The United States military is more than a tool of hard power. It provides the United States with a suite of diplomatic tools and is itself an important producer of American soft power. Though the many repertoires of American defense diplomacy have been carefully studied and the overall phenomenon has been theoretically investigated, their origins have not received similar attention. This research aims to uncover the causes of American defense diplomacy through an account of the American military's institutional development. It is common for defense diplomacy to be presented either as an outgrowth of 9/11 when the United States was engaged in globe-spanning irregular warfare or as part of a drive for global hegemony after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, this research finds otherwise. A key factor in the development of contemporary defense diplomacy was the suite of institutional changes in the American national security apparatus in the 1980s. In particular, the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 reconfigured the power relationships and interests of key elements of the US military thereby overdetermining the development of defense diplomacy. With this finding, this research centers Congress as a key driver of American foreign policy and highlights the sub-state institutional dynamics within the foreign policy apparatus that produced, and reproduce, defense diplomacy as an enduring habit of American statecraft. / Doctor of Philosophy / Using a broad array of archival documents, interviews, and other sources, this research investigated the (unintended) consequences of the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. Those reforms reconfigured the power relationships, incentives, and preferences of the US foreign policy apparatus which in turn yielded new habits of American statecraft. Foremost among these new habits was "defense diplomacy" which, beginning in the late 1980s, became a common, enduring, and popular American foreign policy repertoire. This dissertation focuses on Goldwater-Nichols, the emergence of defense diplomacy, and its institutionalization. This project places special emphasis on the US military's central and eastern European state-building and democratization efforts during the twilight of the Cold War and the dawn of the New World Order. This is a historical institutionalist account contributing to the literature on both the "militarization" of foreign policy as well as the "civilianization" of the military.

Yes / This article examines the key features of state failure that have adversely affected the goal of state-building and peace-building in South Sudan. Drawing on interviews with sections of local and international stakeholders in South Sudan, the article analyses the major areas of state reconstruction and peacebuilding that the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) government has failed to address proactively, areas and issues that seem directly or indirectly linked to the political crisis that started in December 2013 and the relapse into armed conflict. The paper also analyses the recent political developments and ongoing peace process in South Sudan and proffers some complementary policy intervention measures that could be implemented to strengthen the peace process. / This article was made possible through support from the Social Science Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network (APN) research grant, with funds provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

With its departure in the challenge of avoiding conflict-issues becoming politics, the present study merges the literatures on reconciliation and post-conflict politics, and asks why a difference in post-conflict political moderation can be observed in individuals. It uses questionnaire- and interview-material gathered in Mostar during spring 2013 to do a comparative case study, testing the hypothesis that reconciliation makes individuals more politically moderate with respect to war-related issues. Results in line with the hypothesis are found, and the relationship appears to be causal. However, the causal mechanism requires additional work, and the issue of confounders needs to be addressed by future studies to ensure robustness. In conclusion, with these caveats in mind, the answer to the question is that the level of reconciliation affects the levels of political moderation.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / A historical analysis of the Iraqi military suggests that certain actions should be taken if the state building process of the United States led coalition is to be successful. The fulcrum of power in Iraq has always been the internecine ethnic, religious, and tribal relationships and interactions. This thesis studies the recently constructed security structure of Iraq, particularly the new Iraqi Armed Forces, by focusing on likely influences of the ethnic and sectarian factions and social structure of the country on security and reconstruction/reintegration of the new Iraqi Military. The thesis brings into sharp focus a singular fact that the military of Iraq has always been used in one way or another against one section of the population or another by the prevailing political power using the time-honored virtues of patronage and corruption. The use of the military in Iraq as an internal political tool more than anything else contributed to the lack of national identity, the prerequisite for a sound military structure. The thesis presents some situational operating methodologies that if followed should provide a structurally sound modern Iraqi military rather than a supernumerary police force. The recommendations would not only provide a military as a strong basis for national unity and identity, but they would create a military contributing to regional stability. / Major, Turkish Army

