The main goal of the book is to establish a theory that helps explain the most effective way for state building and peace building in a state post-conflict. Sisk achieves this by focusing on three main subtexts: authority, capacity, and legitimacy. Sisk theorizes that a state that is strong in all three categories has a higher chance of being successful and also has a higher chance of becoming a democracy. He also theorizes that states that are weak in these categories are classified as fragile states and have a higher chance of relapsing back into another conflict. To Sisk, state building must be done through democratic processes to be truly effective. An example would be his emphasis on the importance of elections. This democratic process, to Sisk, helps a state establish strong legitimacy. He also discusses how organizations like the United Nations need to spend more time in developing states post-conflict to help with capacity. He mentions how if a state can’t achieve capacity in their governments, thy are likely to backslide into another conflict. It is during this time that Sisk also talks about not rushing the electoral process as it needs to be established legitimately and will most likely take a long time due to division among conflict lines.
Sisk also brings up fragile states and how each state is categorized on a case-by-case basis. While a state may be weak on the three categories Sisk presents, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it does not have a chance to rebuild. To Sisk, each state has their own path, and when outside entities like the UN and NGO’s come to help, it is important not to assume that one size fits all when it comes to state building. Sisk’s three categories are guidelines when it comes to state and peace building, but they are broad topics that can be adjusted depending on the state.
When looking at Sisk’s methods throughout the book, it is clear he uses his literature review and analysis of organizations and institutions like the United Nations to support her claims. In addition to that, Sisk also looks at foreign aid and NGO’s in the peace building process. Sisk emphasizes the importance of women and minorities when rebuilding state governments and how it creates a more stabilized central government. Most of Sisk’s methodology was centered around the rebuilding of the state and its government and its capacity and legitimacy. He mentions Kristine Hoglund and how she describes a state cannot begin its efforts to legitimacy until the formation of an official electoral process is established. She also mentions how violence will not completely subside during this process. Sisk uses this to then further support his point about the importance of elections in state building. His research also focuses on cases of violence, including civil wars, to demonstrate how violence played a role in a fragile state. So while Sisk’s main focus is on his literature review, he also brings in some qualitative data as evidence as well.
Sisk makes several empirical claims throughout the book on how state building and peacebuilding work specifically.
Sisk discusses some problems of democracy-building post-conflict. His argument is that democracy-building puts vertical accountability and to cross-cut identity divisions in society. This and vertical accountability can be problematic because civil society is still most likely divided along conflict lines. For state building to occur successfully, organizations that transcend identity and conflict lines need to be supported. The election process is also crucial for a democracy to emerge post-conflict. Sisk discusses how it is important to establish election processes but to not rush them. He claims that establishing a legitimate election and government is usually rushed because of an outside entity’s exit strategy. Knowing when an electoral process will induce conflict and lead to violence is also very important. The indicators help establish a timeline of legitimizing a new government.
Chapter five focuses on the early phases of capacity in the government. This includes the government’s ability to oversee, negotiate, and regulate foreign investments. The new public administration must be able to provide services for basic human needs and capacities while also rebuilding state-society relations. State building is not just about building the capacities within a public administration but to also have members of that administration have the skills necessary to engage with local communities. Building this relationship shows that a developmental state and administration is about inclusion rather than resorting to authoritarian characteristics. For long-term state building tools, Sisk discusses how it is important to focus on stabilizing economic policy making and to centralize the development of education and health care.
The concepts in Sisk look at state building and peace building through three different lenses. These lenses are capacity, authority, and legitimacy.
Capacity: Capacity is the role of the state in facilitating development in post-war countries. This includes and mainly focuses on the political institutions of the state. When looking at capacity, it is important to look at factors like poverty levels, security, and civil services.
Authority: Authority in state and peace building emphasize security. Through security, it gives states the opportunity to approach conflicts non-violently. The long-term goals oof security and authority are to take what would be considered rebel groups and turn them into legitimate political actors.
Legitimacy: Sisk emphasized the importance of legitimacy because he states that weak governments don’t have the legitimacy to rule. Democracy cannot be deferred. Sisk believes that a legitimate government needs to be in place post-conflict to ensure stability moving forward and to avoid a potential relapse. He does, however, warn that moving too quickly to democratization and elections can be dangerous. It should be approached on a case-by-case basis. An example would be to use the power-sharing approach with the military. While it is not a democracy, it facilitates peace in the state.
Rule of Law: One of the main concepts Sisk promotes is the rule of law. He claims that a democracy is pointless without a rule of law and basic human rights There needs to be a legal system in place that protects the basic rights of all people for a democracy to be truly successful.
Main Theory: The presence of a strong bourgeoisie is key for determining and understanding the outcome of particular societies.
