A failed state is a
political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a
sovereign
''Sovereign'' is a title which can be applied to the highest leader in various categories. The word is borrowed from Old French , which is ultimately derived from the Latin , meaning 'above'.
The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or ...
government no longer function properly (see also
fragile state
A fragile state or weak state is a country characterized by weak state capacity or weak state legitimacy leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks. The World Bank, for example, deems a country to be ‘fragile’ if it (a) is eligible for ...
and
state collapse
State collapse is the breakdown of government authority in maintaining law and order. It is often used to describe extreme situations in which state institutions are no longer able to function. Rather than a temporary disruption such as a riot ...
). A state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly. For a stable state, it is necessary for the government to enjoy both effectiveness and legitimacy. The
Fund for Peace
The Fund for Peace is an American non-profit, non-governmental research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FFP "works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security."
The Fund for Peace works towards sustainable security ...
characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
* Loss of control of its territory, or of the
monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force
In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area.
While the mon ...
* Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
* Inability to provide public services
* Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the
international community
The international community is an imprecise phrase used in geopolitics and international relations to refer to a broad group of people and governments of the world.
As a rhetorical term
Aside from its use as a general descriptor, the term is ...
Common characteristics of a failing state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it has an inability to raise taxes or other support and has little practical control over much of its territory and hence there is a non-provision of public services. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and
non-state actor
A non-state actor (NSA) are organizations and/or individuals that are not affiliated with, directed by, or funded by any government.
The interests, structure, and influence of NSAs vary widely. For example, among NSAs are non-profit organizations, ...
s, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and without the state in question can occur.
Metrics have been developed to describe the level of governance of states. The precise level of government control required to avoid being considered a failed state varies considerably amongst authorities.
Furthermore, the declaration that a state has "failed" is generally controversial and, when made authoritatively, may carry significant
geopolitical
Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...
consequences.
[
]
Definition and issues
According to the political theories of Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...
, a state is defined as maintaining a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force
In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area.
While the mon ...
within its borders. When this is broken (e.g., through the dominant presence of warlord
A warlord is a person who exercises military, economic, and political control over a region in a country without a strong national government; largely because of coercive control over the armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of h ...
s, paramilitary
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
groups, corrupt policing, armed gang
A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectivel ...
s, or terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
), the very existence of the state becomes dubious, and the state becomes a ''failed state''. The difficulty of determining whether a government maintains "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force", which includes the problems of the definition of "legitimate", means it is not clear precisely when a state can be said to have "failed".
The problem of legitimacy can be solved by understanding what Weber intended by it. Weber explains that only the state has the means of production necessary for physical violence. This means that the state does not require legitimacy for achieving a monopoly on having the means of violence (''de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
''), but will need one if it needs to use it (''de jure
In law and government, ''de jure'' ( ; , "by law") describes practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. In contrast, ("in fact") describes situations that exist in reality, even if not legally ...
'').
Typically, the term means that the state has been rendered ineffective and is not able to enforce its laws uniformly or provide basic goods and services to its citizens. The conclusion that a state is failing or has failed can be drawn from the observation of a variety of characteristics and combinations thereof. Examples of such characteristics include - but are not limited to - the presence of an insurgency
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irregu ...
, extreme political corruption
Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain.
Forms of corruption vary, but can include bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, in ...
, overwhelming crime rates suggestive of an incapacitated police force, an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics, and consolidation of power by regional actors such that it rivals or eliminates the influence of national authorities. Other factors of perception may be involved. A derived concept of "failed cities" has also been launched, based on the notion that while a state may function in general, polities at the substate level may collapse in terms of infrastructure, economy, and social policy. Certain areas or cities may even fall outside state control, becoming a ''de facto'' ungoverned part of the state.
No consistent or quantitative definition of a "failed state" exists; the subjective nature of the indicators that are used to infer state failure have led to an ambiguous understanding of the term.
Some scholars focus on the capacity and effectiveness of the government to determine whether or not a state is failed. Other indices such as the Fund for Peace's Fragile States Index
The Fragile States Index (FSI; formerly the Failed States Index) is an annual report published by the United States think tank the Fund for Peace and the American magazine ''Foreign Policy'' from 2005 to 2018, then by The New Humanitarian since 2 ...
employ assessments of the democratic character of a state's institutions as a means of determining its degree of failure. Finally, other scholars focus their argument on the legitimacy of the state, on the nature of the state, on the growth of criminal violence in a state, on the economic extractive institutions, or on the states' capacity to control its territory. Robert H. Bates refers to state failure as the "implosion of the state", where the state transforms "into an instrument of predation" and the state effectively loses its monopoly on the means of force.
