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Building states and developing resilience: A new Approach to International State Building

Søren V. Haldrup and Frederik Rosén.

In recent years we have experienced a change in the way international state building and peace

building is approached. This change can be characterised as a turn towards the notions of capacity

development and of state fragility and resilience. Considerable efforts and funds are currently being

diverted towards promoting and implementing this new agenda. Yet, the approach remains a

vaguely conceived and under-researched construct. This article therefore traces and discerns the

resiliency approach to state building. To distinguish the approach and to illustrate a number of the

practical challenges it implies, the emergence of ‘coaching and mentoring for capacity’ in state

building is pointed as an example of how donors attempt to develop resilience in fragile states.

Introduction

In a 2012 speech, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark argued that resilience must be put ‘… at the

heart of the development agenda’.1 Her statement expresses perfectly how developing capacity for

resilience in fragile states has grown to become a main focus of state and peace building actors. The

concept of state resilience has not, however, been the subject of much systematic investigation.1

This article seeks to remedy some of this gap by examining how the idea of resilience has appeared

in the context of state and peace building. The article starts with outlining the appearance of the

‘resiliency approach’ and its key features. Current concepts of ‘resilience’ are closely related to the

idea of ‘capacity’. The second section therefore explores the changes in the idea of and approach to

capacity, in particular the conceptual move from ‘capacity building’ to ‘capacity development’.

With the aim of distinguishing the resilience and capacity development approach, section three

1 Some literature are…

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investigates the turn to ‘coaching and mentoring’ in the international state building, peace building

and aid communities. In this context, south-south organised coaching and mentoring has appeared

as a ‘logical’ response to the problems and challenges identified by recent ideas about capacity and

resilience. It offers an instant capacity gain due to the influx of skilled people into the targeted

branches and facilitates a long-term resilience building, while at the same time accommodating calls

for local ownership and south-south cooperation.

A key point in this connection is that coaching and mentoring epitomizes a general approach to state

and peace building, and its exploration can help us gain a greater theoretical understanding of some

of the practical challenges of a state building agenda shaped by concepts of resilience, capacity,

local ownership, south-south cooperation, including issues of planning, management and

evaluation.2

The rise of state building and the move towards resilience

During the 1970s and 80s the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ viewed issues of development

through the lens of economic liberalism. This period’s poverty reduction strategy of choice, the so-

called Structural Adjustment Programmes or SAPs, had an economic focus and an anti-big-state

flavour. Essentially these policies aimed at reducing countries’ fiscal imbalances and reorienting

their economies towards the market. The SAPs did, however, manifest a number of flaws. Critiques

have pointed, among other things, to problems of false assumptions,3 suboptimal design and

implementation,4 potential to cause market failure and to worsen the economic situation for the

poor,5 undesirable impacts on the health sectors of recipient countries6 and the possible creation of

environments conducive to domestic conflict.7 During the 1990s the policy-making environments

did become increasingly observant of the fact that policies exist within a context of social, political

and state institutions. Attention shifted towards building institutional capacity to address poverty

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and development.8 Consequently the good governance agenda of the 1990s directed most of its

efforts towards how various institutions, including state institutions, underpin society and the

market. ‘Good governance’ and ‘best practice’ became key concepts in this discourse as

development agencies focused on building technical and formal institutional capacity on the model

of Western standards. Underpinning this approach was also the assumption that the presence of

certain formal structures, skill sets and technical know-how would automatically lead politicians,

the civil service and the justice sector employees to fit into the structure and act in a certain way.

The approach to state building has, since the latter part of the last decade, undergone

considerable changes. Emphasis has shifted away from ambitious and comprehensive interventions

with the purpose of building Western-like state institutions, towards helping fragile states and

regions develop capacity to be ‘resilient’. Rather than assuming the universal applicability of best

practice standards, focus is increasingly being turned towards context, local needs, local capacity,

coordination and alignment. The international development establishment has thus moved away

from the early focus on the non-state dynamics of the market, through the 1990s emphasis on the

state as in need of good governance structures and towards today’s increasing concern with

strengthening state resilience through contextualised capacity building. Three areas are particularly

important if we want to understand the recent turn towards resilience and, accordingly, coaching

and mentoring: the emergence of the focus on fragile states, lessons learned, and the growing

unwillingness to intervene.

9/11: Fragile states become security issues

The end of the Cold War meant an end to the superpowers’ rivalrous assistance to many third world

states and thus the beginning of an era of increased uncertainty and instability for such countries.

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During this period state instability or collapse was predominantly seen as a humanitarian issue until

11 September 2001 reframed issues of fragile and collapsed states as matters of global security.9

Fragile or failed states came to be seen as potential safe havens for terrorist groups, drugs cartels

and weapons dealers and thus a major source of global insecurity.10 Building capable and

functioning states became a priority within what appeared to be a new development–security nexus.

