Conclusion

This concluding chapter highlights the significance of this book’s theory for scholarship and policy. It addresses the implications that result from the book’s central argument about the underappreciated but sizeable role of foreign subversion and its effects on state authority. Importantly, the argument and evidence presented in the previous chapters push back against the normatively unsustainable notion that more conflict will yield effectively governed states. They also challenge scholars to rethink the European statebuilding experience, the baseline for much of the state development literature, through the lens of subversion. The chapter then discusses the prospects for third parties to improve state authority and close the gap between juridical sovereignty and domestic sovereignty. Although there may be some room for third parties to reduce the incentives for states to cripple the domestic authority of their adversaries, system-level constraints that operate in the post-1945 world suggest that subversion of state authority is likely to remain an attractive weapon of statecraft for the foreseeable future.