Weapons of the weak state: How post-conflict states shape international statebuilding

Abstract

International Organizations (IOs), such as the United Nations (U.N.), engage in statebuilding in a range of post-conflict states. Statebuilding scholarship largely assumes that IOs, backed by their powerful member states, have at least temporary authority over the seemingly “weak” states in which they intervene. We argue, in contrast, that many post-conflict states shape IO statebuilding efforts through many statebuilding contracts, which we call incomplete arrangements, that give the post-conflict state the residual rights of control over the unnegotiated components of these statebuilding contracts with IOs. These incomplete arrangements, as opposed to complete takeovers, which are the other type of statebuilding contracts, provide procedural “weapons of the weak state” that enable the post-conflict state to influence what the IO mandate contains, where it intervenes, whom it hires, and when it exits. Using in-depth case studies of Burundi, Guatemala, and Timor-Leste, as well as analysis of 36 U.N. interventions in post-conflict states from 2000–2020, this article demonstrates the potential of incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts to give post-conflict states institutional power over IO statebuilders, with important implications for scholarship on statebuilding and global governance.

1 Introduction

In June 2023, the government of Sudan declared United Nations (U.N.) Special Envoy to Sudan Volker Perthes persona non grata, indicating that he was no longer allowed to serve as the U.N.’s representative to Sudan.¹ Although U.N. officials, as opposed to foreign government diplomats, cannot officially be declared persona non grata, Special Envoy Perthes stepped down from his position in September 2023.² In December 2023, in response to a request from the Sudanese government, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) decided to terminate the U.N. statebuilding mission that Perthes had led—the U.N. Transition Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS)—even though violence in Sudan continued to escalate.³ This type of resistance to a U.N. statebuilding mission is not unique to Sudan or to the current geo-political climate. As Appendix B shows, between 2000 and 2020, dozens of U.N. post-conflict statebuilding missions faced concrete resistance or other alterations from their host government, or the government on whose territory they are deployed (all appendices are available on the Review of International Organizations’ webpage).⁴ What enables these seemingly weak post-conflict states to shape, and often undermine, the implementation of U.N. post-conflict statebuilding mandates that are backed by the Security Council and its powerful member states?

International post-conflict statebuilding aims to help war-torn states build institutions that will sustain peace by upholding rule of law, liberal democracy, and a market-based economy.⁵ These statebuilding efforts are a core activity of international organizations (IOs), such as the U.N., whose charters authorize them to operate on another country’s territory for the purpose of promoting international peace and security.⁶ Existing scholarship on IO statebuilding, and on U.N. efforts in particular, has found that while they have helped to mediate peace agreements, incentivize combatant demobilization, protect civilians, and reduce the overall recurrence of civil war, they have been less successful at building the capacity of the state.⁷ This research often attributes the successes and failures to the IO rather than the host government.⁸ While others argue that host governments play a central role in their own statebuilding successes and failures, this largely assumes that the IO and its strongest member states (not the less powerful host state) still control the IO’s behavior.⁹ Some case-focused work acknowledges that host governments can shape the behavior of external actors,¹⁰ but it does not isolate the mechanism through which this influence happens.¹¹

In sum, much of the existing literature on IO statebuilding broadly assumes that the powerful member states of the IO—which mandate it to carry out statebuilding efforts that would be untenable unilaterally—retain their position of power vis à vis the post-conflict state, enabling the IO to fully control how its statebuilding effort is implemented.¹² We argue that the nature of the statebuilding contract between the IO and the host government is a crucial but overlooked source of institutional power that can alter the IO-host government hierarchy.¹³ When establishing a statebuilding mission, the IO and the host government enact a temporary agreement (generally for one to five years)—such as the country program of a U.N. agency or the U.N. Security-Council mandate for a U.N. peace operation—that outlines the type of statebuilding activities the IO will undertake and the broad conditions for implementation. We refer to these agreements as statebuilding contracts.¹⁴ This statebuilding contract is the IO’s statebuilding mandate in the host country, which the IO’s member states hold it accountable for implementing.¹⁵

We argue there are two dominant types of IO statebuilding contracts: complete takeovers and incomplete arrangements.¹⁶Complete takeovers, such as U.N. neo-trusteeships, give the IO the authority to decide how to implement the ambiguous aspects of the contract, so the IO has what the incomplete contracts scholarship refers to as the “residual rights of control.”¹⁷Incomplete arrangements, such as the majority of recent U.N. Peacekeeping Operations (PKOs) and Special Political Missions (SPMs), give the host government the authority to decide how to implement the ambiguous components of the IOs statebuilding mandate (i.e., it has the residual rights of control).¹⁸

When statebuilding contracts take the form of incomplete arrangements, they enable the host government to use a set of seemingly banal procedures to influence what the IO statebuilding effort is mandated to do, where it operates within the country, whom it hires, and when it begins and ends, ultimately shaping whether or not the IO succeeds at implementing its statebuilding mandate. In other words, under incomplete arrangements, the IO does not fully control how it implements its own mandate. Even though the host government consents to the initial deployment of the IO on its sovereign territory, the use of time-delimited, task-specific incomplete arrangements to govern the implementation of the IO statebuilding effort provides a mechanism through which the host government can continue to assert its sovereign authority over the IO’s behavior on its territory.¹⁹

By showing how seemingly weak post-conflict states use a contractual mechanism (i.e., the incomplete arrangement statebuilding contract) to wield power over much stronger international actors, we challenge assumptions about the effects of global hierarchy.²⁰ We also point to a source of institutional power available to states that lack other sources of material or political power. Building on the conceptualization in the framework paper for this special issue, we theorize how this source of institutional power leverages the primary mechanism that IOs use to provide statebuilding services (i.e., the statebuilding contract), allowing post-conflict governments to shape IO statebuilding outcomes in ways that work to their advantage.²¹ When we identify the procedural tactics that post-conflict states use to shape the IO missions that they host, we echo James Scott’s focus on the "weapons of the weak": the power-shifting potential of banal everyday acts by seemingly less powerful actors.²²

Our conceptualization of incomplete arrangements and complete takeovers is grounded in theories of incomplete contracts used to describe contractual relationships between private firms.²³ Contracts are grounded in the liberal notion that all parties equally consent to the initial signature of the contract.²⁴ But, in incomplete contracts, the party that possesses the “residual rights of control” over the unspecified components of the contract determines how these components are implemented.²⁵ In other words, if a key decision is not specified in the contract, the party with the residual rights of control possesses the authority to make this decision.²⁶ Because IO statebuilding mandates are reached via consensus among a diverse group of stakeholders and seek to leave room for the IO statebuilding effort to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, they are likely to have significant areas of ambiguity and be subject to the theory of incomplete contracts.²⁷ Furthermore, because the norm of host-state consent is a central tenet of IO, and particularly U.N., statebuilding, the host-state is likely to have the compulsory power necessary to negotiate incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts.²⁸ While compulsory power is often conceptualized as using material resources, this use of norms is another source.²⁹

IOs are incentivized to negotiate incomplete arrangements because IO member states want to deploy statebuilding missions, even when they cannot fully control their implementation. Member states use IOs to achieve the international peace and security goals that member states lack the legitimacy, capacity, or will to undertake alone.³⁰ Member states, then, hold the IO accountable for establishing the statebuilding mission in the host country and implementing the tasks outlined in the mission mandate, but not for completing the broader undertaking or even necessarily achieving all desired outcomes in such dynamic contexts.³¹

Overall, then, there are three main components of our theory. First, we argue that there are two ideal types of statebuilding contracts—incomplete arrangements and complete takeovers— that describe whether the host government or the IO, respectively, possesses the residual rights of control over the unnegotiated components of the statebuilding contract. The actor who possesses the residual rights of control has a crucial source of institutional power and, thus, an opportunity to leverage these rights to their advantage.³² Second, when the statebuilding contract is an incomplete arrangement, the host state will use the residual rights of control to shape the IO statebuilding intervention, including what it does, where it operates in the host country, whom it employs, and when it begins and ends. This is its procedural repertoire, which is composed of a potential range of procedural tactics. This procedural repertoire gives host states institutional power, derived from the incomplete arrangement, that we expect them to use to shape the IO statebuilding services they receive.³³ Third, we expect that repeated host-state use of this procedural repertoire will alter the IO’s ability to fulfill its statebuilding mandate in that country.