The notion that development and security are entwined now underpins the approach of major

international development actors such as the UN, the World Bank, OECD, DFID and USAID. As

the 2011 World Development Report noted: ‘[I]nsecurity […] has become a primary development

challenge of our time. One-and-a-half billion people live in areas affected by fragility, conflict, or

large-scale, organized criminal violence’.11 As a result of this change, state building has become a

primary development and security priority and the issue of fragile or failed states has grown to be

the primary area of focus. In 2009, for instance, one third of all aid to developing countries went to

states labelled as ‘fragile’.12

Lack of success and lessons learned

Interventions during the ‘good governance’ era of the 1990s took the form of ambitious

development projects, emphasising the equal importance of establishing the rule of law, respect for

human rights, democracy, economic growth and effective, accountable, and transparent state

institutions. Lack of success with the ambitious ‘one size fits all’ tools for building state capacity

has, however, in recent years led to a rethinking of how to ‘do development’. As a result, major

development actors have downscaled the level of ambition and/or begun to adhere to the notion that

institutions need to be developed from the starting point of the local context. In a 2008 OECD

publication it is, for instance, noted that ‘[t]here are important cases where international mediators

have embedded concepts of political process or institutional arrangements that are incompatible

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with the specific context, or are too ambitious in scope or their timetable’.13 Striking a similar chord,

in its 2011 World Development Report the World Bank points to the considerable amount of time it

has taken the fastest moving countries in the 20th century to approach adequate levels of

development.14 Against the backdrop of these experiences, the approach to state building shifted

from good governance and best practice to one of ‘good enough’ governance and ‘best fit’.15

China’s entry into the African arena as a major investment player is likely also a reason why

Western donors have recently relaxed their requirements for good governance in recipient states.

Unwillingness to intervene

The ambitious and extensive approach practiced in the 1990s and 2000s demanded massive material

and financial donor involvement. The willingness to intervene demonstrated in this period

decreased progressively with the accumulation of experiences from the tough, post-conflict cases of

Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Lack of success combined with the financial burdens of

ambitious involvement caused Western states to become reluctant towards extensive involvement in

state building projects. This trend was amplified by the financial crisis of 2008 onwards. Ambitions

and promises have been rolled back. The approach now stresses modesty, ‘good enough

governance’, resilience and stability. Also emphasised is the need for donors to coordinate

assistance through international organisations and the idea that institutions and capacities need to be

locally grounded. It has also led to more involvement through regional and international

organisations such as the African Union and the United Nations.16 Additionally, aid is increasingly

being channelled through and aligned with local government policies.17

The discourse of fragility and state resilience

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Recent discussions on state building have dealt with issues such as the security–development nexus;

the rise of a ‘post-liberal’ state building paradigm;18 the appearance of a ‘fragile states’ discourse;19

and a merging of peace building and state building.20 A common feature in much of this recent

literature is the increased focus in international development and security on the concepts of

‘fragility’ and ‘resilience’. Derived from the Latin resilire meaning ‘to rebound, to recoil’, the idea

of the attribute ‘resilience’ has been developed in a number of different disciplines.21 In the 1970s,

for instance, resilience appeared as an increasingly popular concept in psychology22, and it has also

been a key concept in the field of ecology. Resilience thinking has also been popular in dealing with

issues such as disaster planning and organisational management, health and community resilience.23

The concept of resilience emerged in the area of state building during the mid 2000s. In early

2005 the influential OECD–DAC publication ‘Principles for Good International Engagement in

Fragile States and Situations’ was drafted at the Senior Level Forum on Development Effectiveness

in Fragile States. The same year more than a hundred signatories endorsed the Paris Declaration on

Aid Effectiveness at the Paris High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (organised by the OECD).

Ownership, alignment and harmonisation were amongst the principles endorsed in the Declaration.

The principles found in the Paris Declaration, along with the problem of unrealistic expectations,

also featured prominently in the early 2005 United Nations Development Group and World Bank

publication on Transitional Results Matrices.24 Between 2007 and 2008 the OECD–DAC published

a number of documents on state resilience and how to enhance it.25 In 2008 the Accra Agenda for

Action was endorsed at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. The Agenda was

designed to strengthen and deepen implementation of the Paris Declaration. Amongst the key

features of the Accra Agenda were ownership, inclusive partnerships and capacity development.

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The World Bank also embraced the notion of state resilience. Before 2009 the word resilience

did practically not feature in any World Development Reports.26 Resilience, however, became a key

concept in the Bank’s 2010 and 2011 reports. In the 2011 report, the overall focus was on

institutional resilience and its impact on violent conflict. A number of bilateral donors have also

become fond of the concept of resilience in the context of state building. The OECD–DAC’s

guidance on state building was endorsed in a 2011 publication produced by USAID. In this

publication USAID also points to a general change in the way state building is being approached.27

DFID likewise appears to endorse the new principles for engaging in state building.28

A general shift is thus taking place in terms of how state building is addressed. This change is

marked by a turn towards the concepts of fragility and resilience as starting points from which to

theorise and practice state building. There is, however, little agreement on what exactly constitutes a

fragile state and how fragility is to be measured.29 Still, some common features inform the debates.

