CILAS Event with Harold Trinkunas: “Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty”

You are invited to attend the lecture by Harold Trinkunas, “Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty”

Date: Thursday, March 3, 2011
Time: 3-5 pm
Place: Deutz Room, Institute of the Americas Complex, UCSD

There has been increased concern in policy circles and in academia over “ungoverned spaces.” This has usually referred to failed states, but more recently has also come to mean areas lacking “effective sovereignty.” For political actors, ungoverned spaces connote a novel and inherently dangerous threat to the security of states and to the international system. However, in the world of the early twenty-first century, state sovereignty has softened. States have been joined by a number of other actors, benign and malign, in providing governance and security through bottom-up and horizontal forms of organization. In some places and at some times, alternative authority and governance structures contest the power of the state. At other times, they may coexist with state authority and co-opt state institutions, taking on hybrid forms. This book analyzes the origins and consequences of alternative forms of authority in the twenty-first century. Instead of focusing on ungoverned spaces, we suggest that the threat posed by some non-state actors today can best be understood in light of the origins and nature of alternative structures in contested spaces. In certain configurations, ungoverned spaces can extend the reach of and magnify the harm caused by violent non-state actors, while in other instances, ungoverned spaces are simply the byproduct of a global trend towards weakened sovereignty and the retreat of the state.

Harold Trinkunas is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His research focuses on Latin American politics, particularly democratization and civil-military relations, but he has also written on terrorism financing and ungoverned spaces. Recent publications include “Latin America’s Growing Security Gap” (with David Pion-Berlin), Journal of Democracy 22.1 (January 2011), and “Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking during Constitutional Crises in Latin America” (with David Pion-Berlin), Comparative Politics 42.4 (July 2010). He authored Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela (University of North Carolina Press, 2005), and he co-edited and contributed to Terrorism Financing and State Responses (Stanford University Press, 2007), Global Politics of Defense Reform (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), and Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2010). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 1999. Harold Trinkunas is also Deputy Director for Academic Affairs of the Center for Civil Military Relations at the Naval Postgraduate School. The Center conducts research and provides education on security sector reform, peace support and stability operations, counter-terrorism strategy, and civil-military relations, both in Monterey and abroad.

For more information, please go to http://cilas.ucsd.edu/events/lectures/