To test our argument, we focus on post-conflict states and U.N. statebuilding interventions in these states. We define post-conflict states here as those that have experienced civil war within the past ten years and achieved a peace agreement, often leading to the election of a new government in post-conflict democratic elections.³⁴ Peace agreements tend to commit post-conflict states to the normative principles advanced by IO statebuilding efforts—rule of law and democratic institutions—at the same time that these state’s new leaders have a strong interest in demonstrating their sovereign authority.³⁵ These characteristics increase the likelihood that post-conflict states will both enter into statebuilding contracts that are incomplete arrangements to retain their sovereign authority, and exercise this authority by using their residual rights of control to resist or alter the resulting IO statebuilding effort. While regional organizations are increasingly engaged in statebuilding efforts,³⁶ the U.N. has been the dominant IO engaged in statebuilding in post-conflict countries since the end of the Cold War.³⁷ For our analysis, then, our population consists of the 36 U.N. post-conflict statebuilding contracts from 2000 to 2020, operating in 22 post-conflict countries.³⁸

We use a multi-method research design that combines four in-depth case studies that process trace our theorized mechanism and a medium-N analysis that examines the external validity of our claims and rules out alternative explanations in the broader population of 36 U.N. post-conflict statebuilding contracts.³⁹ We use in-depth diverse case studies of four U.N. statebuilding missions in Timor-Leste, Burundi, and Guatemala. These missions vary in the type of statebuilding contract and mandate and take place in states that vary in their capacity, geostrategic ties, and degree of international assistance, among other alternative factors that could explain differences.⁴⁰ Process tracing in this set of cases allows us to assess which procedural tactics each host-state employs and demonstrate that the type of statebuilding contract, and who holds the residual rights of control, can shape the host-state use of these procedural tatics.⁴¹ Analyzing our entire universe of 36 U.N. statebuilding contracts allows us to further probe the plausibility that post-conflict states, when given the opportunity via incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts, use procedural tactics to resist or alter the IO statebuilding intervention and to test the external validity of these claims.⁴²

This article makes several important contributions. First, it identifies a key overlooked mechanism that empowers post-conflict states: the residual rights of control within incomplete arrangements. Much of the international statebuilding literature has focused on rarer complete takeovers,⁴³ largely overlooking the authority and leverage that incomplete arrangements, as a source of institutional power, provide host states.⁴⁴ While some statebuilding scholarship acknowledges that host states hold power over intervening IOs, it does not identify the mechanism that provides this leverage or how host states use it.⁴⁵ Second, this article identifies new sources of power for states with relatively little material and political power, showing a much stronger “weak” state than is typically portrayed.⁴⁶ Third, while IO literature examines the delegation of authority from member states to the IO, this article introduces incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts as a new pathway through which member states can retract their delegated sovereignty.⁴⁷ Finally, this article contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of U.N. statebuilding,⁴⁸ explaining how some of the U.N.’s least powerful member states influence its ability to achieve its global peace and security aims.

2 Statebuilding under IOs

Much of the statebuilding scholarship paints the IO-host state relationships as unidirectional: statebuilders intervene and attempt to fix conflict-affected states, which have little power or authority over the intervening actors.⁴⁹ We argue, in contrast, that statebuilding over the past two decades has largely occurred through incomplete arrangements, which reinforce the host state’s authority over the IO statebuilding effort. We contend that the power held by the host government is derived from a normative commitment by U.N. member states to host-government consent, the host-government’s authority over actions occurring on its sovereign territory, and the pooled sovereignty possessed by all IO member states that gives them authority over its missions. These compulsory and institutional sources of power work together to reinforce the predominant use of incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts.⁵⁰ Below, we describe how these sources of power lead IOs to build states through statebuilding contracts. We then, in the subsequent section, explain how the predominant type of contract—incomplete arrangmenets—give seemingly “weak” states the authority to use procedural tactics to resist or otherwise alter the IO’s implementation of its statebuilding mandate.

2.1 IOs build states through statebuilding contracts

The focus of IOs on statebuilding grew exponentially after the Cold War ended, with the vast majority carried out by the U.N. The spread of civil war and political violence in the 1990s led the U.N. to deploy increasingly robust and expansive peacekeeping missions to stop fighting and rebuild peaceful states, governed by statebuilding contracts between the IO and the host government.⁵¹ Many of these initial IO statebuilding efforts used the transitional administration model—which we refer to as complete takeovers—where the U.N. mission temporarily took over the governance of the post-conflict state and possessed the residual rights of control over the IO statebuilding effort.⁵² In these complete takeover statebuilding contracts, the U.N. sought support from the de-facto leaders of the country but did not give these actors the authority to influence the content of the mission mandate or its implementation. As depicted in Appendix B, the U.N. established complete takeovers in emergent states such as Timor-Leste and Kosovo (and earlier in other cases such as Eastern Slavonia).⁵³ But, this IO statebuilding model was short lived: an anomaly in the broader population of U.N. peace operations—including both Peacekeeping Operations (PKOs) with peacekeepers and Special Political Missions (SPMs) without peacekeepers—that prioritized host-government consent and national ownership via consent-based deals that gave the host-government the authority to influence the content of the mandate and how it was implemented, which we refer to as incomplete arrangements.⁵⁴

As IOs increasingly carried out service delivery in post-conflict states, they also increasingly emphasized obtaining and sustaining the consent of the host-government for their deployment. For example, looking descriptively at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) speeches between 1995 and 2017 (see Appendix A.1),⁵⁵ the frequency of the use of the terms “consent,” “cooperation,” and “support” in the 39,271 UNSC Speeches that also contain the word “conflict” is maintained and even increases in some cases (i.e., “support”).⁵⁶ Perhaps even more convincing, in major U.N. policy documents, these terms are specifically used to indicate the importance of host state consent for the deployment of a U.N. peace operation, focusing on supporting and cooperating with the host government and abiding by its sovereign authority.⁵⁷

The consent of the host government to the deployment of a U.N. peace operation is also one of the three core principles of U.N. peacekeeping operations.⁵⁸ Although the deployment of Chapter VII peacekeeping operations does not require the consent of the host government, the U.N. has sought this consent in practice.⁵⁹ Furthermore, U.N. policy documents have also emphasized that even if the host government gives consent at the outset of a U.N. peace operation, the peace operation has to work hard to sustain this consent during its deployment:

In the implementation of its mandate, a United Nations peacekeeping operation must work continuously to ensure that it does not lose the consent of the main parties…Consent, particularly if given grudgingly under international pressure, may be withdrawn in a variety of ways when a party is not fully committed to the peace process.⁶⁰ [Emphasis is ours.]

The U.N.’s prioritization of host-state consent is a form of compulsory power, where seemingly “weak” host governments can use linkage strategies to frame their resistance to a particular U.N. peace operation as aligning with the broadly accepted norm of host-government consent .⁶¹ IOs' allegiance to host-government consent derives, in part, from pooled sovereignty within IOs.⁶² Host states and their allies are often members of the IO governing body—such as the UNSC, General Assembly, or governing board of a U.N. agency, such a the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)—that mandates, finances, and evaluates the IO's statebuilding interventions.⁶³ The focus of IOs in general, and the U.N. in particular, on establishing consent-based contracts with the host-state is underpinned by the fact that IO statebuilding efforts are, ultimately, accountable to IO member states via their pooled sovereignty arrangements. This source of compulsory power enables a host government to use its vote on an IO governing body to emphasize the general importance of host-government consent to IO statebuilding and, then, use this same norm to justify alterations to an IO statebuilding mission on its territory.

Host governments also derive institutional power from the incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts they sign with intervening IOs. When engaged in post-conflict statebuilding, which requires the delivery of specific goods and services, the IO has to seek the host-government’s consent for the specific types of good and services it will deliver. The host government gives this consent by signing or otherwise endorsing the IO’s actual mandate in that country for a time-delimited period, constituting the IO's incomplete arrangement statebuilding contract. Through these statebuilding contracts, host states give intervening IOs permission to deliver a range of post-conflict services that the state would normally provide, such as disarming combatants in accordance with the peace agreement, rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, supporting security sector reform, or implementing projects intended to foster democratic governance and justice.⁶⁴

Statebuilding contracts range from short-term UNSC mandates to multi-year country-program agreements with U.N. development agencies.⁶⁵ They focus on establishing, in writing, the specific conditions of the agreement between the IO and the host state, including the precise goods to be delivered, the precise timeframe for delivery, and the accountability arrangements for assessing the success and failure of delivery. These deals allow post-conflict governments to ensure that crucial goods and services are delivered to their population, potentially increasing the government’s broader legitimacy.⁶⁶ They permit the IOs to fulfill its mandate to fill capacity gaps in the post-conflict state and, simultaneously, reinforce the legitimacy of the state.⁶⁷ When these statebuilding contracts take the form of incomplete arrangements, which are consent-based contracts where not every contingency is specified, the host-government can use its institutional power to modify the rules of engagement of the IO operating on its territory.⁶⁸

The host state’s institutional power in IO statebuilding contracts, and in particular in incomplete arrangements, also derives from its territorial sovereignty.⁶⁹ In the 1960s, sovereignty became “the only game in town,” at least normatively, as empires and colonies lost their legitimacy.⁷⁰ In a system where states recognize each others’ sovereign authority over territory, host-state consent enables IOs to conduct statebuilding missions. In so doing, the host state divides up its sovereign authority and temporarily shares it with the IO.⁷¹ Contracts are, thus, the main institutional mechanism through which host states consent to having IO statebuilders operate on their territory. Contracts establish the rules that govern the IO mission. In the next section, we argue that incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts enable host governments to use these rules to alter or otherwise resist the IO statebuilding effort.