Most definitions, for instance, include elements such as low income,30 inability of state institutions

to provide basic services, and lack of human security. The definition of the OECD–DAC is

increasingly being used to define fragile states.31 State fragility is present, according to OECD–

DAC, ‘when state structures lack political will and/or capacity to provide the basic functions needed

for poverty reduction, development and to safeguard the security and human rights of their

populations’.32 Resilience is defined by the OECD–DAC as ‘a feature of states and more precisely

social contracts [...] defined [...] as the ability to cope with changes in capacity, effectiveness or

legitimacy’. Resilience and fragility are closely connected because fragility in essence has to do

with lack of resilience. The relationship can be summed up as follows:

‘fragility arises primarily from weaknesses in the dynamic political process through

which citizens’ expectations of the state and state expectations of citizens are reconciled

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and brought into equilibrium with the state’s capacity to deliver services. Reaching

equilibrium in this negotiation over the social contract is the critical if not sole

determinant of resilience, and disequilibrium the determinant of fragility’.33

Key in this new approach to state building is the notion of the social contract. A resilient state

must, it is believed, ‘…be able to effectively deliver functions that match the expectations of

societal groups’.34 Because expectations of what state institutions ought to deliver can vary from

one case to another, the argument goes, the state building process must take the local context as its

point of departure. Building institutional capacity is, in this connection, not only perceived to

depend on formal design, but also on the social context within which institutions function.

Legitimacy, another key feature of state resilience, is similarly not assumed to depend on the extent

to which institutions display Western standards of governance. Instead legitimacy is held to derive

from the extent to which state institutions are locally owned, contextually grounded and responsive

to the particular needs of a given population. This is explicitly recognised by the OECD–DAC when

it states that ‘[w]hether and to what degree... [a population’s] expectations entail poverty reduction,

development, security or human rights will depend on historical, cultural and other factors that

shape state–society relations in specific contexts’.35

The once-popular general approach to core state functions is now believed to be used with care

since it may generate overambitious reform agendas and misfit institutional constructs. Donors

instead are emphasising the need for international actors to align their approaches with local

policies and contexts and to coordinate, prioritise and sequence their efforts through international

organisations and coordination units on the ground. The recently emerged focus on context,

coordination and prioritisation is to be seen as a response to lessons learned from previous

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engagements and a growing unwillingness of major donors to invest in state building projects with

bleak prospects. South–South coordinated development fits nicely into this new way of thinking.

The development of capacity – from capacity building to capacity development

The rise of state building and the appearance of resilience have been congruent with the emergence

of capacity as a key concern. Resilience depends on capacity and capacity is, among other things, to

be understood as resilience. The concepts are entwined. The notion of ‘capacity’ and in particular

the idea of ‘state capacity’ has progressively gained credence within the international development

community since the 1990s. Today capacity development has become more than just another

instrument in the donor toolbox; capacity has become the lens through which global issues such as

poverty, development and security are perceived.36

Capacity can mean very different things in different contexts and for different actors. One

typology builds on distinguishing three levels of capacity: individual capacity, institutional capacity

and societal capacity.37 Another approach differentiates between the ideas of state capacity that exist

within different theoretical schools. A distinction can, for instance, be made between neoliberal

institutionalist and neo-Weberian institutionalist conceptions of state capacity.38 In general, a

plethora of definitions of capacity exist. Furthermore, different verbs are often coupled with

capacity. Capacity development, capacity building and capacity enhancement are often used

interchangeably.39 Yet these concepts can, however, reflect fundamentally different approaches to

capacity. ‘Capacity Development’ is often seen as a long-term activity, explicitly focused on

identifying local strengths and developing these. ‘Capacity Building’, on the other hand, is often

perceived as a more short-term, top-down, focused and externally ‘imposed’ activity.40 Despite the

many conceptions of capacity, it is the argument of this article that the overall approach to capacity

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has changed in recent years. Roughly, this change can be characterised as a move from capacity

building towards capacity development.

The history of capacity

Modern approaches to capacity date as far back as the immediate post-World War Two period, but

the idea of capacity can be traced even further back in the context of the Great Power colonial

politics of the late 19th century. The basic assumption in international development, as the discipline

appeared during the middle of the 20th century, was that developing countries lacked important

skills and abilities and that these could be built by injecting skills and know-how. This line of

thought had been bolstered by the Marshall Plan’s success with swift transfer of capital and

technical expertise, and the successful rise of the East Asian Tigers.41 Consequently, development

aid policies in the 1960s were generally conceptualised as ‘technical assistance’ programmes. Such

programmes did, in the 1970s, change name to ‘technical cooperation’ to connote a more equal

relationship between donor and recipient. Technical cooperation projects focused, as the name

implies, primarily on filling gaps by transferring technical know-how. Typical activities included

the dispatching of foreign consultants, provision of equipment and supplies and the training of

developing country personnel in North America and Europe.42

In the late 1980s and early 1990s ‘capacity building’ emerged as a key concept of development

aid and it became widely recognised as a primary goal. This turn is, for instance, apparent in UN

publications such as UNCED (1992), Agenda 21, and the UN Commission on Sustainable

