This chapter from the book ‘Fixing Failed States’ argues that a stable world requires functioning states in order to overcome challenges to the political and economic system. Domestic and global leadership must find a new approach to transform states so that they provide security and prosperity for their citizens and also act as responsible members of the international community. The study terms this a sovereignty strategy. A long-term state-building strategy tailored to specific contexts should be an organising principle for the international community. Collective energies and capital need to be harnessed.
The crisis of the state in developing countries and the unintended impact of global aid in weakening states have undermined their sovereignty. If global security is dependent on the structural stability of governments, then the global system must cohere around the single goal of building fully-functioning sovereign states instead of many different interventions, such as humanitarian projects, security, development or trade.
A sovereignty strategy is the alignment of internal and external stakeholders to the goals of a sovereign state through the joint formulation, calibration of and adherence to certain rules. Citizens attain these goals by mandating their leaders and managers to mobilise sufficient resources, perform or allocate critical tasks and ensure ongoing reflexive monitoring and adjustment of implementation.
Putting sovereignty strategies into practice requires the involvement of a wide range of international actors, as well as the dedication and skills of domestic leaders. For a particular country to acquire the capacity to perform a function, partnerships with a wide range of actors will be necessary, including universities, voluntary associations, scientific research groups and the private sector as well as the more traditional interlocutors of the development agencies. This in turn will require innovative forms of collaboration.
Currently multiple strategies exist, which violate the core principles of unity of purpose and clarity of focus. Diverse external stakeholders have conflicting agendas and compete for resources and attention. Their prescriptions have multiple rules, which result in fragmented policies and tend to obstruct accountability. Furthermore:
- The capacity of governments to represent their people has diminished significantly and has weakened the bond between citizen and state.
- When sectoral strategies are not embedded in a larger strategy, unintended consequences can emerge that undermine the overall objective of state-building.
- When organisations are misaligned, staff, resources, culture and processes are not geared to serving a common purpose.
In a sovereignty strategy the international system is repositioned as a catalyst and genuine partner in a process of enhancing state capabilities rather than as a competitor or a mechanism through which state services are substituted. There is a set of rights and obligations between citizens and their government as well as between a government and the international community, which defines the functioning state.
- Instead of isolated projects or imposed adjustment programmes, the focus is on system-wide coherence and the production of synergies that make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
- Reporting on achievements will facilitate learning from successes and failures.
- External financial management and procurement agents might be contracted to manage a country’s finances in the short-term, provided that agents receive significant incentives to build domestic capacity and hand over operations to a state-controlled ministry of finance.
- Implementation becomes the leaders’ task and strategy becomes the concern of everyone.
NB: A preview of this chapter is available at Google Books.