2.2 Incomplete arrangements give host states control

In an incomplete arrangement, the residual rights of control revert to the host state, giving it control over the unspecified components of the contract. As depicted in Appendix B, the vast majority of contracts between post-conflict host states and U.N. statebuilding missions are incomplete arrangements. The complex nature of statebuilding tasks and the unpredictable conditions within the post-conflict state make it difficult for the host government and the U.N. to anticipate all potential contingencies that may arise during contract implementation. Furthermore, the U.N. Security Council decision-making process leads to particularly ambiguous U.N. peace operation mandates.⁷²

According to the Grossman-Hart-Moore theory of incomplete contracts, complete contracts specify all possible decisions that may emerge during implementation, removing the need for continuing negotiations between buyer and seller once the contract is signed.⁷³ Incomplete contracts, in contrast, specify components of the agreement but do not describe all potential contingencies that may arise during implementation, either because they are unknown or because at least one party is interested in renegotiation.⁷⁴ All contingencies that could arise during the implementation of a complex statebuilding contract between two fully sovereign entities in a dynamic post-conflict context cannot be specified ex ante.⁷⁵ Newly-formed post-conflict governments may also have incentives to negotiate incomplete arrangements that enable them to demonstrate their sovereign authority, as discussed in further detail in the next section.

Theories of the firm outline the implications of incomplete contracts for the contracting parties. This scholarship refers to the contractual relationship between a buyer and seller as the “firm,” which can be governed by “residual rights” or “specific rights.”⁷⁶ Residual rights refer to the rights not specified in the contract, while specific rights refer to the rights specified in the contract.⁷⁷ The theory of incomplete contracts is based on the idea that the good being produced is non-transferable. In other words, it is a highly specialized good that, once made for a particular buyer, cannot be sold to a different buyer.⁷⁸

Imagine a seller producing widgets that only fit the buyer’s machines. Because of the non-transferable character of the widget, the buyer has the authority to determine any unspecified aspects of the contract after the seller has begun producing.⁷⁹ Given the alternative of not selling the widgets, the seller has to comply with the buyer’s revised demands. Once the buyer and seller enter into a contract, the buyer retains the residual rights of control, giving it considerable leverage over the contract implementation. In the theory of incomplete contracts, this uncertainty leads the seller to “hold-up” the contract negotiation, given the concerns about what will happen once the contract is signed.⁸⁰ In this theory, integrated firms resolve potential hold-up problems by integrating the buyer and seller into a single firm, removing the need for ongoing negotiations.

When applied to statebuilding contracts, we consider the IO the seller and the host government the buyer. Incomplete arrangements are equivalent to incomplete contracts, whereas complete takeovers are equivalent to integrated firms, which is the only way to establish a complete contract. The host government owns the “firm,” which is the state, and is “buying” the non-transferrable statebuilding goods and services that IO is “selling.” The IO’s member states mandate it to deliver a specific set of non-transferable goods to the host state. By giving its consent for a specific IO to deliver these goods on its territory, the host government decides to “buy” the statebuilding goods the IO is offering. The host state, then, possesses the residual rights of control over all unspecified components of their incomplete arrangement.

The statebuilding good is non-transferrable because IO member states mandate the IO statebuilding mission for a particular country and hold it accountable for delivering the mandated statebuilding goods, even if the host state alters the conditions.⁸¹ The IO is represented at the state level by its office deployed there, known as the country office or mission. If the IO were to attempt to sell its statebuilding “good” to another host government, it would result in the loss of the resources allocated to the mission and designation of its statebuilding effort as failed. If the IO mission sustains its presence in the country, even if it does not achieve all its objectives, then the IO mission can claim a modicum of success.⁸²

Furthermore, once an IO begins to implement its statebuilding activities, it cannot simply shift these resources to another state while fulfilling its mandate in the particular host country. In other words, there is no other market for improved state capacity in South Sudan other than in South Sudan, even if a mission in another country would have undertaken similar tasks.⁸³ Moreover, other than by taking over the state temporarily, it is difficult to spell out all of the contingencies, so incompleteness is inherent in these contexts. If the IO agrees to the incomplete arrangement and delivers the services outlined in the contract, then the IO has fulfilled its part of the agreement even if the statebuilding effort does not achieve its aims.⁸⁴ In contrast to the seller in the firm, the IO does not have an incentive to “hold up” the contract, so it proceeds.

The non-transferrable nature of the statebuilding good, the incomplete nature of these deals, and the fact that the host state owns the residual rights of control in these incomplete arrangements, give the host state the authority to alter or resist components of the agreement. The IO has few other options than to accept these new terms or, otherwise, leave the country, losing the resources invested there and failing to fulfill the preferences of its member states.⁸⁵

3 Variation in host-state influence in IO statebuilding

What are the implications of this theory of incomplete arrangements (a type of statebuilding contract) for IOs implementing their statebuilding mandates in post-conflict states? We expect that incomplete arrangements allow the host state to retain the residual rights of control over the unspecified aspects of the IO statebuilding contract. Because post-conflict states want to (re)establish their legitimacy and authority, we expect these host governments will use these residual rights through a procedural repertoire to shape how the IO implements aspects of its statebuilding mandate. This procedural repertoire describes the range of seemingly banal bureaucratic tactics (i.e., weapons of the weak state) that the host government can use to control how the IO implements its statebuilding mandate. A host government creates its particular procedural repertoire by combining different tactics, which can include formal procedures and informal communication. We expect that the repeated use of this repertoire will reduce or at least alter the IO’s ability to fulfill its statebuilding mandate in the host country (see Table 1).⁸⁶

Table 1 Expected variation in host-state influence by contract arrangement

We focus specifically on post-conflict states because, among states with IO mission, they may be most likely to use their residual rights of control to alter or resist IO statebuilding efforts. The leaders of post-conflict countries have often been recently elected, following a civil war that challenged their or their opponents’ authority to govern.⁸⁷ Given the past challenges to their authority, these post-conflict governments are likely to have an incentive to demonstrate their newly-won international and domestic legitimacy.⁸⁸ Even leaders in stable countries typically seek to sustain autonomy from outside actors in order to maintain maximum flexibility to respond to changing domestic conditions and implement their preferred policies without constraint. Post-conflict contexts only amplify this pressure on leaders,⁸⁹ and these contexts add to that pressure.

Building on the theory of incomplete contracts, our theory explains how two types of statebuilding contracts—incomplete arrangements and complete takeovers—shape host government use of a procedural repertoire to alter the IO statebuilding mission deployed on its territory. Incomplete arrangements are contracts with unspecified dimensions where the host government maintains the residual right of control in the IO-host state agreement. Incomplete arrangements are equivalent to the incomplete contracts described in the Grossman-Hart-Moore theory of contract relations between private companies, discussed above.⁹⁰ Incomplete arrangements include Chapter VI and Chapter VII peace operations, excluding transitional administrations, as well as ad hoc delegation agreements where the host state invites an IO to engage in a joint statebuilding effort.⁹¹ As the “buyer” of the statebuilding good that the IO is selling, the host government negotiates the content of the incomplete arrangement with the IO and, during the contract implementation phase, holds the residual rights of control over the unspecified components of the contract. While there is variation in how contracts are established that can alter when and to what extent states are effective, in incomplete arrangements generally, we expect post-conflict host states to alter or resist the IO statebuilding effort using their particular procedural repertoire, as depicted in Table 1.

In contrast, the much rarer complete takeovers are instances in which the IO obtains control over the governance of the state and, effectively, determines how the host state is built for a period of time. Complete takeovers are equivalent to the integrated firms described in the Grossman-Hart-Moore theory of contract relations between private companies.⁹² Integrated firms resolve potential hold-up problems in the contract negotiation between the buyer and seller of a good by merging the buyer and seller into a single firm.⁹³ In complete takeovers, we do not expect the host government to resist or alter the IO statebuilding effort through a procedural repertoire because it has relinquished its authority to do so and, thus, lacks the necessary bureaucratic or political structure and legitimacy. Post-conflict governments have accepted these types of IO statebuilding missions because they were unable to effectively govern their territory without them or because they were newly independent states without a government.⁹⁴

Our mechanism is the host state’s use of its procedural repertoire. In incomplete arrangements, the residual rights of control give the host state authority to deploy bureaucratic and diplomatic tactics to negotiate the terms and determine the unspecified components of the contract, which can influence what statebuilding activities the IO implements, where on the host-state’s territory the IO implements these activities, whom the IO hires to implement these activities, and when and for how long the IO implements these statebuilding activities. The particular set of tactics deployed are the host state’s procedural repertoire.

A host state’s particular procedural repertoire can include any combination of tactics, such as those examples depicted in Table 2 as well as others that the host state may develop. There are, thus, multiple potential repertoires that host states can use to influence how the IO implements its incomplete arrangement statebuilding contract, all of which we expect to alter the ability of the IO to achieve its statebuilding aims.

Table 2 Procedural tactics

By controlling aspects of how the IO implements its statebuilding mandate, the host state's use of its procedural repertoire can, for example, prevent the IO from deploying staff to areas where the host government is engaged in illicit activities, prevent the IO from appointing particular IO mission leaders (or require that they fire existing IO mission leaders) that the host government believes will challenge its authority, or require the IO mission to withdraw from the post-conflict country before it has achieved its mandate if the host government decides it wants to regain control. These tactics are not merely a function of the U.N.’s interpretation of host-government consent, but instead demonstrate the host-government’s actual authority over how the IO implements components of its statebuilding mission on the host-government’s territory. Below, and in Table 2, we describe these procedural tactics in more detail.

