Measuring state fragility: a review of the theoretical groundings of existing approaches

Abstract

State fragility has become a resonant term in the development discourse over the past decade. In its early days it served as a catch-all phrase used by donor organisations to draw attention to the need to assist ‘fragile states’. In response to the call for a better understanding of how to deal with these countries, there was a surge in measures of fragility. However, it was not long before academics pointed to the murkiness and fuzziness of the term, and identified several caveats to most of the proposals for quantification. This paper reviews existing approaches to operationalise this concept, distinguishing between those that offer no ranking or only partial rankings of fragile states, and those providing ordinal lists of countries. The examination of their theoretical underpinnings lends support to the critical view that most existing approaches are undermined by a lack of solid theoretical foundations, which leads to confusion between causes, symptoms and outcomes of state fragility.

Keywords:

• Fragile states
• fragility
• measurement
• index
• ranking

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Arjan Verschoor and Edward Anderson for their helpful comments and advice provided. I also thank two anonymous referees for their insightful suggestions.

Notes

1. eg Cammack et al., “Donors and the ‘Fragile States’ Agenda”; Engberg-Pederson, Anderson and Stepputat, “Fragile Situations”; and Bertoli and Ticci, “Fragile Guideline.”

2. Boege et al., “Building Peace”; and Nay, “Fragile and Failed States.”

3. Hameiri, “Failed States”; and Di John, “Concept, Causes and Consequences.” See also Milliken and Krause, “State Failure”; Boas and Jennings, “Insecurity and Development”; Di John, “Conceptualising the Causes and Consequences”; and, more recently, Ayers, “Illusion of the Epoch”; and Hampel, “Dark(er) Side,” for critical analyses of the concept of state failure and the ideology behind it.

4. Cammack et al., “Donors and the ‘Fragile States’ Agenda”; Hout, “Between Development and Security”; Barakat and Larson, “Fragile States.”

5. Grimm, Lemay-Hebert and Nay, “Fragile States.” This is the introduction to a special issue on fragile states. See the full issue for more detailed accounts of how the concept is used by different development actors, from donor agencies to governments.

6. Brinkerhoff, “State Fragility.”

7. Fabra Mata and Ziaja, “User’s Guide”; Ziaja and Fabra Mata, “State Fragility Indices”; Wennmann, “Grasping the Strengths of Fragile States”; and Gutierrez Sanin, “Evaluating State Performance.”

8. Gutierrez Sanin, “Evaluating State Performance.”

9. Similar arguments have been advanced before, for instance, in Besley and Persson, “Fragile States”; and Lambach, Johais and Bayer, “Conceptualising State Collapse.”

10. Stewart and Brown, “Fragile States.”

11. Goldstone et al., “Strategy Framework.”

12. Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State.’”

13. Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “State Fragility.”

14. Fabra Mata and Ziaja, “User’s Guide.” The State Weakness Index was not considered given that it is no longer provided as part of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, which now only offers scores for the state of political and economic transformation as well as transformation management.

15. Fabra Mata and Ziaja, “User’s Guide”; Ziaja and Fabra Mata, “State Fragility Indices”; Gutierrez et al., “Measuring Poor State Performance”; and Gutierrez Sanin, “Evaluating State Performance.”

16. World Bank, “Harmonised List.” The term ‘harmonised’ refers to the averaging of the World Bank CPIA scores with those of the African Development Bank and Asian Development Bank.

17. McGillivray, “Aid Allocation”; and Feeny and McGillivray, “Aid Allocation to Fragile States.”

18. Chauvet and Collier, “What Are the Preconditions”; and Chauvet, Collier and Hoeffler, “Paradise Lost.”

19. Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Fragile Definition”; and Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History or Institutions.”

20. Previous to 2014, this index was designated the Failed States Index.

21. See, for instance, OECD, “Fragile States 2013.”

22. DFID uses as a working definition of fragile states the following: ‘countries where the government cannot or will not deliver core state functions to the majority of its people, including the poor’, and its list of fragile states draws on the CPIA, the Failed States Index of the Fund for Peace, and the Uppsala Conflict Database. Independent Commission for Aid Impact, “Assessing the Impact,” 2.

