Fukuyama book from CU Press foresees expanded need for nation building

The notion of nation building, famously derided by George W. Bush when he was a presidential candidate, has now become reality for the United States as it tries to rebuild the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Such commitments will only become more common according to a new Cornell University Press book by noted scholar Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man and the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, Fukuyama, a 1974 Cornell graduate in classics, argues that we need to shift our emphasis from butting back the scope of states to strengthening the core capabilities of states in the developed world. Weak, collapsed or failed states are chief threats to the United States and to world order because these states are often a breeding ground for terrorists and the source of conflict, humanitarian disasters such as poverty and AIDS, and grave human rights abuses. Effectively addressing such dangers will require that we embark on other nation-building efforts in the near future. In fact, Fukuyama contends, "The art of state building will be a key component of national power, as important as the ability to deploy traditional military force to the maintenance of world order."

According to Fukuyama's analysis, the United States and other Western nations have an abysmal track record in nation building. Such efforts unfortunately have often failed once the outside intervention is withdrawn. But rather than give up on such efforts, Fukuyama argues that we need to look at our mistakes and draw lessons from them. As a means of institutionalizing our nation-building capabilities, he suggests creating a formal government agency, backed by a permanent staff, to manage ongoing and future nation-building activities. Such an agency "must be endowed with sufficient authority to bring the government's warring agencies under control when a crisis emerges," he states.

Fukuyama's book challenges some basic assumptions about how to build effective public institutions in developing countries. Current efforts at capacity building often destroy more capacity than they build, he finds, because organizations focus more on providing a service than increasing the local government's service capacity.

In addition, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the limits of applying developed-country public administration practices to developing countries. Because "there are no globally valid rules for organizational design ... the field of public administration is necessarily more of an art than a science," Fukuyama states. Instead of "best practices" that we export to other countries, efforts to create effective public institutions must be carefully tailored to local norms, cultures and values.