Collapsed And Failed States Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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State collapse and failure appeared as a common feature of the international system after the end of the cold war, though it is not a new phenomenon. The State Failure Task Force: Phase III Findings (Goldstone et al. 2000) identified 135 cases of state failure beginning between 1955 and 1998. The rate of state failures surged in the 1960s and again in the early 1990s, periods when new states were born following the withdrawal of imperial powers (e.g., from Africa in the 1960s) or collapse of a superpower (the Soviet Union in 1991).

Based on the state failure data set, several events are identified as state failure in the State Failure Task Force report: revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime changes, genocides, and politicides. Since the 1980s, events such as the Islamic revolutions in Iran and Afghanistan; ethnic wars in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia; the collapse of the Soviet Union, the genocide in Rwanda; and the complex combination of ethnic and revolutionary conflicts in such places as Sierra Leone, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo serve as examples of collapsed and failed states.

Today, many states are failing to provide security and public order, legitimate representation, and wealth or welfare services to their citizens. However, full-blown cases of state collapse, which involve the extreme disintegration of public authority and the metamorphosis of societies into a battlefield of all against all, remain relatively rare. The worst case of political disintegration is called a collapsed state. While a failed state can still have an official government, a fully collapsed state is characterized by a government’s complete absence. Several features are central to a failed state, occurring when the state apparatus: is unable to uphold an effective monopoly of violence over its whole territory; lacks an effective judicial system and the rule of law; is unable or unwilling to fulfill international obligations, such as debt repayment; and cannot prevent various forms of transnational crime or the use of its territory for the perpetration of violence against other states in the international system. Generally, following the state failure, new local or regional governance structures are formed. The dynamics of governance structures emerge in the virtual or effective absence of a state.

Why States Fail Or Collapse

There are several factors that cause states to fail and even collapse. The Failed States Index 2007 applies twelve indicators of state vulnerability covering social, economic, and political factors that may trigger state failure: demographic pressures, massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples, a legacy of grievances among vengeance-seeking groups, chronic and sustained human flight, uneven economic development along group lines, sharp or severe economic decline, criminalization or delegitimization of the state, progressive deterioration of public services, widespread violation of human rights, the security apparatus functioning as a state within a state, the rise of factionalized elites, and the intervention of other states or external factors. The Index ranks states based on the total scores for these indicators on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest intensity (most stable) and 10 being the highest intensity (least stable).The objective of ranking the indicators is to measure a state’s vulnerability to collapse or conflict, not to forecast when the state may experience violence or collapse.

Generally, states in early phases of state evolution come closest to the phenomenon of a failed state, since they are likely to face social and political problems that may trigger revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, regime changes, and even genocides. Rampant corruption, predatory elites who have long monopolized power, an absence of the rule of law, and severe ethnic or religious divisions can also cause state failure or collapse. For example, according to Transparency International, Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Haiti, which are on top of the most recent Failed State Index, are two of the most corrupt and repressive countries in the world. Burma’s repressive junta persecutes ethnic minorities and subjects its population to forced resettlement, while Haiti experienced extreme poverty, lawlessness, and urban violence even before the 2010 earthquake destroyed the government’s infrastructure and left over a million people homeless. On the other hand, Guinea, also one of the failed states according to the Failed State Index, has been experiencing some of the highest economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, but the gap between the poor and rich is enormous. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the inability of the government to police its borders effectively or manage its vast mineral wealth has left the country dependent on foreign aid.

In When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (2004), Robert I. Rotberg and other contributors demonstrate that all failed states are by definition repressive, but not all repressive states have failed. The authors define several of the most repressive states as hollow states, failed but for the excessive security that prevents the state in question from being characterized as failed. No collapsed state can be repressive, because the apparatus of repression is by definition lacking.

State collapse does not occur spontaneously. It is likely that complex and conflict-ridden processes of deterioration, decline, and erosion of state functions precede state collapse. Actual collapse is likely to constitute the final phase of this process and it occurs when a point of no return is passed.

Collapsed And Failed States And International Security

In today’s increasingly interconnected world, collapsed and failed states pose an acute risk to global security. Various types of state failure have posed major challenges to policy makers seeking to stabilize democratic regimes, prevent genocides, and provide humanitarian assistance during conditions of violence and political crisis. Terrorism, narcotics trade, weapons proliferation, and other forms of organized crime can flourish when chaos prevails. Internal conflict is more likely to arise in countries suffering from poverty, highly unequal income distribution, recent decolonization, weak institutions, ineffective police and counterinsurgency forces, and difficult terrain conditions that allow local armed groups to operate. Valuable raw materials, such as diamonds or oil, also tend to spark internal conflict among competitors who want to seize control of the wealth. Warring groups may even control territory, giving them a base for launching attacks on the state, its citizens, or its neighbors. Other nonstate actors, including transnational terrorist organizations, can also take root in failed states, posing a threat to global security.

Bibliography:

Bates, R. H. When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
The Fund for Peace. “The Failed States Index, 2007.” Foreign Policy, July/ August, 2007. www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3865.
Global Policy Forum. Failed and Collapsed States in the International System. The African Studies Centre, the Transnational Institute, the Center of Social Studies, and the Peace Research Center. December, 2003. http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/12failedcollapsedstates.pdf
Goldstone, J., et al. State Failure Task Force Report: Phase III Findings. McLean, Va.: Science Applications International Corporation, 2000.
Miliken, J., and K. Krause, K. “State Failure, State Collapse, and State Reconstruction: Concepts, Lessons, and Strategies.” Development and Change 33, no. 5, (2002): 753–774.
Rotberg, R. I., ed. When States Fail: Causes and Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Zartman, I.W., ed. Collapsed States:The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995.