How to build a State in a non State environment?

[Stan]

Mod's Note: copied here to facilitate the discussion from another thread, which starts with Post No.3.

Two days ago, while waiting for Santa Claus to come, I had a very interresting (and very drunk) conversation about how to build a State in a non State environment.
The question we finally came with was:
When you try to build a state from scratch, like in Afghanistan or Sudan (different setting, context, history... all agreed in advance), is dictatorship a necessary path or just the wall we all end up hitting?
The point was that despite using the democratic tool box, what ever the exemple you look at closely, you always end in a fake state (most of the time with a military like dictatorship or, at the best, a kleptocracy).

Somehow, it is different from that particular threat and I leave to TheCurmudgeon the right to expel me and my question out to another threat.

M-A,
Here's a great site from the CGSC History Department and this particular post is short and direct regarding The problem of creating a nation state, such as Afghanistan, is not a new one.

It however doesn't directly address Africa while comparing Afghanistan to Europe in the 16th century. I doubt the Europeans had many problems with cleptocracy to the level of The Sudan and Zaire, but I assume all have some experience with a military dictatorship.

Tom was barely in Zaire two days when he told the Country Team to forget what was in their diplomatic tool kit because we are in a cleptocracy, and, when the Country Team decided unanimously that the FAZ (Zairian Armed Forces) had to go, Tom began to laugh hysterically with something like "the mouse trying to bell the cat" (one of those days where I wished I was somewhere else ).

As odd as this may sound, if we didn't have a military dictatorship and/or cleptocracy, why would we need to build a State from scratch