Development (1991).43 Underlying the approach to capacity – and development in general – was the

assumption that organisational and individual performance can be enhanced by the creation of

Western-style organisations, administrative structures and monetary rewards. Furthermore, it was

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assumed that individual performance improves when a particular set of skills and technologies are

transferred through training activities.44 The ‘neo-institutionalist’ solution to underdevelopment was

to create certain institutions, practices and modes of knowledge to ‘change the rules of the game’,

transform the incentives and consequently induce people to act in certain ways.45 The overall goal of

development in this period, as already discussed above, came to be that institutions and individuals

adopted Western standards for ‘good governance’ and ‘best practice’. Capacity building emerged as

a key tool by which good governance could be brought about.

During the early 1990s the technical cooperation programmes were the subject of a number of

evaluations. The 1991 OECD–DAC report, ‘Principles for New Orientations in Technical Co-

operation’, called for changes in existing practices. Simultaneously, the UNDP embarked upon a

review of technical cooperation in Africa. The UNDP report, ‘Rethinking Technical Cooperation:

Reforms for Capacity Building in Africa’, was published in 1993. The approach to capacity in these

studies had a narrow focus on one-way technical skills enhancement. The 1993 publication is, for

instance, described on the UNDP website as ‘[proposals on how to]… deliver the existing package

more effectively’. Along with the narrow technical focus, the approach to capacity taken at this time

assumed that capacity building programmes could be designed externally. In planning for capacity

building, efforts of ‘consultation with user and beneficiary groups’ should only be made ‘whenever

possible and relevant’.46

This external and top-down approach to capacity underwent revision in the early 2000s. In

2001 the UNDP report ‘Reforming Technical Cooperation for Capacity Development’ was

published with the purpose of revising the notion of capacity. Concepts such as ownership and

sustainability appeared in this period and the importance of recipient initiative and local capacity

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was gradually acknowledged. The book ‘Capacity for Development, New Solutions to Old

Problems’ published by the UNDP in 2002 exemplifies the changing approach to capacity that took

off during the early 2000s. This book does, however, still exhibit an understanding of capacity along

quite narrow technical lines. During the early 2000s almost a quarter of Overseas Development

Assistance went to capacity building initiatives, mainly through technical assistance.47 Interventions

in the early 2000s also displayed many of the characteristics of the ‘traditional’ approach to

capacity. The intervention in Iraq is a case in point. This intervention was an exercise in external

state building and ‘…[b]y its very nature, and despite claims to the contrary’, Toby Dodge notes,

‘external state-building is bound to be “top down”, driven by dynamics, personnel and ideologies

that have their origins completely outside the society they are operating in’.48

Around the mid 2000s a number of important donors began to move away from the externally

designed, top-down, imposed and good-governance-best-practice oriented approach to development

and state building. At this point development, state and peace building and capacity building had

become very overlapping activities. Concurrently, the approach to capacity was moving away from

‘capacity building’ towards ‘capacity development’. This new way of seeing capacity is closely

connected to the new discourse on fragile states and resilience. This is, for instance, evident in the

definition of fragility as conceptualised by the OECD–DAC. For the OECD–DAC it is the very lack

of capacity and/or political will that causes fragility. According to one commentator, Shahar

Hameiri, capacity constitutes the principal element in this definition because political will is

essentially construed as a relation of state capacity.49 It is thus through the development of capacity

that resilience, the antithesis of fragility, can be obtained. For this reason, capacity building and

state and peace building appears to be two sides of the same coin.

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The new approach to capacity

The 2002 UNDP report pinpointed a number of fallacies in terms of how capacity building – or

technical cooperation – had previously been approached. Local ownership, sustainability and

awareness of recipient communities were emphasised as key features of how to do capacity building

more effectively. Awareness of the importance of these issues grew during the early and mid 2000s.

In 2002 the Network on Governance and Capacity Development of the OECD asked the European

Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) to carry out a study of developing

countries’ successes with building capacity and improving performance. The study focused on the

endogenous process of capacity development – what Derick W. Brinkerhoff describes as ‘the

process of change from the perspective of those undergoing the change’.50

The idea of capacity as capacity development gained credence during the 2000s, and it differs

markedly from the way in which capacity has previously been conceptualised and practiced by

international and bilateral donors. Capacity as capacity building has been a top-down, externally

designed and controlled activity primarily aimed at enhancing predefined technical skills and know-

how. In contrast, approaches to capacity development claim to focus on the importance of nurturing

already existing practices and capacities. Capacity development is being perceived as country-led

and country-owned. Donors increasingly believe that sustainability is obtained by engaging closely

with the motivation, support and aspirations of people within the recipient country.51 Capacity

emerges as something intimately connected to what country actors believe and do. Consequently,

outside actors can only play a supporting role in developing and reinforcing capacity.