Summary of Theories: The upper classes adapted to the gradual intrusion of capitalism by placing greater pressure on the peasants. For example, the aristocracy in France left the peasants in a situation where they had de facto ownership of the land they worked, but still maintaining control over them through their power and influence. As peasants and middle-class farmers gained greater wealth through the use of private lands, they became more influential within the political spectrum of the nation.
Moore examines how the landed and upper classes in England were able to become the dominant element in society, and they were able to copy bourgeois economic habits. This combined with the violent upheaval of the English and American Civil Wars and the French Revolution allowed for the development of a bourgeois democracy. In this Moore explains how we see the marks of modern liberal society: the right to vote, representative legislature, property rights, freedom of speech, and the right for peaceful assembly. He believes the taming of the agrarian sector is the decisive feature that allows for this process to occur within a society.
Conclusion: Understanding the social structure is key to understanding the development of a nation; industrial modernization is shaped by how different social classes interact and react to capitalistic influences within their society
Main Method: Moore uses comparative historical analysis and various case studies to discuss how social classes and inter-class coalitions transformed nations
Summary of Methods: Moore first compares how the English and French progressed from feudal and ecclesiastical orders to the establishment of a relatively free society. He argues that the classes in the countryside played a significant part in transforming the culture towards industrialism. The focus shifted from investing in people to farm the land to investing capital into the land itself. Land was treated as a commodity which could be bought and sold, and when the English Civil War took away the barriers to enclosures, it destroyed the traditional peasant society. In France the bourgeoisie had taken land from distressed nobles and started to move up in higher social circles as they gained wealth. The penetration of commercial and capitalistic practices into agriculture by feudal methods caused the ‘ancient regime’ to be challenged. Moore then shifts his focus to discuss how the American Civil War became a “series of ramparts around property” and it became protected from state governments by the federal institution. The use of slavery was important for capitalism to flourish in the U.S.; however, with slavery’s abolishment it allowed the country to develop further West without the concern of the moral and political upheaval over slave labor.
Moore then discusses how Japan and Germany become fascist states in which democracy was hindered by labor-repressive agricultural systems. Authoritarian governments were established due to the retention of political power by the landed elite. The peasants never had a revolutionary break-through like England or France, and therefore remained subjected to their control and authority. These countries failed to bring about proper structural changes and tried to modernize without changing their social class structure.
Lastly, Moore discusses how China and Russia never created an urban trading and manufacturing class comparable to Western Europe. Chinese industry largely remained in the shadows of provincial gentry and they failed to adopt commercial agriculture. The countries result in a communist form of industrial development due to poor class structure between the political elites and modern economic growth. “A highly segmented society that depends on diffuse sanctions for its coherence is immune to peasant rebellion because opposition is likely to take the form of creating another segment” (p. 459). The most important causes of peasant revolutions have been the absence of a commercial revolution in agriculture led by the landed upper class and the concomitant survival of peasant social institutions on the modern era.
Conclusion: The methods of modernization chosen in one country change the dimensions of the problems for the next countries who take the step towards development
Main Claim: Industrial modernization does not discriminate; non-democratic nation building is a by-product of capitalism just as much as democratic forms of development
Summary of Claims: Moore analyzes each of the ways in which agrarian societies developed into Western democracy. He sees the development of democracy as 1) to check arbitrary rulers, 2) to replace arbitrary rulers with just and rational ones, and 3) to obtain a share for the underlying population in the making of rules (p. 414). He goes onto explain that structural differences in certain societies such as Germany and China allowed for different forms of industrial development. The persistence of royal absolutism into modern times created conditions unfavorable to democracy of the Western variety. Democracy could not grow or flourish under the shadow of prospective plunder and pillage by marauding barons (p.417).
Moore sees the conditions of democratic development as a threefold process: 1) the development of a balance to avoid too strong a crown or independent landed aristocracy, 2) a turn toward an appropriate form of commercial agriculture, and 3) the weakening of the landed aristocracy and the prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the peasants and workers
Conclusion: The success or failure of the upper class in taking up commercial agriculture has tremendous influence on the political outcome of a nation.
Main Concept: Economic change brings about political change which is caused by social class struggles and cultural upheaval within a country’s normative processes. “No bourgeoise, no democracy” ~B. Moore
Summary of Concepts: In Moore’s approach to explain how agrarian societies transform into modern industrial nations he argues that there are three historical routes from agrarianism to modern industrialism: Capitalistic Democratic, Capitalistic Reactionary, and Communist
1. Capitalistic-Democratic Route:
In this approach Moore highlights England, France, and the U.S. as countries where the peasantry was subordinate to the political and economic power of the bourgeoise and the current aristocracy. The urban bourgeoise emerged as the most powerful economic and political actors, and the aristocracy did not oppose their democratizing efforts. The aristocracy’s use of commercial agriculture bolstered commerce and spurred the creation of a strong middle-class society.
