Securing State Reform in Fragile States

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

When do states actually reform their institutions? This panel will examine the role of shocks and international interventions in making changes to domestic taxation and security structures, the most essential structures of states. The papers each collect new data and take innovative cuts at this important but challenging question. The Grady et al. paper examines administrative data on Malawi to better understand whether a shock can shift taxation institutions from a vicious cycle between citizens and the government, where each shirks, to a virtuous one. The Campbell and Spilker paper turns to the question of how aid is provided to examine how donors and implementers themselves see their role in securing conflict-affected states, and it draws on a new survey of over 1,000 policymakers in these roles. The Matanock paper examines new cross-national data on Africa to better understand when states invite interventions in their security institutions that can actually produce reform. The Brandt paper focuses on the sub-national statebuilding effect of UN peace operations in Burundi, using a quasi-experimental mixed-method research design. The study of statebuilding is disbursed among different academic subfields. This panel brings together scholars who study international statebuilding but tend to be segmented into taxation, international aid, and statebuilding. We seek to identify commonalities across cases that provide answers to these crucial questions about when such shocks and international intervention actually reform state institutions.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Public Service Provision and the Virtuous Circle: Evidence from Malawi - Nuole Chen; Boniface Madalitso Dulani; Matthew S. Winters, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Agents of Aid: Who Believes Aid Influences Post-Conflict States and Why? - Susanna Campbell, American University; Gabriele S. Spilker, University of Konstanz

• Inviting Intervention: Statebuilding by Delegating Security - Aila M. Matanock, University of California-Berkeley

• The Local Statebuilding Effect of UN Peace Operations - Caroline Brandt, Uppsala University

Chair

• Susanna Campbell American University

Discussants

• Dipali Mukhopadhyay Columbia University

• Matthew S. Winters University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign