State Failure

This paper will primarily discuss the concept of Buffer States and the main conditions that need to be in place to make a buffer state. Subsequently, this study will unfold the paradox that two conditions, namely the multi-ethnic divisions in association with the lack of foreign policy in place can affect the formation of a state or even failure.

This essay focuses on a paradoxical transformation that happened within Soviet ideological discourse at the very end of perestroika, around 1990-91. The Party's attempts to revitalize Soviet ideology by returning to the original word of Lenin unexpectedly produced the opposite result. The unquestionable external Truth from which Soviet ideological discourse drew its legitimacy-and that had always been identical with Lenin's wordsuddenly could no longer be known. This shift launched a rapid unraveling of the Soviet communist project. At the center of this unexpected transformation was the search for the true Lenin-a kind of Lenin that Soviet party theorists, bureaucrats, historians, and scientists hoped was still hidden in the midst of his unpublished texts and unknown facts of his biology, life, and death.

This thesis proposes six mechanisms through which an al-Qaeda affiliation changes a terrorist group's ability to destabilize its host country: resources, knowledge, ideology,identification, local distrust, and foreign targeting. Using case studies for groups with varying levels of ties to al-Qaeda, evidence for the mechanisms is provided. No net change in local instability capacity is found at any level of ties to al-Qaeda.

Written for the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Interdisciplinary  honors program in International Security Studies, Stanford University, 2013

Abstract: On 26 April 1986, the world has witnessed an obscure nuclear explosion that transpired by the former Soviet Union, which resulted with perpetual consequences in every aspect of political science and anthropology. This case study examines the political repercussions of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its impacts on the state failure of the Soviet Union. The accident is illustrated by looking at its tragic environmental causes and socio-political impacts on the Soviet society and its disintegration. This project combines differentiated analyses on relevant aspects such as environmental degradation, national economy, socio-political impact and foreign interpretations of the disaster, in order to emphasize overall influence and political repercussions of the Chernobyl accident on state failure. Environmental degradation of states may lead to failure and transformation; these can be political processes such as fusion, globalization, and integration. But at the same time, probability of fragmentation, fission and disintegration of states rest at as high possibilities. The Chernobyl accident happened during the period of tremendous changes such as political restructuring and introduction of democratization, thereof, it played a major role on the collapse of the Soviet Union and became an
`invisible game maker` of the democratic movement.

El curso de Introducción al Sistema Internacional (ISI) ofrece a los estudiantes una primera aproximación  al estudio de las relaciones internacionales (RR.II.). A lo largo del semestre se examinarán las siguientes temáticas: la configuración de las relaciones internacionales como una disciplina científica; la trayectoria histórica de las RR.II.; los niveles de análisis en el estudio de las RR.II.; los actores estatales del SI; la sociedad civil global; las Naciones Unidas; las dinámicas del uso de la fuerza y la guerra; la soberanía y la intervención; el terrorismo. El objetivo es presentar a los estudiantes una perspectiva introductoria de las relaciones internacionales como campo de estudio. Se busca, de esta manera, equipar a los estudiantes con fundamentos sólidos para su buen desempeño en el resto de las materias del Área de Relaciones Internacionales que componen el plan de estudios tanto en Finanzas y Relaciones Internacionales como en Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales.

This paper seeks to underline the link between the concepts of international terrorism and state failure. In order to accomplish such a task, a definition of international terrorism will be offered. Following this, an examination and exploration of the failed state concept will take place with careful consideration taken to outline its origins while highlighting the debate concerning semantic notions of fragility and failure within policy and academia. This section will culminate in defining the characteristics of a failed state. Subsequent subsections will be dedicated to illustrating, with tangible examples, how each characteristic pertaining to state failure can facilitate the incubation and proliferation of international terrorist groups.

Albert Einstein once said: ‘Not everything that counts can be counted and not every-thing that can be counted counts.’ Does this apply to the measurement of state failure? This essay will give an answer to the question whether state failure can be usefully measured.

