THE FAILED STATES
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faildstates1.pptxThe Failed States
The new world order
Presented by:
Wars since 1945 and state strength
Middle East, Africa, Central America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Balkans, Central Asian former Soviet republics
Three interlinked components
The idea of the state
The institutional expression of the state
The physical basis of the state
Vertical legitimacy
Authority
Consent
Horizontal legitimacy
Definition and political role of community
Loyalty to the ideas of the state and its institutions
Those defined in special categories
Remove themselves from the community – exile, migration
Capture the state apparatus through a coup or revolution
Organize resistance against the majority community to defend their interests, rights and aspirations
Start a communal war
Secede to form their own state
Failed states
No public order
Leadership command no authority or loyalty
Variety of groups or factions are armed to resist those who might try to integrate community or establish effective order
Colonialism
The nature of colonial political institutions
Western political concepts and liberal institutions in state-making process
Weak states: structural characteristics
Low level or absence of vertical legitimacy (authority, reciprocity, trucst, accountability)
Local power centers, local centers of resistance
The personalization of the state: patrimonial system, personality politics
Lack of horizontal legitimacy, social fragmentation: ethnicity, religion, class, caste, factions, language, territorial location. Indigenous groups, communal contenders for state power, militant sects, ethnoclasses
Weak states: structural characteristics
State cannot provide security
State itself becomes a major threat to the life and welfare of individuals
The balance between the extraction and services
Societies characterized by extensive poverty any government extraction poses a severe threat
Scarce resources are allocated to favor some groups
Lack of social consensus on the political ‘rules of the game’: minorities access to power and resources
Weak states: structural characteristics
One individual, family, group, or community ‘captures’ the state and uses its authorities to exclude others from participation and access to resources
Subjection, displacement, forced assimilation, mass murder
The prevalence of massive corruption: ‘kleptocracies’ – personal enrichment and public theft and extortion
Bureaucracy as a vast publicly funded employment scheme
The state-strength dilemma
Attempt to find strength – adoption of predatory and kleptocratic practices
Playing upon the social tensions between the communities
State doesn’t have the resources to create legitimacy by providing security and other services
States seek to gain the strength
Attempts to create strength
Resistance
State is weakened
Coercive measures against the local power centers
The claims of legitimacy become hollow
Individual responses to state-strength dilemma
Endurance/quietism
Exit
Voice
Rebellion
Ignore the coercive and predatory practices of the state
Focus life around predominant social unit
‘buying off’ potential political opposition
Migration abroad
Joining the underground economy
The most dangerous option –torture, prolonged detentions, reprisals against family members
Conspiracy
Attempted coups
Rebellion
Intercommunal war
Armed secession
States become weaker as the sources of vertical and horizontal legitimacy erode
Increased oppression generates increased resistance
Leaders become isolated
Government institutions no longer function except in the capital city
The tasks of governance devolve to warlords, clan chiefs, religios figures
The national army disintegrates into local racketeering
Source: Kalevi J. Holsti. The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge University Press, 1996 (2004)