Les programmes de construction de l'Etat soutenus par la communauté internationale depuis la fin des années 1990 dans des contextes d'après-guerre sont souvent considéré ineffectifs. En analysant l'entreprise de state-building au Sud Soudan dans une perspective historique, cette thèse montre comment ces programmes, supposés apolitiques et techniques, s'entrelacent avec le processus de plus longue durée de formation de l'État, avec son caractère cumulatif et négocié. Cette négociation a lieu dans une arène crée par les programmes internationaux dans leurs rencontres avec les acteurs locaux. On se concentre sur trois secteurs d'interventions qui donnent aux 'communautés locales' un rôle très important en tant que sujets avec des droits collectif: la création d'un système de gouvernement décentralisé, la livraison de services publics et la réforme du système foncier. L'administration des droits collectifs à la terre, aux services et à l 'autogouvernement par les autorités traditionnelles comporte un chevauchement entre la sphère coutumière et celle bureaucratique de l'État, ce qui encourage l'ethnicization de la politique Sud Soudanaise. Le développement de politiques et de cadres légaux de ces trois secteurs établit des 'règles du jeu' qui les acteurs aperçoivent devoir respecter dans leurs interactions quotidiennes avec l'État pour accéder à ses ressources. Deux dynamiques émergent par ces interactions : une fragmentation ethnique horizontale, et des liens verticaux de patronage. Les discours sur l'efficience et l'efficace de l'administration définissent donc un sujet communautaire qui produit une repolitisation ethnique du processus de state-building à travers l'appropriation de ces discours pour la part de la population locale des autorités traditionnelles. / State-building programs supported by the international donor community since the end of the 1990s in post-conflict contexts have often been considered ineffective. Analyzing the state-building enterprise in South Sudan in a historical perspective, this thesis shows how these programs, portrayed as technical and apolitical, intertwine with the longer term process of state formation with its cumulative and negotiated character. This negotiation occurs in an arena created by the encounter between international programs and local actors. The thesis will focus on three sectors in which the “local communities” have been given an important role as right­bearing subjects: the local government reform, the delivery of basic services and the land reform. As collective rights to land, services and self-rule are managed by traditional authorities, the customary sphere overlaps with the bureaucratic sphere of the modern state, encouraging the ethnicization of South Sudanese politics. The formulation of laws and policies in these three sectors provides the “rules of the games” influencing local actors' interaction with the state, as they understand them to be necessary to gain access to state resources. Two kinds of dynamics emerge from these interactions: horizontal ethnic fragmentation and vertical patronage relationships. Discourses on administrative effectiveness and efficiency create a communal subject which contributes to re-politicize (and ethnicize) the state­building process through the appropriation of these discourses by local population and their traditional authorities.

This study analyzes Colombia's current process of reintegrating former combatants into civil society. By employing four different citizenship perspectives constructed as ideal types it is shown how issues such as participation, political influence and the relation between rights and obligations are being addressed in the Colombian reintegration program. By relating these findings to current debates on the relation between security and development in DDR research, the study aims to reconcile the hitherto rather separated but yet intimately related discourses of DDR and citizenship. The analysis of the Colombian program gives a multifaceted picture of the country’s reintegration process where several citizenship perspectives are discerned in various and sometimes overlapping ways. Beyond contributing to an enhanced understanding of the Colombian process, the study illustrates the numerous ways in which diverging citizenship perspectives may be incorporated into a wider framework of peace and state-building and the potential tensions that are discerned in different approaches to DDR.

Following the war in Kosovo in 1999, the international community embarked on the most extensive international peace- and state-building project to date. From the early UN administration of Kosovo until the end of 'supervised independence' in 2012, various international organisations played a critical role in shaping the post-war polity. Throughout this engagement, the international community was driven by normative commitments to multi-ethnicity. However, while international organisations were committed to making Kosovo 'multi-ethnic', lack of clarity prevailed about what this goal entailed, or why it was so important. The thesis seeks to answer two inter-related questions: what was meant by multi-ethnicity on the part of its proponents, and what explains the prominence of commitments to this idea. Taking the form of three sections, the thesis examines these commitments' origins, manifestations, and explanations. International normative commitments to multi-ethnicity are found to originate in a shifting conception of the relationship between ethnic diversity and legitimate statehood during the twentieth century. Their manifestations in Kosovo are studied in three policy domains: the return of displaced persons, decentralisation of government to the local level, and minority rights. The thesis finds that international efforts in the pursuit of multi-ethnicity in Kosovo exhibited conflicting notions of multi-ethnicity, which shifted from integrationist ambitions to notions that reconciled the reality of segregation between ethnic groups on the ground through a 'politics of recognition'. The goal of multi-ethnicity remained, but was transformed. Explanations for the commitments to multi-ethnicity are found in both normative and consequentialist considerations, by uncovering unspoken underlying assumptions, and in the identity and self-image concerns of international actors. These findings indicate the power of the normative environment in shaping the actions of international organisations and provide insights into the thus far under-theorised normative dimension of the international state-building project in Kosovo.

