State-building is perceived as a core responsibility of the international community. However, the approach frequently fails. While there is an abundance of literature analysing the mechanisms accounting for success or failure of state-building, it is widely forgotten that in principle this practice aims for results that normally emerge within endogenous processes of state-formation.
Therefore, this paper investigates pathways to successful endogenous state-formation in non-western contexts, and in the light of the results reflects on the prospects for external state-building operations.
Drawing from well-established theories of state-formation, two central pathways for the formation of states are identified: one via the necessities of warfare, the other via social coalitions. It will be illustrated that state-formation in Eritrea resulted from warfare, while the state in Somaliland is owed to an elite coalition. Concluding, it will be argued that both pathways to state-formation are hardly to reconcile with international state-building interventions.
