The literature on the causes and forms of deteriorating governance is in its infancy, and draws heavily from the broader and more established literature on the causes of forms of fragility. Some of the prominent themes on the causes of deteriorating governance are:
- Common pathways to deterioration are escalation of communal conflict, state predation, regional or guerilla rebellion, democratic collapse, and succession and reform crises.
- Identifying situations of declining (state) legitimacy, including the relationship between formal (state) and informal (non-state) sources of legitimacy, may improve the international community’s ability to identify deteriorating governance.
- Not all forms of political deterioration follow the same trajectory. Forms of deterioration include conventional political deterioration, political deterioration amidst state collapse, political deterioration in transitional governments, risk of destructive political orders.
- Elections are playing a role as triggers of violence.
- Informal political orders are prone to political deterioration as much as formal political orders, and this needs to be better understood.
- Governments are prone to political deterioration where there is lack of progress on essential tasks, or the performance of essential state functions. This includes the inability to provide public security, high levels of corruption, and poor provision of basic services.
- Increased risks of instability are often the result of transitions toward democratic governance. The quality of governance – specifically the interaction of autocracy and factionalism – are among the main explanatory variables in the onset of political instability.
There appear to be few documented cases, and a lack of consolidated lessons learned, in regard to how international actors can successfully intervene in situations of deteriorating governance. Donor’s written strategies for responding to deteriorating governance tend to emphasize the need to build state accountability and transparency and to maintain enough institutional capital to facilitate eventual turnaround.
