UN Statebuilding in Authoritarian States: Governance and Bureaucratic Innovation

• In Event: Global Governance and Development

Abstract

How do liberal international institutions implement statebuilding interventions in increasingly authoritarian states? Scholarship on global governance increasingly argues that the liberal international order is under threat due to deadlock in the Security Council, withdrawal of US support for international institutions, and the growth of populism (Colgan and Keohane 2017). In spite of the challenges facing global governance organizations, the UN and other Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) have continued to engage in often-overlooked international statebuilding and peacebuilding efforts that aim to transform war-torn countries into liberal democratic states. Surprisingly, the UN not only implements liberal statebuilding interventions in states that are progressing toward democracy but also in those that are backsliding toward authoritarianism. Using primary qualitative and quantitative data on UN statebuilding in Burundi between 2010 and 2020, and building on comparative politics scholarship on sub-national regime variation (Giraudy, Moncada, and Snyder 2019), we argue that the effect of international statebuilding in increasingly authoritarian regimes is conditioned by sub-national variation in the degree of authoritarianism within the regime. We posit that while the territorial sovereignty of the host state enables it to block the most liberal statebuilding activities (Campbell and Matanock 2020), UN bureaucrats are able to successfully implement statebuilding activities with more democratic sub-national institutions.

Authors

• Yolande Bouka, George Washington University

• Travis B. Curtice, Drexel University

• Susanna Campbell, American University