Capacity development is a process-oriented conception. It is believed to facilitate sustainability

and long-term learning through practice rather than provide quick results (that are assumed to often

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only last as long as the expatriates are deployed). An illustrative example of this is the abolition of

the use of parallel implementation units and the integration of reform teams directly into target

organisations, as was done in the 2000–2008 Public Service Reform Program in Tanzania.52 In this

particular case, as Morgan et al. observe, the shift from the conventional approach to capacity

towards capacity development took place in the mid 2000s.53 The change is also apparent in the

2008 publication ‘Capacity Development. Practice Note’.54 In 2002 the UNDP did, as noted, still

employ a capacity building approach to development though – confusingly – the term ‘capacity

development’ was sometimes used. By 2008 things had changed. The UNDP now explicitly stated

that it preferred to use the concept of ‘capacity development’ rather than ‘capacity building’.55 A

similar change is apparent in the context of specific projects. The capacity project in Kosovo is a

case in point. Between 2004 and 2008 the name of this project was Capacity Building Facility for

Kosovo. After 2008 the project changed name to Capacity Development Facility. The same thing

happened with the UNDP CAP project in Afghanistan.56

The notion of capacity development is identical to the way in which actors such as the OECD–

DAC, the UN, DFID, USAID and, increasingly, the World Bank, approach the issues of fragile

states and resilience. The idea seems to be that donors have little possibility of knowing what a

particular population expects from its state institutions, and that they therefore have a hard time

identifying which institutions might function best within a given environment. Because of this,

responsive and functioning state institutions need to grow out of the local political, social and

cultural context – with all the expectations, beliefs, practices and capacities that exist within it. This

assumption underpins ideas about both capacity development and resilience. The capacity

development approach and the state fragility and resilience discourse likewise emphasise the

importance of ownership, sustainability and the local context and existing practices. Additionally,

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they both hold to the need for coordination and alignment, and have a long-term focus as opposed

being oriented towards short-term results. Best fit and good enough governance are preferred to best

practice and good governance. As state building and development have become issues of fragility

and resilience, capacity development has emerged as the way in which resilience is to be obtained.

Often it is very hard to draw a line that clearly distinguishes capacity development from state

building for resilience.

Coaching and mentoring – a tool for developing fragile states’ capacity for resilience

The turn to resilience and capacity development as a response to a certain notion of fragility has

been outlined in the sections above. To make this approach tangible, this section will identify

‘coaching and mentoring for capacity’ a clear example of how donors try to engage with and

accommodate the new notions of capacity development, state fragility and resilience. Firstly, the

‘coaching and mentoring for capacity’ approach will be presented. Subsequently, how coaching and

mentoring fits into the broader developments described above will be illustrated. We are concerned

neither with whether coaching and mentoring works, nor are we interested in what kind of power

relations it produces. Rather, we are interested in the emergence of coaching and mentoring because

it is a response to the ‘realism’ of current notions of capacity and resilience. Diving into the

workings and theoretical perspectives of this specific ‘tool’, we believe, makes it easier to come to

terms with the particular nature of the emerging approach to state building and the practical

challenges this new approach poses.

How can we understand the turn to coaching and mentoring?

‘Coaching’ found its way from the world of sports into business and management during the 1980s.

In the same period ‘mentoring’, similarly, entered management vocabulary.57 Recent management

literature differentiates between coaching and mentoring.58A rather general conception of coaching

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and mentoring can be seen to set the agenda for its practice in international state building: coaching

and mentoring builds on a longer person-to-person relationship, which the mentor literature mostly

characterises as intimate, informal and friendship-like, as opposed to more prescribed forms of

teaching and supervision. Typically, the coachee/mentee is seen to develop skills, personality

attributes, knowledge of own capabilities, career socialisation and interpersonal skills by being

close to the personal supervision of the coach/mentor. In state and peace building, coaching and

mentoring represents an approach which uses the individual rather than institutions as the entry

point for reform. It implies working on the contextualised individual’s personal capabilities and

dispositions as the primary instigator of organisational and societal change. These features parallel a

general move towards decentralisation and embeddedness in current theorising of capacity and

resilience.