• Procedural Tactic 1: What statebuilding services the IO implements. Host states have the authority to shape what service provision the IO provides through the incomplete arrangement, whether governance, security, economic, or social services. The host states may contract or expand the services the IO can provide, using the incompleteness of the contract to change exactly what services the IO provides by deciding to cooperate in or resist their negotiation or implementation, shaping the type of statebuilding outcomes produced.

• Procedural Tactic 2: Where the IO implements its statebuilding services. Host states have the authority to influence where IO statebuilding services are implemented. The delivery of statebuilding services relies on state-controlled institutions, such as airports, ports, roads and other transport networks, and staging bases. The territorial sovereignty of the host state gives it the authority to influence the locations where IO statebuilding efforts are expected to be deployed and, as implementation proceeds, to alter this arrangement particularly related to locations experiencing violence or other sources of insecurity.

• Procedural Tactic 3: Whom the IO hires (or fires) to implement its statebuilding services. Host states have the authority to shape who implements the incomplete arrangement by giving or rescinding its permission for IO staff to operate on its territory, or by granting or refusing visas for private contractors or International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) staff on which the implementation of the IO statebuilding contract depends. The host government often cannot negotiate which personnel join the IO country office, although it can threaten to declare IO staff that are already in the country persona non grata or otherwise ask them to leave the country.⁹⁵

• Procedural Tactic 4: When the statebuilding services begin and how long they last. Because the host state’s consent is necessary to achieve an incomplete arrangement, it helps determine when the contract starts and how long it lasts once underway. Even if the host state has agreed to a contract of a certain duration, it can alter this duration by withdrawing or extending its consent.

In sum, the empirical implications of our theory are: (1) variation in the ideal type of statebuilding contract—incomplete arrangement vs. complete takeover—explains whether the host state possesses the residual rights of control (which is not fully observable except in conjuction with the next implications); (2) when the statebuilding arrangement is an incomplete arrangement, the host state is likely to develop and use a procedural repertoire to resist or at least alter the IO statebuilding intervention; and (3) combined together, successive host-state attempts to influence the IO statebuilding intervention are likely to reduce or otherwise alter the IO’s ability to fulfill its statebuilding mandate. Table 2 summarizes observable implications of each of these procedural tactics. Below, we outline our research design, which, in addition to testing these empirical implications, enables us to investigate potential alternative explanations advanced in the IO statebuilding literature.⁹⁶

4 Empirical approach

We use a medium-N, multi-method research design to examine the plausibility of our theory, with cross-case analysis to investigate its viability across our entire population of U.N. post-conflict statebuilding missions and within-case analysis to trace our theoretical mechanism in a diverse set of four cases. This type of research design is ideally suited for medium-N studies that aim to test a theoretical mechanism and examine its generalizability across a broader universe of cases, or population.⁹⁷

For our cross-case analysis, we study our full of universe of 36 U.N. statebuilding contracts that took place in post-conflict states between 2000 and 2020.⁹⁸ In this cross-case analysis, we compare these cases to establish whether our theory that an incomplete arrangement is a necessary condition for host-state use of procedural tactics holds across our entire population of U.N. statebuilding contracts.⁹⁹ This cross-case analysis also enables us to establish the broad “empirical scope” of our phenomenon and probe alternative explanations for host state use of procedural tactics.¹⁰⁰

For our within-case analysis, we process trace our posited mechanism in a set of four case studies: one statebuilding contract in Timor-Leste, one in Guatemala, and two sequential ones in Burundi. This within-case analysis enables us to investigate whether there is evidence to support our posited theoretical mechanism. In other words, we are able to process trace how the type of statebuilding contract (and specifically the residual rights of control) enables host governments to use procedural tactics, or not, and how this use affects the IO’s ability to fulfill its statebuilding mandate.¹⁰¹ Our cases vary in the type of statebuilding contract and in crucial alternative explanations, allowing us to examine if and how our theoretical mechanism is present even in the the face of other factors that could also explain our outcome of interest.¹⁰²

These complementary cross-case and within-case analyses, which integrate medium-N and small-N methods, allow us to overcome the limitations of each individual approach. These limitations include potential selection effects in the case studies and the lack of direct evidence of the mechanism in the cross-case comparison of the entire population of cases. Combined together, these two approaches enable us to enhance the overall validity of research that seeks both to describe a phenomenon within a broader population and to test its underlying mechanism.¹⁰³ Below, we discuss the scope conditions for our universe of cases and our case selection strategy.

4.1 Scope conditions and population of cases

We examine the external validity of our mechanism among the universe of cases that fall within our scope conditions. This population of cases—depicted in Appendix B—includes the 36 U.N. post-conflict statebuilding contracts that occurred in 22 post-conflict countries between 2000 and 2020.¹⁰⁴ While our four detailed case studies capture the host states’ use of even subtle procedural tactics—and their non-use in Timor-Leste—our cross-case analysis of the entire population of cases allows us to explore major instances of host-state use of procedural tactics reported in international media across the full population of cases that fall within our scope conditions (see Appendix B.1 for full data collection and coding procedures).

The population of cases is composed of U.N. statebuilding interventions (and their associated statebuilding contracts) in post-conflict states—defined as states that experienced a civil war within the past ten years, a peace agreement, and often post-conflict elections—between 2000 and 2020.¹⁰⁵ Our population of cases starts in 2000, the year of the UN’s first comprehensive peacekeeping review (the “Brahimi Report”), which established post-conflict statebuilding as a core function of U.N. peace operations.¹⁰⁶ It ends in 2020, when the global shock of the coronavirus pandemic made restrictions on the behavior of U.N. statebuilding interventions harder to identify because of changes in the news coverage and reduced movement and action of U.N. missions, due to the response to the virus. The population is made up of U.N. peace operations, including peacekeeping operations (PKOs)—missions with peacekeepers—as well as Special Political Missions (SPMs)—missions without peacekeepers—and ad hoc political missions, such as CICIG.¹⁰⁷ We include U.N. peace operationss that are mandated to engage in direct post-conflict statebuilding service-delivery activities and exclude those that solely have advisory, liason, or observer functions.¹⁰⁸

This broad universe of cases of U.N statebuilding interventions (and their associated statebuilding contracts) allows us also to address the potential influence of a range of factors. By focusing on one IO, we are able to isolate organizational factors—such as the mandating organization, degree of hierarchy, organizational aims, organizational culture, and contractual procedures—and examine the effect of variation in the type of statebuilding contract without also having to account for the influence of variation in these organizational factors.¹⁰⁹ By focusing on the more recent period of U.N. post-conflict interventions (2000–2020), prior to the shock of the global coronavirus pandemic, we are able to examine a period when broadly similar geo-political circumstances shaped U.N. and host-government decisions.

The variation among the 36 U.N statebuilding contracts enables us to examine potential alternative explanations related to the mission’s ability to achieve its mandate, including the robustness of the U.N. peacekeeping operation, whether the U.N. peace operation has a Chapter VI or Chapter VII mandate, the size and budget of the U.N. peace operation, the strategic interest of U.N. Security Council members in the host country, and the composition of the U.N. peace operation staff.¹¹⁰ In addition, the variation among (and over time within) the 22 host governments in our population allows us to address potential alternative explanations that could influence the host-government’s willingness and ability to use their procedural repertoire, including state capacity, history of prior U.N. statebuilding interventions, the density of the broader international statebuilding presence in the country, the relative age of the state, the length and type of conflict, and the degree of contestation among domestic political parties.¹¹¹

4.2 Case selection

Our case studies, in which we process trace our causal mechanism, are U.N. statebuilding interventions in Timor-Leste (UNTAET), Burundi (ONUB and BINUB), and Guatemala (CICIG). Our cross-case analysis of the population of cases allows us to examine whether the presence of an incomplete arrangement is a necessary condition for host-state use of a procedural repertoire, and rule out alternative explanations for host state use of their procedural repertoire. Our within-case case study analysis enables us to trace how host states use their procedural repertoire, how the residual rights of control in incomplete arrangements relate to this use, and how host state use of the procedural repertoire influences the IO’s ability to fulfill its statebuilding mandate. We select our case studies using the diverse case selection strategy, which identifies a typical case of all variants of our explanatory variable, which in our study is whether U.N. statebuilding intervention is governed by a complete takeover or an incomplete arrangement statebuilding contract.¹¹²

Among our four cases of U.N. statebuilding interventions, UNTAET in Timor-Leste represents a canonical case of a complete takeover in which we do not expect to see the use of a procedural repertoire. Burundi, in contrast, represents an iconic case of two consecutive incomplete arrangements, one that is a Chapter VII peacekeeping operation (ONUB) and one that is a Chapter VI Special Political Mission (BINUB). The variation in the type of U.N. peace operation within the same country enables us to examine the alternative explanation that the robustness of the peace operation affects the host-state’s use of its procedural repertiore. Finally, Guatemala represents a different type of incomplete arrangement, an ad hoc arrangement created specifically for the host country (CICIG), which may face more host-state resistance in the negotiation phase, compared to Burundi’s more standard mission. Our four case studies also possess broadly similar levels of state capacity and geo-strategic importance, establishing them as countries that are generally viewed to be less powerful when compared to the states mandating and deploying U.N. statebuilding missions (see Appendix B).

