Description
Scholars have become increasingly interested in the phenomenon of illiberal state-building. These processes are often cast as distinct from, and in fundamental tension with, liberal state-building endeavours. Yet existing accounts of democratization tend to foreground the failure of liberal projects without attending to the prior illiberal state-building efforts they encountered, or asking why those efforts succeeded or failed in the first place. This article addresses that gap through a paired, structured comparison of Cambodia and East Timor as critical cases. Both cases feature extensive external illiberal state-building efforts, and eventually large-scale international involvement in support of liberal state-building. Together, they show that liberal and illiberal state-building endeavours are deeply intertwined at both the international and domestic levels, and that the outcomes of illiberal state-building can dramatically impact the prospects for democracy. In Cambodia, the relative success of illiberal state-building allowed a reconstituted authoritarian regime to triumph despite massive UN investment (etc) and large-scale mass support for democracy. In East Timor, despite intensive military occupation and large-scale investment, Indonesian efforts not only failed but unified and consolidated resistance around an explicitly democratic alternative. Ultimately, it highlights both news factors to consider when assessing all state-building efforts and insights into the success and failure of illiberal and liberal state-building.