The 1970s saw growing assertions that state intervention was failing and that the state itself was in crisis. In the 1980s the dominant neo-liberal response in Britain to this alleged crisis largely involved turning to the market and, to a lesser extent, community or family self-help. Successive Thatcher and Major governments promoted privatization, liberalization, deregulation , the use of market proxies in the residual state sector, cuts in direct taxes to enhance consumer choice, and internationalization to promote capital mobility and the transfer of technology and 'know-how'. They also advocated an enterprise culture and popular capitalism to make civil society more market-friendly. This project was intended to re-equip Britain with a liberal, night-watchman state with progressively smaller and more balanced budgets and thereby boost this slimmed-down state's capacity to perform its remaining core functions. However, while this neo-liberal programme was still being pursued and, indeed, intensified, it also became apparent that the turn to the market had not delivered all that had been promised. Market failures and inadequacies had not been eliminated yet an explicit return to the state was ideologically and politically unacceptable. Thus, as early as the 1980s, one could discern increasing government interest at all levels in how public-private partnerships and similar forms of governance might contribute to public policy and purposes. This alternative to marketization was steadily reinforced during the Conservative years and is likely to become yet stronger under 'New Labour' with its declared commitment to a 'stakeholding society'. The expansion of governance is not meant to return Britain to a discredited corporatism (let alone a tripartite corporatism with the active involvement of organized labour) but, rather, to address real limitations of the market, state, and mixed economy as means of dealing with various complex economic, political, and social issues. One area where a turn to governance has been popular is local economic and social development and it is this that provides the empirical focus of the following theoretical reflections on the various ways in which coordination mechanisms can fail and how tendencies to failure may themselves be governed.

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Measures of governance and stateness have grown substantially in number over recent decade, and gained also greater importance in building public discourses and orienting decision-making processes. Yet there seems to be little agreement on what exactly these measures represent. This paper claims that the proliferation of metrics can only be understood against the conceptual hybridity and indeterminacy in which the notions of governance and stateness have entangled. To frame this ‘creative disorder’, the first part of the paper introduces the current debate on measuring governance and stateness. The second explores the sematic fields of the two concepts, while the third one provides an overview on existing measures and methodological questions. The fourth part explores normative demands and policy prescriptions linked to this production and the fifth section analyses in depth three different measures: The Rule of Law Index, the Sustainable Governance Indicators and the State Fragility Index. The sixth part concludes by summarising the relevance of exploring both conceptual and normative challenges in the use and production of these measures.

Congo’s state failure is usually analysed in terms of a ‘broken social contract’, reflecting the degree to which mainstream understandings of state failure are conditioned by classical social contract theory. This article takes a different route to understanding Congo’s predicament by building on insights from actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s insistence on society as a socio-material entanglement, it shows, translates into increasing attention to the role of material infrastructures in constituting governmental power. Conversely, this approach also allows the highlighting of the importance of the absence of the material underpinnings of rule in drawing up more nuanced accounts of state failure.

The ongoing discussion on the role of the State as a safeguard of security in modern system of International Relations offers contrasting views on the problem of state failure. This paper presents an examination of the current political situation in a failed state of Somalia. From 1990 to 2010 political-territorial developments in Somalia challenged the established approaches to state formation; today it is relevant to examine the developing local trends of state-building under conditions of negative configuration of security.