Charles T. Call
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*k ...
attempts to abandon the concept of state failure altogether, arguing that it promotes an unclear understanding of what state failure means. Instead, Call advances a "gap framework" as an alternative means of assessing the effectiveness of state administration. This framework builds on his previous criticism of the state failure concept as overly generalized. Call thus asserts that it is often inappropriately applied as a catch-all theory to explain the plight of states that are in fact subject to diverse national contexts and do not possess identical problems. Utilizing such an evaluation to support policy prescriptions, Call posits, is then responsible for poor policy formulation and outcomes. As such, Call's proposed framework develops the concept of state failure through the codification of three "gaps" in resource provision that the state is not able to address when it is in the process of failure: capacity, when state institutions lack the ability to effectively deliver basic goods and services to its population; security, when the state is unable to provide security to its population under the threat of armed groups; and legitimacy when a "significant portion of its political elites and society reject the rules regulating power and the accumulation and distribution of wealth."
Instead of attempting to quantify the degree of failure of a state, the gap framework provides a three-dimensional scope useful to analyze the interplay between the government and the society in states in a more analytical way. Call does not necessarily suggest that states that suffer from the challenges of the three gaps should be identified as failed states but instead presents the framework as an alternative to the state failure concept as a whole. Although Call recognizes that the gap concept in itself has limits since often states face two or more of the gap challenges, his conceptual proposition presents a useful way for more precisely identifying the challenges within a society and the policy prescriptions that are more likely to be effective for external and international actors to implement.
Further critique of the ways in which the 'failed state' concept has been understood and used to inform national and international policy decisions is brought forth in research by Morten Bøås and Kathleen M. Jennings. Drawing on five case studies — Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, and the Niger Delta region of Nigeria — Bøås and Jennings argue that "the use of the 'failed state' label is inherently political and based primarily on Western perceptions of Western security and interests". They go on to suggest that Western policy-makers attribute the 'failed' label to those states in which 'recession and informalisation of the state is perceived to be a threat to Western interests'. Furthermore, this suggests hypocrisy among Western policy-makers: the same forms of perceived dysfunction that lead to some states being labeled as failed are in turn met with apathy or are knowingly expedited in other states where such dysfunction is assessed to be beneficial to Western interests. In fact, "this feature of state functioning is not only accepted, but also to a certain degree facilitated, as it creates an enabling environment for business and international capital. These cases are not branded 'failed states.
Measurement
The measurement methods of state failure are generally divided into the quantite and qualitative approach.
Quantitative approach
Quantitative measurement of state failure means the creation of indexes and rankings are particularly important. However, a number of other indexes are generally used to describe state weakness, often focusing on the developmental level of the state (e.g. the ''Freedom House Index'' (FHI), the ''Human Development Index'' (HDI), or the ''World Bank Governance Indicators''). Additionally, regional evaluation might give concrete details about, inter alia, the level of democracy such as the Report of Democratic Development in Latin America (''Informe de desarrollo democrático de América Latina''). However, the Fragile States Index has received comparatively much attention since its first publication in 2005. Edited by the magazine ''Foreign Policy'', the ranking examines 178 countries based on analytical research of the Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST) of the Fund for Peace.
The Fragile States Index
The Fragile States Index (FSI; formerly the Failed States Index) is an annual report published by the United States think tank the Fund for Peace and the American magazine ''Foreign Policy'' from 2005 to 2018, then by The New Humanitarian since 2 ...
published its eleventh annual report in 2015, prepared by the Fund for Peace
The Fund for Peace is an American non-profit, non-governmental research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FFP "works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security."
The Fund for Peace works towards sustainable security ...
and published by ''Foreign Policy Magazine
A state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through mu ...
''. The Index categorizes states in four categories, with variations in each category. The Alert category is in dark red, Warning in orange, Stable in yellow, and Sustainable in green.
The FSI total score is out of 120, and in 2015 there were 178 states making the ranking. Initially, the FSI only ranked 75 countries in 2005. The FSI uses two criteria by which a country qualifies to be included in the list: first of all, the country must be a United Nations member state, and secondly, there must be a significant sample size of content and data available for that country to allow for meaningful analysis. There are three groupings: social, economic, and political with overall of twelve indicators.
Social indicators:
* Demographic pressures
* Refugees or internally displaced persons
* Group grievance
* Human flight and brain drain
Economic indicators:
* Uneven economic development
* Poverty and economic decline
Political and military indicators:
* State legitimacy
* Public services
* Human rights and rule of law
* Security apparatus
* Factionalized elites
* External intervention
The indicators each count for 10, adding up to a total of 120. However, in order to add up to 120, the indicator scores are rounded up-or-down to the nearest one decimal place. In the 2015 Index, South Sudan ranked number one, Somalia number two, and the Central African Republic number three. Finland is currently the most stable and sustainable country in the list.
While it is important to note that the FSI is used in many pieces of research and makes the categorization of states more pragmatic, it often receives much criticism due to several reasons. Firstly, it does not include the Human Development Index to reach the final score but instead focuses on institutions to measure what are often also considered human aspects for development. Secondly, it parallels the fragility or vulnerability of states with underdevelopment. This comparison firstly assumes that underdevelopment (economic) creates vulnerability, thus assuming that if a state is "developed" it is stable or sustainable. Thirdly, it measures the failure (or success) of a state without including the progress of other areas outside the sphere of the 12 indicators, thus excluding important measures of development such as the decline in child mortality rates, and increased access to clean water sources and medication, amongst others. Nonetheless, when discussing failed states it is important to mention the FSI not just for its use by governments, organizations, educators and analysts, but also because it provides a measure of assessment that tries to address the issues that cause threats, both domestically and internationally.
Qualitative approach
The qualitative approach embraces theoretical frameworks. Normally, this type of measurement applies stage models to allow the categorization of states. In three to five stages, researchers show state failure as a process. Notable researchers, inter alia, are Robert I. Rotberg in the Anglo-American and Ulrich Schneckener in the German sphere.
Ulrich Schneckener's (2006) stage model defines three core elements, monopoly of violence
In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area.
While the mon ...
, legitimacy, and rule of law. The typology is based on the ''security first'' logic and thus, shows the relevance of the monopoly of violence in comparison to the other two while at the same time acting as the precondition for a functioning state. His four statehood types are: (1) consolidated and consolidating states, (2) weak states, (3) failing, and (4) collapsed/failed states. The first type is directed towards functioning states; all core functions of the state are functioning in the long term. In weak states, the monopoly of force is still intact, but the other two areas show serious deficits. Failing states lack the monopoly of force, while the other areas function at least partially. Finally, collapsed or failed states are dominated by parastatal structures characterized by actors trying to create a certain internal order, but the state cannot sufficiently serve the three core elements.
Both research approaches show some irregularities. While the quantitative approach lacks transparency concerning its indicators and their balancing in the evaluation process of countries, the qualitative approach shows a diversity of different foci. One of the major discrepancies is the question of whether all the stages have to be taken continuously or if a state can skip one phase. Schneckener stresses that his model should actually not be interpreted as a stage model as, in his opinion, states do not necessarily undergo every stage. Robert I. Rotberg's model underlies an ordinal logic and thus, implies that the state failure process is a chronological chain of phases.
Theoretical mechanisms for state development
State development through war-making
Charles Tilly
Charles Tilly (May 27, 1929 – April 29, 2008) was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the Univ ...
(1985) argued that war-making was an indispensable aspect of state development in Europe through the following interdependent functions:
* War-making—rulers eliminate external rivals (requires building military forces and supportive bureaucracies
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
)
* State-making—rulers eliminate internal rivals and establish control over their territories (requires building police forces and bureaucracies)
* Protection—rulers bring about benefit to their clients by eliminating their external rivals and guaranteeing their rights (requires building courts and representative assemblies)
* Extraction—rulers extract more tax from their subjects (requires building tax collection apparatuses and exchequers)
Tilly summarized this linkage in the famous phrase: "War made the state, and the state made war."
Similarly, Herbst (1990) added that a war might be the only chance to strengthen an extraction capability since it forced rulers to risk their political lives for extra revenue and forced subjects to consent to pay more tax. It is also important for state development in that the increased revenue would not return to its original level even after the end of wars. Contrary to European states, however, he also pointed out that most Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
states lacked external threats and had not waged interstate wars, implying that these states are unlikely to take similar steps in the future.
"Nation-building" by developed countries
Steward and Knaus (2012) tackled the question "can intervention work?" and concluded that "we can help nations build themselves" by putting an end to war and providing "well resourced humanitarian interventions". They criticized the overconfidence of policymakers on nation-building by contrasting successful interventions in Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and He ...
(1995) and Kosovo
Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...
(1999) with the failed attempt of nation-building in Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
(2003) and Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
(2001–2021) in which the U.S. lost thousands of lives over ten years and expended more than a trillion dollars without realizing its central objective of nation-building. When a so-called failed nation-state is crushed by internal violence or disruption, and consequently is no longer able to deliver positive political goods to its inhabitants, developed states feel the obligation to intervene and assist in rebuilding them. However, intervention is not always seen positively, but due to past intervention by for instance the US government, scholars argue that the concept of a failed state is an invented rationale to impose developed states' interests on less powerful states.
The labeling of states like Somalia, Afghanistan, Liberia, or Sudan, as failed states, gives Western countries
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. the legitimization to impose the western idea of a stable nation-state. It is commonly accepted that nation-building or international response to troubled/rogue states happens too late or too quickly which is due to inadequate analysis or lack of political will. Still, it is important to highlight that developed nations and their aid institutions have had a positive impact on many failed states. Nation-building is context-specific and thus a countries' cultural-political, as well as social environment, needs to be carefully analyzed before intervening as a foreign state. The Western world has increasingly become concerned about failed states and sees them as threats to security. The concept of the failed state is thereafter often used to defend policy interventions by the West. Further, as Chesterman and Ignatieff et al. argue, regarding the duration of international action by developed states and international organizations, a central problem is that a crisis tends to be focused on time, while the most essential work of reframing and building up a state and its institutions takes years or decades. Therefore, effective state-building is a slow process and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise to the domestic public.
Promoting development through foreign aid
Pritchett, Woolcock, and Andrews (2013) analyzed the systematic failure of the development of failed states. They defined "state administrative capability for implementation" as the key aspect of state development, and found out the mechanism in which failed states stumbled regardless of decades of development practices tried, billions of dollars spent, and alleged "progress" boasted. These countries adopted the following techniques which led to undermining it:
# ''systemic isomorphic mimicry''—disguising the dysfunction of states by simply mimicking the appearance of functional states.
# ''premature load bearing''—limited-capacity states being overloaded with "unrealistic expectations".
In light of the fact that many of these countries would likely need centuries to reach the state capability of developed countries, they suggested creating "context-specific institutions", promoting "incremental reform process", and setting "realistic expectations" for attaining the goal of substantial development.
Foreign aid produces several unintended consequences when used to develop the institutional capacity of state. Donors will often delegate aid spending to recipient governments since they do not have the information or capacity to identify who is in the greatest need and how it can be best spent. The downside of this is that it can be captured by recipient governments and diverted either towards self-enrichment of incumbent elites or to establish and maintain clientelist networks to allow them to remain in power—for example, in Kenya, aid allocation is biased towards constituencies with high vote shares for the incumbent, so the geographic distribution of aid changes to their supporters following a change of regime. Furthermore, aid can also be diverted to non-state actors, and thus undermine the state's monopoly on violence, such as in Colombia during the 1990s and 2000s, where US aid to the Colombian military was diverted by the military to paramilitary groups, leading to significant increases in paramilitary violence in municipalities located near military bases. The implication is that foreign aid can undermine the state by both feeding corruption of incumbent elites, and empowering groups outside of the state.
Moss, Todd, Gunilla Pettersson, and Nicolas Van de Walle (2006) acknowledged the controversy over the effect of foreign aid that has developed in recent years. They argued that although there is a call for an increase in large aid efforts in Africa by the international community, this will actually create what they call an "aid-institutions paradox". This paradox is formed because of the large cash contributions that Western countries have given to African countries have created institutions that are "less accountable to their citizens and under less pressure to maintain popular legitimacy." They mention that the gradual decrease of aid may help foster long-lasting institutions, which is proven by the United States' efforts in Korea after the Cold War.
Berman, Eli, Felter, Shapiro, and Trolan (2013) also found similar evidence to support the paradox, stating that large US aid attempts in African agriculture have only resulted in further conflict between citizens. Notably, small investments such as grants for schools have proven to decrease violence compared to large investments, which create "incentives to capture economic rents through violence."
Furthermore, Binyavanga Wainaina (2009) likens Western aid to colonization, in which countries believe that large cash contributions to spur the African economy will lead to political development and less violence. In reality, these cash contributions do not invest in Africa's growth economically, politically and most of all, socially.
Neotrusteeship
James Fearon and David Laitin suggest in "Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States" that the problem of failed states can be addressed through a system of "neotrusteeship", which they compare to "postmodern imperialism". Fearon and Laitin's idea of neotrusteeship involves a combination of international and domestic organizations which seek to rebuild states. Fearon and Laitin start with the assumption that failed states comprise a collective action problem
A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action. The collective action proble ...
. Failed states impose negative externalities on the rest of the international system, like refugees who are displaced by war. It would be a net good for the international system if countries worked to develop and rebuild failed states. However, intervention is very costly, and no single nation has a strong enough incentive to act to solve the problem of a failed state. Therefore, international cooperation is necessary to solve this collective action problem.
Fearon and Laitin identify four main problems to achieving collective action to intervene in failed states:
# Recruitment - getting countries to participate in and pay for interventions
# Coordination - providing good communication between all of the peacekeeping countries
# Accountability - ensuring that any peacekeeping countries that commit human rights abuses are held responsible
# Exit - having some mechanism for the peacekeeping countries to withdraw
Fearon and Laitin do propose some solutions to these problems. To solve the recruitment problem, they argue for having a powerful state with security interests in the failed state to take the lead in the peacekeeping operations and serve a point role. Having a single state lead the peacekeeping operation would also help solve the coordination problem. The empowerment of a UN body to investigate human rights abuses would solve the accountability problem. Finally, forcing the failed state to contribute funds to peacekeeping operations after several years can reduce the incentives of the peacekeepers to exit. Fearon and Laitin believe that multilateral interventions which solve the above four collective action problems will be more effective at rebuilding failed states through neotrusteeship.
Autonomous recovery
Jeremy Weinstein disagrees that peacekeeping is necessary to rebuild failed states, arguing that it is often better to allow failed states to recover on their own. Weinstein fears that international intervention may prevent a state from developing strong internal institutions and capabilities. One of Weinstein's key arguments is that war leads to peace. By this, he means that peace agreements imposed by the international community tend to freeze in place power disparities that do not reflect reality. Weinstein believes that such a situation leaves a state ripe for future war, while if the war were allowed to play out for one side to win decisively, the future war would be much less likely. Weinstein also claims that war leads to the development of strong state institutions. Weinstein borrows from Charles Tilly to make this argument, which states that wars require large expansions in state capabilities, so the states that are more stable and capable will win wars and survive in the international system through a process similar to natural selection. Weinstein uses evidence from Uganda's successful recovery following a guerilla victory in a civil war, Eritrea's forceful secession from Ethiopia, and development in Somaliland and Puntland—autonomous regions of Somalia—to support his claims. Weinstein does note that lack of external intervention can lead to mass killings and other atrocities, but he emphasizes that preventing mass killings has to be weighed against the ensuing loss of long-term state capacity
State capacity is the ability of a government to accomplish policy goals, either generally or in reference to specific aims. A state that lacks capacity is defined as a fragile state or, in a more extreme case, a failed state. Higher state capacity ...
.
Capability traps of failed states
Capability trap means that countries are progressing at a very slow pace in the expansion of state capability even in the contemporary world, which is also the core problem of failed states. Many countries remain stuck in conditions of low productivity that many call "poverty traps". Economic growth is only one aspect of development; another key dimension of development is the expansion of the administrative capability of the state, the capability of governments to affect the course of events by implementing policies and programs. Capability traps close the space for novelty, establishing fixed best-practice agendas as the basis of evaluating failed states. Local agents are therefore excluded from the process of building their own states, implicitly undermining the value-creating ideas of local leaders and front-line workers.
Matt, Lant, and Woolcock from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government proposed an approach called the "Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)", to escape the capability traps. Given that many development initiatives fail to improve performance because they promote ''isomorphic mimicry'', PDIA focuses on solving locally nominated and prioritized performance problems of failed states. It involves pursuing development interventions that engage broad sets of local agents to ensure the reforms are politically supportable and practically implementable.
