STATE CAPACITY AND CASE STUDY
Student Feature: Ethiopia as a deviant case of post-colonial state building
Full Country Name : The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Head of State : President Sahle-Work Zewde (the first female president
of the country)
Head of Government : Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
Government : Parliamentary Republic
Official Language : Amharic
Economic System : Transition Economy
Location : Northeastern Africa
Capital : Addis Ababa
Total land size : 1,112,000 sq km; 429,345 sq miles
Population : 116,462,712
GDP : $278.945 billion
GDP per capita : $2,300
Currency : Ethiopian Birr
Ethiopia displays a particularly unique, deviant case of sovereignty despite
colonialism, in that it is the only country within the continent of Africa to never endure
European colonization. Furthermore, it is unique in that it gained individual state
recognition considerably earlier and through vastly different mechanisms than the
other countries within Africa.
We have considered the effect of the so-called “Scramble for Africa” in the
Comparative Case Study: Botswana and Somalia, and despite Ethiopia’s resistance
to colonial rule, the scramble no less affected it. The Scramble for Africa is the most
conspicuous series of events that contributed to the shaping of Africa as we know it
today. Seeing as though most land across Asia and the Americas had already come
under colonial rule, European countries raced to occupy and claim the continent of
Africa beginning in the early 1860s. In less than 40 years, most of the African continent
was controlled by a European state, as depicted in Figure 49 below. This process was
driven largely by hunger for natural resources as the industrial revolution was in full
force in Europe, but also by an unapologetic sense of cultural, religious, and racial
superiority.
By 1913, the only two countries that had not fallen victim to European
colonization were Ethiopia and Liberia, though Liberia had just overcome early
American colonization. This period of colonization heavily influenced the ways in which
these countries developed, through the partitioning of several ethnicities and tribes
across newly created colonial states, and visible European influence and control over
religion, currency, and language and more.
Ethiopia is known as the oldest independent country in Africa with the
emergence of civilization dating back to over 3,000 years. The survival of Ethiopia as
an independent state throughout colonization is taken as a point of pride by the people.
Throughout most of its history, and up until 1975, Ethiopia functioned as a monarchy
with a variety of distinctive advantages that helped it retain its independence despite
the odds. These include its geographical position, the country’s economic and political
strength, the national consciousness of its people, and the quality of leadership.
Ethiopia is in Northeast Africa in a region referred to as the Horn of Africa. While
prosperous, the country’s unchartered climates and harsh terrains were especially
rough for foreigners, and therefore had a significant advantage for Ethiopian armies.
The deserts of Somali and Afar, as well as the swamps of the Sobat River, form natural
borders protecting the highlands from every direction (Seger, 2018). As well, Ethiopia
had a major agricultural potential given its fertile land, diverse climate, and generally
adequate rainfall. This fostered economic success through trade with the Middle East,
Asia and Europe (Seger, 2018).
Religion was also a considerable factor as to how Ethiopia was able to retain
its independence. French catholic missionaries were deployed in Ethiopia sporadically
from the 1840s to the 1870s with the intention of serving as the initial establishment of
European influence in the region (Ram, 1977). The best explanation for the failure of
these missionaries to introduce European influence in the country was the vigilance of
the Ethiopian Coptic church, which remained opposed to foreign missionary activity
given its determination to preserve the national faith of Ethiopia (Ram, 1977). Had the
Coptic church been less vigilant, or furthermore, less nationalistic, it is likely that
Ethiopia would have endured the same colonial experiences as its neighboring
countries.
However, it is important to note that the country gained European recognition
as a sovereign state in 1896, following the Battle of Adwa, an Italian attempt to seize
control of the country. Ethiopian victory over Italy was decisive, as it brought an Italian
war of conquest to an end in the age of relentless European expansion. The Adwa
victory guaranteed the political independence of Ethiopia through a series of treaties
between Ethiopia, neighboring colonial powers, and European legislators. This
contrasts with most other African states which did not achieve independence from their
respective European powers until around the 1960s. In fact, Zimbabwe didn’t achieve
its independence from Great Britain until 1980.
Despite a brief period of Italian occupation from 1936-1941, in which no lasting
colonial infrastructure developed, Ethiopia deviates from postcolonial theory of the
state because it consistently maintained and achieved recognition of its independence
apart from similarly structured African countries. Italy’s intentions of invading Ethiopia
were motivated by increasing Italian national prestige following their former defeat in
1896, in addition to countering the effects of the Great Depression (Berhe, 2003).
