
International actors, coordination
between, 123
International Committee of the Red
Cross, 117
International Council for Volunteer
Agencies, 133
International Criminal Court, 94
International Force East Timor(INTERFET), 79
International Foundation for Election
Systems, formerly the (IFES), 210
International Law Enforcement
Academy, 65
International military forces, 19International Monetary Fund (IMF),
10, 182, 183, 217
International pressure, 192
International trade, 185
Intimidation, 208
Intrabank market, 217
Invasion force, 6
Investment ﬂows, 185
Joint Interim Administrative Structure,141
Justice system, 74, 76
Khmer Rouge, 20
Kosovo Force (KFOR), 54
Law, rule ofbest practices of, 77–100
costs of, 104–107
key actors of, 101–102
key challenges of, 74–76
sizing of, 102–104
Law enforcement, basic, 26, 50, 54–56
Legal codes, 55
Legal planning, preconﬂict, 74, 77–78

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Legitimacy, 194, 198
Lipset, S., 194
Local elections, 197
Local governments, setting up, 136–
137, 152–154
Local revenues, 167
Lustration, 94–95
Mandates, writing, 138
Mapping programs, 126
Market economy, 73
Media, 91, 203
Media Experts Commission, 205
Mediation, 90
Mentoring programs, 144
Military
best practices of, 22–36
costs of, 41–45
key actors, 36–37
key challenges of, 19–22
sizing of, 37–41
Military capacity, 6
Military intervention, 2
Military lawyers, 78
Military observers, 42
Military police oﬃcer (MP), 47
Military-to-population ratios, 37
Milosevic, S., 11, 80
Ministry of justice, 73
Mission staﬀ, building, 142
Mission strength, 142
Mobile training teams, 35
Modernization, theories of, 193
Mutatis mutandis, 79
National and local police forces,
structuring of, 61
National Consultive Council, 141
Nation-building, preparing forchoosing an institutionalframework, 6–10
establishing consultive forums,
10–12
seizing the golden hour, 15–17
setting initial priorities, 12–15
setting the objective, 2–3

sizing the commitment, 3–6
Nazi party, 196
Nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), 27, 33, 56, 91, 122
Non-refoulement, principle of, 125
North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO), 2, 7, 9, 64
Nuremberg trials, 93
Oﬃce of Transition Initiatives, 155
Operating, reconstructing, andinvesting, 215, 231–241
Operation Enduring Freedom, 123
Organization for Security and CoOperation in Europe (OSCE), 64,
155, 205, 209
Payment systems, 224–225
Peace enforcement missions, 4, 37
Peace Implementation Council (PIC),
12
Peacekeeping, 4Peacekeeping force, UN, 4, 7
Pehle, J., 92
Performance matrix, 131
Personal hygiene kits, 115
Policebest practices of, 52–63
cost of, 70–72
key actors of, 63–66
key challenges of, 49–52
sizing of, 66–69
Police forces, 12
Police to population, ratio of, 66
Police to soldiers, ratio of, 68
Ponce, R. E., 97
Poverty and societal conﬂict,
correlation between, 13Power, devolution of, 199
Predeployment assessments, 137
Predeployment planning, 49, 52–54
Preintervention planning, conducting,
109–110, 112
Price controls, eliminating, 228
Prisons, 76
Private gain, resources for, 24IndexPrivate property, protection of, 73
Private sector development, 230
Privatization, 238
Program management, 130
Public health expenditures, 159
Public security, 20, 24, 50, 54–56
Public services, restoring, 136, 142–152
Quality assurance teams, 35–36
Reconstruction projects, 154
Recruiting and training
for judges and lawyers, 75, 83–85
for police, 50, 57–59
Red Crescent Movement, 121
Refugees, 11
Refugees and internally displaced
persons, assisting, 111, 117, 124–128
Regime type, 192
Reintegration, 29
Relief costs, per capita, 133
Remedial educational programs, 147
Remote sensing systems, 32
Representative institutions, structuring,
190–191, 195–198
Resistance, 15
Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana, 20
Responsiveness, 62
Retrenchment, period of, 193
Riot control, 49, 64
Roosevelt, F.D., 2
Royalties, 220
Rule-of-law culture, establishing, 76,
87–90
Sales tax, 223
Secretary-General’s Special
Representative, 53
Security, 14
Security, domestic, 47
Security apparatus, 195
Security forces, local, 19
Security gap, 24
Security-sector reform, 22, 34
Security threats, potential, 19
Sierra Leone, 7281“Six plus two” forum, 12
Skills training, 23
Social divisions, 4Social transformation, 5
Somalia, 7Special weapons and tactics (SWAT),
48, 53, 64
Sphere standards, 127
Stability missions, 47, 53, 109
Start-up costs, 89State-owned enterprises, 237
Tactical intelligence, 56
Taliban, 5, 11
Tariﬀs, 22, 165
Taxation, 185, 214, 220
Tax rates, 172
Tax revenue, 162“Team village” missions, 34
Technical assistance ﬁeld teams, 35
Terrorism, global, 5Tests, national, 147
Transitional administration,
establishing, 135–136, 137–139
Transitional Judicial Service, 83
Transitional justice, supporting, 76–77,
91–97
Transportation, 141
Truman, H. S., 2
Trust funds, 170
Truth commissions, 95–98
Tse-tung, M., 21
Tudjman, F., 11
UK Department of International
Development (DFID), 155
United Nations Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan, 208
United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF), 132
United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), 101, 155
United Nations Educational,
Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization(UNESCO), 206