While failed states are the source of numerous refugees, the chaotic emigration allowed by UN regulations and open border policies have contributed to human capital flight
Human capital flight is the emigration or immigration of individuals who have received advanced training at home. The net benefits of human capital flight for the receiving country are sometimes referred to as a "brain gain" whereas the net cost ...
, or brain drain. Without sufficient professional and skilled workers, such as doctors, nurses, biologists, engineers, electricians, and so on, the severity of failed states tends to increase, leading to even more emigration. Similarly, policies that do not require third country resettlement
Third country resettlement or refugee resettlement is, according to the UNHCR, one of three durable solutions (voluntary repatriation and local integration being the other two) for refugees who fled their home country. Resettled refugees have the ...
on the same continent as failed states make eventual resettlement after the war, famine, or political collapse even less probable, as the distance, cost, and inconvenience of returning to home countries increase with distance and language change among refugee families. In Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen the reform movements and modernization efforts are weakened when there are no effective refugee resettlement programs.
Promoting good governance and combating further hostilities in failed states
Transnational crime and terrorism
According to U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
Trial Attorney Dan E. Stigall, "the international community is confronted with an increasing level of transnational crime in which criminal conduct in one country has an impact in another or even several others. Drug trafficking, human trafficking, computer crimes, terrorism, and a host of other crimes can involve actors operating outside the borders of a country which might have a significant interest in stemming the activity in question and prosecuting the perpetrator".
A study of the Cligendael Center for Strategic Studies explains why states that are subject to failure serve as sanctuaries (used to plan, execute, support, and finance activities) for terrorist organizations. When the government does not know about the presence of the organization or if it is not able to weaken or remove the organization, the sanctuary is referred to as a "Terrorist Black Hole". However, next to governmental weakness there needs to be "Terrorist Comparative Advantages" present for a region to be considered as a "Terrorist Black Hole". According to the study, social tensions, the legacy from civil conflict, geography, corruption and policy failure, as well as external factors contribute to governmental weakness. The comparative advantages are religion and ethnicity, the legacy from civil conflict, geography, economic opportunities, economic underdevelopment, and regional stimuli. Only the combinations of the two factors (governmental weakness and Terrorist Comparative Advantages) explain what regions terrorists use as sanctuaries.
Research by James Piazza of the Pennsylvania State University finds evidence that nations affected by state failure experience and produce more terrorist attacks. Contemporary transnational crimes "take advantage of globalization, trade liberalization and exploding new technologies to perpetrate diverse crimes and to move money, goods, services and people instantaneously for purposes of perpetrating violence for political ends".
Contributing to previous research on the matter, Tiffiany Howard[Howard, T., 2010. Failed states and the spread of terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 33(11), pp.960-988] looks at a different dimension of the connection between state failure and terrorism, based on evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. She argues that "citizens of failed states are attracted to political violence because of the deteriorating conditions within this type of states". Focusing on individual citizens decision-making patterns, it is suggested that "individuals living in failed states are attracted to political violence because the system is broken—the state has failed in its duty". This finding is based on empirical evidence using barometer survey data. This individual-level approach, which differs from previous research which has focused on the attractiveness of failed states for terrorists and insurgents finds that "failed states threaten an individual's survival, which ultimately drives them to obtain tangible political and economic resources through other means, which include the use of political violence". This finding has significant implications for the international community, such as the fact that "this pattern of deprivation makes individuals in these states more susceptible to the influence of internationally sponsored terrorist groups. As a consequence, failed states are breeding grounds for terrorists, who then export their radical ideologies to other parts of the world to create terrorist threats across the globe"
The link between state failure (and its characteristics) and terrorism, however, is not unanimously accepted in the scholarly literature. Research by Alberto Abadie, which looks at determinants of terrorism at the country level, suggests that the "terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries, once the effects of other country-specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account". In fact, as the argument goes, "political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, but it does so in a non-monotonic way: countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes". While poverty and low levels of political freedom are not the main characteristics of failed states, they are nevertheless important ones. For this reason, Abadie's research represents a powerful critique to the idea that there is a link between state failure and terrorism. This link is also questioned by other scholars, such as Corinne Graff, who argues that 'there is simply no robust empirical relationship between poverty and terrorist attacks'.