Furthermore, Mussolini claimed that his policies pertaining to Italian expansion were
no different from that of the other colonial powers remaining in Africa.
Although Ethiopia deviates from the rest of Africa as it only briefly experienced
colonization, nonetheless, the country continues to face adversities that can be linked
to colonization throughout the rest of Africa. Since 1941, Ethiopia has been plagued
by political instability and civil war. What was once considered to be the most noble
nation in Africa is now one of the poorest nations in the world (Hallee, 2020). Even
though they were only there for a short period of time, Italians destroyed prominent
villages, committed a variety of war crimes, and killed an estimated 760,000 people
from a prewar population of 12 million (Duncanson, 1970). Reparations from Italy to
Ethiopia were intended to rebuild the country, however, Ethiopia has since faced
numerous difficulties in rebuilding the state, as the destruction removed almost every
relevant pre-occupation community leader, as well as limited the number of competent
individuals in post-war government, business, and scholarship (Hallee, 2020). Ethiopia
has since suffered from ethnic tensions, corruption, instability, and violence, largely as
a condition of the irreversible damage brought forth by the Italian occupation.
Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn about the connection between
colonization and statehood is the role of borders and identity. By disrupting preexisting
ethnic communities and drawing borders to suit European sovereign claims, European
colonies directly contributed to long-lasting ethnic civil conflict and discrimination
making it difficult for these new states to establish both internal and external
sovereignty upon independence. The colonial shaping of geographic boundaries has
significantly affected many African nations access to the global market, particularly
through the large quantity of land-locked countries distributed throughout the
continent. As a condition of the protectorate design used to shape European colonies,
many African countries are noticeably dissimilar in size and maintain vastly irregular
shapes, which has also spurred challenges regarding the enforcement of law. The
portioning of numerous ethnic groups into more than one country, in addition to the
forcible separation of communities along new borders, contributed to competition for
recognition and favor from the European powers as well as the breakdown of tribal
identities, languages, and belief systems. The ethnic hierarchies established by
colonial powers within their states can also be directly linked to genocide (Mamdani,
2020). One reason that Ethiopia was able to resist colonial rule was that the existing
kingdom was multiethnic, but Emperor Menilek II was able to successfully integrate
various identities into a strong nation in which no group enjoyed particular privilege
over the others (Yates, 2021). Therefore, while having juridical sovereignty, much of
Africa has struggled to institutionalize formal sovereignty as well as a monopoly on the
use of force given the imposed and inorganic way borders were drawn.
State Capacity
One of the key concerns of political scientists as well as policymakers is why
some states seem to perform more effectively than others. Fragile states are generally
defined as “states that lack the capacity to discharge their normal functions and drive
forward development…” (Osaghae, 2007, p. 691). The concern is that states that
exhibit these characteristics are at risk of famine, economic meltdown and even
violence, and these issues may spillover into neighboring states or impact the entire
international system through the proliferation of terrorism, drug or sex trafficking, or
mass migrations.
The discussion of state failure (as supposed to fragility) began in the early
1990s and took on more relevance in the aftermath of September 11th. This moment
was important in world politics because it was the end of the Cold War. The collapse
of the Soviet Union changed the landscape of the globe in that a major economic and
political alliance suddenly ceased to exist, leaving only the so-called “West” as the
center of power. Therefore, at least from the perspective of many American
policymakers, it became important for the US to understand weak states in order to
mitigate risks to international stability. After September 11th, risk mitigation took on
more urgency. Several institutions began to study and measure weak or failed states
including the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID), and later, the Fund for Peace. Fragile states have remained a concern of the
US government. In 2019, the US government passed the Global Fragility Act, which
identifies countries at risk and mandates that a 10-year stabilization plan be
implemented in partnership with the target state (Graff, 2023).
Of course, in order to measure the weakness of states, one needs to first
understand what a state is as well as the main functions a state should be performing.
This is why we spent considerable time in the previous sections defining the state and
outlining the theories by which the state came to be. The most minimal definition
requires a social contract, which implies that the most basic function of a state is to
provide security to its people. A slightly more robust definition requires the monopoly
on the use of force, which implies not only that the state is providing security, but it is
the only and the most legitimate source of security. As the state become more global
and more legitimized, it also started to provide more functions beyond security and
law, such as infrastructure, education, and health.
