Twenty year review

Building a durable peace by means of external nationbuilding can be a cumbersome and uncertain exercise. The outcome often hinges on the attitudes of the local population and elites and their willingness to endorse the process. This article scrutinises the attitudes of the recipient population and political elites towards different aspects of the external nationbuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It addresses the problems of state identity, reconciliation and democratisation in an externally administered nationbuilding endeavour. The empirical findings from Bosnia and Herzegovina are used to illustrate the degree to which external nationbuilding can lay the infrastructure for a durable peace in the aftermath of ethnic war.

Nationbuilding as an Instrument of Peace? Exploring Local Attitudes towards International Nationbuilding and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In most post-conflict states, a strong level of legal pluralism is the norm, particularly in regions of Africa and Asia where between eighty and ninety per cent of disputes are resolved through non-state legal mechanisms. The international community, in particular the United Nations, persistently drives the re-establishment of the rule of law in war-torn areas where, traditionally, customary law is prevalent. Laura Grenfell traces the international community's evolving understanding of the rule of law in such regions and explores the implications of strong legal pluralism for the rule-of-law enterprise. Using the comparative examples of two unique case studies, South Africa and Timor-Leste, Promoting the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict States provides insight into the relationship between the rule of law and legal pluralism. Alongside these studies, the book offers a comprehensive introduction to the conceptual framework of the rule of law in the context of approaches taken by the international community.

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Promoting the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict States

Building the nation's body: The contested role of abortion and family planning in post-war South Sudan

Constitution-making has become an intrinsic component of international politics. Nevertheless, International Relations scholars largely refrain from theorizing it, tending to view formal constitutional drafting as a domestic project. The article aims at challenging this perspective and advance our understanding of constitution making as an international (in addition to national) political phenomenon. Our main goal is twofold. First, we develop a new and comprehensive classification of international influences on constitution making, covering the wide range of international political dynamics impacting constitutional drafting. Moreover, the suggested typology is embedded within IR conceptualization. Secondly, the article contributes to the existing IR scholarship by demonstrating how empirical study of constitution-making illuminates overlooked areas of research and challenges existing IR theories. Our main focus here is on the study of international norms. Based on broad historical and comparative overview of constitutional drafting, analyzed through the prisms of our proposed typology, we present three theoretical insights addressing debates concerning the emergence of international norms, their dissemination, and the role of epistemic communities in facilitating their expansion. We conclude by highlighting how the interaction between international and domestic factors in the crafting of constitutions further challenges the disciplinary distinction between domestic and international politics.

Constitution-making and International Relations Theories

I. Defining the Issues 1. A Useful Distinction a. State Failure and State-Building b. Nation Failure and Nation-Building c. The Habitus of Obedience to Law 2. Foreign Intervention and the Promotion of Democracy a. The Policy of the United States b. The Policy of the United Nations II. Constitutional Politics 1. Constitutional Nation-Building 2. Collective Identity and Constitutional Identity 3. The Procedural Aspect: Democracy, Elite Consensus, and Foreign Intervention a. The South African Constitution b. The Afghan Constitution c. The Cypriot Constitution 4. The Institutional Aspect: Strong Leadership or Consensual Democracy? III. Conclusion

State-Building, Nation-Building, and Constitutional Politics in Post-Conflict Situations: Conceptual Clarifications and an Appraisal of Different Approaches

Felix Hanschmann

Papers

State-Building, Nation-Building, and Constitutional Politics in Post-Conflict Situations: Conceptual Clarifications and an Appraisal of Different Approaches