Conflicts of preferences and domestic constraints: understanding reform failure in liberal state-building and democracy promotion

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges the common explanations that failures of external state-building and democracy promotion are the result of a lack of domestic capacity or a lack of domestic willingness against an externally set liberal agenda of state-building and democratisation. Studying political decision-making on a micro-level, we argue that both explanations fail to capture the multi-faceted motivations and interests of domestic actors that go beyond mere ‘resistance’ against externally induced liberal reforms. Rather, criticism of reforms might be rooted in ideas of social justice and claims to socio-economic security. Furthermore, these explanations tend to overlook the need for domestic elites to bargain with various domestic stakeholders. A case study of Croatian public administration reform illustrates that failure of externally promoted reforms remain an option when significant international resources are available for liberal state-building and the target of reform is a relatively mature bureaucracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Democratisation
• democracy promotion
• state-building
• local resistance
• Croatia
• EU
• public administration reform

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Claudia von Braunmühl, Michael Daxner, Stefanie Kappler, Ulrich Schneckener, Gerald Schneider, the participants of the panel ‘Who Wants Peacebuilding?’ at the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies Annual Conference 2012, the members of the research network ‘External Democracy Promotion’ and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Special thanks to Claire Bacher for her kind and careful proofreading. Financial support from the Young Scholar Fund at the University of Konstanz is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lisa Groß received her PhD at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.

Dr Sonja Grimm is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.

Notes

1. A detailed assessment of the external actors’ activities in the Western Balkans, and in Croatia particular, is beyond the scope of this paper; please see Grimm and Mathis (2015) for an overview.