Exit Strategies and State Building

In the past two decades, states and multilateral organizations have devoted considerable resources toward efforts to stabilize peace and rebuild war-torn societies in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. Despite these prodigious efforts, there has been relatively little consideration of the critical questions arising from the "end game" of state-building operations. In Exit Strategies and State Building, sixteen leading scholars and practitioners focus on relevant historical and contemporary cases of exit to provide a comprehensive overview of this crucial issue. By examining the major challenges associated with the conclusion of international state-building operations and the requirements for the maintenance of peace in the period following exit, this book provides unique perspective on a critical aspect of military and political intervention. Deftly researched, Exit Strategies and State Building sheds new light on what is not merely an academic issue, but also a pressing global policy concern.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Acknowledgments 1. Exit Strategies and State Building: Richard Caplan Colonial Administrations 2. Exit and Colonial Administrations: John Darwin 3. Senegal: Anthony Chafer 4. Indonesia: Hendrik Spruyt Peace Support Operations 5. Exit and Peace Support Operations: William J. Durch 6. Sierra Leone: A. Sarjoh Bah 7. Haiti: Johanna Mendelson Forman International Administrations 8. Exit and International Administrations: Dominik Zaum 9. Kosovo: Ben Crampton 10. East Timor: Anthony Goldstone Military Occupations 11. Exit and Military Occupations: Gregory H. Fox 12. Gaza: Joel Peters 13. Iraq: Toby Dodge Thematic Issues 14. Competing Normative Visions of Exit: Ralph Wilde 15. The Political Economy of Exit: Michael Pugh 16. After Exit: The UN Peacebuilding Architecture: Richard Ponzio 17. Policy Implications: Richard Caplan Index

About the Author :
Richard Caplan is Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. He is the author of International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction (Oxford University Press) and Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia (Cambridge University Press).

Review :
"This book should be compulsory reading for all concerned citizens at a time when Iraq and Afghanistan have raised major questions about the merits of interventionist policies." --Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations "This is an excellent collection of essays, bringing together an impressive cast of contributors and covering an unusually wide range of thematic issues and case studies. It fills a gap in the burgeoning literature on peace- and state-building and merits a wide readership, including from the world of policy-making." --Professor Mats Berdal, Department of War Studies, King's College London "Designing and implementing exit strategies for international efforts to rebuild war-torn societies has never been more necessary or fraught. The insightful essays so ably assembled by Richard Caplan dissipate the fog of contemporary peace-building." --Professor Thomas G. Weiss, Director, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, CUNY Graduate Center "Richard Caplan has assembled a superb collection of thematic and case-study essays on the challenges and modalities of 'exit' in state building operations, a topic that is finally receiving the attention it deserves." --Roland Paris, University Chair in International Security and Governance, University of Ottawa "These chapters are written by top academics in the field and high-level practitioners with extensive experience on the ground during these missions. Readers will also appreciate the brief concluding chapter, which reflects on the policy lessons from the study. The importance of the topic and the wide range of contemporary cases make this a welcome addition to the field and a valuable resource for scholars and students... Highly Recommended." --CHOICE "As this volume shows in interesting detail, the international community has not - in the past or in the present - necessarily covered itself in glory in the way it has exited various forms of state-building interventions... If you are a policy-maker involved in preparing to exit Afghanistan in 2014, what advice can you glean from this volume? The core insight would be to recognise that you are not really exiting at all, merely changing the form of your involvement." --Dr. Joanna Spear, Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of Security Policy Studies Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University "This superior collection does an excellent job of defining and analysing a research agenda for this neglected area and sets a high standard against which future works on the subject should be compared." --Times Higher Education "Richard Caplan's book, Exit Strategies and State Building, is an important, thought-provoking, and compelling addition to what has become quite a substantial body of literature on international peace-building missions... What Exit Strategies and State Building will give its readers is a wide-ranging, level-headed, and much-needed study of the many questions that surround the end of state-building missions." --Mona Fixdal, University of Oslo, Norway, H-Net Reviews "Exit Strategies and Statebuilding is a tremendous addition to scholarship on war termination and peace- and state-building. It provides a useful mapping of thematic issues and a preliminary list of case studies addressing exit mechanisms comparatively, thereby extracting sound policy implications." --International Journal "...[This] volume on exit strategies compiled by Richard Caplan is much more than an assessment of exit strategies in the two recent and possibly most controversial operations. It is a comprehensive yet judicious compilation of country and thematic cases that examines disengagement strategies in a wide range of interventions: colonial administrations, peace support operations, international administrations and military occupations." --nternational Affairs "Richard Caplan deserves great credit for organizing the book in a very coherent manner, something that one does not often encounter when reading edited volumes in the discipline of political science... This organization makes the book easy to read and more accessible to a broader audience." --Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding "Richard Caplan's new book, Exit Strategies and State Building, fills a noticeable void in the otherwise rapidly expanding literature on international state-building... Exit Strategies and State Building comprises a collection of chapters written by expert academics in the field and high-level practitioners with extensive experience on the ground during these missions. It is therefore both a well-informed and rounded contribution to the literature and essential reading both for scholars of post-conflict state-building and policymakers alike... As internationally-led state-building becomes an increasingly ubiquitous aspect of international affairs, the observations of Caplan and his contributors will form an essential part of the debate on how such operations may best be conducted. They also provide timely lessons in caution and pragmatism for international actors considering such interventions who may underestimate the complexity of their mission." --Politics in Spires