Therefore, some measurements of state failure rely on purely instrumentalist
definitions. For example, the World Bank focused on what they called “low-income
countries under stress” (LICUS) characterized by weak policies, institutions, and
governance. Even more simplistic, the State Failure Task Force, a project of the US
government, defined state failure as the presence of a civil war. Later, this definition
was expanded to include revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, “adverse” regime changes,
and genocides. The USAID approach tried to go further and emphasized legitimacy.
(See Chapter 5: Theories of State Emergence for a full discussion on legitimacy).
However, as discussed above, legitimacy is incredibly difficult to measure especially
as outsiders looking in. Furthermore, there might be a state that is externally strong
but internally weak; meaning, the state itself is unlikely to fail due to a high security
apparatus but internally the state fails to provide basic needs like food. An example
might be North Korea. Finally, the Fund for Peace is a non-profit organization that
maintains two different databases: the Fragile State Index (FSI) and the State
Resilience Index (SRI). The FSI measures fragility along four indictors: cohesion,
economic, political, and social, taking into consideration many more functions than
security. Within each of these indicators are more specific variables as depicted in.
These indicators, as well as the shift in focus from “failure” to “fragility,” was a
response to several criticisms aimed not only at the Fund for Peace specifically, but
the idea of failed states more generally. Among these criticisms include the idea of
ranking states according to their perceived “failures,” a perception that is largely rooted
in Western experiences of stable statehood (Leigh, 2012). Also, since many of these
databases are sourced by the US government, there is skepticism that the rankings
are fair or rather simply a reflection of US geopolitical interests. For example, the State
Failure Taskforce defined China as a “failed state” as late as 1998. While China was
certainly struggling with poverty at the time, it is questionable that it was on the brink
of failure in 1998, especially since it was able to withstand the most significant
challenge to its legitimacy—the Tiananmen Square protests—just nine years earlier.
Finally, the most robust criticism of the idea of state failure was that these
measurements lack historical memory; in other words, they bear no reflection of the
past that might contextualize the perceived failures of the state, especially the history
of colonization.
Therefore, the Fund for Peace responded not only by including more indicators,
changing the name of the index from the Failed State Index to the Fragile State Index,
but it also started a new project called the State Resilience Index (see Figure 51
above). The indicators in this index include civic space, economy, environment,
inclusion, individual capabilities, social cohesion, and state capacity. The goal of this
database is to measure the extent to which a state can recover from a crisis. Used
alongside the FSI, the SRI provides a positive measure of state capacity, rather than
simply focusing on the negative challenges a state is facing.
Taking into consideration the important criticisms of capacity measurements,
using both the FSI and RSI can give us quite a lot of useful information about the
character of an individual state, as well as a basis for a robust comparison between
two or more states. It is important to recognize that these measurements are based
on a positivist approach (see section titled The Comparative Method Revisited) which
demands a purely scientific method with quantitative measures that can be easily
replicated. A postcolonial theorist would question the value of this data and would
prefer a more postpositivist approach using qualitative data, collected from the
experiences of everyday people and their own perspectives on their state. It is also
important to recognize that a state is almost never totally failing or totally resilient
(although see Student Feature: Haiti for a discussion on a collapsed state). Rather,
there can be areas of both, and a state might be particularly resilient in one sector and
particularly vulnerable in another sector (Bizhan, 2022). This text encourages the new
student of comparative politics to balance both types of data when trying to get a better
hold on the capacities as well as pressures different states across the world are
experiencing at any given time. A sample case study of this approach follows.
Comparative Within-Case Study: FATA and Karachi in Pakistan
Full Country Name : Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Head of State : President Arif Alvi
Head of Government : Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
Government : Federal Parliamentary Republic
Official Language : Punjabi, Pashto, Urdu, others
Economic System : Market oriented economy
Location : South Asia
Capital : Islamabad
Total land size : 796,095 sq km; 307,373 sq miles
Population : 247,653,551
GDP : $1.211 trillion
GDP per capita : $5,200
Currency : Pakistani Rupee
If you read any recent headlines concerning Pakistan, you might be tempted to
say that Pakistan is a decidedly fragile state on the brink of collapse. Facing dire
economic straits, Pakistan took out a loan with the International Monetary Fund in
2019 in the amount of $7 billion and its annual loan payment, should it take out more
loans, is expected to be $20 billion. As of publication, Pakistan has less than $4.3
billion in federal reserves. It faces default. A new round of negotiations with the IMF
has been tense. The IMF has demanded certain reforms in exchange for a new loan,
such as increasing energy prices, and this has resulted in massive country-wide
protests. In 2022, the country suffered from massive flooding, leaving many homeless
and causing damages estimated to be worth $30 billion. The economy, like most,
suffered greatly also because of COVID-19.
