States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance

The United Nations is sent to build peace in some of the hardest conflicts on earth. Adam Day has been in the trenches and draws on years of observations to show how simplistic attempts to build states make the situation worse. But this is no glib critique of international liberalism or predatory states: Day's deft use of complexity theory offers a deep understanding of how systems of governance are ordered and how international interventions could do better if they took the time to understand the relationships on which order is built. Every UN, World Bank, and foreign office staffer should read this crucial book. * Rachel Kleinfeld, author of A Savage Order: How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security * A masterwork. This book will fundamentally change your thinking on why the UN too often fails when intervening in conflict zones, and how they must reform their approach to be effective in the current era. Combining empirically-based insights from complexity science on how entrenched systems do and do not change with his lived experience and research in some of the most intractable settings of our time, Adam Day delivers a brilliant treatise and actionable steps. This should be mandatory reading at the UN, as well as in all university courses in international affairs and peace studies. A tour de force! * Peter Coleman, Founding Director of The Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity at The Earth Institute at Columbia. Author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization * States of Disorder makes a bold claim: Because systems of governance evolve and adapt over time, United Nations interventions regularly contribute to exclusion and violence. Thankfully, Adam also shows that avoiding such unintended consequences-and helping transform authoritarian states for the better-is possible. His unique insights, born from an innovative use of complexity theory combined with deep first-hand experience, should be required reading for anyone involved in peacebuilding or conflict resolution. * Severine Autesserre, Author of Peaceland and The Frontlines of Peace * Adam Day offers a healthy critique of the self-serving mantra of interventionists who patronizingly talk of fragile states and claim to extend state authority but regularly fail. After the Afghan debacle, it is high time to re-visit traditional assumptions, and acknowledge that, as the author reminds us, there is no disorder on earth; life is constantly re-ordering itself . We just don't see it, and ignore at our own peril the networks and relationships that intervention disrupts. * Jean-Marie Guehenno, Former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Director of International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs * States of Disorder offers a powerful insider's critique of UN state-building efforts. We've long known that the liberal statehood approach to conflict resolution has run its course. But Adam offers hope: if the UN wishes to exert influence and fulfil the goal of reducing violence, rather than impose external models, it can gradually understand the complex systems of governance and web of relationships at work in societies riven by conflicts and evolve new ways of managing growing levels of violence in many parts of the world. * Comfort Ero, President and CEO of International Crisis Group *