Brett Bowden is a Senior Lecturer in Politics in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Hilary Charlesworth is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice, Australian National University. Jeremy Farrall is a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Justice, Australian National University.

• Introduction Brett Bowden, Hilary Charlesworth and Jeremy Farrall; 1. The 'state-building enterprise': legal doctrine, progress narratives and managerial governance Outi Korhonen; 2. Democratisation, state-building and politics as technology Nehal Bhuta; 3. International law, human rights and the transformative occupation of Iraq Peter G. Danchin; 4. Defining democracy in international institutions Brett Bowden and Hilary Charlesworth; 5. Democracy and legitimation: challenges in the reconstitution of political processes in Afghanistan William Maley; 6. Impossible expectations? The UN security council's promotion of the rule of law after conflict Jeremy Farrall; 7. Legal pluralism and the challenge of building the rule of law in post-conflict states - a case study of Timor-Leste Laura Grenfell; 8. From paper to practice: the role of treaty ratification post-conflict Helen Durham; 9. Selective universality? Human rights accountability of the UN in post-conflict operations Annemarie Devereux; 10. Security starts with the law: the role of international law in the protection of women's security post-conflict Amy Maguire; 11. Grappling in the Great Lakes: the challenges of international justice in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda Phil Clark; 12. Conclusion: hope and humility for weavers with international law John Braithwaite.

Review of the hardback: 'This timely collective work addresses the important question of what role international law plays in post-conflict reconstruction … By presenting a range of perspectives, and even conflicting views, this book appropriately portrays this theme in its complexity and fosters understanding and debate about it. Therein lay its strengths.' The Journal of the Institute of International and Comparative Law