The 1970s saw growing assertions that state intervention was failing and that the state itself was in crisis. In the 1980s the dominant neo-liberal response in Britain to this alleged crisis largely involved turning to the market and, to a lesser extent, community or family self-help. Successive Thatcher and Major governments promoted privatization, liberalization, de-regulation, the use of market proxies in the residual state sector, cuts in direct taxes to enhance consumer choice, and internationalization to promote capital mobility and the transfer of technology and 'know-how'. They also advocated an enterprise culture and popular capitalism to make civil society more market-friendly. This project was intended to re-equip Britain with a liberal, night-watchman state with progressively smaller and more balanced budgets and thereby boost this slimmed-down state's capacity to perform its remaining core functions. However, while this neo-liberal programme was still being pursued and, indeed, intensified, it also became apparent that the turn to the market had not delivered all that had been promised. Market failures and inadequacies had not been eliminated yet an explicit return to the state was ideologically and politically unacceptable. Thus, as early as the 1980s, one could discern increasing government interest at all levels in how public-private partnerships and similar forms of governance might contribute to public policy and purposes. This alternative to marketization was steadily reinforced during the Conservative years and is likely to become yet stronger under 'New Labour' with its declared commitment to a 'stakeholding society'. The expansion of governance is not meant to return Britain to a discredited corporatism (let alone a tripartite corporatism with the active involvement of organized labour) but, rather, to address real limitations of the market, state, and mixed economy as means of dealing with various complex economic, political, and social issues. One area where a turn to governance has been popular is local economic and social development and it is this that provides the empirical focus of the following theoretical reflections on the various ways in which coordination mechanisms can fail and how tendencies to failure may themselves be governed.

Regeneración y patología... Medellín, julio-diciembre de 2012: pp. 149-169 * El artículo es el resultado de la investigación La Regeneración y la patología del estado colombiano (1853-1900), desarrollado en el Doctorado en Derecho de la Universidad de los Andes. Una versión inicial titulada: "Melancolía, regeneración y patología. Análisis de la vigencia de los discursos regeneradores y el duelo poscolonial de la Regeneración hasta nuestros días". Fue presentada en el evento La justicia constitucional colombiana: perspectivas históricas. Colombia,

Logo design: Carola Vogel Layout design: Jeanette Schade, Sascha Werthes Cover photo: Jochen Hippler Abstract Daniel Lambach/Tobias Debiel (Eds.): State Failure Revisited I: Globalization of Security and Neighborhood Effects. Duisburg: Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg-Essen (INEF Report, 87/2007).

To Be Official or Appear Official? On Two Styles of Roadblock in West Africa (Ghana/Senegal)
This study compares two types of roadblocks created by entities representing passenger transport professionals in Ghana and Senegal. Far from competing with the legal authorities, each of these types of roadblock bases their legitimacy on a performance of proximity with the state, its ideal, symbolism and the officials who represent it. By comparing these two cases, however, one may go further. In Ghana, this practice has long been subject to legal supervision. In Senegal, by contrast, it is the result of an array of informal agreements reached at the municipal and regional levels. While this difference confers greater resources upon the Ghanaian entity to stage its proximity with the state, it also makes it more vulnerable than its Senegalese counterpart to changes in the national political conjuncture. In this specific case, what may a priori seem the most fragile performance of the state appears to be the most enduring, if not the most stable.

Français
Cette étude compare deux types de barrage routier mis en place par des entités représentant les professionnels du transport de passagers au Ghana et au Sénégal. Loin de se déployer dans un registre concurrent de celui des autorités légales, la légitimité de chacune de ces formes de barrage repose sur la mise en scène d’une proximité avec l’État, son idéal, sa symbolique et les fonctionnaires qui le représente. La mise en regard de ces deux cas permet cependant d’aller encore plus loin. Au Ghana, cette pratique a longtemps été encadrée par le droit. Au Sénégal, elle est en revanche le produit d’une multitude d’accords informels passés à l’échelle des villes ou des régions. Cette différence a doté l’entité ghanéenne de plus de ressources pour mettre en scène son étaticité, mais l’a aussi rendue plus vulnérable aux évolutions de la conjoncture politique nationale que son homologue sénégalaise. Dans ce cas précis, la forme a priori la plus bricolée d’étaticité est loin d’être la plus fragile. Elle apparaît au contraire comme la plus durable, si ce n’est la plus stable.

