Acknowledgments

This book emphasizes the importance of viewing international peacebuilding with an expanded horizon, thereby better situating it in the context of what came before and after. In acknowledging the numerous intellectual and personal debts upon which the researching and writing of this book rests, it occurs to me that they, too, must be viewed with a long temporal lens. I started this project in 2004 as a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, but the initial inspiration came when I was working at the World Bank before graduate school, circa 2000. It was then that I took my first trips to war-torn countries (Cambodia and East Timor), as one small cog in the vast, bright-eyed machinery of the post-conflict reconstruction bureaucratic machine. I was instantly enthralled – even after spending two dank weeks living in a fevered haze in a container in Dili, East Timor, and suffering a waist-deep fall into an uncovered drain in the pitch-black night that left me limping for weeks. I knew that this major contemporary policy challenge was what I wanted to study at graduate school, which I began in 2001. Having done so – and, quite simply, figured out what on earth was going on and how to fix it all – I was resolved to then return to the policy world to continue working operationally in fragile countries.

I did exactly that, finishing my PhD at Berkeley in 2007 and going back to the World Bank. And then I realized, as I gained more exposure to the realities of governance and institutional reform in post-conflict and developing Asia and the Pacific, that my intellectual journey was very much incomplete. In many ways my own trajectory mirrored that of the international peacebuilding endeavor: the hubris that came with the end of the Cold War peaking at the turn of the century, followed by the often grim reality and soul-searching that soon followed. My task became how to find my own stance between Pollyanna's unrealistic expectation and Cassandra's cynicism. I wanted to understand better what I had seen on the ground, instead of wringing my hands in despair. The intellectual side of it called to me – and I was extremely fortunate to be offered in 2010 a tenure-track position at the Naval Postgraduate School with the promise of being able to focus my scholarly research on contemporary policy challenges.

This book is the combined result of my dissertation, my time in the policy world, and my return to academia. At Berkeley, I was supported by a dissertation committee composed of four brilliant scholars who had the grace to let me do what I wanted without letting me take any shortcuts. Steve Weber, my advisor, has been an exemplary mentor, always pushing me, often by example, to ask big questions and to find creative and elegant answers to them. Margaret Weir, Peter Evans, and Pradeep Chhibber together inspired me to think systematically about the state and how elites govern society and equipped me with the intellectual appetite and tools to do so. Only now do I fully recognize my great fortune in having these extraordinary scholars as guides in the early stages of my own scholarly journey. I sincerely hope that they will be proud of the way this book turned out. While at Berkeley, I also had the formative opportunity to learn from Steve Vogel, Nick Ziegler, John Zysman, and the late Don Rothchild of UC Davis, among others. I was very fortunate to receive major funding from Berkeley's Political Science Department and Institute of International Studies; as well as the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and the United States Institute of Peace.

The Berkeley Political Science Department also gave me the great and lasting gift of camaraderie with a group of people who are both exceptional peers and my dearest friends, to whom I shout out my deepest affection and gratitude: Jennifer Bussell, Rebecca Chen, Thad Dunning, Brent Durbin, Jill Greenlee, Rebecca Hamlin, Amy Lerman, Abe Newman, Ely Ratner, Jessica Rich, Sarah Snip Stroup, and Regine Spector. Thanks for all the discoveries and capers, intellectual and otherwise – I simply cannot imagine a better group of people with whom to have shared it all.

I interviewed and talked with over one hundred individuals over the course of this project and I am extremely grateful for their time and patience in sharing their knowledge with me; I also thank them for their commitment to the best version of peacebuilding. Since joining the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School I have learned from and been inspired by our students, many of them returning from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and all of them diligent and dedicated public servants. Pieces of the analysis in this book were first published in the International Journal on Multicultural Societies (now Diversities) and Conflict, Security & Development, and I thank UNESCO and Taylor & Francis, respectively, for their permission to repurpose that analysis and empirical material here. Parts of the argument here were presented at different stages at the Australian National University, the London School of Economics, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the World Bank, as well as at the annual conferences of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association, and I am grateful for those opportunities to discuss the work and for the feedback I received from those in attendance.

