Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Peacebuilding

The Rise of the Post-Cold War Peace and Security Architecture

Integrated Transition

The ‘Peace Map’ of a Typical UN Peace Building Operation

Fragmentation Not Integration

Chapter 3 State Building

The Evolution of Post-Conflict State Building

Building Denmark

Building Leviathan

The Core State Functions Model

The Grand Bargain model

State Building Limits Our View of State Formation

Chapter 4 State Formation in National Peace Transitions

State Formation as Historical Process Imperfectly Shaped by Human Design

The State as an Incipient System of Rules for State Authority

National Peace Transition as a Normative Field of State Formation

Chapter 5 Cities and State Formation

Federalism and Local Government

Decentralization and Local Government

The Constitutive Role of Local Government in State Formation

Incipient Local Authority

The Formation of Rules for Local Authority in National Peace Transitions

Local Peace Transition

Chapter 6 The South African Peace Transition

State Racism and the Long Arc of Conflict in South Africa (1910-1993)

The Fragile Apartheid State

The Peace Transition: Political Negotiations and Constitution-Making (1990-1996)

Chapter 7 Civic Conflict

Local Government and the Enforcement of Apartheid

Civic Struggle as People’s War

The Civic Dimension of the Conflict

Civic Conflict Defined the Pathways for the Local Peace Transition

Chapter 8 The Local Peace Transition in South Africa

Local Peace Agreements

The ‘Local Government’ Constitution

Elected Transitional Local Council

Local Peace Transition

Chapter 9 Cities and State Formation in National Peace Transitions

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Derek Powell is an Associate Professor in Law and Head of the Multi-Level Government Initiative in the Dullah Omar Institute of Constitutional Law, Governance and Human Rights at the University of the Western Cape. He served as a deputy director-general, senior civil servant and policy advisor in the South African government under the Mandela and Mbeki administrations (1996-2009), where he worked on key policy processes to establish and reform the systems of democratic local government and intergovernmental relations. He was head of the research department at the Constitutional Assembly during the process to draft a democratic constitution for South Africa (1994-96). His research interests focus on comparative constitutional studies, international peace and security law and politics, local government, intergovernmental relations, public finance management, and more recently on using large datasets in researching complex problems of governance that cut across the law, state, economy, and society. He is co-editor of Jaap de Visser, Nico Steytler, Derek Powell, Ebenezer Durojaye eds., Constitution Building in Africa (Nomos, 2015).

Reviews

‘This is a helpful and important study. Powell deftly criticises overly prescriptive and deterministic models for post-conflict peace building, highlighting the need to take real people, real needs and real struggles into account, not as problems but as enabling factors for rebuilding a sustainable polity.’
David Chandler, University of Westminster, UKSince it has become clear that the international instruments relating to fragile states are failing, it is time to seek new avenues. Professor Powell offers us a new, comprehensive approach that will be much welcomed by both academics and practitioners.Henk KummelingDistinguished University Professor, professor of Constitutional Law , Utrecht UniversityChair Electoral Council, The Netherlands