Moreover, "problems of weakened states and transnational crime Transnational crimes are crimes that have actual or potential effect across national borders and crimes that are intrastate but offend fundamental values of the international community. The term is commonly used in the law enforcement and academic c ...
create an unholy confluence that is uniquely challenging. When a criminal operates outside the territory of an offended state, the offended state might ordinarily appeal to the state from which the criminal is operating to take some sort of action, such as to prosecute the offender domestically or extradite the offender so that he or she may face punishment in the offended state. Nonetheless, in situations in which a government is unable (or unwilling) to cooperate in the arrest or prosecution of a criminal, the offended state has few options for recourse".[Dan E. Stigall]
Ungoverned Spaces, Transnational Crime, and the Prohibition on Extraterritorial Enforcement Jurisdiction in International Law
. February 3, 2013. ''The Notre Dame Journal of International and Comparative Law'' 1 (2013)
Examples
A relevant contribution to the field of failed states and its attributes was made by Jack Goldstone in his paper "Pathways to State Failure". He defines a failed state as one that has lost both its effectiveness and legitimacy. Effectiveness means the capability to carry out state functions such as providing security or levying taxes. Legitimacy means the support of important groups of the population. A state that retains one of these two aspects is not failed as such; however, it is in great danger of failing soon if nothing is done. He identifies five possible pathways to state failure:
# Escalation of communal group (ethnic or religious) conflicts. Examples: Rwanda
Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
, SFR Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...
.
# State predation (corrupt or crony corralling of resources at the expense of other groups). Examples: Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...
.
# Regional or guerrilla rebellion. Examples: Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
, Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
.
# Democratic collapse (leading to civil war or coup d'état). Examples: Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
, Nepal
Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...
.
# Succession or reform crisis in authoritarian states. Examples: Indonesia under Suharto, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev
Larry Diamond, in his paper "Promoting democracy in post-conflict and failed states", argues that weak and failed states pose distinctive problems for democracy promotion. In these states, the challenge is not only to pressure authoritarian state leaders to surrender power but rather to figure out how to regenerate legitimate power in the first place. There are mainly two distinct types of cases, and each of these two types of cases requires specific kinds of strategies for the promotion of good governance:
# The post-conflict states that are emerging from external or civil war. Many of these countries have been in Africa—South Africa, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia. Some have been in Latin America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, and much of Central America), in Asia (e.g. Cambodia), and in the Middle East (Lebanon, Algeria, and Iraq);
# Countries that are in the midst of civil war or ongoing violent conflict, where central state authority has largely collapsed, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Generally speaking, the order is the most important prerequisite for democracy promotion, which relies heavily on formal democratic mechanisms, particularly elections to promote post-conflict state-building. In the absence of an effective state, there are basically three possibilities: If there has been a civil war and a rebel force has ultimately triumphed, then the vacuum may be filled by the rebellious army and political movement as it establishes control over the state; second, there may be a patchwork of warlords and armies, with either no real central state (as in Somalia) or only a very weak one. In this situation, the conflict does not really end, but may wax and wane in a decentralized fashion, as in Afghanistan today; the third possibility is that an international actor or coalition of actors steps in to constitute temporary authority politically and militarily. This may be an individual country, a coalition, an individual country under the thin veneer of a coalition, or the United Nations acting through the formal architecture of a UN post-conflict mission.
Criticisms of the concept
The term "failed state" has faced criticism along two main strands. The first argues that the term lends itself to overgeneralization, by lumping together different governance problems amongst diverse countries, and without accounting for variations of governance within states. The second is concerned with the political application of the term in order to justify military interventions and state-building based on a Western model of the state.
Olivier Nay, William Easterly, and Laura Freschi have critiqued the concept of state failure as not having a coherent definition, with indices combining various indicators of state performance arbitrarily weighted to arrive at unclear and aggregated measurements of state fragility. Charles T. Call argues that the label of "failed state" has been applied so widely that it has been effectively rendered useless.[Charles T. Call (2008) ''The Fallacy of the Failed State''] As there has been little consensus over how to define failed states, the characteristics commonly used to identify a failing state are numerous and extremely diverse, from human rights violations, poverty, corruption to demographic pressures. This means that a wide range of highly divergent states are categorized together as failed (or failing) states. This can conceal the complexity of the specific weaknesses identified within individual states and result in one size fits all approach typically focused on strengthening the state's capacity for order. Furthermore, the use of the term 'failed state' has been used by some foreign powers as a justification for invading a country or determining a specific prescriptive set of foreign policy goals. Following 2001, Call notes that the US stated that failed states were one of the greatest security threats facing the country, based on the assumption that a country with weak – or non-existent – state institutions would provide a safe haven for terrorists, and act as a breeding ground for extremism.
