The Fallacy of the 'Failed State

Bibliographic Data

ID5780032
AuthorsCharles T Call (0000-0002-6930-9220, American University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume29
Issue8
Pages1491-1507
Publication date2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThird World Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0143-6597 • E-ISSN: 1360-2241
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01436590802544207
OpenAlexW1983966434
LanguageEN
Citations received84

This article examines the origins and evolution of the concepts of 'failed' and 'failing' states, arguing that the terms have come to be used in such widely divergent and problematic ways that they have lost any utility. The article details six serious problems with the term 'state failure' and related terms like 'fragile' or 'troubled' states, concluding that analysts should abandon these terms. It concludes with a modest attempt to develop alternative concepts and principles for thinking about diverse states that pose varied challenges for academic analysis and policy makers. Notes I am grateful to William Stanley, Madalene O'Donnell, Elizabeth Cousens, Vanessa Wyeth, Yolande Bouka, Sanjeev Khagram, Barney Rubin, Jim Ron and Heather Svanidze for helpful feedback. 1 Noam Chomsky's Failed States, New York, NY: Henry Holt, 2007, analyses the USA as a failed state. 2 K Menkhaus, Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism, Adelphi Paper no 364, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. See also Menkhaus, 'Somalia: governance vs state-building', in CT Call with V Wyeth (eds), Building States to Build Peace, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2008. 3 SV Einsiedel, 'Policy responses to state failure', in S Chesterman (ed), Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance, Tokyo, United Nations University, 2005, p 16. 4 William I. Zartman, Collapsed States: The disintegration and restoration of legitimate authority, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995; and Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner, 'Saving Failed States', Foreign Policy, 89, 1999. Earlier references are not as immediately relevant to the contemporary deployment of the term 'failed' or 'collapsed' state. See N Yoffee & GL Cowgill (eds), The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations, Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1988; and M Janicke, State Failure: The Impotence of Politics in Industrial Society, University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1990. Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, New York: Viking Adult, 2004, provides a provocative examination of social, not state, collapse. 5 See the Political Instability Task Force website, at http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/, accessed 5 February 2008. For results, see also J Goldstone, R Bates, TR Gurr et al, 'A global forecasting model of political instability', paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2005, Table 1. 6 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC, 15 February 2006, at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/61262.htm, accessed 5 February 2008. See also her 'Transformational diplomacy', speech delivered at Georgetown University, 16 January 2006, at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/59306.htm, accessed 5 February 2008. 7 See the LICUS website, at http://www.worldbank.org/licus/, accessed 5 February 2008. 8 World Bank, World Development Report: The State in a Changing World, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997. 9 RS Williamson, 'The dangers of weak, failing and failed states', Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 8 (1), 2007, pp 9-19. 10 N Bensahel, 'Organising for nation building', Survival, 49 (2), 2007, p 49; and S Patrick & K Brown, Greater than the Sum of its Parts? Assessing 'Whole of Government' Approaches to Fragile States, Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2007. 11 A Ghani & C Lockhart, Fixing Failed States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 12 RI Rotberg, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, p 5. 13 Ibid, pp 5-9. The crucial element of 'weak states' seems to be that their inter-communal tensions have not yet thoroughly 'become overtly violent' (p. 4). While the author seems to be able to draw these distinctions readily, they are not so apparent to me. 14 See the 41 sub-indicators listed in Fund for Peace's Failed States Index, at http://www.fundforpeace. org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99&Itemid=140, accessed 5 February 2008. 15 See, for example, Alvaro de Soto & Graciana del Castillo, 'Obstacles to peacekeeping', Foreign Policy, 94, 1994, pp 69-83; and Susan L Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, Washington, DC: Brookings, 1995. 16 Diverse solutions are described in BM Kraxberger, 'Failed states: temporary obstacles to democratic diffusion or fundamental holes in the world political map?', Third World Quarterly, 28 (6), September 2007, pp 1055-1071. 17 See Fund for Peace, Failed States Index, Frequently Asked Questions #9, at http://www.fundforpeace. org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=102&Itemid=327#8, accessed 5 February 2008. 