Missing 'the real thing': How the development discourse neglects the dynamics of local state-building.

The development discourse has been facing new challenges over the last fifteen years. The good governance discourse, pre-dominant in the 1990s has subtly been replaced by the re-emergence of state-building concepts, with a strong focus on security sector reform. Despite for the reiterated stress on 'local ownership', the new approach is driven by top-down concepts of social engineering, mainly focused on the national level. Different political and academic settings have successfully elaborated a common language to interact more or less properly under 'difficult circumstances'. This language, however, misses 'the real thing' - the dynamics and idiosyncratic rule of local settings that effectively determine the success or failure of state-building processes.The paper holds that the political economy of state-building is mainly shaped by the reproduction modes and legitimization strategies of local elites which use the appropriation of material and immaterial (e.g. reputation) resources not only for enriching themselves but also for securing legitimacy from relevant segments of the population. The composition and relative strength of local elites is a decisive factor for the direction in which 'post-conflict' countries are heading. Such elites may include actors of violence, revitalised traditional and religious authorities, remnants of the former state administration, party officials, local businessmen, influential intellectuals, repatriates from the diaspora etc. By offering themselves as 'hybrid' providers (traditional-state-private) of public goods, they are able to position themselves as "functional equivalents" of the state and to re-direct external actors' policies and resources to further their political and economic interests. The major assumption of the paper is that local state-building in a globalized world is a contested arena in which local, national and international perceptions and interests are rather incompatible. The rationale of external actors, so the paper maintains, is grounded on ideas which are generated by the self-referential logics of bureaucracies and policy-related think-tanks rather than by a closer study of local realities. At the same time, international engagement impacts as an intervening variable on opportunities and choices of local elites. These elites have developed remarkable skill and finesse in capitalizing on selected parts of the 'state-building agenda' to further their own 'projects'. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]