Our comparison between the complete takeover case (UNTAET) and our incomplete arrangement cases (ONUB, BINUB, and CICIG) allows us to examine the effect of variation in our explanatory variable on our posited mechanism.¹¹³ Our comparison among the three incomplete arrangements allows us to validate whether our explanatory variable leads to our posited mechanism and address the potential influence of alternative explanations. For example, these three incomplete arrangement cases differ in the U.N. member states that have a strategic interest in the host country, the robustness of the U.N. statebuilding mission (i.e., Chapter VII, Chapter VI, or ad hoc arrangement), the length and type of conflict in the host country, the density of the broader international statebuilding presence in the country (indicated by ODA per capita), and the history of prior U.N. statebuilding interventions, among other alternative explanations. In spite of this variation, we expect to see evidence of the presence of our posited mechanism in both of the Burundi cases and in the Guatemala case. If we detect our posited causal mechanism across these diverse incomplete arrangements, and not in the Timor-Leste complete takeover case, this would serve as a strong test of our theory.¹¹⁴ In addition, our cross-case analysis enables us to identifying our necessary condition and ruling out alternative explanations across our entire population of cases, allowing our case study analysis to focus primarily on examining the evidence base for our posited mechanism.

5 Evidence from our population of U.N. post-conflict statebuilding missions

Our population of 36 U.N. post-conflict statebuilding contracts from 2000 to 2020, listed in Appendix B, enables us to test our assertion that incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts (and the associated residual rights of control) are a necessary condition for host states to use procedural tactics to resist or otherwise alter the IO statebuilding mission. Our four case studies allow us to trace our mechanism: how the residual rights of control enable host states to use these procedural tactics to resist or otherwise alter the IO statebuilding mission. But our broader population of cases allows us to 1) examine if incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts (as opposed to complete takeovers) are a necessary condition for host-state use of procedural tactics within our population of cases, and 2) rule out alternative explanations for host-state behavior and IO fulfillment of their statebuilding mandate within our population of cases.¹¹⁵ In addition, examination of the full population of cases sheds light on the variation in the host-state’s use of different types of procedural tactics listed in Table 2, while our case studies allow us to trace the process by which the nature of the statebuilding contract facilitates the use of these tactics. Even though it is beyond the scope of this article to explain why a host state may use different combinations of procedural tactics, our population of cases enables us to demonstrate that there is variation in host-state use of these tactics.

Examination of our population of cases shows that there are only two missions in which we could not find any host-state use of procedural tactics, and these are the only two complete takeovers. In the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) prior to Kosovar independence in 2008 and the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), we could not identify any host-state use of procedural tactics to alter how the IO statebuilding mission implements its mandate. This evidence supports our theory that an incomplete arrangement statebuilding contract is a necessary condition for host-state use of procedural tactics.¹¹⁶

Our universe of cases also enables us to examine whether potential alternative explanations are also necessary conditions. For example, the fact that UNMIK and UNTAET were both established for emerging states points to a potential condition under which this type of statebuilding contract may occur, but there are other emerging states such as South Sudan where U.N. statebuildng interventions have been governed by statebuilding contracts instead, demonstrating that this is not a necessary condition for host-state use of procedural tactics to alter the IO statebuilding mission. We also see variation in other potential alternative explanations. For example, among the 34 U.N. statebuilding interventions with incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts, we see differences in the robustness of the U.N. missions, with an almost equal split between Chapter VI and Chapter VII missions. There is also variation in the relative operational strengthen of each U.N. mission, including its size and composition of U.N. staff,¹¹⁷ and the density of the broader international statebuilding presence.¹¹⁸ The broad geographic scope of the U.N. missions—ranging from Afghanistan to Burundi, Guatemala, and Nepal—points to differences in the strategic interest of U.N. Security Council members.

There is also variation in potential alternative explanations for the 22 host-governments’ willingness and ability to use their procedural repertoire, such as their history of prior U.N. interventions. For example, some countries, like Burundi, have multiple different missions between 2004 and 2020 (starting in 2004), while others, like, Tajikistan, have only one relatively short mission (2000–2007). They also vary in their state capacity. Although all of the host countries are ranked negatively on the state capacity measure, they range from Afghanistan at -2.18 to Nepal at -0.17.¹¹⁹ The length and type of conflict and the degree of contestation among domestic political parties also varies among these 22 countries over the time-period when they hosted U.N. statebuilding interventions.¹²⁰ In other words, none of these alternative explanations are necessary conditions for host-state use of a procedural repertoire to alter the U.N.’s ability to implement its statebuilding mandate. Additional research could seek to establish the sufficient conditions for the host-state use of different tactics or, as we do in the Appendix, use frequentist analysis to examine the conditions under which a host-state is likely to use different tactics.

Given that the vast majority of cases in our population have incomplete arrangements for their statebuilding contracts, descriptive examination among these cases allows us to identify interesting patterns in host-government use of procedural tactics. It points to differences in how often host-governments use procedural tactics under incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts. As Table 3 shows, in the slight majority of U.N. statebuilding missions, the host state most often uses only one type of procedural tactic (47%), such as controlling who works in the mission by denying visas or declaring personnel personae non grata. Future research could further investigate this pattern, which may be explained by host states that find a successful strategy and using it repeatedly. The other host states employ a combination of two (28%) or three (19%) tactics to alter the statebuilding missions on their territory. These data, which rely on news sources and are thus likely to undercount the use of procedural tactics, also show that some missions experience half a dozen or more major instances of host-state use of procedural tactics (see, for example, the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan). Future research could also investigate the clustering of procedural tactics in these contexts.

Table 3 Number of procedural tactics used by each U.N. mission

Further descriptive exploration tells us which procedural tactics the U.N. statebuilding missions with incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts used most frequently. Across all 36 statebuilding contracts in our population, we found just over 100 major instances of different procedural tactics. As depicted in Table 4 and Appendix B, all of these instances were under incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts. The most commonly used tactic is shaping what the mission can do (34%), followed closely by who the mission can send (31%). Again, why different host states select specific tactics would be another interesting avenue for future research. For this article, these descriptive data demonstrate a wide “empirical scope” of the occurrence of each tactic, supporting their inclusion in our theoretical framework.¹²¹ Overall, these descriptive data show the willingness and ability of a wide range of post-conflict states to shape what statebuilding activities the U.N. statebuilding intervention is mandated to implement, where it operates, when the statebuilding intervention takes place, and who serves in its leadership roles. Unlike with complete takeover statebuilding contracts, the 34 cases with incomplete arrangements always see the occurrence of at least one of these tactics. In the next section, we use four case studies to examine how the nature of the contractual arrangement influences host-state use procedural tactics, and how these tactics alter the IO’s ability to fulfill its statebuilding mandate.

Table 4 Use of different procedural tactics in our population of cases

6 Case study evidence

Our case study evidence allows us to use process tracing to examine our posited mechanism: how the nature of the statebuilding contract (i.e., incomplete arrangement vs. complete takeover) influences the host state’s use of a procedural repertoire to resist or otherwise alter the IO statebuilding mandate. In the cases of incomplete arrangements, we expect that the host state will directly influence what the IO statebuilding mandate is, where the IO statebuilding mission is deployed, who leads the IO statebuilding mission, or when the IO statebuilding mission leaves. As discussed above, even though host states may use these procedural tactics on their own or in different combinations to create their particular procedural repertoire, our theory seeks to explain whether or not they use any procedural tactics, not which ones they use or in which combinations. We also expect our case studies to show that when host states use any combination of procedural tactics, they alter the IO statebuilding mission’s ability to achieve its mandate (i.e., to fulfill its statebuilding contract with the host government).

We start with the case of Timor-Leste, the complete takeover case, to illustrate the relationship between the nature of the statebuilding contract and the host state’s use of its procedural repertoire. The Timor-Leste case shows that even though some Timorese leaders disagreed with the U.N statebuilding mission, and they sought to resist, they lacked the authority to influence the content of the U.N. mandate or its implementation. In other words, because the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) was governed by a complete takeover statebuilding contract, Timorese leaders lacked a procedural repertiore that they could use to shape the U.N. statebuilding mission.

Next, we examine the role two consecutive incomplete arrangements in Burundi—a Chapter VII peacekeeping operation (PKO) and a Chapter VI Special Political Mission (SPM)—had on the host state’s use of a procedural repertoire. The Burundi case shows that regardless of whether the U.N. peace operation was a robust PKO or a smaller SPM without troops, the fact that the statebuilding contract was an incomplete arrangement enabled the host government to use these procedural tactics to shape how the U.N. carried out its statebuilding mandates.

Finally, the case of Guatemala presents a very different incomplete arrangement: the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). CICIG was a small, ad hoc statebuilding contract that authorized U.N. intervention directly in the Guatemalan judicial system. The Guatemala case shows that in this case of a statebuilding contract that was entrenched within the judicial system, mandated to assist in building the rule of law, the incomplete arrangement also enabled the host government to use a procedural repertoire to resist the IO statebuilding intervention.