Current ‘coaching and mentoring’ for capacity initiatives mostly target core governance areas,

such as the civil service sector, the justice sector, politicians and the security sector.59 The United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has initiated a number of projects utilising coaching and

mentoring as a capacity building tool. Programmes have been implemented in Kosovo (Capacity

Building Facility for Kosovo), Liberia (Liberia Capacity Development Project), Timor-Leste

(Democratic Governance Project), Afghanistan (The National Institution Building Project) and

South Sudan (IGAD Initiative). The initiatives are often arranged as South–South cooperation,

typically financed by a donor through the UNDP in so-called ‘triangular setups’. The projects

display different levels of coherence, yet common to them all is that the concept of coaching and

mentoring stands central. The most recent, and largest project so far, is the Initiative for Capacity

Enhancement in South Sudan (IGAD Initiative) initiated by UNDP in 2011. The IGAD Initiative is

seeking to develop capacity by deploying 200 civil servants from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda to

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South Sudan for a two-year period of on the job training and mentoring of South Sudanese civil

servants.60 The African Union is working on deploying up to 1000 coaches and mentors recruited

from English speaking African countries to South Sudan. Also, military organisations are

increasingly utilising the concept of coaching and mentoring for security sector reform.61 For the US

military in Afghanistan, coaching and mentoring constitutes a primary concept in building security

capacity.

Coaching and mentoring as practiced in state building presents itself as an inherently process-

oriented approach. Key is the idea that the role of the coach/mentor is not that of a ‘doer’ of line

functions. Instead coaches are supposed to facilitate their coachees or mentees in a process of

learning-by-doing. This gives the coaching approach a long-term perspective because the coachees’

personal development takes precedence over short-term organisational outputs. The assumption is

that the absence of short-term results will be made up for by improved and sustainable long-term

organisational output. The basic purpose of coaching/mentoring is to unlock existing human

potential.62 The job of coaches/mentors in settings such as Kosovo, Afghanistan and South Sudan is

therefore to identify existing capabilities and needs and to respectively nurture and help address

these. In accord with the turn towards capacity development and resilience thinking, the context,

existing capacities and local needs are believed to constitute the starting points of coaching and

mentoring.

The ideas and assumptions now underpinning the approach to capacity, development and state

building constitute a departure from previous practices. In the context of international state

building, the turn to coaching and mentoring may be viewed as part of a larger move towards

thinking about state and peace building in terms of capacity development and state fragility and

resilience. This close relationship between coaching and mentoring on the one hand and new

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thinking on state and peace building and development on the other, has recently been acknowledged

in the context of Afghanistan:

‘After decades of experimenting with development models in transition and post-

conflict countries, UNDP has recognized the value of local ownership and indigenous

capacity in the development of such countries. Of late, UNDP has therefore moved from

its approach of capacity building […] to the approach of capacity development […]

with a focus on empowering and strengthening endogenous capabilities in a sustainable

manner. Assignment of [a] Capacity Development Advisor (CDA), institutional

twinning, [and] coaching and mentoring programmes are integral parts of this

approach’.63

Theoretical perspectives on coaching and mentoring

The emergence of coaching and mentoring in state and peace building as a response to recent

notions of resilience and capacity may be theorized as ‘neoliberal governance’. The notion

‘Neoliberalism’ is used as a political theory concept of governance and not economics. Concepts of

‘neoliberalism’ in political theory mostly take off from the French historian Michel Foucault’s

examination of the German ‘Ordoliberals’ and the ‘Chicago School’.64 These two schools built their

critiques of liberalism on the ‘realism’ that society and economy are in constant flux and that

knowledge, therefore, is context bound. They argued that even the smartest state would always fail

to take adequate account of all economic judgments, and that the local individual would always

prove wiser than the state and for this reason circumvent grand planning. Centralised top-down

attempts to anticipate the future by governing through comprehensive institutions would, they

argued, lead to sub-optimal outcomes and market failure. The ‘neoliberal’ realism called for a

governance paradigm that venerated improvidence, decentralisation, localisation, autonomy and

independence. Rather than issuing decrees, the aim of governance, it was argued, should be to assist

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free agents to develop their own inherent potential. The challenge to governance was how to

persuade individuals into common action, to socialise people into certain forms of agency that

supported the objectives of governance, without restraining their autonomy by laws and regulation.

Hence, this concept of neoliberalism denotes a general theory of governance that rests on a certain

view of expertise and authority.

This way of thinking is echoed by the UNDP Concept Paper for the Capacity Building Facility

in Kosovo. What is labelled ‘soft skills development’ is linked with mentoring:

‘Soft skills differs from “hard” technical skills by stressing the nurturing of creativity,

initiative, courage, sound judgement and other behavioural norms necessary to lead and

leverage public resources for the public good [...] They are skills that are difficult to

teach in the classroom and normally require intimate one-on-one exchanges between a

mentor and the beneficiary’.65

The focus on ‘soft skills’ as behavioural ‘whole of person’ capacities to interact with the world,

bears many similarities to the thinking of neoliberal governance, which aims at enhancing capacity

for decentralised and contextualised self-governance in order to accommodate heterogeneity and

autonomy. In the context of South Sudan, the ‘realism’ may sound like this:

‘Every capacity situation is part of an ongoing dynamic system with many actors, ideas,

values, elements, most of them hidden and informal, interacting to produce some sort of

outcome in terms of public value. And these systems have a history and a memory that

affect the way people engage and participate’.66

From this perspective, the contextualised individual civil servant constitutes a unique

constellation that cannot be written into formulae or grand plans. The prudence of coaching and

mentoring for capacity may be said to lie in its decentralised and ad hoc approach – both key

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aspects of what the academic literature describes as strategies of ‘neoliberal governance’. It may be

worth noting that local ownership and demand-driven approaches in this connection mostly serve

effectiveness and not ethics – i.e. the pursuit for ownership appears to be motivated more by a

desire to create higher long-term programme output than by the idea that an ownership approach is

a morally better way to do development. In this manner the neoliberal approach to building

resilience through coaching and mentoring may simultaneously accommodate both efficiency and

ethical claims to local ownership.

