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Abstract
The special issue ‘Fragile States: A Political Concept’ investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the oecd, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of ‘fragile states’ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the contributing authors, who endured numerous meetings (International Studies Association annual meeting in Montreal, International Political Studies Association annual meeting in Madrid) in order to produce a coherent set of articles for this special issue. We also thank our colleagues who served as anonymous reviewers at various stages in the production process. We are grateful to Claire Bacher for her careful proofreading, as well as to Katarina Lavric and Nicki Jeschke for editorial support. The financial support of the Center of Excellence ‘Cultural Foundations of Integration’ at the University of Konstanz and of the Research Assistant Scheme at the School of Government and Society, University of Birmingham, is gratefully acknowledged.
Notes
1. World Bank, World Development Report 2011; oecd, Principles for Good International Engagement; Council of the European Union, “An EU Response to Situations of Fragility”; and European Commission, “Towards an EU Response to Situations of Fragility.”
2. National Security Council, The National Security Strategy. Interestingly this strategy document was drafted amid a period of heightened tension between the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) over the policies of the Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian.
3. Toje, “The 2003 European Union Security Strategy,” 124–127.
4. Holsti, The State, War and the State of War, xi.
5. Stepanova, “Trends in Armed Conflicts,” 71.
6. Odhiambo, “The Economics of Conflict,” 292–296.
7. There is also an element of gradation in the typology of certain authors. For Robert Rotberg, ‘it is according to their performances – according to the levels of their effective delivery of the most crucial political goods – that strong states may be distinguished from weak ones, and weak states from failed or collapsed’. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-states,” 2.
8. dfid, Why We Need to Work More Effectively.
9. Helman and Ratner, “Saving Failed States,” 5.
10. Ibid. Helman and Ratner identify three groups of states whose survival is threatened: failed states, in which the governmental structures have been overwhelmed by circumstances; failing states, where collapse is not imminent but could occur within several years; and, finally, certain newly independent states whose viability is difficult to assess.
11. Wilde, “The Skewed Responsibility Narrative,” 425; and Paris, “Ordering the World.”
12. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-states”; Fukuyama, State-building; and Zartman, Collapsed States.
13. Doornbos, “State Formation and Collapse,” 281.
14. Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War.
15. Yannis, “State Collapse and its Implications,” 64.
16. Annan, “We can Love What We Are.”
17. Including 47 ‘not free countries’ and 58 ‘partly free countries’, according to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2013 report. Reasoning taken from Dempsey, “Nation Building’s Newest Disguise,” 416–417.
18. This analogy was developed by Thomas P. M. Barnett, whose book The Pentagon’s New Map proved influential during the ‘neo-conservative moment’ in the USA in 2001–2005.
19. United Nations, Monterrey Consensus.
20. World Bank, World Bank Group Work in Low-income Countries under Stress.
21. The ‘Principles for Good International Engagement’ were published in 2007 by the oecd; for an overview of the process, see oecd, International Engagement in Fragile States.
22. undp, Human Development Report 2003.
23. dfid, The Politics of Poverty.
24. usaid, “Fragile States Strategy.”
25. oecd, Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, para. 3.
26. Ibid., para. 37.
27. Bellamy, “The ‘Next Stage’ in Peace Operations Theory?”; and Lemay-Hébert, “Review Essay.”
28. Ziaja and Fabra Mata, State Fragility Indices; Stewart and Grown, Fragile States; and Grimm and Schneider, Predicting Social Tipping Points.
29. Brinkerhoff, Governance in Post-conflict Societies; Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies, Overcoming Fragility in Africa; and Wesley, “The State of the Art.”
30. For the former, see Carment, “Assessing State Failure”; and Ikpe, “Challenging the Discourse on Fragile States.” For the latter, see Brinkerhoff, “State Fragility and Governance.”
31. For the former, see Boas and Jennings, “Failed States and State Failure,” 475–485. For the latter, see Hehir, “The Myth of the Failed State”; and Newman, “Weak States.”
32. Ziaja and Fabra Mata, State Fragility Indices, 3; Hagmann and Hoehne, “Failures of the State Failure Debate,” 42; Nuruzzaman, “Revisiting the Category of Fragile and Failed States”; Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State’,” 322; Call, “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’,” 1491; and Nay, “Fragile and Failed States.”
33. See Lemay-Hébert and Mathieu, as well as Grimm, in this issue. See also Mcloughlin, Topic Guide, 9–14.
34. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance, 10–11.