Study title

The data consists of qualitative interview notes in English for 246 interviews: 111 interviews across four locations in Sri Lanka and 135 interviews across four locations in Nepal. The locations are comprised of the respective districts (three per country) in which the study was undertaken, plus the capital cities of the two countries (for national data-mapping). 13 of the Sri Lanka interviews and 20 of the Nepal interviews are with the brokers who were the focus of the study. Political economy critiques of the mainstream literature on statebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, highlight its ahistorical, functionalist and technocratic orientation (Cramer, 2006; Migdal et al; Schlichte, 2005; Roxborough, 2012; Pugh et al, 2008). This critique emphasises the historically-divergent and contested trajectories of state formation/building, and the importance of studying the state as it actually exists rather than as an ideal type. The corollary to this is the need to disaggregate the state through coalitional analysis, to appreciate the role that coercion and the distribution of rents play in shaping political (dis)order and the critical importance of informal networks, brokers and power relations that underpin formal state structures and institutions (North et al 2012, De Waal 2009, Mac Ginty 2010). However, important though these political economy insights are, they rarely deal explicitly with questions related to the territorialisation of power, or the spatial dimensions of scarcity, abundance and dependence (Le Billon, 2012). The implicit spatial assumption is that post-war statebuilding and development involves the creation or rebuilding of institutions at the centre, followed by the diffusion or radiation of power outwards to the margins of the state. This research challenges this narrative, drawing upon insights from political geography, political ecology and border studies which examine the interactions between territory, space, scales, resources and...