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.