A TIRED CLICHE: WHY WE SHOULD STOP WORRYING ABOUT UNGOVERNED SPACES AND EMBRACE SELF-GOVERNANCE.

• Author: Murtazashvili, Jennifer

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been many costly efforts to build capacity in conflict-affected states. Despite substantial investments, an almost inescapable conclusion is that such efforts have not lived up to their promise of improving political order and economic development. (1) For example, although Iraq and Afghanistan have held national elections and vast resources invested into building national governments, there remains substantial conflict and violence, as well as persistent economic underdevelopment.

I argue that one of the reasons why state building has not lived up to its promise is because these efforts are mainly top-down endeavors that leave little role for self-governance in the reconstruction process. This top-down drive for reconstruction, with its focus on building new state institutions or generating strong central government capacity, reflects the continued misdiagnosis of the causes of conflict in society. One of these misdiagnoses is that fragile states are "ungoverned spaces."

The problem with thinking of ungoverned spaces is that it neglects much of what we know about how individuals survive in societies without strong centralized order: they learn to cope and devise their own ways of managing problems when the state is unwilling or unable to do so. Although such efforts may be "messy" and lack vertical hierarchies, it does not mean they are ineffective. In fact, these efforts are an important source of governance because they are designed and recognized by the individuals who use these institutional innovations and organizational structures. A state that lacks a strong presence does not mean communities are ungoverned. As we will see, thinking about these places as "ungoverned" forces policymakers to make a devastating intellectual error that impedes them from understanding the deep sources of legitimacy in such places. There are simply no ungoverned spaces.

Such thinking also provides a narrative to justify top-down reconstruction efforts that typically undermine enduring social institutions that effectively transcended conflict and became most legitimate to citizens during their most difficult hours. Rather than embrace these often-messy structures, donors and many domestic policy makers see them as a threat to the legitimacy of a nascent state and seek to diminish, if not eliminate, their role in public life.

This policy folly is anticipated by a deep intellectual tradition that pundits and conflict scholars often neglect, which calls into question the very concept of an ungoverned space. A large and diverse literature in social science recognizes that self-governance works well. (2) Most notably, Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in economics for recognizing the ability of communities to overcome collective dilemmas under challenging circumstances. (3) This includes in fragile contexts where the state is weak or cannot be trusted. (4) This literature finds that substantial order in society has little to do with the government. Families are an example, but so are clans, customary governance, tribes, some banking systems, as well as organizations such as mafias, gangs, insurgencies, and warlords. Sometimes, self-governance may even work better than governments in conflict-affected states. (5)

Such approaches to self-governance do not imply that it is better to let states fail, or to do nothing when a state is fragile. Self-governance does suggest that international donors and often benevolent technocrats in national ministries should rethink their approaches to the seemingly unruly hinterlands. In contexts where there is persistent conflict, self-governance is likely to be operational at many levels; where there are people, there will be governance. Indeed, most fragile states are governed by custom, tribe, warlord, insurgencies, gangs, clans, and so on. Some of these organizations are more productive than others. To figure out which ones are effective and legitimate requires an in-depth exploration of these informal social and political institutions through fieldwork, not a dismissal of these areas as blank, ungoverned spaces. It requires understanding the complex institutional layering that goes on in such environments. It also requires a new kind of thinking: policymakers and scholars should avoid the dangerous misconception that the state is the main source of order in society. In many of these environments, it was predatory behavior on the part of the state that sparked conflict to begin with. So why would citizens want to welcome bureaucrats back with a warm embrace? Such thinking is inaccurate in all states, especially those affected by conflict. More specifically, it requires us to think carefully about the usefulness of the concept of an ungoverned space.

These points become more precise if we look at their intellectual antecedents and compare the economics and the state with parochial approaches to state building. (6) The economics literature on anarchy recognizes the role of self-governance. This does not mean there is no role for a state. The economic theory of the state describes how the state emerges in response to diseconomies of scale with informal and traditional orders, as well as smaller-scale political organizations, such as feudal organization. (7) However, this literature underscores that most institutions that are socially beneficial often emerge spontaneously. (8) This approach identifies what works locally and where possible, builds states where there is an identifiable need to do so, while anticipating that there is likely to be much order even under conditions of anarchy.

The predominant approach to state building proceeds in the opposite way. Rather than beginning with the presumption that self-governance works, state-building takes as its point of departure the literature on state formation in historical sociology. Much of it is informed by Tilly, who emphasized war-making as a logic of historical development, and Weber, who emphasized rational-legal orders as a foundation for success. (9,10) This literature views the modern state as an inevitability, arising through a sort of war of attrition with informal orders. Customary and tribal governance are more of a nuisance than anything else, an ugly provincial residue whose importance should wane over time. Most importantly, political order and economic development are thought to require a strong state.

Using evidence from Afghanistan, I illustrate why the state-building approach is less useful than the anarchic perspective of economics. During the state-building effort that commenced in 2001, elections have been prioritized over decentralization of the highly centralized administrative state. As a result, aid tends to reinforce old administrative structures and contributes to corruption. Based on fieldwork conducted in rural Afghanistan, the conceptual incoherence of the ungoverned spaces metaphor becomes clear. A more useful metaphor is Olson's notion of stationary bandits. (11) Although often applied to a state, it is useful to think of Afghanistan as a nation of many local stationary bandits, such as customary governance or even warlords in some parts of the county, which vary in the extent to which they work effectively and are socially productive. The central task of state-building is to identify which of these self-governing orders are productive, which are unproductive, and how to harness both into an effort to promote a viable political and economic order.

Thinking that central government authority is somehow the primary antidote to maladies of such states explains why some of these places find themselves in vicious cycles of conflict. Central governments emboldened by international support push full throttle on expanding states and seek to create government hegemony. Citizens outside the capital find themselves once again repulsed by this idea and they move to exit the state. Donors scratch their heads, while their impatient constituents at home lament wasting money on societies that are simply ungovernable. Meanwhile, these citizens in conflict-affected states are not repulsed because they are ungovernable, but rather because they are simply unwilling to tolerate another round of government predation, this time under the cover of benevolent donors.

A Brief Review of the Literature

Ultimately, I will argue for an approach that I call decentralized state-building. To get there, it is necessary to briefly review three literatures: anarchy, the state, and state building.

Anarchy

Most pundits and observers equate anarchy with disorder. To say that a situation is anarchic means that it is lawless. To some extent this is true: societies may not have formal "parchment" rule by the government, but this does not mean that informal rules and norms that order social and political life do not prevail. The idea is that without a government, people will fight. Such thinking goes back to the 17th century political economist Thomas Hobbes, who thought that without a centralized state, conflict was an inevitability. The solution was Leviathan--an all-powerful state. (12)

Yet in social science, anarchy is a statement about the absence of state control over social, economic, and political activities. (13) The extent of order is an entirely separate question from anarchy. Indeed, in many instances, self-governance works well under conditions of anarchy. (14)

One example is the management of the commons. The defining feature of the commons is that it can be used up when too many people use it without thinking about the effects of their use on others' ability to use that resource. Unlike those who proclaimed a "tragedy of the commons", Elinor Ostrom emphasized that self-governance of the commons is often effective. (15,16) Not only is it effective, it can be superior to rules designed by state officials. The commons can be used up when there are unclear property rights. (17) The conventional...