Why rebuilding states may not be enough: failed states, failed nations and the global recession

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Why rebuilding states may not be enough: failed states, failed nations and the global recession

Jackson P.

Introduciton

This paper outlines a case why firstly, there are real issues in rebuilding states that in some way may be said to have "failed", and, secondly, why the global economic downturn may seriously affect how we currently approach post-conflict reconstruction of states that have collapsed. It begins with a series of definitions of state failure and begins to look at some of the reasons for that.

Using a case taken from the reconstruction of Sierra Leone in West Africa, which collapsed entirely, the paper outlines some of the key issues that remain after ten years of reconstruction efforts. The Sierra Leone case holds some interesting lessons regarding what people actually try to do in reconstructing a state, but also some of the key problems in making any state work.

Fundamentally, of course, Sierra Leone remains a relatively small state in West Africa and the fact that a viable state remains elusive brings in to question the time it takes to reconstruct social and political norms and structures, but also asks the question of whether state-building is actually the best way of coping with post conflict situations and failed states. The paper then goes on to look at the contemporary example of Iraq, putting forward the view that the US approach to state-building has affectively hollowed out the Iraqi state, an approach that may lead to difficulties with legitimacy. Finally, the paper goes on to look at the consequences of an economic downturn for these approaches. State-building is a long term and expensive business. If the finances for that reconstruction dry up then this is likely to lead to an exaggerated set of difficulties in supporting state structures.

This leads to a potential situation whereby security is therefore worsened as states that are relied on to control their own militants begin to collapse themselves. The consequences of Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan or indeed any of the Central Asian states collapsing would certainly be a far worse international security situation. States, power and money therefore, remain at the centre of global security.

1. Failed states and other variations

What exactly do we mean by failed states? There is a complex set of definitions, some of which overlap, that are used to describe various states of state collapse.

Fragile states or weak states are those that are vulnerable to crisis in one form or another within any of its subsystems. This type of state is particularly vulnerable to exogenous shocks, including financial crisis or international conflict. Institutional arrangements tend to shore up the conditions necessary for crisis. This may be extreme inequality, institutionalised corruption, repressive and corrupt security forces, a high degree of political personalisation. In addition, The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) defines a fragile state as "those countries where the government cannot or will not deliver core functions to the majority of its people". There may, of course, be several reasons for this, including the idea of many states being not really "states" at all, but quasi-states whereby the official state is subject to institutional multiplicity and rival political systems, including warlords, that may perpetuate financial crisis and produce a LICUS (Low Income Country Under Stress) country or a Neo-Patrimonial State reliant on extensive patronage networks and a tendency to kleptocracy.

One of the key competing institutions is primarily economic but also has implications for power. The idea of a shadow state is an important element in much of this analysis. There are basically two kinds of shadow states. Firstly, there is the common type of economy that exists beyond the state - a black or grey economy that may or may not be entirely legal. This could include international trading networks such as drugs, arms and people that circumvent state structures entirely. The second form of shadow state usually builds up where formal state functions in a geographical area have broken down and have been replaced by an alternative structure, usually where resources have been channelled through patronage systems based on armed force.

A crisis state is a state under acute stress, where control is contested and where several of the issues outlined above have come to a head. A state may recover from being in crisis or it may collapse. If a crisis state unravels then it may collapse entirely or, alternatively, lead to a process of state formation (or re-formation).

If a crisis state fails to recover then it becomes a failed state, sometimes referred to as a collapsed state which effectively means that the state infrastructure is incapable of reproducing the conditions for its own existence and has no effective control over its own territory, borders or basic security.

In the policy community many of these descriptions are used in contradictory ways. There is a tendency, for example, to label poorly performing states as "failed" which may or may not be true. The UK Government constantly referred to the Iraqi state as failed whereas this was manifestly not true. In fact Saddam's Iraq, although an unpleasant regime, was an enduring state since it managed to survive everything that was thrown at it. One of the sources of confusion is that state subsystems may survive even if the central state had collapsed.

2. The problem with state-building

Given the policy community's focus on states, it is perhaps hardly surprising that the main focus of international aid has been in trying to support states that are weak and also in reconstructing states that are in crisis or have collapsed entirely. There are clearly a set of clear reasons for this, not least is a concern with international security and the reliance on an international state system at international level (the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.) that relies on functioning states to carry out basic tasks. The current security environment also relies on states to maintain existing international order. The collapse of the Somali regime has spawned a whole range of issues, not least the development of piracy along the Somali coast which poses a threat to international shipping.

Unsurprisingly state-building has become the main focus of much international aid, with the aim being to create and bolster international security both for the people of the relevant states but also for the international community more broadly. Unfortunately these attempts at state building have frequently been problematic. One of the core reasons for this is that state building has taken place in a particular way. The vast majority of states that have been built have concentrated very much on technical issues - effectiveness, functionality, etc. - rather than on the idea of what a state actually is. A real issue in Africa and Central Asia in particular is what constitutes a state? There is a clear difference between constructing a state apparatus and building a real world state.