6.1 U.N. in Timor-Leste: Complete takeover

In 1999, twenty-four years after Indonesian invasion, incorporation, and subsequent control of Timor-Leste, Indonesia suddenly allowed the non-self-governing territory to vote on independence. This decision was part of a U.N. process to resolve the territory’s status that was brokered with Indonesia and Portugal, the territory’s colonial power until 1976.¹²² Although 78.5 percent of the population peacefully voted to secede, anti-independence militias, with consent from the government forces, retaliated with a widespread “scorched earth” campaign.¹²³ Over 1,000 civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands fled, and nine U.N. observers were killed, while the rest evacuated.¹²⁴ What followed was a canonical complete takeover, also called a transitional administration, which the UNSC established. While this new state had some local leaders who could have resisted the U.N. intervention during the negotiation or implementation phase, and, indeed, some occasionally attempted to do so outside of the government structures, they lacked the procedural repertoire that they would have had if they had been under an incomplete arrangement statebuilding contract. Eventually, after independence, the state did host such a statebuilding contract, providing the host state access to the procedural repertoire, but we focus on the complete takeover case here.

Established under U.N. Chapter VII, the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), composed of 12,000 primarily Australian troops, deployed in September 1999.¹²⁵ INTERFET was an urgent Australian-led mission to restore order in Timor-Leste, leading to the exit of anti-independence militias and the Indonesian military. After five months, it was replaced by the the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), a canonical complete takeover. UNTAET viewed Timor-Leste as a context in which some of “the attributes of the state had been removed.”¹²⁶ In establishing this mission, rather than “negotiate,” the U.N. “invested primarily in building its own capacity to function as a defacto state.” Only over time did it “shift toward a greater focus on local participation and capacity-building.”¹²⁷ UNTAET set up external structures to do “civilian policing, humanitarian assistance, and, in a unique move, the governing of an entire country.”¹²⁸ The U.N. acted as both the “state and state builder.”¹²⁹ UNTAET’s mandate, then, allowed it to import police forces, and “also laws and courts; not only administrators, but administrative structures and tribunals.”¹³⁰ There was always a tension between the U.N. mandate, on the one hand, to provide services in the short-term and, on the other hand, to build a legitimate and capable state able to supplant it in the long-term.¹³¹ Going well beyond traditional peacekeeping,¹³²UNTAET officials decided on an entirely new system of Timorese laws and when to return authority to Timorese officials.¹³³

This was a clear case of complete takeover as Timorese officials were uninvolved in the mission (and, although local participation increased over time, even then, “the extent to which this shift [was] authentic or symbolic is a matter of some disagreement.”)¹³⁴ Initially, the UNTAET mission excluded Timorese officials to avoid any potential for “derailment” due to fears of politicization as well as a limited budget to carry out the mandate.¹³⁵ Indeed, the mission was established under Chapter VII, and Resolution 1272 only stated a vague need to “consult and cooperate closely with the Timorese people to carry out its mandate effectively.”¹³⁶ Little else in the negotiation process included an explicit decision-making role for Timorese officials.¹³⁷ To include more Timorese in decision-making, the mission established a National Consultative Council (NCC) alongside separate domestic bureaucratic institutions but, with the partial exception of the police and the courts, UNTAET was very slow in turning over power to local leaders in ways that would have allowed them to use procedural tactics to alter UNTAET's behavior.¹³⁸ Some suggest, in fact, that UNTAET was undermined by its failure “to share power sufficiently with Timorese counterparts early on and [by] failing to shift power more fully to them early enough.”¹³⁹ The U.N. did, eventually, increase the engagement of Timorese officials with UNTAET, but maintained control of finances and key institutional positions.¹⁴⁰

Timorese leaders, therefore, did not have the procedural repertoire to resist UNTAET that we will see in some other cases. Although Timorese leaders did attempt some pushback against UNTAET, they could only use mechanisms like widespread popular protest, rather than the bureaucratic tools (i.e., a procedural repertoire) that would have been available to alter the IO mission under an incomplete arrangement.¹⁴¹ Although initial mandate drafts included proposals for Timorese political leaders to act as advisors within the mission, factions within the U.N. took control over planning and Timorese participation dwindled.¹⁴² Local officials, frustrated about not being consulted, called for the U.N.’s prompt withdrawal after six months, without any success.¹⁴³ The mission regularly adapted over time, but often as a response to critiques from within UNTAET, alongside U.N. concerns about their legitimacy in the host state broadly—for example, a popular boycott changed the implementation of the Civic Education Program—but not due to the use of the procedural tactics by leaders that other cases feature.¹⁴⁴

Overall, the U.N. largely dictated what UNTAET would do and what U.N. and other personnel would be involved in governing Timor-Leste. UNTAET was a classic transitional administration, or complete takeover, where the U.N. intervention largely operated only under its own authority. This was just one mission of several sent to Timor-Leste. The missions invited by the government after UNTAET left were incomplete arrangements, where the U.N. came to act as the “navigator” for the Timorese leaders who were placed in the “driver’s seat” and eventually took full ownership.¹⁴⁵ We would expect these subsequent missions to face more resistance, which was the case. The Timorese leaders began to use the procedural tactics available to them, rolling back the training role of the 2006 U.N. incomplete arrangement, for example.¹⁴⁶ Scholars debate the effectiveness of transitional administrations such as the one in Timor-Leste, but many consider the results of UNTAET positive because of the steady increase in Timor-Leste’s economic and social development scores,¹⁴⁷ although identifying the contribution of each component of the mandate is more difficult. While the neo-trusteeship arrangement certainly enabled the U.N. to take actions it might not have otherwise taken, the lack of domestic involvement in UNTAET’s structure and decision-making, and even the inability of Timorese leaders to push back, may have contributed to producing authoritarian and dysfunctional dynamics in the state’s later institutions.¹⁴⁸

6.2 The U.N. in Burundi: Incomplete arrangements for peace operations

Burundi, one of the world’s poorest states, faced a devastating civil war that lasted from 1993 to 2005. Ending the conflict required a series of ceasefire agreements and the implementation of the main provisions of the Arusha Agreement, a comprehensive framework for political, security, and economic reform.¹⁴⁹ The agreement, signed by 19 political parties in 2000, established a three-year transition period to implement the most critical security and political reforms and organize the first post-conflict democratic elections. Arusha dictated that this transitional period, which began in 2001, was to be governed by the Transitional Government of National Unity, led for the first half by the main Tutsi party and for the second half by the main Hutu party, and overseen by the top U.N. official in Burundi—the U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG)—who would serve as the head the Arusha Agreement’s Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC), although Burundians still governed the country. In so doing, the Burundian signatories to the Arusha Agreement gave the U.N. SRSG the authority to oversee the first peaceful transfer of power between opposing political parties and the implementation of Arusha’s main security and governance reforms. After the 2005 democratic elections that ended Burundi’s transitional period, the government continued to permit U.N. statebuilding missions to operate on its territory, although with much less authority and capacity.

In this context, Burundi’s peace operations represented canonical incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts under both Chapter VI and VII of the U.N. Charter. First, in 2004, under Chapter VII that allows the U.N. to act on its own authority without host-government consent, the United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB) deployed.¹⁵⁰ Next, in 2007, under Chapter VI that formally requires host-state consent, the Integrated United Nations Office in Burundi (BINUB) followed. Both of these U.N. peace operations were incomplete arrangements: the Burundi Government held the residual rights of control and used this authority to deploy its full procedural repertoire to influence the content of these U.N. statebuilding mandates and their implementation, fundamentally reshaping how these two U.N. peace operations operated in Burundi and their ability to fulfill their mandates.

6.2.1 United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB)

The United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB) was mandated by the UNSC in 2004 to oversee the end of Burundi’s transitional phase. Even though ONUB was mandated as a Chapter VII peacekeeping mission, the Transitional Government of Burundi retained the residual rights of control over the unspecified components of this incomplete arrangement. ONUB was composed of over 5,600 military personnel and 1,100 civilian personnel—stationed in five regional offices around Burundi and in the capital, Bujumbura—and had an ambitious mandate that included deploying peacekeepers to monitor the ceasefire and the disarmament of ex-combatants, providing training to a newly-reformed security services, and organizing and overseeing the peaceful organization of Burundi’s first post-conflict elections, including the passage of the prerequisite constitutional and electoral reforms.¹⁵¹

Despite the fact that the Arusha Agreement called for its deployment, the U.N. was initially reluctant to send a mission in the absence of a ceasefire between the Burundian army and rebel groups,¹⁵² so the African Union’s first peace operation, the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB), was deployed instead. Once a comprehensive ceasefire was reached, the Transitional Government of Burundi, in concert with its regional and international allies and the African Union,¹⁵³ called on the UNSC to deploy the promised Chapter VII peacekeeping mission.¹⁵⁴

Despite ONUB’s Chapter VII mandate, the Burundi Government helped to determine when the UNSC deployed ONUB and the content of the statebuilding contract that ONUB implemented on its territory. For example, in January 2004, the Burundian Permanent Representative to the U.N. asked the UNSC to step in for the AMIB with "a United Nations peacekeeping operation.”¹⁵⁵

