I'm frankly a bit startled that anyone can write an article that starts by saying that "Few think of counterinsurgency as linked to constitutional design." I would have thought that nearly 100% of political scientists, and nearly 100% of politicians in conflict-prone countries, see the two as intimately linked, given that the vast majority of constitutions around the world (including, I might add, those of Canada and the US) were written precisely to minimize the possibility of ethnic/religious/linguistic violence or secessionism and to assure long term political stability.
It is also a bit odd to start of citing Rory Stewart ("the author, who served as deputy governorate coordinator in Maysan province, Iraq, 'operated at a level that had nothing to do with new constitutions' ") in support of this lacunae. Not only is Rory's quote intended to highlight the disconnect between the CPA and what was happening on the ground in the provinces, but the author rather misses what is central to Rory's argument: that outsiders are typically so poorly informed, and carry too much ideological, political, and cultural baggage, to do a very good job of designing systems of governance for other people—especially when they tend do so in a hurry, and when they get up and leave eventually and don't have to live under the system they have designed.
Much of the rest of the article is fairly straightforward, and fairly sensible, although it would have been much more effective if it had addressed Rory's argument, instead of using him as an introductory straw-man.
I get a bit nervous when people feel it the need to dress perfectly obvious social science in new COIN garb just for the sake of it. (I feel like the political science version of Wilf on infantry doctrine!)
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