Another noteworthy aspect of the turn to the coaching and mentoring approach is the

differentiation between office output and the individual capacity of the civil servant. This line may

be difficult to draw and operationalise. Nonetheless, conceptually the line is drawn and it carves out

a specific social space for capacity development as a particular form of agency and relation. Focus

is restricted to assisting individual civil servants in developing their personal capabilities. It is

thereby suggested that no particular political worldview is being imposed ‘top down’. The success

criterion for coaching and mentoring for capacity is therefore first and foremost ‘the transfer of

skills from the coach to the coachee’67 as one UNDP project report puts it. In ‘capacity

development’, individual capacity development is viewed as a premise for longer term increases in

institutional capacity and resilience. Yet, according to the realism of current approaches to capacity,

the capacities that need development, the needs that have to be addressed and the horizon of change

– and thus the purpose of the whole enterprise – is not something that can be specified in advance. It

has to grow out of the process in an ad hoc manner. The purpose and success criteria of a capacity

development cannot therefore be determined ex ante. Consequently, the success of a coaching and

mentoring project comes to depend on the success of the ‘twinning’ relationships: if the ‘twins’ fail

to establish a good working relation there is little chance that this relation will result in a ‘transfer of

skills’ (notice how vaguely the purpose and success criteria are stated). Hence, for a project such as

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the IGAD Initiative, the totality of funds and logistics are directed towards the aim of facilitating

good ‘twinning’ relations. The twinning relation and the skills transfer become the defining ‘code’

(the ultimate objectives) for the entire initiative since nothing more substantial can or should be

specified in advance. The emphasis on individual civil servants and not office and line functions

also enables capacity building projects utilising coaching and mentoring generally to claim

neutrality and depoliticised agency.

Conclusion

This article has suggested that a larger shift is taking place in terms of how development and state

and peace building are addressed in third world countries. The turn to coaching and mentoring in

state building, we have argued, embodies and evinces a broader move towards focus on ‘fragile

states’, ‘resilience’ and ‘capacity development’. The concept of neoliberal governance was invoked

to theorise coaching and mentoring as a ‘phenomenon’ in state and peace building that illustrates

the general shift in state and peace building towards resilience and capacity development. A critical

observation is that neoliberal governance strategies such as coaching and mentoring challenges

conventional project governance in terms of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation:

essentially, the ethos and practical dynamics of coaching and mentoring move project governance

away from pre-arranged organisational planning towards decentralised, process-oriented support for

vaguely formulated objectives such as individual development and good ‘twin’ relations. This way

of thinking and implementing projects is difficult to accommodate within the conventional frames

of project management. The international development world more generally and state building in

particular primarily utilise pre-planned implementation schedules and systems of benchmarks and

indicators for monitoring and evaluation. This model is, not least, important for engaging with

donors, who usually demand fairly strict reports on what their money has been used for and whether

aims have been met. New approaches to state building resist ipso facto such forms of project

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governance. Instead, they stress vague objectives because project needs and goals have to

materialise from the process. On a practical level, it is also difficult to monitor and evaluate such

programmes due to the lack of clearly observable and measurable results. How do you, for instance,

measure and track personal development? How do you do it in accordance with a predefined plan?

How do you set standards? Monitoring and evaluation is, of course, possible but it calls for methods

utilising much more qualitative approaches than those usually employed by conventional aid

programs. Implied in this challenge is the problem of how to develop adequate concepts and

practical solutions for contemporary notions of fragility, resilience and capacity. Implied are also

the conceptual difficulties of moving from centralised to decentralised modes of governance. In this

way the ‘figure’ of the coach/mentor, an incarnation of capacity development and resilience

thinking, may be said to embody some of the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the

tectonic shifts we are currently witnessing in international state building.

Notes

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27

1 Clark, Putting Resilience at the Heart of the Development Agenda.

2 To avoid any confusion, note that we advocate neither for the efficiency of coaching and mentoring as an approach, nor do we argue that ‘coaching and mentoring’ will propagate throughout the development agenda. Rather, we simply view the coaching and mentoring approach as one example of how the international state building community tries to accommodate the calls for resilience and capacity development.