Considerando que transformações no sistema tributário indicam processos de construção do Estado, o presente trabalho dirige-se aos seguintes problemas: quais os determinantes sociais e políticos do sistema tributário paraguaio desde a transição democrática, 1989? Qual a influência dos principais setores econômicos? Por que tem sido particularmente difícil extrair impostos das elites privadas no país? De forma a responder tais questões, o trabalho está organizado da seguinte maneira. Primeiro, traz uma periodização da construção do Estado no Paraguai a fim de contextualizar o processo em andamento. Segundo, apresenta indicadores para ilustrar a conjuntura socioeconômica, institucional e fiscal do país. E terceiro, analisa a trajetória das reformas tributárias implementadas no Paraguai desde 1989 a partir de categorias da literatura de sociologia fiscal. O estudo sugere a existência de estruturas de dependência de trajetória no sistema tributário paraguaio, conformadas pela ação política de elites agrárias com alto grau de coesão e dominância. Essas elites têm conseguido bloquear reformas que possibilitariam transformações em termos de capacidade e progressividade do sistema tributário, além de perfurar sua universalidade. / Assuming that changes in the tax system indicate state-building processes, this paper addresses the following questions: what are the social and political determinants of the Paraguayan tax system since the beginning of the democratic transition in 1989? What is the influence of the country’s main economic sectors? Why have state authorities in Paraguay been so unsuccessful to impose taxes on its private elites? To best answer these questions, the study is organized as follows. First, it provides a periodization of state-building in Paraguay so as to contextualize the ongoing process. Second, it illustrates the country’s socioeconomic, institutional and fiscal situation through the display of indicators. Third, it draws upon scholarship on fiscal sociology to provide analysis of the trajectory of tax reforms implemented in Paraguay since 1989. The study suggests the existence of a path dependent tax structure that was shaped by political action of highly cohesive and dominant agrarian elites. These elites have been able to veto reforms that would allow changes in levels of tax capacity and tax progressivity, besides having perforated tax universality.

Considerando que transformações no sistema tributário indicam processos de construção do Estado, o presente trabalho dirige-se aos seguintes problemas: quais os determinantes sociais e políticos do sistema tributário paraguaio desde a transição democrática, 1989? Qual a influência dos principais setores econômicos? Por que tem sido particularmente difícil extrair impostos das elites privadas no país? De forma a responder tais questões, o trabalho está organizado da seguinte maneira. Primeiro, traz uma periodização da construção do Estado no Paraguai a fim de contextualizar o processo em andamento. Segundo, apresenta indicadores para ilustrar a conjuntura socioeconômica, institucional e fiscal do país. E terceiro, analisa a trajetória das reformas tributárias implementadas no Paraguai desde 1989 a partir de categorias da literatura de sociologia fiscal. O estudo sugere a existência de estruturas de dependência de trajetória no sistema tributário paraguaio, conformadas pela ação política de elites agrárias com alto grau de coesão e dominância. Essas elites têm conseguido bloquear reformas que possibilitariam transformações em termos de capacidade e progressividade do sistema tributário, além de perfurar sua universalidade. / Assuming that changes in the tax system indicate state-building processes, this paper addresses the following questions: what are the social and political determinants of the Paraguayan tax system since the beginning of the democratic transition in 1989? What is the influence of the country’s main economic sectors? Why have state authorities in Paraguay been so unsuccessful to impose taxes on its private elites? To best answer these questions, the study is organized as follows. First, it provides a periodization of state-building in Paraguay so as to contextualize the ongoing process. Second, it illustrates the country’s socioeconomic, institutional and fiscal situation through the display of indicators. Third, it draws upon scholarship on fiscal sociology to provide analysis of the trajectory of tax reforms implemented in Paraguay since 1989. The study suggests the existence of a path dependent tax structure that was shaped by political action of highly cohesive and dominant agrarian elites. These elites have been able to veto reforms that would allow changes in levels of tax capacity and tax progressivity, besides having perforated tax universality.

Considerando que transformações no sistema tributário indicam processos de construção do Estado, o presente trabalho dirige-se aos seguintes problemas: quais os determinantes sociais e políticos do sistema tributário paraguaio desde a transição democrática, 1989? Qual a influência dos principais setores econômicos? Por que tem sido particularmente difícil extrair impostos das elites privadas no país? De forma a responder tais questões, o trabalho está organizado da seguinte maneira. Primeiro, traz uma periodização da construção do Estado no Paraguai a fim de contextualizar o processo em andamento. Segundo, apresenta indicadores para ilustrar a conjuntura socioeconômica, institucional e fiscal do país. E terceiro, analisa a trajetória das reformas tributárias implementadas no Paraguai desde 1989 a partir de categorias da literatura de sociologia fiscal. O estudo sugere a existência de estruturas de dependência de trajetória no sistema tributário paraguaio, conformadas pela ação política de elites agrárias com alto grau de coesão e dominância. Essas elites têm conseguido bloquear reformas que possibilitariam transformações em termos de capacidade e progressividade do sistema tributário, além de perfurar sua universalidade. / Assuming that changes in the tax system indicate state-building processes, this paper addresses the following questions: what are the social and political determinants of the Paraguayan tax system since the beginning of the democratic transition in 1989? What is the influence of the country’s main economic sectors? Why have state authorities in Paraguay been so unsuccessful to impose taxes on its private elites? To best answer these questions, the study is organized as follows. First, it provides a periodization of state-building in Paraguay so as to contextualize the ongoing process. Second, it illustrates the country’s socioeconomic, institutional and fiscal situation through the display of indicators. Third, it draws upon scholarship on fiscal sociology to provide analysis of the trajectory of tax reforms implemented in Paraguay since 1989. The study suggests the existence of a path dependent tax structure that was shaped by political action of highly cohesive and dominant agrarian elites. These elites have been able to veto reforms that would allow changes in levels of tax capacity and tax progressivity, besides having perforated tax universality.