Overcoming Obstacles to Peace: Local Factors in Nation-Building

Abstract : In the past decade, RAND has published a series of studies on nationbuilding. We intend this term to describe operations conducted by external civilian and military authorities that employ armed force alongside other means of influence in the aftermath of conflict to promote enduring peace. Some prefer the term state-building, giving primacy to postconflict activities aimed at constructing state institutions and deemphasizing those activities intended to build a national identity. Others prefer peace-building, which perhaps best captures the overriding purpose of the types of externally driven operations on which we focus. Neither state-building nor peace-building necessarily implies the employment of armed force, whereas all the cases we study include this element. We have stuck with nation-building, the most common label in American parlance, albeit one often applied pejoratively, in order to reach a wider audience and to shed new light on an oft-misunderstood and underappreciated undertaking.