In most of the cases studied in this book, interveners have felt compelled to press for some set of political and institutional arrangements that will enable them to leave the country in which they have intervened in better political condition than they found it. More specifically, they have sought to negotiate or impose procedures for creating order within the affected state, selecting a new government, and establishing the basic political and legal limits within which that government will operate. These new arrangements amount to nothing less than a blueprint for the political reconstruction of the affected country.

From a rule of law standpoint, the blueprints reflect the proposed macro-political and legal underpinnings of a new or transformed state; they represent an attempt to design a new political and legal order within which other elements of a rule of law system, such as police and courts, must operate. Blueprints lay out the critical steps interveners and their local partners expect to take to move a state from the shock of military intervention to self-government under the rule of law. Typically, they include provisions for maintaining security, forming an interim government, conducting elections to choose a new government, and in many cases, drafting the constitution under which that government will operate. In some cases, the blueprint may take the form of a more or less coherent political package.