Building states. The United Nations, development and decolonization, 1945-1965

Abstract

The theme of state-building became popular in International Relations literature in the 2000s, in the aftermath of UN experiences (or experiments) in Kosovo and Timor-Leste. Muschik’s commendable book dispels the misconception that it was only in the 1990s that international organizations sought to assist states in structuring their governance, even if the term ‘state-building’ might not have been in use before that decade. It is a book of many qualities, foremost of which the aim to connect the immediate object of study to broader tendencies in international politics. The purpose of Building States is to assess the role of the UN in establishing the post-Second World War system of states in the context of the fall of colonial empires, economic interdependence and a rise in nationalism. The book analyzes how the UN Secretariat tried to conciliate the conflicting demands of ending colonialism, preserving sovereignty and organizing trusteeships in the name of development. The empirical analysis establishes that the UN should be taken seriously as an actor in world history, that its Secretariat crafted an agenda of its own and did not act at the behest of the West, and that the idea of state-building was conceived in the course of early decolonization as a universally applicable technical instrument rather than a political practice. There are two methodological choices that are worth noting. First, the book selects sources that come almost entirely from UN staff, such as memoirs of international officials. This does not allow much room for voices from the countries receiving assistance. Second, in terms of the choice of cases, those where the Secretariat was heavily involved are dealt with in depth, whereas those where intergovernmental bodies led, such as Trieste and Namibia, are left outside the book’s scope. The introduction grounds the book in the UN’s historiography with a thorough discussion on the organization’s role in the undoing of colonial empires in what ultimately became the decolonization process. Engaging with the works of Pedersen, Mazower and others, Muschik’s book shows how small states and the Secretariat chose to interpret the provisions of the UN