Call suggests that, instead of branding countries as failed states, they could be categorized in more relevant, understandable terms. For example, a "collapsed state" would refer to a country where the state apparatus completely falls apart and ceases to exist for a couple of months. This would only apply to a country where absolutely no basic functions of the state were working, and non-state actors were carrying out such tasks. A "weak state" could be used for states whereby informal institutions carry out more of the public services and channeling of goods than formal state institutions. A "war-torn" state might not be functioning because of conflict, but this does not necessarily imply it is a collapsed state. Rotburg argued that all failed states are experiencing some form of armed conflict. However, the challenges to the state can be very different depending on the type of armed conflict, and whether it encompasses the country as a whole and large territories, or is specifically focused around one regional area. Another type of state that has been traditionally put under the umbrella term "failed state" could be an "authoritarian state". While authoritarian leaders might come to power by violent means, they may ward off opposition once in power and as such ensure there is little violence within their regime. Call argues that the circumstances and challenges facing state-building in such regimes are very different from those posed in a state in civil war. These four alternative definitions highlight the many different circumstances that can lead a state to be categorized under the umbrella term of "failed state", and the danger of adopting prescriptive one-size-fits-all policy approaches to very different situations. As a result of these taxonomical difficulties, Wynand Greffrath has posited a nuanced approach to "state dysfunction" as a form of political decay, which emphasizes qualitative theoretical analysis.
See also
* Banana republic
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighboring ...
* Crisis States Research Centre
The Crisis States Research Centre or 'Crisis States' was based within the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN, now Department of International Development) of the London School of Economics. It was a broad research initiative funded by a gran ...
* Examples of state-collapse anarchy
* Fragile States Index
The Fragile States Index (FSI; formerly the Failed States Index) is an annual report published by the United States think tank the Fund for Peace and the American magazine ''Foreign Policy'' from 2005 to 2018, then by The New Humanitarian since 2 ...
* Fund for Peace
The Fund for Peace is an American non-profit, non-governmental research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FFP "works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security."
The Fund for Peace works towards sustainable security ...
* Human capital flight
Human capital flight is the emigration or immigration of individuals who have received advanced training at home. The net benefits of human capital flight for the receiving country are sometimes referred to as a "brain gain" whereas the net cost ...
* Least developed countries
* List of ongoing armed conflicts
The following is a list of ongoing armed conflicts that are taking place around the world.
List parameters
This list of ongoing armed conflicts identifies present-day conflicts and the death toll associated with each conflict. The guidelines ...
* Mafia state
In politics, a mafia state is a state system where the government is tied with organized crime to the degree when government officials, the police, and/or military became a part of the criminal enterprise. According to US diplomats, the expressio ...
* Ochlocracy
Mob rule or ochlocracy ( el, ὀχλοκρατία, translit=okhlokratía; la, ochlocratia) is the rule of government by a mob or mass of people and the intimidation of legitimate authorities. Insofar as it represents a pejorative for majori ...
* Pariah state
A pariah state (also called an international pariah or a global pariah) is a nation considered to be an outcast in the international community. A pariah state may face international isolation, sanctions or even an invasion by nations who find its ...
* Rogue state
"Rogue state" (or sometimes "outlaw state") is a term applied by some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to the world's peace. These states meet certain criteria, such as being ruled by Authoritarianism, authorita ...
* Societal collapse
Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of socioeconomic complexity, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes ...
* Stabilization of fragile states Promoting recovery from conflict is not limited to simply a humanitarian, security or development issue and often involves a combination of all three. Stabilization of fragile states is an approach and a process regarding the fragility and security ...
* State collapse
State collapse is the breakdown of government authority in maintaining law and order. It is often used to describe extreme situations in which state institutions are no longer able to function. Rather than a temporary disruption such as a riot ...
* Third country resettlement
Third country resettlement or refugee resettlement is, according to the UNHCR, one of three durable solutions (voluntary repatriation and local integration being the other two) for refugees who fled their home country. Resettled refugees have the ...
* Violent non-state actor
In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use viole ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Failed state
Former countries
International relations
Political neologisms
States by power status