2. Capitalistic-Reactionary Route:
In this route, exemplified by Germany and Japan, the aristocracy and bourgeoise were weaker than the capitalistic-democratic route, and the peasantry posed a legitimate threat to their interests. A bourgeois-aristocratic coalition formed an autonomous state sprinkled with periods of quasi-democratic rule. Totalitarian fascism came to these countries due to the reluctance of their leaders to enact structural changes in the face of political and economic crisis.
3. Communist Route:
In this case, demonstrated by China and Russia, the peasantry emerged as the agent for social change. The peasantry was capable of uniting as a single collective actor, which created a non-socially stratified society. The current aristocracy was weaker, and it was incapable of creating a transition to commercial agriculture. It was unable to destroy the current social structure of the peasant class, and an urban bourgeoisie failed to emerge. The landed aristocracy was politically and economically displaced by the agrarian bureaucracy and it failed to oppose a peasant revolt against the state.
Conclusion: The relative strength and interactions of the peasantry, bourgeoise and aristocracy within a society influence how its political landscape will develop in reference to its transition from agrarian to industrial.
Sisk’s broad question is what practices or strategies best sustain peace following a civil war or conflict. To answer this, Sisk theorizes that following a conflict, internationally recognized states (that are in reality extremely fragile, such as Afghanistan or Somalia) need to build/re-build authority, capacity, and legitimacy. Sisk theories that weak authority, capacity, and legitimacy are the leading contributors of fragile states that experience civil wars, political violence, and poverty. Sisk theorizes that the key to statebuilding is a strong domestic system that is built on consent of the people and strong, inclusive democratic processes. Otherwise, states are liable to violent upheaval or control by criminal, corrupt elites. Sisk theorizes that security from outside forces and aid from donor organizations are not enough to support true statebuilding, as this merely creates the skeleton of a state that will not properly function. For statebuilding to occur, there must be a delicate balance between “local ownership” of people living in the state and outside influence that pushes international norms (Sisk, 2013, 10). In sum, true statebuilding is only theoretically possible once all of these conditions are met, otherwise the state is likely to experience recurring conflict, continuing the violent cycle.
Throughout the book, Sisk offers other theories to support or add nuance to his argument. One theory is that for successful statebuilding to occur the fragility of a state is best viewed as a spectrum. Sisk theorizes that each state has a different starting point, which will impact how statebuilding should occur. For example, states like Somalia are completely failing, while Yemen is considered fragile (Sisk, 2013, 41-45). This is particularly interesting notion because of the great diversity in states. As argued by Svolik, creating rigid categories and definitions for authoritarianism doesn’t offer a full picture of the heterogeneity of regimes. That argument is similar here, as the term fragile is not sufficient to capture the great variation in states. Also, Sisk’s main framework is expounded upon by theorizing that the role of women is critical to statebuilding because healthy democratic processes involve all people in a state. Sisk then confirms this theory through literature showing that the physical security of women is correlated with peacefulness of a state.
Throughout the book, Sisk’s main methodology is reliance on literature review to address his main question of what practices or strategies sustain peace following a civil war. Sisk states that the purpose of the book is to “introduce and explore prevailing concepts, discourses, debates, and dilemmas of statebuilding” (2013, 11). Sisk achieves this by utilizing a wide variety of literature from both scholarly and “practitioner” sources (2013, 11). The practitioner literature is drawn from non-governmental organizations, aid agencies, states included in the analysis, and international organizations like the U.N. and OECD. What also sets Sisk’s book apart is focus on special topics, women’s rights, inclusion of minority groups in governance, and the agency of local leaders and clans. These special topics fit into Sisk’s framework of using the concepts of autonomy, authority, capacity, and legitimacy. This framework is the basis of Sisk’s argument and how the book is organized. Despite Sisk’s insistence that the methodology of these individual literature pieces being “genuine and robust”, there are some drawbacks, such as institutional bias from some practitioner literature (2013, 12). Another drawback of this methodology is that literature on statebuilding is often very context-specific, which makes it difficult to draw generalizations on a global level. Since much of the literature is heavily contextual, this book can’t provide every detail described in the literature, which doesn’t allow Sisk’s book to provide great depth on one situation.
Sisk does provide some original qualitative information in the book. For example, to illustrate the role of civil war in fragile states, Sisk gathered information on the most fragile states from Global Report 2011: Conflict, Governance, and State Fragility, then coded each country for whether it had a “civil war or significant episode of political violence” (2013, 38-40). This small qualitative illustration was included to show correlation between civil war/political violence and fragile states. Overall, Sisk’s methods are largely qualitative and exploratory by examining major literature pieces on statebuilding, then using this information to create a framework to answer his research question.