The study combines theoretical frameworks from public administration and ethnology to create a new perspective on state-building processes in fragmented post-war societies and develops an administrative ethnography as a methodological approach. By examining the interactions of citizens, administrative officials, and members of international organizations in the city of Mostar, processes of community building, interest articulation, and the formation of state ideas and forms become visible, which do not align with either the externally supported order of a multi-ethnic, consensus-democratic state or the local leadership elites' notions of ethno-national communities. Based on this ethnography, the author argues for a departure from the academic and applied paradigm of state building and presents new pathways for a reflexive, integrative public administration that addresses locally-global entangled governance and administration.