The example of Iraq illustrates this extremely well. Armed with a whole range of neo-liberal state theories that view the institutions of the state as almost being separated from existing politics, the US attempted to construct a western style state. In order to do this it dismantled the state that existed and started all over again, constructing a new set of institutions that are ahistorical and in many ways, alien, to the local population. Holding an election does not necessarily constitute state formation in a classical sense, even though the assumption is that democracies can be created in this way in less than three years. Aside from the issues with multiparty democracy in a post conflict situation, the real issues with Iraq lie in a fundamental misunderstanding of what the project of state building actually means in practice.

The literature on failed states has increased dramatically since the mid-1990s. It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine this in any detail, but it is useful to look at representative illustrations of the core approaches. One of the best known analysts is Francis Fukuyama, who outlines a set of approaches posited on a completely ahistorical and technocratic view of states See, for example: Fukuyama F. State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21^st Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; Fukuyama F. Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.. One of the initial points made by Fukuyama in his analysis concerns the lack of institutional memory within policy bodies such as the UN concerning state-building. This is complemented by the point that state building takes a long time - it is a long term commitment and sustained investment in terms of both time and resources.

These two ideas are frequently taken up by other analysts, but additional complexities are added. Many of these end in generalised comments that don't really provide a comprehensive theoretical framework for state building. For example, Jochen Hippler outlines a three point plan for state building based on Hippler J. (ed.) Nation-Building: A Key Concept for Peaceful Conflict Transformation? London: Pluto Press, 2005.:

Improvement in living conditions;

Structural reform of functional ministries;

Integration of the political system.

Well, yes, but what does this actually mean in practice and integration of the political system into what? More importantly, if this means (as it usually does) integration of the political system into the international order, then who owns this process? Is this then a process that has some form of local ownership amongst those who are supposed to benefit in the country itself, or is the main body presumed to benefit international states who will lose much if the state system collapses?

This is supplemented by analysis separating nation-building from state-building. Heinrich and Kulesa, for example, provide an analysis of Somalia - the archetypal collapsed state - which argues that a weak or collapsed state is not simply a function of its own history but also a problem of contemporary international relations, particularly the universalisation of the nation-state Heinrich W., Kulessa M. Deconstruction of States as an Opportunity for New Statism: The Example of Somalia and Somaliland // Hippler J. (ed.) Nation-Building. 2005..

Whilst virtually all current analysts accept that there are issues with the nation-state in many of the contexts in which states are failing, there is still a tendency to accept, certainly in policy terms, the technocratic parameters of state building as laid out by Fukuyama. This continues to cast the nation-state as the norm in international relations, whilst ignoring the broadening and deepening of security at international and subnational levels. There remains an assumption that if we can develop the right mixture of policies then we can create a healthy nation state that can exist in the international order, whilst in reality this is contestable given that many of the states where nation-building is focussed were never really states in the first place, except on paper.

It follows from this therefore that rebuilding them on paper does not mean that they exist in reality as states. Fundamentally all states rely on people to make them work and this means that they need to be political structures as well as institutional ones. There are a number of implications that fall out of this. Firstly, people need to buy in to the state at some level. Commonly related to ideas of legitimacy, there has to be some level of support for the state as an institution that represents something that they recognise as a state. In a liberal sense this is represented by multiparty democracy, but in reality this type of democratic structure may not deliver representation in this environment, partly because nascent democratic institutions take time to bed down.

This raises the second main point, namely that the construction of a new state requires a significant cultural change in terms of how people relate to that state as well as how people conduct everyday business. In Iraq, for example, the current attempts of the US to construct a western state, and their initial emphasis on deconstructing Saddam's state and political party, have effectively created an artificial layer of a state overlying subnational political systems and existing because the US supports it, not because there is an underlying support for the Iraqi nation state. This creates the risk that the new Iraqi state effectively becomes another faction rather than an oversight mechanism for controlling warring factions at subnational level.

Thirdly, state building is an extremely uneven within states. My own experience in the security system of Sierra Leone is that the UK supported a lot of technical support but the political support surrounding the security institutions was not supported to the same degree - mainly because it is difficult. Ten years of reform have effectively created the perfect conditions for a military coup with an overdeveloped security force, including intelligence, but without the culture of civil oversight to control it.

Lastly, given the fact that state building is so resource intensive, it is also externally funded. This, in turn means that it is externally driven politically. This creates significant problems with regard to funding and funding priorities and particularly when considering local ownership - or lack of it - and the availability of funding affected by the financial crisis.