As I reconsidered the puzzle that motivated this study and turned my dissertation into this, quite different, book, I have incurred numerous additional debts of gratitude that it is a pleasure to acknowledge. When Barbara Nunberg hired me to work with her at the World Bank in 1998 she quite literally set my life on a new pathway. She has shaped my intellectual outlook and my political and global sensibilities and she has been for almost two decades a dear friend and mentor. I am also indebted to her and another amazing boss and friend, Nick Manning, for my introduction to the three countries on which this study is built. My respect and thanks, too, to the other colleagues and friends I picked up through the World Bank: especially, Jana Orac, Amanda Green, Elisabeth Huybens, Mark Abdollahian, Mick Moore, Shabih Mohib, Saysanith Vongviengkham, Habib Rab, Catherine Anderson, Doug Porter, and Lorena Viñuela; and my YPeeps, Peter Lafere, Jamus Lim, Elizabeth Ninan, and Peter Dulvy. I am also grateful to my other DC pals, especially James Kvaal, Oliver Fritz, Sara Porsia, and Ely Ratner, for all the rollicking conversations and warm friendship. Each of these folks has influenced the way I see the world and the practice of development, politics, and public policy – and I admire them greatly for their commitment to making the world a better place and the integrity with which each of them pursues that goal.

Two major intellectual realizations shaped the rewriting of my dissertation into this book: both a product of what I was reading and teaching and what I had learned on the ground. First, I came to see that peacebuilding operations can only be truly understood if they are viewed as temporal sequences that link conflict, intervention, and aftermath. In this regard, this book is singularly inspired by Paul Pierson's Politics in Time, which led me to more consciously apply a historical institutionalist lens to this study. Second, I also grasped that post-conflict countries could fruitfully be viewed as a special subset of the developing world, which brought me back to the foundational concept of political order and a political economy lens.

As I grappled with the implications of these new viewpoints, I received a great deal of help along the way. I am grateful to John Haslam, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for two extremely thoughtful and constructive anonymous peer reviews, and to the production team who helped shape this into a book. I am deeply indebted to those who read large portions of this book or helped me think through different parts of its argument, providing insightful comments as well as generous encouragement: Kent Eaton, Maiah Jaskoski, and Ben Read for that wonderful impromptu book workshop; and, also, Ed Aspinall, Susanna Campbell, Bjoern Dressel, Paul Hutchcroft, Naomi Levy, Clay Moltz, Jessica Piombo, and Sarah Stroup. Their feedback has improved this book immeasurably. I am grateful to others for timely advice on the mysteries of academic careers and publishing and, more importantly, their warm collegiality and support: Séverine Autesserre, Joshua Busby, Anne Clunan, Jeff Colgan, Erik Dahl, Mike Glosny, Jim Goldgeier, Bruce Jentleson, Matt Kroenig, Mohammed Hafez, Aila Matanock, Abe Newman, Jordan Tama, Chris Twomey, and Rachel Whitlark. I owe more than I can say to my book buddy extraordinaire, Brent Durbin.

And I owe my deepest gratitude to my family. Antonia Jindrich, Elkova Sallaberry, Karen Manville, and Shelly Grabe: thank you for your unconditional friendship and encouragement. Karen, Tom, Heather, and Wyatt Rowley, and Jessi Hempel: you embraced me into your family and into your hearts and you are always and everywhere in mine. Tyzoon Tyebjee, I miss you; and, Joyce Hemmer, thanks for keeping the delicious dinners and elder statesmanship going. My Barma cousins: you boost me up and make me laugh, a winning combination. Papa Taher: you were proud of my future even when it was yet unknown and I hope that I've begun to live up to your dreams for me. Sakina: thanks for always having my back and embodying the best of stolid support. Inseeyah: thank you for all the laughing, crying, and soul-good living we've been blessed to enjoy together; and for bringing the amazing Sven and Iva Stieldorf and the resultant adventure into our lives. Tarifa and Haider, Mum and Dad: thank you for setting the example of the life rooted in community to which I aspire and for your unfaltering support and encouragement in everything I undertake, no matter how far afield it takes me. Scout: thanks for the beach time that honed my California state of mind. Zalia: thank you for the gift of presence and for all the joyful days on which you distracted me from this book and also invigorated me to finish it. Erin: thank you for your love and the gift of stillness, for your unshakeable faith that I would finish this book, and for moving heaven and earth to help ensure that I could. (We'll always have Cambodge.) To have shared these fortunate and joyful years with all these remarkable people makes this book theirs as much as it is mine.