If we are going to improve policy and operations in future R & S environments , it ’ s vital to recognize that core fact and commit to a critical re-examination of how we think about governance and its reconstruction . More important by far , however , is to recognize that the successful path is not one of finding faster ways to build the institutions . Rather , we need to find better and faster ways to address fundamental problems that tend to trip up the process , such as :
• While true democracies do tend on average to be more peaceful than other countries , times of transition are also times of fragility and thus countries in transition towards democracy tend to carry a higher than usual risk of violence . 67 68 Libya , Iraq , Afghanistan , Egypt and South Sudan are only a
69 70 71 short list of apt examples .
• While change itself ( in society or government ) does not tend to correlate with violence or fragility , the rate of change and order of change do , and the ( perceived ) sudden appearance of representative government can trigger nationalist violence along ethnic or sectarian lines . 72 This is especially true in countries with no history of democratic experiences , where government and “ the people ” are perceived as two separate things , one of which rules over the other . 73 Violence is extremely likely in transitions where shortcuts were taken or where the process of transition at an institutional level outstripped the society ’ s ability to absorb the shock of change , or the ability of institutions to resist manipulation by sub-national elites . 74
• Fukuyama may have argued that liberal democracy constituted the end of history , but most of the world ’ s nations — including the democracies — do not resemble Westphalian nation states either in polity or in historical conceptions of governance .
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