Presentation on Understanding Fragile States

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Presentation onUnderstanding Fragile States

• Delwar Hossain, Ph.D.
• Associate Professor
• Dept. of International Relations
• University of Dhaka
• Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh

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Outlines of the Presentation

• Introduction
• Changing Nature of State in the Post-War Era
• The Debate on Fragile States
• The Key Attributes of Fragile States
• Implications of Fragile States
• Global Response Salvaging and Revitalizing
  Fragile States
• Looking Ahead

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Objectives of the Presentation

• to shed light on different views on conceptual
  understanding of fragile states and to show how
  conceptions of fragile states are reflected in
  the grand narratives of donor agencies and
  nations.
• to foreground specific challenges posed by
  fragile states to the global community and what
  global response is available to salvage and
  revitalize fragile states.

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Changing Nature of State in the Post-War Era

• Cold War Dynamics
• Decolonization/Post-colonial societies (state
  formation, dominance of elites)
• Post-Cold War Era
• Post-9/11 Period
• Limits on State Behavior (internal and external)
• Key Areas of Changes and Continuity
• State Sovereignty
• Territorial Integrity
• Core Functions of State
• External Environment

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Box-1 The ten core functions of the state

• legitimate monopoly on the means of violence
• administrative control
• management of public finances
• investment in human capital
• delineation of citizenship rights and duties
• provision of infrastructure services
• rule of law
• management of the states assets (including the
  environment, natural resources, and cultural
  assets)
• international relations (including entering into
  international contracts and public borrowing)
• formation of the market
• Source Ghani et al, 2005.

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Box-2 External environment

• Global trade system
• Global aid system
• Global security system
• Global and regional corporations
• Global civil society networks
• Global media
• Global and regional networks of knowledge

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The Debate on fragile states

• Politics of defining states
• Cold War Era (Superpower, great power, middle
  power, small power, strong power, and weak power
  Rich, poor, industrialized, newly
  industrializing, developed, developing,
  underdeveloped, high income, low-income, least
  developed, last of the least developed, and so
  on.)
• Post-Cold War Era (failed, collapsed
  crisis, fragile, rogue, weak,
  ineffective, murderous, vulnerable, poorly
  performing, ineffective, or shadow,
  neo-patrimonial, warlords, quasi, a
  country at risk of instability or under
  stress, or even a difficult aid partner,
  competition, and so on.)

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Contd.

• Donors view on fragile states
• DFID (Capacity and political willingness)
• USAID (broad meaning, challenges, strategic
  options)
• JICA (fragility and its three dimensions
  functionality, outputs and relationships with
  donors)
• Critics of donors view (static, a-historical,
  technical and functionalistic tendency to focus
  on index or indicators and aid policy oriented)
• Beyond the donor driven framework
• As a precursor to collapsed or failed states
• Different theoretical traditions (more relevance
  of constructivism)

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Contd.

• Fragile states and nation-building
• Process to build nation
• Third world syndromes (Ayoob, Behera)
• Defining Fragile States
• Combination of donors views, academic stream of
  thought and nation-building process
• A fragile state is defined as a state facing a
  condition of statehood where the state in
  question substantially loses its domestic and
  international agential powers to organize its
  collective action.

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Contd.

• Figure-1 Directions of States
  
• Powerful
• Emergence of a State
  Failed/collapsed
• 
  Strong
• Figure-2 The Fragility Continuum
• Fragility
  Solid
• Low
  High

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The Key Attributes of Fragile States

• Who are Fragile States?
• Africa Angola, Cote dIvoire, Dem Rep of Congo,
  Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Burundi,
  Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad,
  Comoros, Kenya, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia,
  Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rep of Congo, São Tomé
  Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo,
  and Zimbabwe
• Asia Cambodia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Burma,
  Nepal, , Indonesia, Lao PDR, Tajikistan, Timor
  Leste, Uzbekistan
• The Pacific Tonga, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea,
  the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu
• Others Yemen, Georgia, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti,
  (Macedonia, Serbia-Montenegro, El-Salvador by
  USAID)

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Contd.

• Causes behind fragility (cases of Afghanistan and
  Nepal, formation of post-colonial states,
  neo-liberal globalization, roles of WB, IMF and
  WTO)
• Indicators Developed by Donors (DFID, JICA,
  USAID)
• Major Characteristics of Fragile States
• Political element
• Territorial context
• Incapable of delivering public goods
• Poor legitimacy at home and abroad
• Combined pressures from geography, geopolitics
  and demography
• Weak or nearly absent civil society
• Prolonged rule by non-democratic regimes and
  absence of democratic culture

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Implications of fragile states

• America is now less threatened by conquering
  states than by failing ones. We are menaced less
  by fleets and armies than catastrophic
  technologies in the hands of an embittered few.
• US National Security Strategy, September 2002
• Issues
• Politico-Security (civil wars, terrorism, drug
  trafficking)
• Economic (Poverty, development, growth
  distribution)
• Socio-cultural (MDGs, criminalization,
  trafficking)
• Contexts
• Post-cold war (unipolarity, ethnic upsurge,
  emerging powers)
• Post-9/11 scenarios (global war on terror,
  reborderization, identity politics)
• The process of globalization

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Contd.

• Levels
• National (instability, underdevelopment, security
  vulnerabilities, human security, image crisis)
• Regional (security, drug trafficking, refugees,
  migration and IDPs)
• Global (terrorism, violence, human security,
  violation of human rights, aid effectiveness,
  organized crimes)

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Global Response Salvaging and Revitalizing
Fragile States

• Short-term measures
• Forcible Humanitarian intervention
• Non-forcible Humanitarian Intervention (aid and
  relief, others)
• Long-term measures
• Preventive strategy
• Political stability through democratization
• Economic development
• Improving governance
• Increasing Aid

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Contd.

• Politics of humanitarian intervention
• Matrix of humanitarian intervention motivation
  and outcomes
• Humanitarian motives, non-humanitarian outcomes
  The UN intervention in Somalia from May 1993-Feb.
  1995
• Humanitarian motives and outcomes Northern Iraq
  in April 1991
• Non-humanitarian motives and humanitarian
  outcomes Vietnams Cambodia in December 1978
• Non-humanitarian motives and outcomes Soviet
  intervention in Afghanistan in 1979.
• Selective intervention/engagement (No to Rwanda,
  Sudan, Burundi, Chechnya, Colombia, Yes to
  Somalia, Kosovo, Northern Iraq,
  Bosnia-Herzegovina)
• Dilemmas and contradictions

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Decreasing aid to fragile states
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Looking Ahead

• Nation-state is still a powerful actor
• Avoiding reductionism and linearity
• Changes in donors driven framework (DFID and
  USAID)
• Need for a Long view
• More academic engagement on fragile states needed
  

The End