This article illustrates how discourses on 'state fragility' have been instrumentalised by the Indonesian military in order to consolidate its political and economic power after the fall of Suharto. In the wake of Indonesia's transition to democracy violent conflicts escalated in East Timor, Aceh, Papua, the Moluccas and Sulawesi. Most notably East Timor's successful secession spawned fears over the potential 'balkanisation' of Indonesia. In this context the Indonesian military, which had been shunned for its involvement in Suharto's New Order, managed to re-establish itself as the 'guardian of the nation'. Based on fieldwork in Indonesia, the article describes how post-9/11 discourses over a potential break-up of Indonesia were used by the Indonesian military to reconsolidate its power in the post-Suharto era. The research findings illustrate that, against the looming threat of state disintegration, attempts to revoke the military's prerogatives have either failed or have been aborted during the planning stages.

Congo’s state failure is usually analysed in terms of a ‘broken social contract’, reflecting the degree to which mainstream understandings of state failure are conditioned by classical social contract theory. This article takes a different route to understanding Congo’s predicament by building on insights from actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s insistence on society as a socio-material entanglement, it shows, translates into increasing attention to the role of material infrastructures in constituting governmental power. Conversely, this approach also allows the highlighting of the importance of the absence of the material underpinnings of rule in drawing up more nuanced accounts of state failure.

Yemen, the poorest and most populous country on the Arabian Peninsula, has long been a prime candidate to join the failed state club. After the wave of uprisings sweeping through the Middle East reached the country in early 2011, the already high levels of instability and violence reached new heights and threatened to accelerate a steady march towards collapse. Even though a variety of scenarios can be identified for the future of Yemen, the most likely paths all imply a period of prolonged instability. This will carry significant consequences for regional and international security, in particular, by providing al Qaeda's local franchise with an attractive safe haven from which to plan and launch operations.

There is a strong possibility that state authority in Yemen will considerably erode in the coming years under the effect of multiple pressures. This could lead to at least partial, and possibly complete, failure of the state, which would have important regional and international implications. However, a number of key initiatives, if implemented by Yemen and the international community, could in the best of cases prevent the gradual deterioration of the situation or at least limit the speed and extent of the erosion of state authority. Importantly, should preventive measures be unsuccessful, other initiatives could contain the eventual negative implications of state failure in Yemen.  In this context, this article asks three questions:
• What are these multiple pressures that could lead to the failure of the Yemeni state?
• What would be the impact of state failure for regional and international security?
• What can be done to prevent failure or, alternatively, to contain the implications of the erosion of state authority should preventive measures not succeed?

This is a theoretical paper which draws on the existing land planning and state failure literatures to underpin its key assumptions and to provide an appropriate context. Its main purpose is to consider the connection between capital markets and brownfield development. The paper begins with a summary of the various explanations put forward for why the private sector appears reluctant to build on brownfield, and offers a previously overlooked possible cause: the impact of asymmetric information on credit markets for residential construction. The paper then moves on to its main focus by considering state failures in the allocation of land and the likely impact of information problems on the success of fiscal measures to encourage brownfield development. As a result, a new form of possible state failure in land use intervention is identified that arises out of the link between fiscal policy and the financial market treatment of

The Congo region is one of the best examples of the negative consequences of world market integration (and hence globalization) in the world. Today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is an almost “perfectly ” failing state – although not necessarily with respect to a state’s function as a revenue machine for its rulers, but definitely with respect to almost all other state functions, including the most basic ones, like security or infrastructure provision for its people. However, the recent civil war was only the tip of an iceberg of a wellestablished system of structural violence, which is neither simply a result of post-colonial nor colonial heritage. Remarkably stable, it dates back to the very beginning of the integration of the Congo into the global economy. Since the first contact with Europeans, it has experienced a vicious cycle of exploitation that promotes violence and is driven by internal power relations but even more so by world market demands. While the object of...

