The authors clearly acknowledge that most countries do not resemble the ideal Weberian state.
The report does not start from a normative position. By being so state-centric, the report misses an opportunity to recommend policies for prevention which are grounded in the actual functioning of political systems. Analytically, this leads to an irreconcilable contradiction: the fictive notion of (more or less) stable state authority is used to understand complex political systems in the real world (Willis 2015, p.147). The report correctly diagnoses the causes of violent conflict however, it views political systems where such conflict takes place through the lens of the ‘ideal’ state. How we understand the state has implications for how we understand conflict, and in turn, the strategies we choose to prevent conflict. One strand of this literature is of particular interest to me: the role of the modern state in conflict.
These questions are not new, of course, and a huge amount has been written on this topic. What causes violent conflict? And how can it be prevented in an interdependent world? These are the key questions taken up in the new World Bank – United Nations report: Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict.
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