[Book Review in Political Science Quarterly (forthcoming)]

You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building /by Simon Chesterman //New York//, //Oxford// //University// Press, 2004. 280 pp. $95.00./

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and

Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace /by Virginia Page Fortna //Princeton//, //Princeton// //University// Press, 2004. 243 pp. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $18.95./

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These books by two impressive young scholars on opposite ends of Manhattan (New York University and Columbia respectively) at first seem to have little in common.. They are concerned with different issues, use different methods, and cite different literatures. But they both focus on the possible actions of third parties in attempting to help resolve the major security problems of our time, and, using multiple methods, both substantially advance our knowledge in these areas.

Simon Chesterman has written a pathbreaking book about the varied experiences of the United Nations in state building. Its organization is one of its many strengths. The introduction focuses on precedents in the League of Nations, the Allied occupation of Germany, and decolonization. Building on his expertise in international law, it stresses the legal foundations of these events as well as the political realities which shaped them.

But the bulk of the book is devoted to an analysis of the thirteen cases: Congo, West New Guinea, Namibia, Western Sahara, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Eastern Slavonia, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Instead of a separate chapter for each, Chesterman first organizes them in terms of the tasks which the U.N. attempted to fulfill: decolonization, peaceful transfer to an existing government, administration to hold elections, administration with no end state, and responsibility for basic law and order. This allows him to compare cases which are in fact comparable, as well as trace the shifting patterns of mandates over time and give us the essential facts for each case to boot. The remaining chapters draw on the cases but focus on common, important functions: peace and security, building democracy, transitional justice, humanitarian and development assistance, and elections and exit strategies. Throughout he uses a combination of legal analysis and in-depth political reporting (both in the countries and in the United Nations itself).

Many of his conclusions are not surprising. The United Nations has been handicapped by inadequate resources, political divisions, overly ambitious mandates, and organizational problems. Under the circumstances it is perhaps surprising that there are some successes, usually the less ambitious efforts, along with some resounding failures. It has not been successful using military force. Quick elections are not a good exit strategy.

His more fine-grained analysis is consistently more interesting. He notes that the U.N. never developed a doctrine of civil administration, despite its multiple experiences. Although committed to bringing democracy to countries, it has been unable to make itself accountable to the local populations. Internal politics have hindered the recruitment of qualified personnel in the field (in East Timor it was hard to hire people who spoke Portuguese!). Transitional justice is not necessary for democracy, and amnesty may be appropriate, but establishment of a working justice system needs to be an immediate priority (and is not). Humanitarian and development assistance often conflict, sometimes have negative impact on the target country, and often end too soon. “State-building after a war will always take years, perhaps decades, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise to domestic publics.” (235) Unfortunately the high cost of this volume may substantially hinder its dissemination.

Fortna tackles another interesting problem—why do some peace agreements after inter-state wars last and others do not and in particular what is the role of cease-fire agreements in this process? Her analysis focuses on the 48 agreements in 25 wars between 1946 and 1997. She asks what conditions make agreements more or less likely to last, when are cease-fire agreements more likely to be employed, on balance do they make peace more or less likely, and what specific provisions, if any, are associated with peace? As with the best of recent academic analyses, she uses several different but complementary methods: conventional quantitative analysis (using her own database), a less systematic examination of patterns of all the cases, and in-depth case analysis of the Israeli-Syrian and Indian-Pakistani cases (both of which have numerous violent conflicts and cease-fire agreements, allowing comparison within as well as between them). Her crystal clear presentation of both methods and results makes this an admirable illustration of how to do research for undergraduate and graduate courses.

The problem is framed as preserving peace when the belligerents have fought one another and continue to disagree over the political issues which triggered the war in the first place. She concludes that decisive military victory, high costs of war, lack of prior conflict between the belligerents, lack of threat to the existence of one of the states, and lack of contiguous borders all make renewed war significantly less likely, both in quantitative and case analysis. Equally interesting, “relative power, the number of states in the war, whether the conflict is over territory, measures of states’ ‘expected utility’ for war, and changes in regime type…are less helpful for understanding whether peace will last.” (9) Belligerents resort to cease-fire agreements in situations where war seems likely to break out again, and these agreements seem to significantly reduce the likelihood of this occurring (the analysis of Israeli-Syrian case is particularly striking). She then disaggregates the agreements and finds that demilitarized zones, explicit guarantees and peacekeeping by outsiders, and joint commissions to help resolve issues are all associated with peace, while arms control agreements, controls over groups which oppose the cease-fire, troop withdrawals, and third party mediation are not. On the controversial issue of peacekeeping by outsiders, she finds that it can be very helpful but that, if it fails, reestablishing it tends to be futile.

On balance, then, these are two very impressive, albeit very different, books. Their combination of systematic analysis, in-depth research and knowledge, and focus on both theoretical and policy issues make them models worthy of admiration and emulation.

Roy Licklider

Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick