Failed States

11 Key excerpts on "Failed States"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Failed States and Institutional Decay

  Understanding Instability and Poverty in the Developing World

  • Natasha M. Ezrow, Erica Frantz, Natasha M. Lindstaedt (née Ezrow)(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  51

  States that experience a persistent decline in the size of their economies (particularly when they are less developed to begin with) have proven incapable of prioritizing the health of the economy. This robs citizens of opportunities to contribute to a productive economy and better their social standing in legitimate ways. It also usually means that those who are poor will become even more impoverished.

  The five dimensions of state failure that we discuss here touch on the key components of state failure that have been raised in the literature. Though there is little consensus on the definition of what constitutes state failure, this discussion should provide a picture of the types of environments that researchers, journalists, and policy makers are referring to when they mention Failed States.

  Typologies of Failed States

  A few scholars have created typologies of those states that lie at the end of the failed state continuum (i.e. weak and Failed States). (For ease of discussion, throughout this section we use the term Failed States to refer to these states, as opposed to weak and Failed States.) The motivation for identifying different types of Failed States is the idea that these states are not one and the same and that differences among them have implications for the kinds of policies external actors should pursue to engage them.52

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  International Migration and Global Justice

  • Satvinder Juss(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 The Failed States Phenomenon

  INTRODUCTION

  In a speech in London in early 2005, ‘Not Every Country in the World can be Democracy’, Professor John Gray of the London School of Economics, drew attention to the state of the world today, where there are an increasing number of broken, fragmented and corroded states.1 In much of Africa, Asia and the Balkans, he commented, there is nothing resembling a functioning modern state. Instead, there are failed or semi-Failed States. Yet, this is not a new phenomenon. It has been known to the international community for a good many years now. A failed or collapsed state is not simply a state that is institutionally destabilized. This destabilization need not be by civil strife or guerrilla warfare. It can arise in other ways also. The World Bank in 19972 highlighted three distinguishing features of a collapsed state. These are: (1) ‘states that have lost (or failed to establish) legitimacy in the eyes of most of the population ... and are therefore unable to exercise authority’; (2) ‘states that have been run into the ground by leaders and officials who are corrupt, negligent, incompetent, or all three’; (3) ‘states that have fragmented into Civil War, and in which no party is capable of re-establishing central authority’.3 State collapse, however, is a process. When does one determine that a state is in full collapse?

  It seems to me that one can have a country with internal dissension, such as in Kosovo, where the state has ‘fragmented into civil war’ but where one party still has central authority, and yet be said to be in a state of collapse. One can even have a state without civil war, such as in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where the central authority does not have sovereign control over outlying areas which are a law unto themselves. In both of these situations one can realistically talk of a failed state phenomenon where the violation of human rights may be at the behest of either state elements or non-state elements. The World Bank definition is unduly limiting in this respect. It is more accurate to say that a failed state is one that has experienced a ‘fundamental loss of institutional capability’.4 It is a de facto and not a de jure

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Nigeria Since Independence

  Forever Fragile?

  • J. Hill(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  These states are more legal entities than material realities. The concept of state failure has undertaken a profound intellectual and political journey over the past 30 years. From its early origins in the academy, it is now embraced by policy makers, security providers, aid and development workers, journalists and ordinary people the world over. Terms such as weak state, failing state, failed state and collapsed state are today used and applied in a myriad of ways, to the extent that state failure is simultaneously an academic thesis and mainstream label. It is a process and a description, an explanation of what has happened and a prediction of what is to come, a lament and a warning, a reprimand and a cry for help. State failure is a modern phenomenon. It is unique to the post-Second World War period. It has only been made possible because of changes in global attitudes towards colonialism. This shift in moral reasoning was orchestrated by the United Nations and 10 Nigeria Since Independence Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and it led to the establishment of a new sovereignty regime. Under its rules, self-determination became an unequivocal right for everyone. No longer could Europe’s imperial powers argue that their colonial subjects were unsuited to or unready for independence. This led to decolonisation being carried out at breakneck speed and the establishment of states which did not possess the political, economic and social wherewithal to survive. And some have not. This chapter has two main aims. The first is to explain why state failure occurs. And the second is to specify what makes a state failed rather than quasi or weak or failing or collapsed. In pursuit of these goals, the chapter is divided into three main sections.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  International Law, Power, Security and Justice

  Essays on International Law and Relations

  • Serge Sur(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  6 ‘Failed States’: More Problems than Solutions* T HE TERM ‘FAILED STATE’ has made quite a splash in con-temporary international discussions. Like many such terms, it is of American origin and quite recent at that, its popularity dating back a little more than a decade, roughly to the days of the horrendous massacres in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, most infamously in Rwanda. Though the phenomenon has existed for a long time, it was not until the 1990s that it was given a common moniker. Empirically speaking, the term is clear enough: it refers to a situation in which the state cannot fulfil its essential functions, most critically that of assuring the physical security of its popu-lace. This situation can arise either from domestic strife or from some exter-nal shock—be it intervention by a neighbour, a massive influx of refugees or a domino-effect of regional instability—the result being in turn a viable threat to international peace and security. However, such instability can arise from manifold sources. Is it reasonable, for instance, to compare nat-ural disasters with political unrest? Is it appropriate or helpful to unite under the umbrella term ‘failed state’ all those diverse situations? Should one cre-ate a unifying intellectual concept to subsume these divergent problems? This leads us to pose two rather simple questions. First, should the term ‘failed state’ be considered a formula or a concept; if the latter, what does it mean? Secondly, what is the purpose of the term? Does it serve only to describe and enhance our understanding of a series of situations? Or does it serve to develop a common response, a plan of action aimed at ‘fixing’ these Failed States? If the former is the case, then the term can be taken to represent an analytical concept, and it interests students and academics.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Troubled Regions and Failing States

  The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflict

  • Kristian Berg Harpviken, Bernard Enjolras, Karl Henrik Sivesind(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  The chapter has three parts. First, I briefly discuss some key contributions to the Failed States discourse, focusing in particular on the notions of the state that underlie the analyses and on the implications of these notions for how Failed States are understood. Second, I discuss the conceptual strategy employed in the Failed States discourse, arguing that the idea of statehood that underlies that discourse should be treated as a category of practice rather than as a category of analysis. Finally, in the last section, I sketch an alternative approach to the study of state formation. ‘Failed States’ IN THEORY We may distinguish between two different approaches to state failure on the basis of how their proponents understand the state. The first approach, STEIN SUNDSTØL ERIKSEN 28 represented by authors such as William Zartman and Robert Rotberg, sees the state as first and foremost a service provider. According to Zartman (1995, p. 5) , a state has collapsed ‘when the basic functions of the state are no longer performed’. In other words, a state has collapsed when it is no longer able to provide the services for which it exists. A similar approach is to describe states that have not been able to establish the features associated with statehood as ‘Failed States’. Rotberg (2003, 2004) , a leading authority on Failed States, defines state failure as the inability of states to provide positive political goods to their inhabitants. Both Zartman and Rotberg distinguish between a variety of services that states may provide, ranging from security to the rule of law, the protection of property, the right to political participation, infrastructure, and social services such as health and education. These services constitute a hierarchy, Rotberg argues. The provision of security is the most fundamental service states provide, in the sense that security is a condition for the provision of all other services.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Governance in Post-Conflict Societies

  Rebuilding Fragile States

  • Derick W. Brinkerhoff(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  One key issue, then, is the degree to which a given state exhibits these characteristics. The label, failed state, has been employed to describe extreme cases of collapse, such as Somalia, where civil and social authority have disintegrated. Many more countries, though, confront less drastic situations, and vary in the extent to which they have failed or risk failing to provide for the welfare of their citizens, supply basic security, or facilitate equitable economic growth. At this less extreme, opposite end of the spectrum, the state is more fragile than failed, and becomes nearly indistinguishable from the status of many, if not most, poor countries, which suffer from institutional weaknesses and capacity gaps.

  No state’s degree of fragility or failure is static; so another issue has to do with the trajectory that characterizes the direction and degree of change taking place. Is the state on a downward slide into a serious crisis, which could provoke collapse and the outbreak of conflict; or is it weak but recovering, with an upward trajectory toward an improved situation? Given the long time horizon for state reconstruction and for putting in place the foundations for sustainable development, anticipating and planning for ups and downs along that path is important. The record shows that countries which have experienced violent conflict face a 40 percent risk of renewed conflict within five years (Collier et al. 2003).

  Similarly, conflict and post-conflict are relative terms as well, and subject to nuance. Post-conflict rarely means that violence and strife have ceased at a given moment in all corners of a country’s territory. In practice, most post-conflict reconstruction efforts take place in situations where conflict has subsided to a greater or lesser degree, but is ongoing or recurring in some parts of the country. As Doyle and Sambanis observe, “no peace is perfect. Public violence . . . never gets completely eliminated. . . . We should thus consider peace to be a spectrum ranging from insecure to secure” (1999: 1). The peace-building literature has evolved a more nuanced perspective on conflict, moving away from a linear conception, similar to the recognition of the artificiality of the relief-to-development continuum (see Jeong 2005). Greater understanding of conflict dynamics has led in turn to intervention designs that recognize this complexity. For example, Leatherman et al.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Geopolitics and the Anglophone Novel, 1890–2011

  • John Marx(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  . . left 1.5 million people homeless” and “the imposition of emergency rule . . . dragged on” (“Index 2008” 68). As the analysts behind the index sum up, “[f]ailing states are a diverse lot” (“Index 2007” 56). “After all,” they say, “as Tolstoy might have put it, every failing state is failing in its own way” (“Index 2009” 82). With this assertion, the “Failed States Index” attempts not only to sidestep political scientific jos- tling to stabilize the definition of state failure but also to avoid becoming mired in the discipline’s more general and fundamental disagreement about what a “state” is, about whether it is best defined in Lockean, Weberian, or more broadly juridical terms. 4 Instead of legalistic definition, the “Failed States Index” encourages statistical comparison among demonstrably different combinations of civil war and natural disaster, bureaucratic corruption, and economic malaise. 5 The philosophical shorthand of Michel Foucault versus Giorgio Agamben goes a long way in capturing the difference between efforts to norm state failure and to define crisis in legal terms. 6 Foucault theorizes the eighteenth-century rise and subsequent 4 A not entirely successful maneuver, it turns out, since any number of political scientists have questioned the FSI methodology and its findings. Foreign Policy published the comments of one such critic, Robert Rotberg of the Kennedy School of Government, who craves a more “objective system of rankings” to “better help policymakers analyze the options available and choose the prescriptions that best fit the country in peril” (“Index 2009”). Sebastian von Einsiedel rehearses these definitional debates (“Policy” 14–15). He attributes the most cited definition of state failure in Zartman, for whom “[c]ollapse means that the basic functions of the state are no longer performed” (Collapsed 5).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  State Failure in the Modern World

  • Zaryab Iqbal, Harvey Starr(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Stanford Security Studies

    (Publisher)

  At the heart of these conceptualization and measurement issues is the diversity of purposes across existing studies and the definitions of state failure used in those studies. Some analysts start at the most basic level, with the role, nature, and capacity of states under the Westphalian ideal of sovereignty (as well as “conventional sovereignty” and its alternatives; see Krasner 2004), and the legal status of entities that might not approximate that ideal (for example, Grant 2004). But most who study Failed States begin with some clear problem or set of problems that lead to a conclusion that a state has “failed.” Some analysts focus on the loss of governmental control, which is heavily involved with conflict, both internal and external, while others focus on the inability of states to deal with societal conditions, especially those of extreme poverty. In state failure we have a very messy, contested concept in that it brings together the broad international relations subfield of conflict analysis with the equally broad subfield (which straddles international relations and comparative politics) of political economy. We not only have a concern with conflict—its causes, consequences, and management—but also with economic (and political) development. Both international conflict and IPE have large gaps and questions that defy broad generalizations. For example: why are some conflict rivalries enduring? Why are protracted social conflicts so impervious to many standard conflict management techniques? 3 What is the path (or paths) to economic development? Why do poor countries stay poor? Why can’t we do better with economic aid? As such, it may be that the subject of state failure is best approached not from broad generalization, but Most and Starr’s notion (1989) of sometimes true, domain specific “nice laws.” 4 The diversity of purposes has other dimensions as well

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Failed States and Fragile Societies

  A New World Disorder?

