Building the nation in Timor-Leste and its implications for the country's democratic development

This article contributes to the discussion of the international democratisation of the so-called `post-conflict¿ or `fragile¿ countries by addressing one of the most important but least studied issues in the literature*the relationship between democracy and nation-building. It does so by analysing the major socio-political aspects of the democratic nation-state-building process in Timor-Leste in the post-1999 period. It argues that contemporary international democratisation policies and practices prioritise the `stateness¿ problem, conceptualised by reference to a set of organisational, procedural and functional concerns. Little attention is, however, paid to the `nationness¿ question. As the experience in Timor-Leste indicates, it is the national ideas that determine the structural and operational parameters of democratisation, which is, after all, a process of socio-political transformation by which political power and wealth are redistributed amongst a variety of competing societal interests.