Furthermore, the country is also facing a political crisis. In 2022, former Prime
Minister Imran Khan lost a no-confidence vote (see Removal of the Executive, page
208) the National Assembly, Pakistan’s legislature, resulting in his removal from office.
His removal has completely divided Pakistanis along partisan lines. Khan is a former
international cricket star. His stardom, along with his message of being an outsider
able to break the grip of power between two warring parties, launched his successful
bid for Prime Minister in 2018. The election was contentious, and Khan’s party was
accused of fraud. His campaign was also aided by the support of the military.
Since Pakistan gained independence in 1947, after being part of the British
Indian Empire for most the 19th century, the government of Pakistan has been
characterized by series of civilian governments followed by military coups. Even
civilian governments have usually required military support to function. Khan’s
government, however, was expected to end the military’s grip on power, but instead,
he relied on the tacit support of the military to maintain his legitimacy. His governing
style was brash, and he arrested many former members of government in what he
described as an anti-corruption campaign. The military began shifting their support for
other parties, resulting in the no-confidence vote.
Since leaving office, he has alleged that his removal was either a Western
conspiracy or a conspiracy of Pakistani rivals. Elections are set for October 2023, and
Khan’s campaign has resulted in an alleged assassination attempt, as well as a
mountain of legal battles he believes are attempts to keep him from running. When he
was arrested in May of 2023, violent protests erupted. Yet, Pakistan displays some
features that can also be found in states considered more stable by the FSI and the
SRI. At the state level, Pakistan scores 4.7/10 (where 10 represents the most resilient)
on the SRI scale and 89.9/120 (where 120 represents the most fragile) on the FSI
scale as of 2023. The FSI rating represents a decline since 2006, indicating that
Pakistan’s capacity has increased in that period. Risk of terrorism has gone down and
per capita poverty fell between 2002-2014 (World Bank, 2017). Furthermore, Pakistan
has robust institutions, such as the central bank, the military, the civil service, the
telecommunications infrastructure, and an extensive irrigation network. In the case of
the first two sectors, these are indeed strong institutions at little risk of failing, despite
the problems that both have created for the economy and the functioning of more
legitimate elections (Javed & Nabi, 2022).
Still, fragility is still persistent in other sectors such as legitimacy and
effectiveness, security, and overall resilience. But these issues vary considerably in
different parts of the country, especially between its urban centers like Karachi and the
more distant rural regions such as the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA). Many of these regional challenges can be traced back to the original
conditions of Pakistan’s statehood.
As mentioned above, Pakistan was formerly part of the British Indian Empire.
In the aftermath of World War II, the British faced increasing pressure in its colonial
empire as well as an intense Indian independence movement. As the British began to
withdraw, some demanded that a new Muslim-majority state be formed, while others
argued for a unified independent India. Eventually, a two-state solution was agreed
upon, resulting in the creation of Pakistan. But the newly formed state had a major
disadvantage: it had two separate pieces of discontinuous land separated by newly
independent India, a much larger and more powerful state. This led to mass migrations
of Hindus and Muslims to and from the Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority East
and West Pakistan, as well as deep animosity between each state. While Pakistan
remains 96% Muslim, there is considerable diversity in terms of language and
ethnicity. Provinces under the British were mostly ethnically homogenous, but this was
completely upended during partition and the resulting migrations. Because
government was centered in West Pakistan, this territory grew economically more
quickly than East Pakistan. This, combined with the fact that East Pakistan did not
speak a common language with the West, led to a nationalist movement in the East,
resulting the succession and independence of Bangladesh. Therefore, Pakistan was
formed in an atmosphere of heightened insecurity as a breakaway state during a very
hasty process of decolonization. As a result, most of the governing resources were
quickly consolidated in the military and national security (Javed & Nabi, 2022).