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent assessment missions to Burundi in December 2003 and January 2004, which consulted with a range of Burundi’s transitional government officials, rebel group leaders, the South African mediation team, other regional and international diplomats, and civil society actors, and led Annan to recommended the deployment of a Chapter VII peacekeeping operation in Burundi.¹⁵⁶ According to one participant, these assessment missions “consistently heard from Burundian stakeholders that the peace process was now on an irreversible course and that a UN peacekeeping operation would be welcomed.”¹⁵⁷

In March 2004, the Burundian Foreign Minister sent a letter to the UNSC outlining the specific aims of its hoped-for U.N. peacekeeping mission, including monitoring the ceasefire, supporting ex-combatant disarmament and the creation of a new security force, enabling post-conflict reconstruction and development, and helping to establish the overall conditions for free and fair elections.¹⁵⁸ In April 2004, the Burundian Permanent Representative to the U.N. sent a follow-up letter to the UNSC, expressing additional preferences for the U.N. peacekeeping force’s mandate and composition and supporting the proposed mandate submitted by the U.N. Secretary-General, which closely mirrored the aims outlined in the Burundian Foreign Minister’s March 2004 letter, and calling for the UNSC to endorse these proposals and mandate the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Burundi, as it had in other contexts.¹⁵⁹ On May 21, 2004, the UNSC adopted Resolution 1545 that deployed a Chapter VII peacekeeping operation in Burundi, ONUB.

Once Burundi and the UNSC had established their incomplete arrangement in the form of Resolution 1545, the Burundi Government used its residual rights of control to push back on the intervention, initially shaping how long ONUB would be deployed and who would lead ONUB. ONUB was initially mandated to withdraw from Burundi by the end of the three-year transitional period on October 31, 2004, only five months after its deployment. Different forces within the Transitional Government of Burundi tried to slow ONUB’s withdrawal, while others tried to keep it on track. Some transitional government officials in key positions attempted to delay ONUB’s withdraw, and the consequent end of the transitional period, to avoid losing their coveted, and often lucrative, positions in government.¹⁶⁰ Other members of the Transitional Government of Burundi aimed to speed up the transition period because they believed they would gain more power in Burundi’s general elections.¹⁶¹

This inter-party competition led representatives of one former rebel group, National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD), to threaten that “a ‘return to war’ remained an option” if the the transitional period did not end and, generally, delayed the end of Burundi’s transitional period forcing the UNSC to extend.¹⁶² For example, the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) twice postponed the date of the constitutional referendum, which directly delayed in the elections that ONUB was mandated to help organize and led to the UNSC twice extending ONUB’s mandate.¹⁶³

In 2005, the Burundi Government finally organized its post-conflict elections, with the support of ONUB and other international actors, and Pierre Nkurunziza, the former head of the CNDD-FDD rebels, was elected president in August 2005.¹⁶⁴ Even though the UNSC had mandated ONUB under Chapter VII, it mandated ONUB to help the Burundian leaders implement the Arusha Agreement's conditions for the end of the transitional period. But these same Burundian leaders retained the residual rights of control over the government’s incomplete arrangement with ONUB, which enabled the Burundi Government to influence if and when ONUB’s mandate was fulfilled.

In October 2005, the newly-elected Burundi Government notified the U.N. that it wanted ONUB to withdraw, which led the U.N. to initiate extensive negotiations with the Burundi Government to try and enable a U.N. peace operation to remain in the country. They agreed to a incomplete arrangement for a pared-down political mission, without peacekeepers, that would prioritize post-conflict reconstruction.¹⁶⁵ Through these actions, the Burundi Government used its procedural repertoire to full effect to end ONUB’s incomplete arrangement and establish the terms of its successor. In public statements and in letters to the President of the UNSC, the Burundi Government argued that it did not need further U.N. oversight of Arusha’s implementation and had “never asked for it.”¹⁶⁶

Analysts argued that Burundi’s post-conflict government had employed these procedural tactics because it was “eager to demonstrate its sovereignty and emboldened by what it interpreted as a crushing victory at the polls.”¹⁶⁷ The Burundi Government also admitted to being inspired by Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, whose party had forced the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to leave after it failed to prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide and, subsequently, expelled international actors, “readmitting them slowly later once it had established its right and ability to negotiate from strength.”¹⁶⁸

Recollecting the U.N.’s negotiations with the Burundi Government, ONUB’s SRSG, Carolyn McAskie, indicated that she had tried to convince the newly-elected President Nkurunziza that he could, in fact, control the terms of ONUB's behavior by saying: “You’re the boss. We’re not trying to run anything here. Take advantage of the U.N. You have the right as any member country to take what the U.N. can offer. We’re here to help you.’”¹⁶⁹ But the government responded by forcing SRSG McAskie to leave the country in early 2006, before ONUB was mandated to leave.¹⁷⁰

In August 2006, the government declared McAskie’s successor, Nureldin Satti, persona non grata, although they later rescinded this designation and allowed him to remain until ONUB’s mandate ended on December 31, 2006.¹⁷¹ While ONUB achieved its most important goal—facilitating Burundi’s successful post-conflict transition—its forced departure and its contentious relationship with the new Burundi Government led it to fall far short of achieving the longer-term security-sector, governance, and judicial reforms outlined in its mandate.¹⁷²

6.2.2 Integrated United Nations Office in Burundi (BINUB)

On January 1, 2007, the U.N. deployed BINUB, a Chapter VI Special Political Mission, without peacekeepers, that was mandated to “consolidate” peace in Burundi.¹⁷³ To achieve its post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction tasks, the UNSC mandated BINUB’s civilian peace operation staff to work directly with other U.N. development, humanitarian, and human rights agencies in three integrated units: security-sector reform, rule of law and human rights, and governance and peace.¹⁷⁴ Building on its experience with ONUB, the Burundian government continued to deploy its procedural repertoire to resist and alter its incomplete arrangement, both during the negotiation and implementation phases.

BINUB was established after protracted negotiations between the U.N. and the Burundian Government. With the promise of millions of dollars in peacebuilding aid, the Burundi Government and the U.N. concluded a bilateral agreement to establish a U.N. peace operation that would have the dual focus on both development, as demanded by the Burundi Government, and peacebuilding, as requested by the U.N.¹⁷⁵ The U.N. also agreed to change the title of the head of the mission to the Executive Representative of the Secretary General (ERSG), rather than SRSG, providing another signal that BINUB was a different type of mission, as the Burundi Government had demanded. UNSC Resolution 1719, which mandated the establishment of BINUB, reflected the precise wording suggested by the Burundi Government.¹⁷⁶

The Burundi Government played a central role in the implementation of BINUB’s mandate. This was guided, in part, by the newly-created Joint Steering Committee, composed of Burundian and U.N. civil servants, which oversaw peacebuilding projects that were jointly-directed and implemented by BINUB and corresponding Burundian ministries.¹⁷⁷ To appease the Burundi Government, ERSG Youssef Mahmoud also required all staff to ensure that their governmental counterparts could take credit for BINUB’s successes.¹⁷⁸ He argued that “building national ownership takes time, patience and requires humility.”¹⁷⁹ Mahmoud viewed government appropriation as essential to BINUB’s success.¹⁸⁰ “We have to ensure that this strategy is owned and that the Burundians define the priorities and design the projects and who implements it.”¹⁸¹ This approach generally enabled BINUB to carry out its mission in the sectors and locations to which the Burundi Government consented,¹⁸² although this working relationship began to fall apart in the lead-up to the 2010 presidential elections.

In December 2009, the Burundi Government asked ERSG Mahmoud to leave the country, threatening to declare him persona non grata if he refused to go. ERSG Mahmoud complied with their wishes and left.¹⁸³ The government claimed that Mahmoud had sided with Burundi’s Independent National Electoral Commission, which President Nkurunziza viewed as a threat to his continued hold on power.¹⁸⁴ In reality, Mahmoud had tried to preserve the independence of the electoral commission as the 2010 elections approached, a central component of its UNSC mandate, in the face of the Burundi Government’s increasing violence and intimidation of opposition politicians and civil society actors.¹⁸⁵

After winning the highly-contested 2010 elections, Nkurunziza’s government requested that BINUB, which had been unable to consolidate peace in the face of Burundi’s increasing violence, withdraw and be replaced by an even weaker U.N. peace operation.¹⁸⁶ The U.N. complied.¹⁸⁷ The Burundi Government had used its residual rights of control over its incomplete arrangement with the U.N. to determine what tasks BINUB carried out, who would lead BINUB, when BINUB’s mandate would end, and, ultimately, whether BINUB fulfilled its UNSC mandate.

The cases of ONUB and BINUB demonstrate that both Chapter VII and Chapter VI missions, respectively, can operate as incomplete arrangements. The Burundi Government used its procedural repertoire to determine what these missions could do, when they could do it, who led them, and even where they operated on Burundi’s territory. This case demonstrates that even a highly aid-dependent country with weak state capacity and escalating violent conflict is able to use its residual rights of control within incomplete arrangements to shape the form and function of U.N. peace operations, influencing their successes and failures.

