Peace-building and State-building from the Perspective of the Historical Development of International Society

This article examines the relationship between post-conflict peacebuilding and state-building in the context of the process of the expansion and transformation of “world international society.”1 It compares the process of the formation of sovereign states in modern Europe and state-building activities in post-conflict societies in the contemporary world. The article aims at answering the question, what are the fundamental dilemmas of peace-building through state-building, as seen from the perspective of world international society? The question deserved to be answered, as there are numerous theoretical and policy-oriented issues concerning such dilemmas. Then, the article presents three dilemmas relevant to this question.2 First, there is the dilemma at the level of overall international order concerning world international society and regional discrepancies of peace-building through state-building. Second, there is the dilemma at the level of state-building policies concerning the concentration of power and the limitation of concentrated power. Third, there is the dilemma concerning liberal peace-building and local ownership. The article argues that post-conflict state-building needs to be understood in the context of the long-term state-building process. There are usually many fragile elements, including armed conflicts, in such a process. In the process, we will be able to see a long-term process of state-building, which covers conflict-prone states in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Developing countries, de-colonized in the process of the formation of ‘world international society,’ constitute the conflict zone of the contemporary world, stretching from Africa to South East Asia. The fragility of these states can be explained in terms of the rapid universalization within international society of sovereign nation states in the 20th century after