23. Carment, Prest and Samy, “Fragile States Framework”; Marshal and Goldstone, “Global Report on Conflict.”

24. Carment, Prest and Samy, “Fragile States Framework.”

25. Marshal and Goldstone, “Global Report on Conflict.”

26. Bhuta, “Measuring Stateness,” 7.

27. Goldstone et al., “Strategy Framework”; ARD, “Measuring Fragility.”

28. Putzel and Di John, “Meeting the Challenges,” 18.

29. Gutierrez et al., “Measuring Poor State Performance.”

30. Marshall, Gurr and Harff, “PITF Codebook 2014.”

31. Ibid., 12.

32. Ibid., 13.

33. OECD, States of Fragility 2015.

34. Ibid., 19.

35. Ibid., 104.

36. Bhuta, “Measuring Stateness,” 7.

37. See Faust, Gravingholt and Ziaja, “Foreign Aid,” for a discussion of the cognitive challenge associated with identifying the causes of state fragility and with finding suitable instruments to understand it.

38. Goertz, “Social Science Concepts,” 6–7.

39. Lambach, Johais and Bayer, “Conceptualising State Collapse.”

40. Besley and Persson, “Fragile States”; and Gutierrez Sanin, “Evaluating State Performance,” 21. Besley and Persson also highlight that a conceptualisation based on a sound theory will enable the distinction between endogenous and exogenous factors. Besley and Persson, “Fragile States.”

41. For this reason, the analysis of this index is not included in this section.

42. This list of proposals does not make claims of completeness. The selection was made on the basis of the aforementioned dimensions of state fragility, which appear to be the most common among existing frameworks. For other, more extensive, lists of dimensions, I refer to Ghani, Lockhart and Carnahan’s framework based on 10 functions for the modern sovereign state. Ghani, Lockhart and Carnahan, “Closing the Sovereignty Gap.”

Additionally, Kaplan has proposed to categorise fragile states (or ‘political orders’, in the terminology of the author) around four types, based on their level of political fragmentation and government capacity. Kaplan, “Identifying Truly Fragile States.”

In a different account, but also using a multidimensional approach, the Crisis State Research Centre proposes a definition of fragility based on four attributes of the state, which constitute the basis for a fragility-to-resilience spectrum. Putzel and Di John, “Meeting the Challenges.”

43. Goldstone et al., “Strategy Framework.”

44. Ibid., 3.

45. Ibid.

46. Goldstone builds upon this approach and maps out different pathways of state failure. Goldstone, “Pathways to State Failure.”

47. Marshall and Cole, “Global Report,” 51.

48. Marshall and Goldstone, “Global Report on Conflict,” 13–4.

49. Rice and Patrick, “Index of State Weakness.”

50. Ibid., 3.

51. Ibid., 8.

52. Patrick considers the same definition of state weakness and proposes a typology of seven categories of countries, from ‘endemically weak states’ to ‘reform-minded governments’, based not only on their current situation, but also on their trajectory. Patrick, “‘Failed’ States and Global Security,” 651.

53. Carment et al., “2006 Country Indicators,” 5.

54. Carment, Prest and Samy, “Fragile States Framework,” 84.

55. Carment et al., “2006 Country Indicators,” 6–7.

56. Cited in Carment, Prest and Samy, “Fragile States Framework,” 83–4.

57. Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State.’”

58. Ibid., 306–8.

59. Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “State Fragility”; and Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “Disaggregating State Fragility.”

60. Carment et al., “2006 Country Indicators”; Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State.’”

61. Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “Disaggregating State Fragility,” 1290–2.

62. Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State.’”

63. Lambach, Johais and Bayer, “Conceptualising State Collapse,” 1301.

64. Stewart and Brown, “Fragile States,” 3.

65. Ibid.

66. Carment, Prest and Samy, “Fragile States Framework”; Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State’”; and Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “State Fragility.”

67. Bates, “Logic of State Failure.”

68. Besley and Persson, “Fragile States.”

69. Ibid.

70. Zulueta-Fulscher, “Democracy-Support Effectiveness.”

71. OECD, States of Fragility 2015, 45.

72. Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “State Fragility”; Gravingholt, Ziaja and Kreibaum, “Disaggregating State Fragility”; and OECD, States of Fragility 2015.

73. This agreement was signed in Busan in 2011 by the G7 and the group of 19 fragile and conflict-affected countries, development partners, and international organisations. International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, “New Deal.”

74. Brinkerhoff, “State Fragility,” 337.

75. Gisselquist, “Varieties of Fragility,” 1272.