Constructing the capable state: Contested discourses and practices in EU capacity building

Capacity building has risen to prominence in the vocabulary of the international community as a way to promote security and development in fragile and post-conflict environments. Capacity building seeks to promote a bottom-up approach drawing on and strengthening existing local capacities. This article argues that capacity building can be understood as part of a broader governmentality that seeks to determine from the outside what constitutes a ‘capable’ subject. However, the effects of these governance practices are not straightforward as they are constantly shaped by the way local actors on the ground engage with these. Drawing on both policy documents and interviews conducted in Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia, the article examines European Union capacity building initiatives in these post-conflict environments. By examining the rationality and problematisations behind this discourse, the article unveils how such assumptions (in particular, regarding the lack of institutions, power and knowledge) result in interactions and contestation between the local and the international in practice, which lead to new outcomes that neither straightforwardly reflect the existing status quo nor represent a linear imposition of power by external capacity builders.