How to build a State in a non State environment?

[Bob's World]

On so-called "failed states", I don't think we call states "failed" because they lack western-style governance structures. We call them "failed" because of famine, genocide, civil war, pestilence, and other evidence of failure. I'd be the last to say they need a western-style government or state, but we also can't pretend that if we don't intervene they will happily revert to functioning self-governance. In many of these areas traditional tribal governance structures (arguably never as benign or popular as Western myth pretends) have been degraded by innumerable interventions and meddling, and barely function if they function at all. What's left is rule by whoever has the most armed men on any given spot at any given time. It's pretty raw, and calling it "self-governance" is probably putting a bit too kind a face on it.

Building a functioning government is a place where there is none? Why do we assume that we can do that at all? Before we ask "how do we do it", we need to ask whether we can, and whether we need to try.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...p_and_rankings

The criteria really much more rooted in "do they look and act like us." The west scores itself high as it spirals into economic collapse, and scores Asian countries with robust economies low because they have cultures and governances different than ours.

We do need to meddle less, it is over-rated as to what "good" we can bring to others. We also need to stop using "well, we must intervene because their natural systems have become so disrupted by previous interventions" to rationalize additional invasive behavior.

We do the same thing with the environment. We abuse it until it breaks, then think we must engage just as hard to fix it. The fact is that such natural things are self-healing, and heal best if one just "fences them off" and gives them the space and time to sort it out. In nature we call it succession. If a forest is cleared away of the climax species it will return in time to that same climax state, but only after it works its way back up to it in a healing succession of species that each exist in their specific time to serve a specific function in that healing process. Repairing the soil and creating the conditions that allow the climax species to ultimately take root and grow and thrive. A very similar dynamic is true with people and governance. We want everything to be a climax species of governance just like ours, and we want it sooner rather than later. It doesn't work like that. They need time and they they need space, and if we can fence them off to some degree from further abuse, great; and we need to accept that the path taken is their own, and the climax achieved varies by "cultural ecosystem."