18 See Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 19 I diverge here from the views of Michael Barnett in 'Building a Republican peace', International Security, 30 (4), 2006, pp 87-112. 20 One exception is Anna K Jarstad & Timothy Sisk, From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding, New York: Cambridge, 2008. 21 High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, New York: United Nations, December 2004, para 229. 22 See CT Call, Institutionalizing Peace: A Review of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Concepts and Issues for DPA , report for UN Department of Political Affairs, New York, 2005. I have contributed to this trend. 23 CT Call, 'Conclusion', in Call with Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace. 24 For instance, the British 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, race riots in France, even the internal armed conflicts and authoritarian traits of Russia seem to escape analysis in Rotberg, When States Fail. Although these problems may serve as evidence that 'successful' states can handle myriad forms of violence and social strife, they are not clearly outside the definition of failing states. 25 See SD Krasner, 'Sharing sovereignty: new institutions for collapsed and failing states', International Security, 29 (2), 2004, pp 85-120. 26 Rotberg, When States Fail, p 6, emphasis added. 27 David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building, London: Pluto, 2006. 28 RE Brooks, 'Failed states, or the state as failure?', University of Chicago Law Review, Fall 2005, pp 1159-1196. See the large postcolonial literature, including Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1979; and Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. 29 See http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/, accessed 5 February 2008. 30 These five categories, in a form I have abbreviated, are as follows: rebuilding countries, developing countries, transforming countries, sustaining partnership countries, and restrictive countries. See category descriptions in 'Annex A-Strategic Framework for Foreign Assistance', from the US Director of Foreign Assistance, 'FY2007 Operational Plan Guidance', 27 October 2006, USAID white paper, p 33. 31 TR Gurr et al, State Failure Task Force Report: Phase II Findings, McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), 31 July 1998, p 41. 32 For instance, was Laurent Kabila's movement in Eastern Zaire 'revolutionary' or 'ethnic'? What of the US civil war? Given Jack L. Snyder's research in From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict, New York: WW Norton, 2000, why do regime changes in an authoritarian direction pose more threat of instability than those in the direction of democracy? 33 Thus the list of 'sustained partners' includes authoritarian pro-US regimes like Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea, which would logically be considered 'restrictive' were it not for their political relationships with the USA. For details see 'Annex B-Extended Framework' to the document in the USAID white paper (note 30), which explicitly cites ideology as a criterion for 'restrictive states' and lists the countries for each category except for 'restrictive states'. 34 The Political Instability Task Force found, in testing multiple variables several ways, that disaggregating states did not improve its model's predictive powers. See Goldstone et al, 'A global forecasting model of political instability', p 15. 35 It is here more narrowly defined than in Zartman, Collapsed States, op cit. 36 Before adopting an unfortunately broad definition of state failure, the State Failure Task Force adopted a definition identical to that of a collapsed state: 'Narrowly defined, state failure consists of instances in which the central state authority collapses for several years'. It found that, 'Fewer than twenty such episodes occurred globally between 1955 and 1998, however'. In fact, a careful review of the post-1989 cases reveals that only four cases meet the definition as interpreted here. Other cases listed, such as Guinea-Bissau, Bosnia, Burundi and Sierra Leone during the 1990s, experienced either regime change, where other actors took the reins of the state, or war that left the state unable to carry out all of its tasks in all of the national territory, but not a collapse of state authority. TRGurr et al, State Failure Task Force Report: Phase III Findings, McLean, VA: SAIC, 30 September 2000, pp 3, 79. 37 Among the literature on informal political institutions, see W Reno, Warlord Politics and African States, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999; and M Bratton, 'Formal versus informal institutions in Africa', Journal of Democracy, 18 (3), 2007, pp 96-111. 38 Mike McGovern, 'Liberia: the risks of rebuilding a shadow state', and Rex Brynen, 'Palestine: building neither peace nor state,' both in Call with Wyeth, Building States to Build Peace. 39 Human Rights Watch, Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004. 40 Jan Knippers Black, Sentinels of Empire, Westport, CT: Greenwood-Praeger, 1986

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