What are the causes and consequences of state failure? This paper from the Crisis States Research Centre reviews the extensive literature on failed states, examining definitions, possible causes, and common consequences of state failure, particularly in Africa. It suggests further lines of research into the political economy behind state conflict and state failure.
Definitions of what constitutes a ‘failed state’ are varied but generally centre on the inability of a state to provide positive political goods, such as security, infrastructure and services. Given the multi-faceted definition, no single indicator provides evidence of state failure, further complicating the analysis.
Several causes for state failure have been posited. These fall into two categories: one focused on resource explanations and one focused on a functional view of the state. Suggested causes include: resource scarcity provoking conflict; resource abundance provoking corruption and exclusion; clientelist regimes leading to a criminalisation of the state; and the ‘new war’ thesis, which argues that contemporary wars have generated an economy built on plunder and sustained through violence.
All of these models, however, are based on a liberal view of the state that defines state failure by the degree to which a state deviates from ‘best practice’, as represented by Western developed economies. This undermines their applicability because it fails to recognise that late developers in Africa and elsewhere face unique challenges in terms of institutional formation and economic change. Indeed, the significant involvement of the state in economic development makes the process of institutional and economic growth decidedly more political.
Given these unique conditions, late developers, particularly fragile states, require different analytic tools. Several lenses might be used to develop a sophisticated political economy of conflict in these states:
- Institutional multiplicity: a situation in which different sets of rules of the game coexist in the same territory, putting citizens and economic agents in complex, often unsolvable, situations, but offering them the possibility of switching strategically from one institutional universe to another.
- State capacity and capability: the abilities and skills of personnel and the organisational culture within the subsystems of the state.
- ‘Influencing’ or rent-seeking: legal and institutional influencing activities, informal patron-client networks, or corruption.
- Coalitional analysis: according attention to the shifting constellations of power that underpin formal and informal institutional arrangements.
- Divisibility and boundary activation: the creation and activation of boundaries contribute to the escalation of political conflict and violence.
Political economy analysis of late developing states illustrates the importance of understanding the economic underpinnings and interdependencies of conflict for examining state failure and post-war reconstruction. In addition to raising interesting questions as to the nature of state failure, it also suggests an explanation of how political order can be maintained in late developing states. Indeed, existing evidence suggests that centralised patronage contributes significantly to state resilience, but further research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Some initial propositions concerning centralised patronage include:
- It enables the executive to have an encompassing interest in the maintenance of political stability
- It draws on a strong national political organisation to limit predatory and violent actions
- It increases the likelihood of forming a loyal and unified army
- While it cannot eliminate factional conflict, it provides an institutional context for bargaining
- It is relatively resilient to economic shocks and crises without triggering state failure
