Statebuilding - constructing or reconstructing institutions of governance capable of providing citizens with physical and economic security - is widely held to be one of the most pressing policy questions facing the international community today. Those concerned with such issues cross the political spectrum. They include political realists who argue that there is more to fear from failing states than from conquering ones. They also embrace activists who see the dysfunction of state institutions as lying at the heart of the global poverty trap. Indeed, it is the intersection of these concerns on the part of the security and development communities that has made state-building a core policy focus across the policy agendas of major Western states, international institutions and international NGOs.

From post-conflict governance, in places like Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to international support for weak states, under the state capacity-building programmes of the US government's Millennium Challenge Account, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's poverty reduction strategies, or the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, to the European Union enlargement strategies of ‘member-state building' in the Balkans, the policies and programmes of statebuilding are proving central to the future of global politics.

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding brings together academics and practitioners to analyse the impact of the internationalisation of domestic governance mechanisms, to assess the development and the consequences of these policies, both intended and unintended, in an international and cross-disciplinary framework. In addition to analysing the impact of the blurring of the sovereign division between the domestic and the international, and the broader development of international statebuilding mechanisms, the entire range of statebuilding practices will be considered, including: international administrative powers; country ownership of poverty reduction strategies; the export of the EU acquis communautaire; civil society building; democracy promotion; anti-corruption policies; election monitoring; educational reform; psycho-social counselling; rule of law support; judicial and police reform; civil service and administrative reform; post-conflict peace-building; financial and economic reforms.