  • Ingo Trauschweizer, Steven M. Miner(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Ohio University Press

    (Publisher)

  PART I State Failure? 3 CHAPTER 1 The Future of War Understanding Fragile States and What to Do about Them David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy INTRODUCTION “Fragility” is not a term typically applied to countries as dissimilar as Haiti, Pakistan, and Yemen. Yet each is fragile in its own unique way. Yemen ranks poorly using legitimacy standards, which include measures of gender equity, political representation, human rights, and rule of law, among others. Paki-stan is a poor performer in political and social development and is plagued by low-intensity turmoil, political instability, and other internal challenges to its authority structures. A more typical choice for a high-ranking fragile state would be Haiti, and, indeed, this is a country that suffers from weaknesses in multiple areas of political and social performance but is especially weak in economic capacity. Depending on the specific point in time at which one examines each of these states, they could also be described as “weak,” “failing,” or “failed” states (see fig. 1 on page 4). In comparing these three examples, we can see that some states more easily fit our understanding of what we think a fragile state should be. These are states that have typically fallen into complete collapse brought on by “man-made” calamity, such as civil war or a mismanaged economy, sometimes ex-acerbated by environmental degradation or natural disasters. These states are, despite international efforts, utterly incapable of managing their political and economic space. 4 CHAPTER 1 State fragility can also be understood as a composite measure of all aspects of state performance, resulting in those countries that are typically “failed” being ranked at the top of the list. This list would be recognized by most policymakers and academics; indeed, if one surveys the vast literature on fra-gility and the various rankings available, it is clear that such lists do not vary that much in terms of which countries appear at the top.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Self-Determination, International Law and Post-Conflict Reconstruction

  A Right in Abeyance

  • Manuela Melandri(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The terms belong to the language of international relations but have no value in the lexicon of international law. The question of whether they should, or whether international law should pay special attention to states without an effective government is one open to debate. Several reasons have been adduced to why international law should have specific provisions for so-called Failed States. For instance, in the 2005 report of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, the UN recognised that the existence of weak states poses risks to collective security. 34 In addition, it is generally acknowledged that weak/Failed States with ineffective governments are likely to have internal consequences as they may not be able to protect and promote human rights or provide for the basic needs of its population on its territory. 35 Some have noted that state failure also has a negative impact on representation in bilateral and intra-state fora, because the absence of an effective government affects consular relations between states as well as states’ representation in the UN General Assembly and other specialised UN agencies. 36 Brooks further notes that there are certain specifically legal challenges posed by ineffective states: ‘they [Failed States] cannot enter into or abide by treaties, they cannot participate in the increasingly dense network of international trade, environmental or human rights agreements or institutions’. 37 Essentially, a situation whereby a failed state is incapable of acting as a subject of international law leads to the exclusion of the people of the failed state from international interaction. 38 In this respect, Giorgetti adds that Failed States are problematic for international legal order not only because they unable to fully perform their obligations towards their citizens, but also because they are unable to live up to their obligations towards the international community as a whole

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Tragedy of Failure

  Evaluating State Failure and Its Impact on the Spread of Refugees, Terrorism, and War

  • Tiffiany O. Howard(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  As a consequence, terrorist groups implement two strat- egies. First, if there is an inflow of refugees into a weak state, they move through these porous borders posing as pilgrims, refugees, aid workers, etc., which has been the case in Iraq. And secondly, if there is a large movement of IDPs within a failing state, terrorist groups settle within the recently vacated, but now completely ungoverned territory, which has been the case in STATE FAILURE, REFUGEES, AND THE SPREAD OF TERRORISM 65 Colombia. Terrorist cells are able to successfully implement these strategies and engage in violence because of the weak rule of law in these fragile states and the complete absence of a security infrastructure capable of monitoring territorial borders. One caveat of this relationship between terrorism, failing and Failed States, and forced migration is that not every failing state with substantial forced migration is susceptible to terrorist threats. The main thread that links states in crisis that are at risk for the emergence of terrorism within their borders is the existence of ungoverned territory. Ungoverned territories are typically characterized as large stretches of land within a state that are without rule of law exercised by a central government. These spaces are typically located in rural areas, beyond the influence of the central government, or in mountainous locations where there is rough terrain. The existence of ungoverned territory within a weak state is a recipe for disas- ter. Without the presence of the government and security personnel, non-state actors such as rebel groups, terrorist cells, paramilitary units, and insurgents can organize themselves in these spaces and engage in illegal and dangerous activities without having to contend with the interference of the central government.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book