Failed States
Conceptual Issues
-
What
is a failed state?
o
Rotberg: state that no longer provides “positive political goods”
for its citizens (nil capacity)
§
Sovereign
territorial state that is no longer sovereign in areas that it claims to rule
·
Claimants
to rule fail to exercise clear priority over other groups in territories
o
“State Failure Task Force” now called “Task Force on
Political Instability”
§
“State
failure is a new label that encompasses a range of severe political conflicts
and regime crises exemplified by macro-societal events such as those that
occurred in
-
How
do we measure state failure?
o
“Know
it when we see it” standard
§
Widespread
violence and lawlessness over large parts of its territory?
§
Inability
to control borders (e.g.,
§
Political
goods absent: security, education, healthcare, law & order
o
No
clear consensus on the standard
o
Task
Force:
§
“Narrowly
defined, state failures consist of instances in which central state authority
collapses for several years. Fewer than 20 such episodes occurred globally
between 1955 and 1998, however—too few for robust statistical analysis”
§
task
force used expanded definition:
“failure-event”
-
Task
Force measures
o
set of nearly 1,300 political, demographic, economic, social, and
environmental variables for all countries of the world from 1955 to 1998.
o
list
of 114 state-failure events that began between 1955 and 1998
What
Task force found “key drivers”:
-
Quality of life, that is, the material
well-being of a country’s citizens.
-
Regime type, that is, the character of a
country’s political institutions.
-
International influences, including
openness to trade, memberships in regional organizations, and violent conflicts
in neighboring countries.
-
The ethnic or religious composition of
country’s population or leadership.
Risk factors that roughly doubled
the odds of
state “failure-event”:
-
Low
levels of material well-being, measured by infant mortality rates.
-
Low
trade openness, measured by imports plus exports as a percent of GDP.
-
presence
of major civil conflicts in two or more bordering states
Underlying Causes
-
alternative patterns of state formation
and state building
-
-
Much of “developing world” lacks similar
experience
-
Does war make the state?
-
Must state-building be violent?
Focus on Sub-Saharan
-
democracies (partial & full) failed
more often (5x rate of autocratic regimes)
-
low
trade openness, ethnic discrimination, new or entrenched leaders, or unbalanced
patterns of development caused failure rate 2-5x as high
-
unbalanced
development (high urbanization with low GDP per capita) makes country 5x more
likely to fail
Focus on Muslim Countries
-
at least 40% Muslim pop.
-
5x failure rate for partial & full
democratic regimes v. autocratic
-
smaller effect for other variables (only
50-70% increase)
-
three new factors
o countries with sects 3x more likely to fail
o countries with extremely high or extremely low religious diversity 3x more likely to fail
o countries with few IO memberships 2x more likely to fail