Building East Timor and Kosovo: Issues in Post-Conflict Reconstruction

This study argues there are two separate but interacting processes involved in post-conflict settings: (re)building the state and (re)building the nation. Much of the literature, however, has treated post-conflict reconstruction as a single and objective process of organisational and functional structuring that overlooked the potential and actual interactions and contradictions within and between these two very different but inter-related processes taking place during the course of post-conflict recovery. These processes are not neutral or straight-forward but involve highly sensitive, power-driven institutional and societal undertakings that are related to the definition of the state as a political and cultural community. They entail a political and social (re)structuring that is closely linked with the pursuit and distribution of power. The simultaneous undertaking of democratisation that requires the redistribution of power and interests through public participation and contestation tends to further complicate these already sensitive processes.