All’interno delle Considerazioni finali del Governatore relative al 2020, rilasciate il 31 maggio 2021, ci sono spunti degni di nota. Nel paragrafo «L’azione del Governo e l’attività economica in Italia», Visco scrive: «Con l’attenuarsi dell’incertezza l’intervento pubblico dovrà divenire più selettivo, concentrandosi nei settori che sconteranno ancora difficoltà legate alla crisi sanitaria e cercando di evitare di sussidiare imprese chiaramente prive di prospettive, pur garantendo il sostegno a chi è in esse occupato». Qui si fa riferimento alla necessità di distinguere la casistica delle aziende sane ma entrate in crisi di liquidità a causa del lockdown dalle aziende strutturalmente insolventi: salvare quest’ultime significherebbe falsificare la concorrenza e distruggere risorse preziose in una sorta di “accanimento terapeutico”. Si tratta, infatti, di imprese «zombie, morti che camminano», per usare le parole usate in uno studio sulle prospettive del settore privato post-Covid, rilasciato lo scorso dicembre dall’influente think-tank G30, il “Gruppo dei Trenta”, di cui Mario Draghi al momento della stesura dell’analisi era Co-Chair e membro dello Steering Committee. A tal proposito, parlando in generale e non dell’Italia – ma per noi è particolarmente vero – veniva scritto che era giunto il momento di allargare lo sguardo e comprendere che non era più possibile né opportuno proseguire con aiuti a pioggia, indiscriminati, secondo logiche assistenzialistiche e clientelari. Occorre invece – ed è una svolta “culturale” – accettare la prospettiva di un processo di «distruzione creatrice», com’è scritto letteralmente nell’analisi del G30 riprendendo la famosa definizione data dall’economista austriaco Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950).

Nel paragrafo dedicato a «Il ruolo dell’intervento pubblico per il rilancio dello sviluppo», Visco afferma poi che la grave recessione generata dalla pandemia «ha ridato centralità all'azione dello Stato», ma che «non bisogna confondere la necessità di uno Stato più efficace nello svolgere le funzioni che già ora gli sono affidate con quella di estenderne i compiti. L’esperienza storica suggerisce che la produzione pubblica di beni e di servizi di mercato porta con sé rischi non trascurabili di “fallimento dello Stato”, soprattutto se l’impresa pubblica viene sottratta alla disciplina dei meccanismi concorrenziali o se non è accompagnata da regole e presidi istituzionali che ne garantiscano responsabilità e autonomia di gestione. È fuorviante la contrapposizione tra Stato e mercato, che sono invece complementari. Un’economia sana ha bisogno di entrambi: di buone regole, servizi pubblici di qualità e interventi in aree in cui i rendimenti sociali sono alti ma l’attività privata è insufficiente, così come di imprese dinamiche e innovative, in grado di valorizzare il lavoro ed essere premiate per la qualità della loro produzione».

Le considerazioni fatte da Visco sono molto importanti: il Governatore riconosce il ruolo positivo dello Stato a complemento, e non in sostituzione, dell’attività dei privati, che rimane imprescindibile. Non “più Stato”, quindi, bensì uno “Stato migliore”.

In this entrance room to Goma’s Provincial Urban Planning office, planners work among old and new blueprints, books, archives, old architectural materials and tools. The manager lamented their working conditions, low salaries and budget, and the crumbling building – reflective of the poor conditions in Goma and the Congo.

This archival material, though seemingly covered in dust, corroded by moisture and poorly organised, was properly labelled and organised chronologically. And, while demanding better resources, the clerks and bureaucrats were proud to be the collectors and guardians of this knowledge.

