Why do some states self-destruct? How should the international community engage with failed states? This paper, by the Danish Institute for International Studies, discusses definitions of the failed state and argues that there is no easy way of dealing with them. It offers an analytical framework that maps some of the contradictions and complexities of this and should assist policy makers in addressing the challenges posed by failed states.
State failure in the post-Cold War world takes place in a global setting that is different from before. States are guaranteed survival unlike before the Second World War, when weak states could be divided up or annexed by stronger states. Furthermore, democracy and human rights mark a new “standard of civilisation”. Ultimately, the forces of globalisation have changed the manner in which world politics are conducted. Non-state actors and transnational flows of capital and people provide challenges to the territorially defined states.
Failed states share three characteristics: (1) the central government has lost control; (2) violence is widespread; (3) there is acute human suffering. The combination of these characteristics presents the international community with two conundrums. Most of the international instruments available depend on the existence of an effective state. Security failures in failed states necessitate military protection for the international community engaging with it. The international community’s interest in failed states relates to humanitarian, developmental and security concerns.
However, in order to deal effectively with failed states, it should be understood that:
- Failed states have never functioned as modern states.
- Informal patron-client networks and shadow economies continue to operate after the state institutions have become irrelevant.
- Some of the core functions associated with the state may be undertaken by different types of non-state actors.
- Human questions of how to ensure physical and economic security for oneself and one’s dependants do not disappear because the state does.
- The mechanisms for exercising political power in failed states may be difficult to detect for ‘outsiders’, but that does not make them any less real.
There are currently four different approaches to dealing with failed states: Peacebuilding, Liberal Imperialist, Realist and Critical. The international community currently favours the Peacebuilding approach. It is a multidimensional enterprise that includes political, social, economic, security and legal dimensions. Each different approach has its own strengths and dilemmas:
- In the Peacebuilding approach there is an inherent contradiction, in that the transition process needs to be locally owned and yet local values may not fit with the fixed agenda of liberal democracy and market economy.
- In the Liberal Imperialist approach, human rights, democracy and market economy are core concerns. The commitment of the Western states is pivotal for success.
- Peacebuilding and Liberal Imperialist approaches argue that, in failed states, the security concerns of the West overlap and coincide with the interests of the local population.
- According to the Realist Theory, liberal approaches falsely assume that democracy-building and state-building are mutually reinforcing.
- Defining what constitutes core national security and strategic interests may be somewhat more complex than the Realist Approach holds.
- Critical Theory does not see the state as the default organisational structure of human community but as a particular institution with a number of historical and contemporary competitors.
