May 6, 2005

Scholars To Develop Knowledge Base And
Strategies For Rebuilding Authority In States At Risk
Partnership with Global Humanitarian
Organization for Implementation, Evaluation

By Barry Jagoda

A new partnership between scholars at the Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies at UCSD and the International Rescue Committee will evaluate international strategies toward states at risk—societies in which poverty and insecurity are exacerbated by weak governance and violent conflict. In its assessment of the existing strategies of non-governmental organizations, multilateral organizations and governments toward states at risk, the project aims to make those strategies more effective and complementary in rebuilding legitimate political authority. The two-year effort is being funded by a grant of $349,700 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This research partnership with the IRC, a leading international NGO dedicated to humanitarian services and advocacy for those uprooted or affected by violent conflict and oppression, is a new departure for IICAS and UCSD. The project will bring research at the university into practice at the NGO, improving both, and enhancing international capabilities for assisting states at risk. UCSD international specialists Miles Kahler, Kristian Gleditsch, David Lake and Barbara Walter are co-investigators in the project. Clark Gibson and Craig McIntosh, other UCSD faculty members, will also participate in the research and Jodi Nelson, director of policy for IRC, will provide leadership at the NGO partner organization.

Explaining the urgency of the task, Kahler, director of IICAS, said, “Since the end of the Cold War the issue of internal political order has risen to the top of the international agenda. The failure of governments to provide minimal levels of security and public goods has produced large-scale loss of life, economic impoverishment and threats to our own national security. Our project will focus on strategic missteps in international assistance, often based on knowledge deficits. These shortcomings have often made international assistance in re-establishing political authority ineffective.”

The UCSD researchers will apply and extend research on global governance, political institutions and internal conflict to contemporary international strategies for re-creation of political authority in states at risk. The researchers will work with the IRC to connect a broader intellectual framework to that organization’s programming in selected countries. The researchers will relate the characteristics of internal conflict to post-conflict reconstruction, investigate the value of decentralization in dealing with self-determination movements, examine the role of international trusteeship in creating sustainable local political authority and evaluate the current engagement of international financial institutions and bilateral aid donors in states at risk.

The researchers and the NGO leaders will disseminate results of their work at a conference that brings together policy experts with activists to further refine alternative strategies for rebuilding political authority. In the longer run, a network of researchers in universities and policy institutes will join NGO practitioners to provide more permanent engagement between these two communities.

Media contact, Barry Jagoda, (858) 534-8567