3. Why the financial crisis will make it worse

A recent article in The Economist The Economist. 12. March 2009. has already downgraded predictions for economic growth. In January 2009 the IMF was still predicting that developing countries would grow by around 3,3% whereas rich countries would fall by around 2%. However, in some of the poorest and most fragile states, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, the IMF has predicted reduced growth rates. Any reduction in economic growth could have dangerous consequences. Although the channels through which economic collapse affects states differ with context, institutions in fragile or weak states tend to extremely strained and ethnic tension and confrontational politics can worsen when competition for scarce resources intensifies.

In fragile states, particularly those relying on external state-building activities, a reduction of private capital flows can be difficult, but a reduction in aid in support of nascent states could be catastrophic. The Overseas Development Institute in the UK estimates that aid could be reduced by around $20 billion this year. This is both the result of the recession in general whereby Governments aim to give a proportion of GDP as aid, but also as a result of currency changes that have eroded the value of the pound.

A second major area for fragile states is the fall in commodity prices. Many weak states have access and are over-reliant on primary commodity exports for income whilst importing food and other commodities. The food crisis of 2007-2008 that came about following these price changes increased the number of people suffering from malnutrition by around 44 m. This is a significant security threat but could also shift a fragile state into crisis and thence into collapse.

Falling export earnings also exacerbate budgetary problems made worse by a decline in aid. An inability to raise taxes domestically therefore produces a real security threat as Governments become unable to pay their employees including security services. At the same time, many people will begin to sink below the $2 a day poverty line. The World Bank estimates that this could be as many as 65m people will slip below this line as a result of the economic crisis and around 53m people will slip below the absolute poverty line ($1,25). One of the clearest correlations remains that between poverty and levels of conflict. The more poor people there are the more likely to be continuing conflict.

In security terms whilst the weakness of the US could have implications for Chinese influence in Africa, the main security threat to the West and also to Russia is the decreasing capacity of regimes vital to maintaining order. In the same way as the Somali collapse led to piracy in shipping lanes, the danger is that collapsing states, no longer propped up by western state-building efforts, will greatly increase security threats. For example, there were riots in Egypt last year as a result of rising wheat prices, which put pressure on the state to manage both ordinary people and also extremist groups who used the unsettled situation to make political capital.

In this context there are particular countries that are perhaps of more concern than others. Pakistan, currently, is a state that is extremely fragile. There are areas of the country not controlled by the state, it has a poorly performing economy, rising Islamic militancy, is adjacent to an unstable conflict in Afghanistan and is dependent

on external support to keep its state going. Western state-building efforts are extremely resource intensive and the state faces rising support for the Taliban amongst poor and marginalised groups to whom it cannot reach out and provide services. Pakistan is also a nuclear power and a collapsed state here is potentially catastrophic. Yemen is another potential casualty of the financial crisis with a rising number of Islamic radicals and declining oil prices. Certainly if the state fails there then it is likely that there will be a safe haven from Islamic radicals to launch attacks into the Horn of Africa and in the Middle East more generally.

economic stability legitimate

Conclusions

Western state-building suffers from three core flawed assumptions. Firstly, Western style state institutions are transferrable to any context. The second is that the diagnosis of what is actually wrong is shared between those who are providing the state-building effort and those who are within the state itself. The third is that international actors have the capacity to build states.

The first of these points is closely related to the focus of international relations on the nation state as a construct that exists outside of context. In particular it ignores the existence of levels of polity that exist at transnational and subnational levels apart from those forms of international organisation that are directly reliant on the nation state itself, e.g. the UN. This can lead to a situation as in Iraq where and artificial state has been created above a series of substrata of political activity but with almost no interaction with that activity.

Secondly, the assumption of a shared idea of what, say, democracy means, let alone what the state should be used for is flawed. In many states local politicians see the state as a means to build personal power bases and personal fortunes. States are a source of funds and power, not necessarily shared expressions of nationhood or unity.

Lastly, the assumption that the international community has the ability to reconstruct states that have collapsed is clearly the assumption most interrogated by the current international financial downturn. Economic recession can lead to periodic crises within states that leads to an inability to perform basic state functions such as providing services or security. If this persists then the issues related to increased political pressure amongst those suffering as a result of these changes are likely to result in prolonged crisis that could lead to state collapse. Once a state collapses then it leaves a power vacuum that is all too frequently filled by an agent of instability, either a transnational terrorist group or criminal activity such as drug trafficking.

Recession significantly reduces the ability of donors to continue along a path of state building. Regardless of how flawed the assumption, the ability even to achieve any gains in maintaining peace in the short term through state building are likely to be undermined by a declining capacity to act in bolstering regimes that are supportive of a particular security situation. Recession therefore is likely to lead to a more unstable security situation and a reduced capacity to react to security crises.

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