6.3 CICIG in Guatemala: Incomplete arrangement in the courts

Since its civil war, which ended in 1996, Guatemala had been plagued by crime and impunity. The U.N. Special Rapporteur ironically said that Guatemala was “a good place to commit a murder, because you will almost certainly get away with it.”¹⁸⁸ The crime was fueled by weapons from recent conflicts, high rates of unemployment, and poor governance in the state emerging from a major civil war; however, the primary driver of impunity was embedded illegal networks in the state structures that perpetuated corruption and failed to combat crime.¹⁸⁹ Specifically, criminal structures and clandestine security structures (known as CIACS for their Spanish acronym) had taken over the state institutions. In this context, as the peacekeeping mission wound down, Guatemala and the U.N. established an incomplete arrangement focused on the courts. The mission featured cyclic resistance from the host government. While certainly weak relative to the U.N. and the major donors to this mission, the state used the procedural repertoire provided by the process of setting up a new statebuilding contract and, later, by its residual rights of control under the incomplete arrangement. Eventually, while the mission stayed for twelve years and conducted many successful anti-corruption cases, the Government of Guatema constrained its behavior and eventually pushed out in 2019.

The Guatemalan Government, facing pressure and changing incentives, and after thorough negotiations, signed an agreement with the U.N. to intervene in its courts. The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) was formed to “dismantle” the CIACS through two roles, according to its mandate: “promot[ing] the investigation, prosecution, and sanction of [their] members” together with domestic counterparts and providing recommendations on “the necessary judicial and institutional reforms” to Guatemalan lawmakers. CICIG’s personnel could investigate any private person, entity, or public official, requesting statements, documents, and general cooperation from anyone, and then it could ask to join criminal proceedings as a “querellente adhesivo,” or joint prosecutor, introducing evidence, filing procedural motions, and otherwise helping its domestic counterparts run the case.¹⁹⁰ CICIG selected and trained domestic counterparts, primarily a special prosecutorial unit, eventually known as the Special Anti-Impunity Prosecutor’s Bureau (FECI), but also National Police.¹⁹¹ Beyond specific cases, CICIG also recommended reforms to the state’s policies and laws,¹⁹²including innovations such a providing for witness protection and wiretapping in corruption cases.

CICIG also identified civil servants that committed infractions and participated in their disciplinary proceedings.¹⁹³ CICIG operated for twelve years until, after five renewals to its two-year mandates, the Guatemalan Government eventually chose not to renew its mandate in 2019.

During CICIG deployment, the Guatemalan Government used its procedural repertoire to push back on CICIG's behavior. First, in terms of “what” the mission did, the Guatemalan Government maintained the authority to sign off on the cases in which CICIG could involve itself. In both the 2011 and 2013 renewals, the U.N. agreed to make this a period of transition, steering away initially from new high-profile cases.¹⁹⁴ There were also specific cases in which CICIG sought to participate and was blocked, such as a case against a former president, in which CICIG had investigated extortion and embezzlement charges but then was excluded from the prosecution (and he was acquitted in the case before, with advice from CICIG, he was extradited to the United States and tried).¹⁹⁵ In other cases, the government just did not bring charges as quickly as CICIG requested.¹⁹⁶

In terms of anti-corruption reforms, the Guatemalan Government maintained most authority for itself. For example, although a law was passed allowing both CICIG and domestic NGOs to participate in the selection of judicial nominees, their recommendations were not binding, so when CICIG objected to six candidates (out of thirteen) for Supreme Court, three were appointed anyway by the legislature (although all 30 out of 90 that it opposed for the appeals court were rejected).¹⁹⁷ Even more troubling, the Guatemalan president in 2011 selected a public prosecutor who fired more than 20 prosecuting attorneys working on human rights and began dismantling CICIG’s domestic partner, leading CICIG’s head to resign, although eventually the Constitutional Court ruled the appointment procedurally improper, so the public prosecutor was removed but not due to CICIG’s direct action.¹⁹⁸ Broadly, the Guatemalan Government could resist changes to policies and laws, such as ending pre-trial protections that allowed public officials to interfere with cases against them, because these final decisions were up to the domestic courts.¹⁹⁹ Finally, the Guatemalan Government also used its procedural repertiore to resist “who” worked for CICIG. For example, some administrations, especially the Morales administration in 2019, pushed back against CICIG’s work by declaring its head persona non grata and revoking visas for other personnel.²⁰⁰

Guatemala and the U.N. established a canonical incomplete arrangement that focused on the courts. During the negotiations of the agreement, and its renewals, as well as the implementation of its mandate, the state used itsprocedural repertoire to shape especially what the mission could do but also who could do it. While the mission stayed for twelve years and conducted many successful cases—securing a high conviction rate and likely lowering certain crime rates, while also training domestic counterparts and lobbying for some reforms that were enacted²⁰¹—it was not able to more fully improve the rule of law in Guatemala, one of its aims, and was eventually closed in 2019.

7 Conclusion

Building on literature that highlights the authority and agency of post-conflict and other unconsolidated states,²⁰² this article argues that seemingly weak states shape IO statebuilding. We go beyond existing work by theorizing about how particular types of statebuilding contracts, incomplete arrangements, give post-conflict states residual rights of control over the unnegotiated components of the contract and thereby empower these states.²⁰³ Through these incomplete contracts, host states can influence the IO’s mandate, where it implements its activities, whom the IO hires, and when it withdraws. The procedural repertoire through which host states use their authority appears to be banal, but provides an important tool for domestic leaders to influence IOs operating on their territory.

We test our argument using a multi-method research design that investigates our posited mechanism in case studies (Timor-Leste, Burundi, and Guatemala) and examines the generalizability of this mechanism among the full population of 36 U.N. post-conflict statebuilding contracts that fall within our scope conditions.²⁰⁴ We find that under incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts, host states use at least one of the tactics in their procedural repertoire to resist or otherwise alter the IO statebuilding effort. In complete takeover statebuilding contracts, while domestic actors may also try to resist or otherwise alter the IO statebuilding mission, they do not exercise sufficientcontrol over aspects of the IO statebuilding mandate necessary to change the IO’s ability to achieve its statebuilding mandate.

This article contributes to the international statebuilding literature by demonstrating that post-conflict governments use contracts to actively shape the IO statebuilding effort at all stages, challenging the assumption that post-conflict states lack capacity or authority in relation to international statebuilding efforts.²⁰⁵ Because the role of host-government agency has often been overlooked in assessments of international statebuilding success and failure, this article points to a potentially crucial omitted factor in existing scholarship.²⁰⁶

This article also brings the post-conflict host state back into the discussion of global governance, pointing to the authority that these seemingly weak states can wield over IOs.

The global governance literature largely views the delegation of sovereignty as something that happens at the global level, arguing that states delegate sovereignty to IOs and then attempt to exercise preference control over the IO’s behavior through their shared governance of the IO.²⁰⁷ We show that “local-level” statebuilding contracts present another potential avenue through which states can reclaim the sovereignty that they delegate to global IOs.²⁰⁸ When these statebuilding contracts are incomplete arrangements, they give the post-conflict state the residual rights of control over the unspecified components of the statebuilding contract, enabling the host government to resist or otherwise alter the IO’s statebuilding effort. These incomplete arrangement provide a set of procedural tools that may be especially valuable to states lacking favorable alternative sources of power, such as global ties or material capabilities. By pointing to this source of institutional power, we contribute to a growing literature that investigates the hierarchical underpinnings of theories of global governance.²⁰⁹

Our investigation of the authority available to host states via this form of statebuilding contracts also opens a new research agenda. Future research should investigate variation within incomplete arrangements, examining when host states use different tactics or implementation strategies and how these choices interact with domestic actor capacity, among other factors, and to what effect. New research should also examine systematic variation in host-state tactics based on domestic factors, such as the characteristics of host-state leadership, the proximity of elections, and the degree of consensus between the host state and the IO on the IO’s statebuilding activities.²¹⁰

Future research should examine the relevance of our theory of statebuilding contracts to other types of interventions outside of our scope of U.N. Peace Operations. We expect that other types of interventions are subject to similar incomplete arrangements, but perhaps with different outcomes. For example, would resistance to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) look different from resistance to the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) or the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)? What about bilateral donors that are also mandated by their principals to implement services in conflict-affected states via incomplete arrangements? Are they also subject to the same potential resistance, even though the host government does not govern the bilateral donor? Future research should also explore variation by sector that may appear more or less intrusive to the host-government, comparing the health and security sectors, for example. We expect that the broader mechanism of incomplete arrangements will hold in each of these cases, but that the relative power dynamics between international and domestic actors as well as the specific procedural tactics used by domestic actors will shift.

Finally, our findings have significance for policies relating to international statebuilding efforts. Host-government ownership of IO statebuilding is becoming the global norm.²¹¹ If the host government and IO statebuilders are committed to the same liberal statebuilding reforms, their statebuilding contracts are likely to support these reforms. If they are not, then the IO statebuilding effort, no matter how robust, is unlikely to achieve these aims. Only by accounting for the procedural tactics available to the host government can international policymakers accurately assess the feasibility of international statebuilding in post-conflict states and evaluate the conditions necessary for success.