Mats Berdal is Professor of Security and Development in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. He is Visiting Professor at the Norwegian Defence University College, and author/editor of several books.Dominik Zaum is a Reader in International Relations at the University of Reading, and a Senior Research Fellow at the UK Department for International Development (DFID). He is author of several books on state- and peacebuilding.

"This is an important book because it focuses on the most critical and, sadly, often-neglected aspect of state building -- the political dimension. The high quality essays in this volume not only illuminate state-building cases and practices, they also make a compelling case that shaping political economies and fostering political settlements conducive to reform are foundational and essential to success." - Brig. H.R. McMaster, US Army."This book, which contains a magisterial introduction by Mats Berdal and Dominik Zaum, brings together some of the top thinkers in the world of peacebuilding. It takes the commonly expressed idea that 'development' is a necessary route to peacebuilding, and shows how neo-liberal interpretations of 'development' have often promoted instability, not least by promoting large-scale unemployment."- David Keen, LSE, UK"Focusing on the interactions between external 'statebuilders' and local power brokers - and how these processes shape post-war developments - Mats Berdal and Dominik Zaum have produced an impressive collection of thematic and country cases that significantly enriches our understanding of the consequences of statebuilding interventions."- Astri Suhrke, Christian Michelsen Institute, Norway'With a particular focus on economics, the book is a well-written, analytically impeccable and insightful account of the limits of state-building by some of the best scholars in the field.' - Erik Jones, Survival Journal June 2013

• Foreword, Alvaro de Soto 1. Introduction, Mats Berdal and Dominik Zaum Section I: A Political Economy Perspective on Selected Statebuilding Practices 2. State-Building and the Limits of Constitutional Design, Oisin Tansey 3. Elections and Post-conflict Political Development, Benjamin Reilly 4. Transition from War to Peace: Stratification, Inequality and Post-War Economic Reconstruction, Stina Torjesen 5. Informal Actors and the Post-conflict Moment, Christine Cheng 6. State-building and Corruption: A Political Economy Perspective, Michael Pugh 7. State-building and the Political Economy of the Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict States, Thorsten Benner and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira Section II: Approaches to Statebuilding 8. The United Nations and International State-Building after the Cold War, Mats Berdal and Hannah Davies 9. The IFIs and Post-Conflict Political Economy, Susan Woodward 10. Regional Approaches to State-building I: the European Union, Richard Caplan, Spyros Economides, and Othon Anasthasakis 11. Regional Approaches to State-building II: The African Union and ECOWAS, Kwesi Aning and Naila Salihu Section III: Case Studies 12. Back to the Future: the Failure to Reform the Post-war Political Economy of Iraq, Toby Dodge 13. Building a State and ‘State-building’: East Timor and the UN, 1999-2012, Antony Goldstone 14. The Political Economy of State-building in Kosovo, Dominik Zaum with Verena Knaus 15. From New Dawn to Quicksands: The Political Economy of State-building in Afghanistan, Antonio Giustozzi and Niamatullah Ibrahimi 16. The Political Economy of State-building in Burundi, Peter Uvin and Leanne Bayer 17. The Political Economy of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, Atta El-Battahani and Peter Woodward 18. The Political Economy of Statebuilding in Haiti: Informal Resistance to Security-First State-building, Robert Muggah 19. Georgia and the Political Economy of State-building, Neil MacFarlane 20. How the EU and the US Stopped a War and Nobody Noticed: The Containment of the Macedonian Conflict and EU Soft Power, Kristof Bender