Regulating Statehood / Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific (PDF)

SHAHAR HAMEIRI is Lecturer in International Politics and Fellow of the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia. His research has focused on state building and new modes of governance in the Asia-Pacific. His work has been published in journals including Millennium, The Pacific Review and Third World Quarterly.

'Regulating Statehood puts Hameiri ahead of the field in engaging with the practices and policy drives behind international statebuilding. Arguing that traditional approaches to the state fail to grasp the fact that international intervention aims to transform and reshape states rather than merely rebuild them, this book weaves in depth case-study material with a powerful intellectual framework. It is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the problems and limits of international regulation in this area.'

-David Chandler, Professor of International Relations and editor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, UK

"This book investigates the partial collapse of the legitimacy of the liberal peace project while statebuilding continues regardless. It is a crucial contribution to the debate surrounding these dynamics, introducing a grounded comparative and critical discussion of how and why this happens, its implications for international order, and for the future of statebuilding. The author shows that the praxes of statebuilding have already shifted beyond current academic and policy prescriptions, and that an understanding of this is crucial if the experience of statehood by its subjects is to be situated in context and not in distant ideals."

- Oliver Richmond, Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of St Andrews, UK

'This book takes on the dominant belief that rescuing failed states is simply a selfless humanitarian exercise. Shahar Hameiri argues that interventions to rescue failed states are deeply contested exercises of political power and resistance that transform both the states being intervened in and the intervening states themselves. It is a provocative and important book.'

- Michael Wesley, Executive Director, Lowy Institute for International Policy, Australia