{"id":119,"date":"2017-02-15T19:49:03","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T19:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/global\/?p=119"},"modified":"2018-01-17T10:06:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T10:06:02","slug":"liberia-ebola-and-the-pitfalls-of-state-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/global\/2017\/02\/15\/liberia-ebola-and-the-pitfalls-of-state-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberia, Ebola and the Pitfalls of State-building"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Priska Dibiasi<\/em><\/p>\n

The Sussex Africa Centre and the Institute of Development Studies recently invited Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey from the University of Oxford to discuss her latest research at a joint event. She presented her findings at the event entitled \u201cLiberia, Ebola, and the Pitfalls of State-building: Reimagining Public Authority \u2018Inside\u2019 and \u2018Outside the Post-war State\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Pailey argued that public authority goes beyond the domain of a state and suggests that \u2018public authority\u2019 also has a horizontal and a spacial dimension. Therefore \u2018Inside\u2019 also includes actors such as communities, non-governmental organisations, and civilians, while \u2018outside\u2019 includes the diaspora \u2013 individuals as well as organisations.
\nShe demonstrated her argument by providing a case study of Liberia and the recent Ebola outbreak in 2014. She found that initially traditional actors of public authority were failing in their task to tackle the Ebola crisis and argues that an extended \u2018public authority\u2019 filled this vacuum for instance by offering churches, mosques or football fields as service delivery sites, by forming tasks forces, by increasing remittances as the economy was shut down during the height of the crisis.<\/p>\n

Finally, she pointed out that the response in Liberia to the Ebola crisis is indicative of nation-building as Liberians had for the first time a \u2018common enemy\u2019 in the disease.<\/p>\n

I found Neajai Pailey\u2019s argument very interesting and am looking forward to reading a more detailed account of her research once it will be published in the African Affairs journal. I am particularly interested to find out more about her argument regarding the common response as indicator of nation-building and how this might connect to Charles Tilly\u2019s (1985) argument of war-making and state-making and its possible indications for theoretical debates about the expansion of the international security discourse to include for instance threats relating to health or the environment.
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Priska Dibiasi is an MA student in International Security at the School of Global Studies. She completed her BA in Political Management at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen, Germany. Previously, she was an intern at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and at the Italian international development charity Help without Frontiers. Her research interests include conflict, mediation and sustainable peace (-building) and more general in the international politics of the sub-Sahara African region, the USA, Europe and Eurasia.<\/p><\/div>\n

Priska Dibiasi is an MA student in International Security at the School of Global Studies. She completed her BA in Political Management at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen, Germany. Previously, she was an intern at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and at the Italian international development charity Help without Frontiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Priska Dibiasi The Sussex Africa Centre and the Institute of Development Studies recently invited Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey from the University of Oxford to discuss her latest research at a joint event. She presented her findings at the event…<\/span><\/p>\n

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