In Yancong, a drought-prone agricultural rural Township of North-East Yunnan, access to water is a crucial concern of local villagers. Irrigation and drinking water comes to the community from a reservoir located fifty km north, and the local Water Bureau – a government office under the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources where I conducted 16 months of fieldwork – is in charge of delivering it to the 27 villages under its jurisdiction, securing that all villages get their share. Developing the water supply network so that the Chinese citizens' right to domestic water can be fulfilled is one of the main objectives sought after by the Water Bureau. This however with ambivalent results. Despite the many efforts of keeping the drinking water flowing, Yancong's distribution network has been affected since its completion by severe disruptions. Furthermore, with the construction of a hydro-power station in the late '80s, the old water infrastructures collectively excavated by the local villagers have been definitely encroached upon by the state, being converted to uses which were not supported by or even discussed with the local community. The dispossession of collectively owned infrastructures prompted local villagers to find alternative ways of securing drinking water, creating a network of  illegal wells from which anyone can collect clean water without charge. This paper investigates the moral significance and social implications of this water management counter-practice, investigating the local notion of solidarity it enacts and how this directly challenges the state governance of water and the entwined notion of legal right protecting its access.

The book "Why Nations Fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty" has been written by the two prolific writers Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Daron Acemoglu is Turkish born American economist. He is teaching at Massachusetts institute of technology since 1983. James A. Robbin is British economist and political scientist. He taught at Harvard university. The book was published in 2012 and it generated new pattern of debates in the top brass of development economists, political scientists and institutional theorists. The first and foremost endeavor was to answer the fundamental questions and admonitions which this book has succinctly generated. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson two exuberant and popularly known development scholars have started the book with examples from the world that why there is increasing gulf of poverty among the people. Why the people living on the same borders have disparate living standards. This kind of difference never existed before in the ancient times. Even today an American earn more than the people living on the other side of Mexican border. They are 10 times more prosperous than the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and 40 times prosperous than the people of Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Mali. Among the thousands of reasons of lackluster economic policies, geography, culture, the basic reason is difference of institutions. On the basis of institution, it can be divided into two categories. "Extractive Institution" where small number of people are governing and "Inclusive Institution" where a bulk of people are governing. Both writers argue that for the economic prosperity of the country there is need to have stable political institutions. This can be accomplished by the inclusive political institutions which give more room to innovations as specimen is Industrial Revolution. The Extractive Institutions also

States play a complex role in the incidence of human rights abuse. It is widely acknowledged they act as both perpetrators and preventers of abuse. The literature has emphasized the former over the latter, however, devoting considerable energy to understanding the conditions under which states adopt abusive policies. Less attention has been paid to the question of how variations in state capacity influence the protection of human rights.
My central argument in this book is that state weakness and failure is responsible for much of the human rights abuses we see in the world today. Weak states are unable to control their own agents or to police abuses by private actors, resulting in less accountability and more abuse. By contrast, stronger states have greater capacities to protect human rights: even strong authoritarian states tend to have better human rights conditions than weak ones. Scholars and activists should therefore focus much more on the issues of state capacity to protect human rights, the impact of state failure, and pay greater attention to abuses by non-state actors.

This hand-drawn map hangs in the local police substation of Quartier Djalo, Kinshasa. Despite having no access to computers, printers, surveillance devices, radios or the Internet, administrative and law-enforcement staff engage in detailed, routine practices to ensure social control and gather information on their constituents. The eyes and ears of the state, police and local chiefs patrol their territory and document the activities of local residents. Maps help them exert their authority as state agents and track social and physical changes within their boundaries. They thus re-legitimise and re-institutionalise the state from the ground up.

This article deals with the growing policymaking interest in the condition of ‘failed states’ and the calls for increased intervention as a means of coping with international terrorism. It starts by highlighting the inordinate attention initially granted to the threat posed by ‘rogue states’ to the neglect of ‘failed states’. Generally, it is argued that the prevalence of such notions has to be related to a persistence of Cold War discourse on statehood that revolves around binary oppositions of ‘failed’ versus ‘successful’ states. Specifically, the purveyors of this discourse are practitioners who focus on the supposed symptoms of state failure (international terrorism) rather than the conditions that permit such failure to occur. Here, an alternative approach to ‘state failure’ is advocated that is more cognisant of the realms of political economy and security constraining and enabling developing states and appreciative of different processes of state formation and modes of social organisation.