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United Nations High Commisioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), 123, 132
United Nations Interim Administration
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 54,
80, 84
United Nations Oﬃce for
Coordination of HumanitarianAﬀairs (OCHA), 120
United Nations Operation in Somalia(UNSOM), 117
United Nations Security Council, 138
United Nations Standard Minimum
Rules for the Administration ofJuvenile Justice, 87
United Nations Transitional
Administration in East Timor(UNTAET), 80, 84
United Nations (UN), 7, 63
UN Security Council, 7
U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), 101, 125, 155
U.S. Department of Justice, 101
U.S. Department of JusticeInternational Criminal Investigative
Training Assistance Program, 65

U.S. Department of State, 101
U.S. Department of State Bureau ofInternational Narcotics and Law
Enforcement, 65
Utilities, 144, 215, 231
Value-added tax (VAT), 223
Vehicle checkpoints, 27
Very important person (VIP), 66
Vettingjudges and lawyers, 83–85
police, 34, 50, 57–59
War crime trials, 92–94
Weapon collection, 28
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
2, 4, 116
Weapon storage, 28
Weapon survey, 28
Weapon training, 66
Well-run systems, 232
Witness protection program, 90
World Bank, 10, 77, 143, 155
World Food Programme, 132
World Health Organization, 116, 132

About the Authors

James Dobbins directs the RAND Corporation’s International Security and Defense Policy Center. He has held U.S. State Department
and White House posts, including Assistant Secretary of State forEurope, Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere,
Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans,
and Ambassador to the European Community. He has handled a variety of crisis management assignments as the Clinton administration’s
special envoy to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and the Bushadministration’s ﬁrst special envoy to Afghanistan. He is lead author of
RAND’s two-volume History of Nation-Building. Dobbins graduatedfrom the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and served three years
in the U.S. Navy.
Seth G. Jones is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation andan adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh
School of Foreign Service. He is the author of The Rise of European
Security Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He has published articles on a range of national security subjects in The National
Interest, Political Science Quarterly, Security Studies, Chicago Journal ofInternational Law, International Aﬀairs, and Survival, as well as such
newspapers and magazines as the New York Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune. He received his M.A. and
Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

283

284

The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Keith Crane is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, where
he works on issues pertaining to Eastern Europe, Russia, international
development and trade, China, Iraq and the Middle East, as well as
postconﬂict nation-building. In fall 2003, he served as an economic
policy advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.
More recently, he was a member of the Reconstruction and Economics
Working Group serving the Baker-Hamilton Commission on Iraq. He
received his Ph.D. in economics from Indiana University.
Beth Cole DeGrasse is a senior program oﬃcer in the Center for PostConﬂict Peace and Stability Operations at the U.S. Institute of Peace(USIP). Prior to joining USIP, she held a variety of positions in theexecutive, legislative, and nonproﬁt sectors. She worked on arms control issues for many years, including assignments at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Foreign Aﬀairs and National
Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service. She received
her B.A. in political science and French from the University of Vermont and completed Kent State University’s program on internationalorganizations in Geneva, Switzerland.