State failure and collapse must be placed within a broader appreciation of the evolution of statehood within the international system. What impact has globalisation had on the development of states and their social and economic structure? This paper published by Development and Change traces the origins of the state and identifies the structural and contextual factors that enhance the vulnerability of states. It argues that state failure has to be understood in the context of a world in which maintaining states has become increasingly difficult.
State collapse occurs where structure, authority, law and political order have fallen apart. It is especially prevalent where the conditions for state formation and maintenance were in any event inadequate. Until the end of the nineteenth century, substantial parts of the world were not governed by states. Colonialism and global capitalism led to the adoption of the ideology of the sovereign state as the sole basis for governance, while decolonisation caused the number of states to increase. Nonetheless, the bases of statehood remained fragile within much of the developing world.
- In the first two decades after World War II the underlying problems of maintaining states were masked by the assumed universality of statehood. Superpowers and former colonial powers helped maintain states through diplomatic support, economic aid and military intervention.
- Little attention was given to the domestic structure of the state itself or to the levels of repression and corruption that existed.
- By the 1980s the failure of neopatrimonialism, combined with external shocks, led to the imposition of structural adjustment programmes, which undermined the mechanisms by which fragile states had kept control.
- In parts of the developing world there was a decline in the quality of governance, reflecting an inability to maintain institutional structures created during the colonial era.
- The failure of the USSR had massive implications for the ideology of statehood in the world as a whole and led to a new orthodoxy of how states could be made effective.
- States were expected to harness the resources of order and security, representation, legitimacy, wealth and welfare. These fundamental aspects would allow successful states to insert themselves in the modern global system.
There are a number of issues associated with these new expectations:
- Security: International structures intended to assure security of weak states often ended up undermining them. External support can increase the alienation of the population from rulers, who look to their powerful patrons, rather than their own people.
- Warfare, historically a major spur to effective statehood, has undermined many developing states, which engage in internal wars, weakening institutions, capacity and loyalty to the state.
- Representation is often problematic, due to the absence of economic and social structures necessary to secure democracy. The belief that top down processes of social engineering could create a nation proved to be mistaken.
- After the failure of the USSR the dominant western states solution was for developing countries to focus on democracy, human rights and good governance. This formula presupposed the existence of conditions that were lacking in parts of the developing world.
- Wealth and Welfare: Economic globalisation reduced the rent collecting capabilities of the state. Vulnerable states are likely to get trapped in a cycle of decay, in which their inability to manage interactions with the global economy becomes increasingly damaging.
