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The proposed research draws on a decade of research and writing on non-state armed actors in Lebanon, Bosnia, Colombia, and sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the study of non-state armed actors engaged in violent internal conflict is particularly vulnerable to social scientific ?biases?. These biases are of two sorts: conceptual and empirical. On the empirical side of the ledger, participant-observer research ? a must to unravel the complex realities of internal war?is susceptible to charges of partiality and adhockery. The paper demonstrates that such charges can be avoided by drawing a distinction between the notions of objectivity and impartiality and adopting the latter as the measuring rod for qualitative fieldwork. Conceptual biases, the paper claims, are less obvious but more consequential. These biases derive from political science?s reification of the state as the ?natural? form of political organization. Using illustrations drawn from previous research on the topic, I explain how such conceptual lenses affect the manner in which we perceive and study non-state armed actors and propose potential avenues out of this quandary. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Africa failed states have become prevalent over the last ten years. The paper looks at the African cases from an international society perspective. The cases of failed states in Africa are reviewed with regard to the question to what extent external democratization pressures, in Africa, have contributed more to making than to mastering state failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European origins of contemporary international society have been well documented. A key component of this multifaceted genealogy is the outward expansion of European political authority. This is traditionally held to have begun with the Iberian conquests of the fifteenth century, and would eventually culminate in the global imperial order of the early twentieth century. Existing accounts of European expansion primarily concentrate upon cases where European power was predominant, and thereby downplay or otherwise disregard situations where European agents were forced to work within indigenous models of political authority. This can lead to a misleading, one-sided image of a complex process of cross-cultural engagement. By the eighteenth century, European Powers had developed extensive commercial networks in many parts of the globe, but often found it difficult to dictate terms to various partners. In west Africa, vulnerable trading posts were dependent upon local elites, as trading networks developed around gold and slaves, yet Europeans consistently found themselves beholden to local political forces. This can be seen as a fragile, yet nonetheless identifiable international order, with non-European models of political authority enjoying international parity and/or preponderence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]