State-building has been seen as the path to both security and development in East Timor. However, this article argues that this approach neglects situating key government institutions within a social context. There has been little effort on the part of central institutions to engage with local, community and customary governance. A nation-building agenda needs to support the emergence of networks of communication and exchange between government, social institutions and people and between different levels and kinds of governance. Building deep connections between different forms of governance, and so grounding government in communities, is slow and difficult, yet essential.
A situation of extraordinary devastation faced the East Timorese and international agencies following the rampage by the departing Indonesian military and associated militia in late 1999. The Indonesian state left in 1999, taking much of its administrative experience with it and destroying most of its infrastructure. Nevertheless, most of the East Timorese population had and has a living socio-political culture and local administrative mechanisms. Local, customary practices have traditionally provided much of the social order of the country, particularly in rural areas; this continues to be broadly the case. Moreover, the resistance to Indonesia drew significantly on aspects of this culture for communication and support networks.
Efforts at state formation in East Timor have largely overlooked the relevance of culture or custom. Neither the UN transitional authority nor the Fretilin government that followed it were sensitive to or broadly aware of the value of customary life or local community governance.
- The international language of resistance was communicated in the more widely familiar terms of human rights and anti-colonial struggle. The assertion of local cultural values and practices did not serve as a significant basis for the international claim to independence or identity.
- International assistance focused largely on building national government institutions, and was highly centralised in Dili. The rural majority of the population received relatively little attention.
- Local party political elections were repeatedly identified by regional East Timorese as a key instrument by which the positive values of local culture and governance mechanisms were marginalised.
- This was not a rejection of elections as such. Some level of incorporation of traditional mechanisms, however, was widely seen as essential to effective governance, law and order, particularly in rural areas.
Nationhood, effective governance and democratic governance reside not in government institutions but in the multi-layered relationships between government, other fundamental social institutions and the population.
- Community life is the basis for much of the social cohesion and resilience in East Timor and the context for the food production that sustains most of the population. The health of communities, which includes evolving customary socio-political and economic life, may be central to nation-building.
- This requires links and mechanisms that represent community and customary life (and the concerns, generally regarding land, social peace and food security, which they articulate) to government and vice versa.
- This approach need not be a matter of fundamentally changing the political structures already in place, but of establishing processes and networks of exchange.
