Implications for a world ordered by states

This chapter suggests that the findings from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are typical of United Nations (UN) statebuilding around the world, including in Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Central African Republic, and Somalia. Across these settings, evidence of highly networked, interrelated systems of governance contrasts with the UN’s boilerplate ‘extension of state authority’ mandates. Despite some advancement at the policy level towards concepts of systemic resilience that might allow for more nuanced approaches that align with these findings, they have not meaningfully filtered into statebuilding and peacebuilding practice. Drawing from complexity thinking, Chapter 8 offers several concrete policy implications for the future of statebuilding, demonstrating how a systems-based approach can transform the practice of conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The book concludes that the insights from complexity thinking have application more broadly in the realm of global governance. Here, liberal institutionalists have relied upon statebuilding as a practice that reaffirms liberal world order, prevents the growth of competing models, and heads off perceived security threats from ungoverned states. Today, that order appears increasingly in disarray as major powers retreat from multilateral institutions in pursuit of narrow national interest, while non-state actors have assumed a far greater role in global dynamics. Complexity thinking offers hope that new forms of order may emerge from these constellations of increasingly interconnected actors. Indeed, it suggests that if the UN is to play an influential role in global governance, it would best think in complex systems terms about how to become more connected to the nodes that matter.