State reconstruction in international law : conjuring with political independence.

This is a study about large-scale international involvement in the reconstruction of a
state without an independently effective domestic government. Specifically how the
practice in Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Kosoyo, East
Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq, relates to the right of the target state and its people to
political independence. The international involvement, particularly its legal
justification, is analysed from the perspective of the right to political independence
and the core UN system values of self-determination of peoples and international
peace. From this analysis, an opinion is formed on what explains intenlational
acceptance of a practice that struggles to remain consistent with the legal structures
and political values of the inter-sovereign relations paradigm of the international
system. This is argued to rest on the pursuit of democratic reconstruction. The
absence of a legal concept of democracy, in the practice analysed, is the basis for the
thesis that: when there is not an independently effective domestic government, there is
a need for greater international legal regulation and accountability of those - both the
domestic and international actors - that exercise the right to political independence for
the purpose of state reconstruction. This is to compensate for the lack of assurance
that the process reflects the wishes of the state and its people, which is a threat to the
core UN system values of self-determination of peoples and international peace.