State Failure in Sub-Saharan Africa by Catherine Scott

Author:Catherine Scott [Scott, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, History & Theory, History, Modern, 20th Century, Asia, General, International Relations, World, African, Africa
ISBN: 9781786722102
Google: C9WLDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-06-30T01:12:49+00:00

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

Myths of State Failure

The concept of state failure arose out of the ashes of the new world order. While the origins of the term remain ambiguous, its emergence, in many respects, reflected international dismay at the upsurge in nationalist conflicts and the disappointment of Western ideologues that the fall of the Berlin Wall had not, in practice, led to the anticipated triumph of, and universal convergence towards, ‘liberal democracy as the final form of human government’.1 The straitjacket of the Cold War had seemingly imposed a period of unparalleled, albeit uncomfortable, stability and its removal had led to a new world disorder which represented a return to history (rather than its end). In an increasingly interdependent world, which had seen states being rolled back and marginalised, failed states (conceivably the sine qua non of the withering of the state system) reinforced the continued relevance of the state. Negating their effects became paramount not just for the functioning of the global marketplace and the promotion of development and social justice but for international peace and security. Threats to the latter were reinterpreted in a way that breached hitherto sacrosanct principles of state sovereignty, presaging increasingly permissive rights (or responsibilities) of international intervention which, in turn, precipitated a kind of benevolent (or post-modern) imperialism.

Optimism about the UN's re-found capabilities was however dashed, together with the humanitarian agenda of the 1990s, by the international community's first encounter with a failed state in Somalia. Failed states thence remained isolated tragedies that imperilled their own citizens and destabilised neighbouring countries – until their ‘remarkable odyssey from the periphery to the very centre of global politics’ in the aftermath of 9/11.2 Increasingly feared as epicentres of international organised crime, global pandemics, weapons proliferation and, more acutely, as havens for transnational terrorists, failed states gained heightened strategic significance and remedying the ‘problem’ of such states became a critical component of homeland security agendas. In the process, the empirical line between intervention for the sake of others and intervention in self-defence began to blur.3 As the so-called ‘Long War’ followed on the heels of the Cold War, state failures were retrospectively recognised and other crises re-clothed in their guise, and the (already opaque) concept became increasingly elastic and securitised. Although, as ‘sober analysis’ replaced ‘anecdotal evidence’, the link between state failure and transnational terrorism proved specious,4 the state failure net has continued to widen.

This is arguably because widening the net serves a political purpose – to delegitimise states that pose a perceived threat to Western interests or values. Further, by placing the culpability for state failure (and its ramifications) within those states, it creates a moral justification for successful states to help the not-so-successful ones. Thus, the constitution of state failure is based on a subjective political judgement, defined and constructed by the ‘great powers’ (according to the principles of appropriate statehood promoted and legitimised by them), as much as it is on the objective, empirically observed disintegration of statehood – and the latter is not necessarily

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