3 North, ‘The New Institutional Economics and Third World’, 18.

4 Green, ‘A Cloth Untrue’, 209.

5 Abaza, ‘UNEP/World Bank Workshop on the Environmental Impacts of Structural Adjustment Programmes’, 1499.

6 Peabody, ‘Economic Reform and Health Sector Policy’, 823.

7 Hartzell et al., ‘Economic Liberalization via IMF Structural Adjustment’, 339.

8 Chandler, International Statebuilding, 8.

9 Ikpe, ‘Challenging the discourse on fragile states’, 87.

10 Yannis, ’State Collapse and its Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction’, 818.

11 World Bank, World Development Report 2011, 1.

12 OECD, International Engagement in Fragile States, 3.

13 OECD, Concepts and Dilemmas, 27.

14 World Bank, World Development Report 2011, 108.

15 See e.g. Menocal, ‘State Building for Peace’, 1724; Fritz et al., Problem-driven Governance; and Unsworth, An Upside Down View.

16 Chandler, International Statebuilding, 141-142.

17 JICA, State Building in Fragile States, v.

18 Chandler, International Statebuilding.

19 Ikpe, Challenging the discourse; Overbeek et al., The Fragile States Discourse unveiled; and JICA, State Building in Fragile States. For an early take on the fragile states approach see Cammack et al., Donors and the ‘Fragile States’ Agenda.

20 Menocal, State Building for Peace.

21 Breda, Resilience theory.

22 See e.g. Garmezy, ‘Competence and adaptation’.

23 Martin-Breen and Anderies, Resilience: A Literature Review; Caruana et al., Promoting students’ ‘resilient thinking’; Abesamis et al., Social Resilience; and Chandra et al., Building Community Resilience to Disasters.

24 World Bank and United Nations Development Group, An Operational Note.

25 OECD, Principles for Good International Engagement; OECD, Concepts and Dilemmas and OECD, State Building in Situations of Fragility.

26 Between 2002 and 2009 the word ‘resilience’ appears one time in the 2006 publication, seven times in the 2007 publication (this year focus was in particularly on agriculture) and one time in the 2009 publication (in a reference).

27 USAID, Statebuilding in Situations of Fragility and Conflict, 2.

28 DFID, Operational Plan 2011–2015.

29 Overbeek et al., The Fragile States discourse unveiled, 6 and JICA, State Building in Fragile States, iv-v.

30 Ikpe, Challenging the discourse, 88.

31 Overbeek et al., The Fragile States discourse unveiled, 7.

32 OECD, Principles for Good International Engagement, 2.

33 OECD, Concepts and Dilemmas, 7 and 17.

34 OECD, State Building in Situations of Fragility, 2

35 OECD, Concepts and Dilemmas, 16.

36 Whyte, ‘Landscape Analysis of Donor Trends’, 24-25.

37 Fukuda-Parr et al., Capacity for Development, 9.

38 Hameiri, ‘Capacity and its Fallacies’, 60.

39 Whyte, Landscape Analysis of Donor Trends, 23.

40 Lopes and Theisohn, Ownership, leadership and transformation, 1.

41 Fukuda-Parr et al., Capacity for Development, 3.

42 Whyte, Landscape Analysis of Donor Trends , 27

43 Kenny and Clarke, Challenging Capacity Building, 46.

44 Hilderbrand and Grindle, ‘Building Sustainable Capacity’, 31-33.

45 Kahn, ‘State Failure in Weak States’, 72.

46 OECD, Principles for New Orientations, 7.

47 Whyte, Landscape Analysis of Donor Trends, 13.

48 Dodge, ‘Iraq’, 190.

49 Hameiri, ‘Capacity and its Fallacies’, 60.

50 Brinkerhoff, Capacity Development in Fragile States.

51 Ibid.

52 Brinkerhoff and Morgan, ‘Capacity and Capacity Development’, 6; and Morgan et al., ‘Developing Capacity’.

53 Brinkerhoff and Morgan, Capacity and Capacity Development, 6

54 UNDP, Capacity Development. PRACTICE NOTE.

55 Ibid.

56 CSO and UNDP, Capacity Development Plan (2011–2014), 10.

57 Whitmore, Coaching For Performance, 7-11.

58 Parsloe & Wray, Coaching and Mentoring; Ives, ‘What is ‘Coaching’?’.

59 Rosén, ‘No Words will Deliver Anything’.

60 Tarp and Rosén, Building Civil Servant Capacity; Tarp and Rosén, ‘South Sudan’; and Tarp and Rosén, ‘Coaching and mentoring for capacity development’.

61 Rosén, ‘No Words will Deliver Anything’; Hill and Jones, ‘Mentoring Afghan National Army judge advocates’.

62 Ibid.

63 CSO and UNDP, Capacity Development Plan (2011–2014), 10.

64 Foucault, The birth of biopolitics; Hamann, ‘Neoliberalism, governmentality, and ethics’; Read, A genealogy of homo-economicus, 25-36.

65 UNDP Capacity Building Facility for Kosovo, Concept Note 2004.

66 Morgan, The context for capacity development, 12.

67 UNDP Afghanistan, Capacity for Afghan Public Service (CAP) Project.